by Jim Wellman
His church has always played a large role in Vernon’s life. He’s been a board member and treasurer of the Pentecostal Church in Port de Grave for more than fifty years. He has also served on the board of the Gideon’s Society for years. Through his church, he also travelled to different parts of the world, spending his own money to provide labour, particularly his carpentry skills, to rebuilding churches and other buildings in regions that had been devastated by hurricanes or other disasters. He went to Montserrat in the West Indies in 1990, St. Lucia in the Caribbean and Zambia, Africa, in 1991, and back to Africa again in 1997.
Vernon is not the type to boast about his travels. Instead, he enjoys talking about his interest in the various cultures he observed there and shares stories about his adventures when trying to construct something from sparse building materials.
He also volunteers at home—a lot. He’s been a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary for years. He also volunteered with the Heritage Society, the local museum, the Port de Grave Harbour Authority, and the list goes on.
Vernon is a shining example of what volunteerism stands for. He does things for the sheer satisfaction and joy of being able to help those less fortunate.
One of the pastors at his church tells a story about Vernon that sums him up very well.
Pastor K. M. Bess said, “There was a family in our community in need of a house because the house they occupied was inadequate for the coming winter. It was then that Vernon volunteered his entire fall, day and night, putting his carpentry skills to work, and with little help from anyone else he built this family a house, from its foundation to the kitchen cabinets. I personally witnessed him volunteering his time every day, including Christmas Eve, putting the finishing touches on the house to get the family in for Christmas Day. The work was completed and the house stands today as a representation of selfless giving, thanks to Vernon Petten.”
Shirley and Vernon Petten
People noticed Vernon’s goodness and nominated him for several prestigious awards, most of which he was granted. He received the Newfoundland and Labrador Volunteer Medal in 2001 and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002. He was also awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and was inducted into the Navigator Mariner’s Hall of Fame in 2008.
Vernon and his wife, Shirley, live in a modest but cozy home which he built himself when they were married sixty years ago in Port de Grave. He told me that on a couple of occasions Shirley hinted that it might be nice to have a new, more modern home—especially for occasions when they have family visiting. But Vernon is a humble man who sees nothing wrong with their old traditional house in which they raised six children and had a good life. There is no doubt that they could afford a much larger and more expensive property, but fancy houses don’t impress Vernon Petten.
At eighty years of age, Vernon doesn’t go to sea very often these days. Blair has taken over most of the family business, but Vernon is still very active in the decision-making process and still plays a very hands-on role in the enterprise.
While tuna fishing might have been his most interesting fishery to prosecute, Vernon says his favourite meal of fish is cod and smiles as he pays Shirley a nice compliment.
“They say you’ve never tasted good fish until you’ve had Shirley Petten’s pan-fried cod,” he says, nodding his agreement as Shirley laughs.
Lucky for me, I had just sat down at the kitchen table in their home to a huge plateful of Shirley’s wonderful pan-fried cod, complete with potatoes, scruncheons, and all the fixin’s.
Just the aroma from the hot, heaping dinner plate was enough for me to know that I didn’t need Vernon’s convincing about Shirley’s cooking skills.
Chapter 6
Tabusintac’s Troubled Year
The town of Tabusintac in northeastern New Brunswick, along with several neighbouring communities, is still reeling after the tragic lobster season of 2013. Three fishermen died in the early morning hours of May 18 when their fishing vessel struck a sandbar and capsized. The tragedy came on the heels of another blow to the fishing community less than two weeks prior. On May 5, fire totally destroyed five fishing vessels that were docked at the wharf in Tabusintac. Several other vessels were damaged, and more were moved away from the wharf just in time to escape the same fate.
And then, on May 27, just nine days after the full reality of the most tragic incident to hit that area in decades was starting to sink in, four more vessels grounded on a sandbar, but this time luck was on the side of the crews. The tide was low, the wind and seas were calm, and everyone survived without serious incident. Later in the day, the boats were able to move off the sandbar under their own steam at high tide.
Losing a fishing boat means losing the primary tool of a fisherman’s trade. Without a vessel, he or she can’t work, and that leaves them without a means to financially survive and support their families.
As devastating as the loss of five vessels to fire was to the small fishing village of Tabusintac, the loss of three lives was a terrible blow. Replacing vessels would obviously mean a huge financial burden and create severe difficulty for those affected, but it pales in comparison to the loss of three productive and relatively young men. Vessels can be replaced, but lives cannot.
The year 2013 was one that lobster fishermen and their families in Tabusintac and area wish they could forget—but they know they never will.
Anxiety started early in the lobster season for fishermen in northeastern New Brunswick fishing communities. Prices for the delicious crustacean plummeted before the spring season officially opened and, like many of their counterparts in all of Atlantic Canada, fishermen in Tabusintac debated whether it was worth their time to set traps. Some left their boats at the wharf for a few days rather than fish for such a measly return on their investment. Fuel, vessel insurance, crew salaries, and every other expense connected to their fishing enterprise continued to increase, and prices at or below $3 per pound were barely enough to pay the bills, let alone make a small profit.
