Whaling
- DILDO
This is the last of the 21 whaling stations built in Newfoundland and Labrador,
and was radically different from the Harbour Grace operation. The Arctic
Fishery Products Co. Ltd plant, opened at Dildo in 1947, was built primarily
to process Pothead and Minke whale meat and oil, and in part to ease meat
shortages in the 1950s and 1960s on local mink and fox farms (these being
part of the governments attempt to develop and diversify after confederation.
The local whale fishery could not supply these needs and failure in the
whale fishery was thus influential in the decline of the fur industry. Dildo
also played an important role in the final resurgence of Newfoundland and
Labrador commercial whaling. In 1966 Arctic Fishery Products began using
the Dildo factory to process meat for human consumption in Japan. The company
used the catchers, Kyo Maru 17 and Westwhale 8 (purchased from B. C. Packers
in 1968). The company then went into partnership with Taiyo Gyogyo K. K.of
Japan and refurbished the Williamsport station in 1967. However, Canada,
primarily in response to growing concern globally about whale stocks, placed
a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1972 thus closing the Williamsport
and Dildo factories, and bringing the Newfoundland and Labrador commercial
whaling industry to a close.