Reviews From the Edge

On March 15, 1931, an explosion ripped through the stern of the steamer SS Viking, just nine miles from Horse Islands, White Bay on the north east coast of Newfoundland. With insufficient supplies, shelter or medical equipment, of the 153 men aboard, 24 perished. By then, the sealing industry was in decline, and only a handful of steamers were sent to the front, marking the beginning of the end of Newfoundland’s two hundred-year traditional industry. In his new book, The Last of the Ice Hunters: An Oral History of the Newfoundland Seal Hunt, Shannon Ryan presents, through recorded conversations with sealers, a comprehensive resource detailing their working lives at a time of both modernization and economic collapse.

            Shannon Ryan has spent his entire professional life documenting the working lives of Newfoundland fishermen, having already produced two books on the subject. Over the course of two years, and with the assistance of more than a dozen history graduates, Ryan and his team collected approximately 150 oral history interviews from former sealers. But Ryan also had additional sources at his disposal, including a series of taped interviews conducted in the 1960s and 70s. The resulting narrative spans approximately twenty years, from the Great Depression to Confederation, when sealing ceased being a Newfoundland industry but was “resurrected as a Canadian industry in time to meet the animal rights protest movement.”

            The Last of the Ice Hunters is encyclopedic in both scope and design. The sealers themselves provide revealing insights, and their plain language is, at times, both simple and eloquent. Lester Andrews is particularly effective: “It was a dog’s life. I’ve got a dog that belongs to my grandson, and I wouldn’t let it go in the berth that I slept in for all the world.” Oral history writing has gone through resurgence because it tends to present these kinds of relatable working class stories to a general readership. With The Last of the Ice Hunters, the themed chapters and interviews are arranged alphabetically, as the author indicates, for the ease of reading. For multi-voiced oral histories to flow organically, they need to develop a rhythm that builds into a chorus. Here they tend to feel assembled into a tallying of anonymous experiences, rather than a collection of commonly-shared narratives. Many personalities get lost in the shuffle.

Shannon Ryan’s The Last of the Ice Hunters: An Oral History of the Newfoundland Seal Hunt is timely because it portrays an industry in general decline. Hampered by constantly diminishing markets, by the beginning of World War II, the seal hunt was conducted by only a handful of vessels. By the end of the war, the fleet had all but vanished. Today, because of bans on seal products in Europe, the industry is mostly relegated to exporting fur. The parallels are undeniable. The author’s opening essay is detailed and functional and provides a broad overview of both his methodology and the industry. Ryan writes, “The history and oral traditions of sealing ships and sealers have remained a vital part of Newfoundland’s culture and history.” To that extent, the raw data is a major contribution. But what the book lacks is cohesion. There is a sweeping narrative lurking beneath the surface of these voices which only sometimes emerges. In his introduction, Ryan admits, “The informants were so generous with their time and attention they deserved to be included, even at the risk of repetition.” It makes the reader wonder if a defter editor might have presented a more creative approach.