I write this without expectation that it'll be heeded; that it must be argued at all, and has not been enacted in the regulatory regime long since, is reason enough to despair, but here goes nothing. It happens that the rarefied corner of the world I was born into is the heart of "District 34", a fishery zone delineated in the North Atlantic off southwestern Nova Scotia which may be proportionally the most lucrative lobster grounds on God's earth today. The lobster fishery today IS the local economy, despite the best efforts of my father among others to diversify: there's lobstering and there's boatbuilding and other such support for the lobster fishery, then there are the secondary services dependent for their daily bread on those producers, and nothing more to speak of; no farming or fish farming, no oil and gas, no manufacturing, etc. So to neglect the market for our lobster would be practically criminal.
The natural, next-door market for District 34 lobsters happens to be the greatest market in the world and in history, namely the United States, and in this age a lobster caught in District 34 on Thursday may have made it to the American market on Friday. The lobster season this year opens as it has for as long as I can remember, on the last Monday of November, placing it well for the market in lobsters around Christmas and New Year's, but more often than not missing by a day the market for Thanksgiving (or "American Thanksgiving", which is to say the first and true Thanksgiving).
Thanksgiving in America is of course a holiday of between one day and three, plus the weekend following, when families are reunited and eat uncommonly large and special dinners at home or out, and which inaugurates the Christmas season, with "Black Friday" after Thanksgiving Thursday being the busiest single shopping day of the 365. And Thanksgiving in America falls on the fourth Thursday of November, i.e., November 22 to 28. Thanksgiving 2019 falls on November 28, all of six days later than Thanksgiving '18 and after the last Monday in November which opens the lobster season. But seven years in ten, the lobster fishery which amounts to the totality of the economy is opened a day late for what may be the greatest demand in what assuredly is the greatest market.
I shudder to imagine the wealth that's been forfeited by setting the lobster season with such disregard for the lobster market; the lobsters couldn't be much better off for being spared a few days, but those few days could cost our tiny economy untold millions of American dollars. So I propose on this unread blog that the lobster season be adjusted marginally, to open not on the last Monday of November but the Monday before the fourth Thursday in November -- and lest it be protested that this would be an upset to the lobsters, let it be noted that every few years the last Monday does fall before the fourth Thursday, so surely the change would be inconsequential to all but our economy. But this is the universe of Canadian federal regulation, so I can only expect that the status quo will be observed universally and uniformly, without question or consideration, and tomorrow as yesterday, like a manufacturer of toys releasing its new line annually on December 26, a day late for Christmas but well placed for all those January birthdays.
The natural, next-door market for District 34 lobsters happens to be the greatest market in the world and in history, namely the United States, and in this age a lobster caught in District 34 on Thursday may have made it to the American market on Friday. The lobster season this year opens as it has for as long as I can remember, on the last Monday of November, placing it well for the market in lobsters around Christmas and New Year's, but more often than not missing by a day the market for Thanksgiving (or "American Thanksgiving", which is to say the first and true Thanksgiving).
Thanksgiving in America is of course a holiday of between one day and three, plus the weekend following, when families are reunited and eat uncommonly large and special dinners at home or out, and which inaugurates the Christmas season, with "Black Friday" after Thanksgiving Thursday being the busiest single shopping day of the 365. And Thanksgiving in America falls on the fourth Thursday of November, i.e., November 22 to 28. Thanksgiving 2019 falls on November 28, all of six days later than Thanksgiving '18 and after the last Monday in November which opens the lobster season. But seven years in ten, the lobster fishery which amounts to the totality of the economy is opened a day late for what may be the greatest demand in what assuredly is the greatest market.
I shudder to imagine the wealth that's been forfeited by setting the lobster season with such disregard for the lobster market; the lobsters couldn't be much better off for being spared a few days, but those few days could cost our tiny economy untold millions of American dollars. So I propose on this unread blog that the lobster season be adjusted marginally, to open not on the last Monday of November but the Monday before the fourth Thursday in November -- and lest it be protested that this would be an upset to the lobsters, let it be noted that every few years the last Monday does fall before the fourth Thursday, so surely the change would be inconsequential to all but our economy. But this is the universe of Canadian federal regulation, so I can only expect that the status quo will be observed universally and uniformly, without question or consideration, and tomorrow as yesterday, like a manufacturer of toys releasing its new line annually on December 26, a day late for Christmas but well placed for all those January birthdays.
