Lac La Biche - History - Agriculture and Food

Agriculture | Fishing | Gardening & Greenhouse

FISHING

Fish and Game, 1887

Lac La Biche, which contained many whitefish, supplied the mission with food. In the winter, when supplies grown the previous year were running low, fish was a constantly present source of food. The nuns used the fish-bones to make jewelry, such as earrings, for themselves and the children.

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"The prices were very high. The fishermen receiving five cents per pound for Whitefish. Besides the regular fish companies doing business steadily here, there were quite a few outside buyers." – From the Edmonton Bulletin Prices, February, 1917

Annual Report of Superintendent A.H. Griesbach, N.W.M.P. "G" Division, 5 December 1887

The game in this district consists of moose, elk and jumping deer, bear, beaver, otter, lynx, foxes, wolves, wolverines, coyotes, mink, rabbits, rats, cranes, prairie chicken, partridge, geese, waveys and ducks. There is also whitefish, sturgeon, jackfish to be found in the lakes and streams.

Big game, which is not so plentiful, will no doubt in a short time become very scarce.

This, though applying to all kinds of deer and fur-bearing animals, and arising from the same cause, refers particularly to the beaver.

This animal, one of the most prolific of its kind, the fur most valuable, and the meat the best of food, is fast becoming exterminated by the heedless and wanton destruction of both old and young in the breeding season.

Not only is the killing of the old in the breeding season one of the worst features of the case, but also the killing of the young at any time, without regard to age or size, and I would suggest that it be made an indictable offence to kill beaver under an age to be stipulated, or what is called "kitten beaver".

I cannot express myself too strongly on this subject, bearing as it does on that already sufficiently intricate question, the future welfare of the Half-breed and Indian. If something is not done, and done quickly too, to prevent the wholesale destruction of game, a few years must see the end, and the Half-breed and Indian of the North must lose a source of income and food which has hitherto been his greatest standby, and of the thick bush Indian, his very existence.

Inspector Piercy who lately visited the North and lake part of my district, the home of the whitefish, reports on the fish question as follows:

"Fish. - This is a matter that should be brought to the notice of the Government at once. From what I can learn the fish are becoming less every year, and at the present rate it will be a matter of only a very few years until the whitefish will be a thing of the past.

The practice amongst the Indians has been to learn the spawning season, which they do to the very day, when the fish come into shallow water and are there caught.

They know nothing about deep-water fishing, but this could very easily be remedied by sending fishery instructors to the different reserves."

Partridge and prairie chickens are fairly plentiful, and duck would be unlimited in number were it not for the manner in which roving bands of Indians get into their homes, destroy their eggs and beat down the young before they are able to fly, with the aid of dogs and sticks, to say nothing of their killing in the same manner the old in the moulting season.

From the biography of Sister Tisseur, one of the founders of the Grey Nun Convent at the Lac La Biche Mission, 1862

"When the Oblate Brothers arrived at Lac La Biche, fishing provided their main food, but they only managed to catch one measly jackfish. Mgr. Taché who, distressed to see his Brothers suffer, had the devotion to attach a medal of St. Peter to the nets which then filled with excellent whitefish." Believe it or not.