But finally, push came to shove and buyers increased the price, and eventually fishermen decided that they would untie their boats, thinking that if they could catch a lot of lobsters in a short period, they just might be lucky enough to make ends meet.
Trap setting day (season opening) was April 29 and fishermen couldn’t ask for better weather, so most boats that were docked at McEachern’s Point wharf in Tabusintac were boarded before daylight. More than thirty vessels were steaming out the harbour at dawn.
Weather turned bad after opening day and some boats got out only a couple times that week, so it was a relief when the weather forecast called for calm seas and sunny skies on Monday, May 6. But the good forecast was muted for many in the early morning hours of Sunday, May 5.
Robbie Wishart, a young fisherman in Tabusintac, was abruptly awakened by the sound of his phone ringing just before 3:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. It was his cousin Gordie Wishart saying there was a fire at the wharf and it looked like there may be more than one boat burning. Robbie jumped out of bed, woke his dad, and ran to his truck. A few minutes later, he arrived at McEachern’s wharf. Gordie was already there and making calls on his cellphone to alert as many boat owners as he could. Shortly, the father-son fishing team of Billy and Jamie McEachern, who lived near the dock, also arrived. Word spread fast through Tabusintac that morning, and soon several fishermen, including Peter McEachern, Robbie’s dad, John, Weldon Harding, and others were on the scene as well.
Five vessels burning at Tabusintac wharf (Photo courtesy of Gail Harding)
Robbie says he could hardly believe what he was seeing. Amazingly, five vessels were all burning intensely. The men knew it was impossible to attempt to move the burning boats, so the only thing they could do was to try and move other vessels still untouched by the flames out of harm’s way. But moving forty- to forty-five-foot lobster boats, most of
them carrying approximately 500 gallons of fuel, is easier said than done, especially in a small harbour. Tabusintac wharf was designed to accommodate hardly more than twenty boats, but on May 5, 2013, there were twice that many docked, meaning several vessels were docked side by side, as many as three or four deep.
That was Robbie Wishart’s dilemma. His own boat, Ocean Spray, was docked just ahead of the burning vessels, but his was on the inside at the wharf and he had to move those outside first before saving his own vessel.
Moving a forty-five-foot lobster boat can’t be done in a matter of a few seconds, like you can with small rowboats. The engines have to be started and the boats manoeuvred around, one at a time, or they have to be towed. And that’s what Robbie and the others did to get away from the intense heat and flames. They could start the engines on some boats, but others were locked, so Robbie and the other rescuers hitched a line to their boats and towed those away.
Working feverishly, the men moved approximately fifteen vessels away from the flames and across the harbour to safety, but while they did a great job, there was no way to save all the boats from danger. Some vessels were totally destroyed and sunk, while a few others were scorched but were not a total loss.
Fishermen in Tabusintac have a collective uneasy feeling about what caused the fires on board five of their fishing boats that night.
It was a calm night and boats were not pushing against each other by wave action. There was a watchman at the wharf, but he went home as usual, about midnight, at the end of his regular shift, just a few hours before fishermen and boat owners would start arriving at the wharf. It might be pure coincidence, but the boats that burned were the only five that had backed into the wharf rather than rafted side by side, parallel to the dock like the rest. But the strangest thing that everyone, including the police, couldn’t seem to understand is that all five vessels seemed to be burning at the same intensity and at the same rate—all at the same time. Two of the five were fibreglass construction and three were wooden hulls. While the fibreglass burned more quickly and intensely than the wooden boats, it seemed to Robbie and the other fishermen who were at the wharf that all five were burning equally at first, indicating the fires started on all boats at the same time. Police are still investigating, but so far they have not found enough evidence to charge anyone with any wrongdoing.
The fire was a devastating blow to the owners of the vessels. Although some insurance was carried, it wasn’t nearly enough to cover their losses. However, they were determined to carry on. Within forty-eight hours, the boat owners had rented or borrowed vessels from fishermen in their hometown or in neighbouring communities and were back on the water trying to salvage something from the troubled lobster fishery of 2013.
All five were back on the water a couple of days later, among them veteran Captain Weldon Harding and a very close friend of his, Captain Ian Benoit. Ian had fished as a crew member with Weldon for eight years. In fact, Weldon and his wife, Genevieve, both say Ian was like a son to them.
A big concern for area fishermen in May was the ever-shifting sandbars located about four kilometres off the coastline from McEachern’s Point wharf where fishermen docked their vessels. The sediment on the sandy bottom is constantly changing with current and tidal activity depending on various oceanographic conditions. Fishermen have to carefully steam through a “gully” to get to open sea before heading to their fishing grounds. They were aware that the channel had narrowed over the winter, and several fishermen, including Ian Benoit, had advocated vigorously for speedy action to have the channel widened by dredging, to make it safer for vessels heading to sea.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada said it had been working on a plan with local fishermen since the fall of 2012 to dredge an access channel. In a statement issued in late May, DFO said “sounding” surveys were conducted on April 22 and May 7, after which the department requested the proper permits from Environment Canada to proceed with dredging.
