43. FISHERIES. Among the great indus tries of Canada the fisheries stand fifth in the order of value. The farming industry (mainly grain growing) is estimated to yield $500,000,- i 000 per annum; the lumber industry $100, 000,000; stock raising $100,000,000; mining $105,000,000, while the fishing industries are estimated to produce, on the whole, $39,000,000 to $40,000,000 annually. The latest report of the Marine and Fisheries Department, which gives the value for 1916-17, places it at $39, 208,378, but when account is taken of the amount of fish consumed by wandering tribes of Indians and Eskimo, with their hordes of fish-eating dogs, as well as the amount used as food by isolated settlers, miners, prospectors, lumberers and sportsmen, and, above all, the employees at the Hudson's Bay Company's posts in the remoter parts of northern Canada, the total amount must be greatly in excess of offi cial statistics.
Completely accurate returns are hardly pos sible, admirable as the Canadian system of gathering statistics is, so admirable that the late Prof. Brown Goode, head of the United States Fish Commission, declared at a fisheries conference in 1883 that t. . . other countries ought to study it with a great deal of The expansion of the Canadian fisheries since 1870 is sufficiently shown by the figures given below: 1870 56,577,391 1901 $23,737,153 1876 11,117,000 1908 25.451,094 1880 14.499,979 1911 29,965,433 1890 17,714,902 1913 33,389,464 1893 20,686,661 1915 31,264.631 1897 22.783,546 1916 35,860,708 1900 21,557,639 1917 39.208,378 Number of Boats, Fishermen, etc.— Over 1,300 vessels (valued at $4,961,343) and 40,105 boats, including 12,828 with gasoline engines (valued at $4,829,493), are employed, while the fishing gear used, including nets, lines, lob ster-traps, etc., is valued at over $5,690,002. Certain branches of the fisheries have developed in a special degree, such as the salmon canning industry on the Pacific Coast and lobster pack ing on the Atlantic Coast. The former, em bracing about 80 canneries, represents an in vestment of about $3,000,000, while the Atlantic lobster canneries, in Quebec and the three Mari time provinces, numbering 700, are valued at about $660,000. Smokehouses, curing and re frigerating establishments, in operation, are officially recorded at $4,025,371 in value. In
other words, a capital of over $28,000,000 is employed in the fisheries. In three years (1911 14) the total increased by nearly $5,000,000.
The total number of persons engaged either in fishing or in handling fishery products in Canada reaches to over 90,000, of whom 70,000 take part in Atlantic fishery enterprises. On the Pacific Coast 10,000 fishermen follow salmon netting, and 8,000 hands find employment as cannery workers, etc. The inland (fresh-water) fisheries engage a considerable number of fisher men, over 4,000 being employed in the Ontario or Great Lake fisheries, while, in Manitoba and the Northwest territories, 3,000 or 4000 men take part in the fishing operations.
Seven Fishery Seven territorial divisions may be distinguished in a general sur vey of the fisheries of the Dominion, viz.: 1. The Atlantic division, from Grand Manan in the south to the coast of Labrador, including the Bay of Fundy (8,000 square miles) and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (80,000 square miles), and characterized by deep-sea and inshore fish eries for cod mackerel, haddock, halibut, her ring. hake, lobsters, oysters, seals and white whales (beluga). Annual value, over $14,000,000.
2. The estuarine and inland waters of Que bec and the Maritime provinces, including fish eries for salmon (by stake-nets, drift-nets and angling), striped bass, smelt, shad, gasperean (alewife) ; and in the lakes, ouananiche or land-locked salmon, lake trout, togue or lunge, etc. Annual value, nearly $2,000,000.
3. Great Lakes division, including Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron and Superior, which Canada shares with the United States, the in ternational boundary passing practically through the centre of these vast inland seas, all of which finally empty into the river Saint Lawrence. This complex system of waters, with innumer able subsidiary lakes and rivers, abounds in lake whitefish (Coregonus), great lake trout (Cristivomer namaycush), lesser whitefish (er roneously called lake herring); sturgeon, pike perch (doree or pickerel), black bass, brook trout, maslcinonge, pike and numerous carpoid suckers, and bearded catfish. Annual value, nearly $3,000,000.