Annie's Day

In all the tiny fishing villages that snuggle in Nova Scotia's rocky coves, there is no fisherwoman quite like Mrs. Annie Lyons of Hadleyville on Chedabucto Bay. A wiry little (105 Ibs.) mother of seven, she sports a boyish bob, a man's clothes and does a man's work.

At 4 a.m. one morning last week Annie was up & about, to get breakfast for a son and daughter and Bert Hadley, for whom she keeps house. Then she got into oilskins, rubber boots and sou'wester, rowed a mile and a half through the bay's ice floes to haul her lobster pots. She rowed to the collecting smack to sell her catch, then headed home again. There she milked the cow, fed it and the horse, did the barn chores, and before cooking lunch got in a few licks at a fence she was fixing. In the May-to-October fishing season, that is daily routine for Annie Lyons.

Annie, now 45, got her start as a girl of 18 when she shared a boat with her father for a year. From then on, she fished alone. She can handle her own gear: 32 lines for cod, 100 lobster pots (most of which she made herself), eight nets for herring, mackerel and other ground fish, two rowboats and a 23-foot motorboat. She first qualified for the Dominion government fishing bounty* 17 years ago, has just got her latest $8.75 check for the 5,000 pounds of fish she caught in 1947.

Last winter, when there was no fishing, Annie cut 20 cords of pulpwood for sale and a couple of cords for the home stove. Said she last week: "I make enough out of fishing and pulpwood to live on. There isn't much left over. I love the sea and I love the land. I think maybe I would like other things better but this is my bread & butter." Then she added with pride: "The men down here who go fishing all think I'm wonderful."

*To qualify for a bounty, a fisherman or fisherwoman must fish three months a year, catch 2,500 Ibs. of deep-sea fish and use a boat with at least a twelve-foot keel. The money is interest on Canada's share of the $5,500,000 the U.S. paid after the 1871 Treaty of Washington for rights to fish in British waters.

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