“The geographic location and the tidal currents of McEachern’s Point naturally encourage sedimentation. The access channel has shifted 250 metres south from its position last year,” the DFO statement said.
It wasn’t stormy, but weather had been unsettled near Tabusintac on May 16 and 17, 2013. Northeast winds and moderate seas made fishing a little uncomfortable but not bad enough to remain in port. Similar conditions continued into Saturday, May 18.
As fishermen gathered at the McEachern’s Point wharf early Saturday morning to prepare for fishing, the captains sized up the skies, wind direction and speed, and tide and wave conditions offshore before making a decision to untie. Some decided to wait until after daylight, but most, including Weldon Harding and Ian Benoit, thought it would be fine to leave before dawn. Weldon says the weather was fair enough for fishing, and with the tide rising they should be able to navigate the “Gut” without a problem. In fact, they reasoned, coming back later that day should be better, with higher tides, even if the winds breezed up a little higher.
“The forecast said the wind was expected to pick up by noon, but we figured that we’d get half or three quarters of a trip in, and if it looked like it was gonna get bad, we’d come in,” Weldon recalls. So, for most boats it was a go.
Weldon says he was the third or fourth boat to head out in the dark.
“There was a bit of sea on, so we kept spottin’ the buoys [with spotlights] as we went and it wasn’t too bad, but when I was about at the end [of the Gully], a couple of waves hit us and then I took a pretty good one right on the side of her and I thought, ‘Geez, that’s funny,’ because it didn’t look that bad in the spotlight, but we had a new gully cut through the sand [by sedimentation] just above the old one in the past few days. Sand can move that quick, and it looked like the two of them were kind of filling in and probably meeting together at the end,” he says, explaining that the shifting sands and new gullies created by nature’s forces probably created unpredictable wave action.
Weldon and his crew made it through the gully and kept on steaming, but the farther he went the rougher it got, so he started wondering whether it was wise to proceed.
“So, I called my buddy Jamie, who was up ahead of me, and asked where he was. He said, ‘I’m about ten miles off,’ so I asked him what it was like and he said he was only doing about four or five knots. I said to him, ‘You have another five miles to go and I have about ten, so that’s gonna take you another hour and me two,’ so I said to hell with this, I’m goin’ back home.”
A short while later, Ian Benoit called Weldon and, after a few minutes, several skippers, including Ian and his twin brother, Eric Benoit, who was on a different boat, got in touch again and exchanged opinions on what to do.
“Ian asked what I was going to do and I said, ‘I’m going back but I’m gonna wait till daylight before trying to get through that bloody hole [gully], because it was kinda dirty when we came through on the way out. Ian said yeah, it seemed to be a good idea, so the three of us, Ian and his brother Eric and me, turned around and headed back.”
Both Ian and Eric had been behind Weldon on the way out, but now they were ahead of him, going back, so he kept a close eye on both the Benoit boats along the way while at the same time trying to hang back a little more and wait for daylight.
As they got closer to the sandbars and in shallower water, seas got considerably rougher. By the time the three boats were approaching the entrance to the gully, Weldon saw a couple of big waves strike both the boats that were less than a quarter-mile in front of him.
“A couple of minutes later, all hell broke loose,” Weldon says.
Captain Weldon Harding was keeping a very close eye on the two boats just a few hundred yards ahead of him as they approached the so-called “gully” leading through the sandbars to get back home to Tabusintac. Thirty-five-year-old twin brothers Ian and Eric Benoit, captains of separate vessels, were approaching the most vul
nerable area of the gully while Weldon hung behind his friends a little bit, intending to wait for more daylight to improve his chances for a successful passage through the narrow gully. A veteran skipper, Weldon said seas were running strong and erratic in the shallow waters.
Captain Weldon Harding at wheelhouse door (Photo courtesy of Gail Harding)
“I saw a couple of big waves, and then one real big wave that struck Eric, and suddenly he was nowhere to be seen for a little while. And then I saw Ian, who was now in the gully, and I saw the waves coming at him, too, and after the third one, I’m there going, ‘Now’s your chance, boys, now’s your chance!’ Usually they [waves] come in threes and then you get a little lull, so I was there goin’, ‘Give ’er, give ’er, give ’er, now’s your chance,’ and he was doing everything right. With the third one, he was riding it with the bow up on it, but after the third one, out of the blue came this big one, a surprise fourth one, and struck Ian right on the side, laid right into the side of her, rolled her out—you could see her keel. He must have seen it coming because he tried to cut her to take it on an angle and ride it, but it was too late, and when she came down off the wave, she came down fast and she came down arse first, and he was thrown all the way over on the other side of the gully, and then I knew he was in bad trouble!”
“Trouble” meant that Ian’s boat had been tossed onto the sandbar and was hard aground. Weldon says he wasn’t sure what to do, but he knew he had to try to save his friend Ian along with his two deckhands, Samuel René Boutin, just twenty-three years of age, from Saumarez, and Alfred Rousselle, age thirty-two of nearby Brantville.
Charred remains of some of the burnt vessels (Photo courtesy of Gail Harding)