Bronte - A Fishing Village: by Andrew Armitage

In the mid-19th century, Lake Ontario was rich with fish. While Bronte was only one of dozens of ports participating in the commercial fishery, it was, for many years, home to one of the largest fleets of fishing boats to be found on Lake Ontario. Increasingly, numbers of Bronte residents turned to commercial fishing. Among the fishing families of Bronte were the Belyeas, Carpenters, Dorlands, Hintons, Ingledews, Joyces, MacDonalds, Osbornes, Pickards, Sargents, Skeltons, and Thomases.

The earliest commercial fishing on Lake Ontario took place on its western reaches, particularly off Burlington Beach. Fishing in waters anywhere from five kilometres (three miles) to 25 kilometres (18 miles) from shore, the men of the Bronte fleet at first sought the plentiful schools of whitefish and lake trout. As the decades passed and their numbers declined, cisco or "yellowback," as it was called locally, became the major species harvested from Lake Ontario.

And even after whitefish, lake trout, and cisco declined, other fish kept the industry alive. Four types of herring were netted. As well, there was pickerel, bass, and pike. Even sturgeon was still being caught in the 1930s and, just prior to World War I, perch added to the fishery's profits.

On Lake Ontario, and Lake Huron and Georgian Bay as well, the light but strong clinker-built fishing boat was generally favoured. While Ontario and Huron fishermen preferred transom sterns and those working the waters of Georgian Bay selected sharp sterns, whatever the design, most fishing boats were stoutly made, carried large amounts of sail, and were steady in the water.

According to the mariner-historian, C. H. J. Snider in his Tales From the Great Lakes, these schooner-rigged fishing boats went by several names including Collingwood skiffs, Huron boats and Mackinaw boats. Because it was thought that this type of fishing boat originated in the Straits of Mackinaw, Lake Ontario fishermen tended to call them "Macs," whether they were sharp-sterned like the Collingwood skiff, square-sterned like the true Mackinaw or with overhangs like the Huron boats. ¹

Of all the types of boats produced on the Great Lakes, it was the Collingwood skiff built by W. Watts and Sons of Collingwood, Ontario that had the greatest influence on boat builders. According to Peter Watts and Tracy Marsh in W. Watts and Son Boat Builders: Canadian Designs for Work and Pleasure, 1842-1946, the extremely seaworthy Collingwood skiff, clinker-built, schooner rigged, with a movable iron centre-board became a much copied model throughout the Great Lakes. On Lake Ontario, fishermen at Bronte received a trainload of Watts-built fish boats. Only after the arrival of the Collingwood model did local builders start to duplicate their design. ²

Bronte's fishing fleet, which by 1900, numbered some twenty-two boats, were, in appearance, either transom-sterned or double-ended skiffs. With the foremast stepped well forward and the mainmast just aft of the centreboard box, they were able to carry over 500 square feet of sail on a 26 foot hull.

Dalt MacDonald, born at Bronte in 1878, was both a boat-builder and a house carpenter. MacDonald built approximately thirty fishing boats, both sailing boats and gasoline boats, at his boatyard at the Bronte Gore, near where the cenotaph stands today. Lorne Joyce, in his pioneering article, Fish Boats Under Sail, recalls "Boatbuilders frequently were also house builders, but they knew which had priority. Dalt MacDonald of Bronte was building a big new house for a local steamer captain when a fisherman asked him for a new boat. Work n the house stopped. "Me and the boys went a building the fish boat,' Dalt recalled. 'A man makes a living by a boat, not by a house". ³

The regular fishing seasons stretched from September to May. By the turn of the century, Lake Ontario had been divided into discreet sections by the combined efforts of the United States and Canadian governments. Each Ontario county was given a section to fish and an overseer to enforce regulations. The overseer for Lake Ontario off Halton County was, for many years, Bronte's William Sargent.

The catch was either smoked, salted, or packed in ice to be sold fresh. The major destination was Toronto but fish were also sold to wholesalers in Hamilton, London, and Brantford, Ontario.

By 1910, two major changes came for the Bronte fish fleet. First, the centre of the industry moved from the western end of Lake Ontario gradually eastward toward Prince Edward County and the St. Lawrence River. Main Duck Island, off the coast of Prince Edward County, became summer fishing community for families like the Joyces, Belyeas, and Hintons. For over a decade, Main Duck was the "Bronte of the East". ⁴

The second major influence for the Bronte fishing fleet was the introduction of gasoline powered fish boats. Gas engines allowed Bronte's fishermen to work far from their home-port, even establishing fish stations at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.

Sailing was a way of life for Bronte's fishermen. Not only did they hold an annual regatta on Christmas or New Year's Day, Bronte fishermen also served as sailing masters on racing yachts. The winner of numerous awards of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club was the yacht, Aggie. Her sailing master was Sam Joyce, a fisherman.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, fishing was one of the sole ways for Bronte men to make a living. "You couldn't buy a job, " recalled Dalt MacDonald. But, as World War II began, only four Bronte fish boats remained on Lake Ontario. Even so, as late as 1944, they were landing some 350,000 pounds of herring in a single season. ⁵

Following World War II, the Lake Ontario fishery neared exhaustion. Confronted with an invasion of sea lamprey, Bronte fishermen left the lakes after nearly one hundred years of successful fishing.

Footnotes

1. C. H. J. Snider, Tales From the Great Lakes, p. 165-166.
2. Peter Watts and Tracy Marsh, W. Watts and Sons Boat Builders, p. 184.
3. Lorne Joyce, "Fish Boats Under Sail," Inland Seas, Spring, 1997, p. 8.
4. Philip Brimacombe, The Story of Bronte Harbour, p. 31.
5. Ibid., p. 34.