Wade Collinson: Halibut Joint Venture on Haida Gwaii

One chat with Wade Collinson and you’re bound to be talking about either fishing or basketball.

Born and raised in Skidegate, Wade has been fishing Haida waters since he was a young boy. When he’s not on the water, Wade’s either playing or coaching basketball, or spending time with his four active children. He coaches his daughters’ basketball teams at the U13 level and also the lady and high school programs in Skidegate and Daajing Giids.

For the Collinson family, it’s a generational approach to both pursuits. Just like many other Haida fishers, who inherit skills and knowledge from family members “in the know,” Wade has been learning how to fish these waters his whole life. “I learned everything from my father and grandfather,” says Wade, “who taught me how to read the weather and the tides and know how to manage all that.”

Wade has fished all over Haida Gwaii and along the BC coast from border to border, and he’s bringing all that experience to a new joint venture fishing for halibut and black cod (sablefish) with Coastal Nations Fisheries. “Taking on an existing licence works well because I don’t have to deal with as many initial costs and setup that you’d normally have to cover,” he says. “Fishing these days is so hard for up-and-comers, given the steep upfront costs to get licenses and gear and so on.”

Wade doesn’t sugar-coat it when discussing past and current challenges starting up in the fishing industry. “Fishing has been difficult for decades, and especially hard for small-scale fishers,” he says. “All those upfront costs for vessel and gear, including high-tech fish finders and navigational aids, plus attaining the costly licences on top of that.” Even when you get over that initial hump to get a foot in the door of the industry, he says it’s also difficult to scale up. “It’s tough to find good help because so much knowledge and skill has been lost over the years,” he explains. “Wages are always an issue, but so is the lack of interest from younger generations who maybe didn’t have that same connection to fishing growing up.”

Talk to any Elder or long-time fisher from Haida Gwaii, or anywhere along the coast, and you’ll hear a similar refrain. It’s an issue for anyone wanting to get involved in fishing, but especially for lifetime fishers like Wade and many other Haida citizens, who grew up with a deep connection to these waters. For Haida people, fishing isn’t just a source of food and income, it’s also cultural activity. “Fishing for salmon, halibut and herring, or gathering shellfish like razor clams, is just what you do,” says Wade. “It’s just a part of daily life.”

The good news is that these issues are exactly what the Fisheries Resources Reconciliation Agreement was designed to overcome, and it’s leading to several new commercial opportunities, in Community Based Fisheries or smaller-scale joint ventures, similar to Wade’s halibut and black cod project.

“I think it’s putting power back in the hands of First Nations to manage the fisheries in ways that are sustainable and make sense for our people,” says Wade. “Long-term efforts like establishing Haida title and the FRRA are major developments that will make a huge difference, but it takes time for these bigger initiatives to lead to new opportunities.”

With the season just getting started for Wade, he’s hopeful this new joint venture is a step in the right direction, and looks forward to future opportunities.