Who Speaks for the Fishes?

With the debate now underway about increasing the commercial fishing on Lake Nipissing, I am reminded of a story a friend told me about some land negotiations he attended. Essentially the negotiations were about mineral rights and the environmental impact of opening a mine in northern Ontario. Attending for the native peoples were a number of band chiefs from the area and their lawyers. Sitting opposite were the Ministry of Natural Resources, Northern Mines and Development and the mining company with all their lawyers. The talks in Toronto had been dragging on for several days with each side trying to gain some economic advantage. One elderly native peoples’ representative had not said a word, and indeed seemed to be snoozing as the others made their cases.

My friend said the company representatives thought the elderly man had just been brought along as a courtesy to let him see the Big Smoke and get some free meals. In fact they had not heard a word from him other than when he was introduced at the opening session. The name tag in front of his seat simply said ‘Charlie’ with a long name only pronounceable in Cree, no tribal or official designation. The day came when they thought they might have an agreement so each person who had a vote gave his or her decision. The meetings were being recorded on tape and for clarity, every person gave their title and position and who they represented before saying yea or nay to the deal. As the vote moved around the table, ‘Charlie’ sat very still but was paying full attention to each person’s remarks. The vote was tied when it came to Charlie and there was only one more person after him, a band chief.

Charlie gave his name, but before he could continue, one of the lawyers interrupted and asked for whom Charlie was speaking. “I speak for the fishes,” was the reply. There were a few coughs around the table as the folk from the Ministries and corporation tried to hide their snickers, but the native representatives were paying full attention. The gist of it was that Charlie was there to speak to environmental issues without any ties or obligations to any community. His view was to be the traditional, long-range vision of the environmental impact. He chastised the other negotiators for always talking about money and jobs and who had the right to do this or that. But there were other beings living in the area and they had forgotten about them. That was why he was speaking for the fishes. The fishes, birds and animals had made the area proposed for development their home long before man came. It might be a good thing to build a mine and give jobs and money to the community around the lake, but if the chemicals leached into the waters, the fishes would die. Even the MNR had admitted that there might be some loss of fish in the immediate area, but it would only be one small lake, one of thousands of lakes in the north. The company had already worked some dollars into the payment equation to pay for the lost fishery.

My friend could see that this was going to be a deal-breaker so he proposed a recess while the company studied another plan for mine waste disposal. They finally made a deal but my friend said he never went into another land negotiation meeting without an awareness of who was speaking for the fishes. Which brings me back to the current discussions about the Lake Nipissing fishery.

The fishery on the lake is mostly commercial, in one form or another. Whether the fish are caught in a net or on a hook, people are spending money in the hope of either making a living or getting something to eat. Walleye or pickerel seem to be the target now and although some people are trying to sustain the fish population by putting little ones into the lake and only taking them out when they reach a certain size, the lake is one large fish farm. In days gone by, sturgeon were caught and shipped to exotic places like New York City; now we want to send the walleye to Toronto. When the walleye have gone the way of the sturgeon, will we be sending perch to Barrie? Perhaps we should follow the trend around the world and create aquaculture farms around the lake and leave the few remaining wild fish to themselves.

Oh, I know, those glassy-eyed swimmers do not have sense of being anymore than the chickens and cows we eat, but maybe they do have a life of their own that we do not yet understand. If the goldfish in my pond can play games, do the fish in the wild not have their own games and social life? We humans seem very capable of looking after our own interests ahead of anything (or even anybody) else, but maybe we need a ‘Charlie’ to speak for the fishes in the current talks aimed at turning more living things into lifeless dollars.

In this ‘dog-eat-dog’ world I suppose we are lucky to be at the top of the food chain. The fishes may be down near the bottom of that chain, but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In the grand scheme of all things it may not matter a whit whether there are any fish or any people left on this spinning rock, but I think I would feel the better for it if there were both.