Lake Huron's Entangled Eden: Fish, Fisheries, and Lost Opportunities in Freshwater Borderlands, 1900–1940

Abstract

Lake Huron’s Entangled Eden: Fish, Fisheries, and Lost Opportunities in Freshwater Borderlands, 1900-1940 By Kent LaCombe Lake Huron is both a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem and a politically divided international borderland between Michigan and Ontario. However, even as it serves as a barrier and dividing line, the lake concurrently fosters exchange and migration. The international boundary between Canada and the United States is often referred to as a permeable border.1 In the nineteenth century, the Great Lakes fueled increasing market linkages between the two nations. Agricultural products, fishes, and other goods were shipped across the lakes; human migrations were common. Despite the interchange, commercial fishing was an increasingly competitive venture. The Lake Huron fisheries story is one of the contentious nature of managing borderlands resources, the pernicious influence of short-term thinking, and the tendency of stakeholders to focus on economic selfinterest as fisheries stakeholders successfully blocked the adoption of new regulations to the detriment of their own industry. Any critical management plan for fishing was ultimately stalled and derailed, leading to further adverse environmental changes. Although there have been a good number of environmental and scientific histories of the Great Lakes, any systematic historical investigation of Lake Huron’s commercial fisheries remains woefully incomplete. As present day environmental managers struggle to address new and evolving challenges in aquatic environments, a careful analysis of past assumptions, motivations, mistakes, and other modes of destructive resource exploitation can aid in the formation of improved conservation 1 For an excellent explanation of the term’s applicability to the region, see John J. Bukowczyk et al., Permeable Border (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 1-9. THE MICHIGAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 41:1 (SPRING 2015): 25-56© 2015 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All rights reserved 26 The Michigan Historical Review and preservation strategies.2 Today economic priorities and anthropocentric considerations continue to provide the foundations of freshwater environmental management. Yet it was those same priorities which earlier drove decisions on how to manage the Great Lakes commercial fisheries, ultimately to their detriment. The period from 1900 to 1940 is especially noteworthy in the histories of the Great Lakes due to the numerous examples of lost opportunities at cooperative international management, particularly within the interwar period. With the outbreak of World War II, a wartime shift toward maximum food production and the successful formulation of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission after the war further wove a vibrant historical tapestry that lies outside the scope of this work. Few records provide a better historical reconstruction of the state of international fishery than the accumulated testimonies of individual commercial fishermen, scientists, and government officials concerning the utilization and management of critical freshwater resources. Catch records are also a useful, though incomplete, resource. Michigan did not adopt comprehensive catch reporting until 1929 and Ontario waited until the 1940s.3 Even considered as minimum totals, the incomplete catch data of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries chronicled dramatic declines.4 Canada took the lead in developing broad regulatory legislation. While its international negotiations remained in the hands of the British Crown until the 1931 Statute of Westminster, federal governance of domestic resources was a reality following the Constitution Act of 1867. 2 See William Ashworth, The Late, Great Lakes: An Environmental History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987); Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Margaret Beattie Bogue, Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environmental History, 1783-1933 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000); Michael J. Chiarappa and Kristin M. Szylvian, Fish for All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment on Lake Michigan (East Lansing: Michigan State Press, 2003); Milo M. Quaife, ed., The American Lakes Series (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944-1949); Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Robert Doherty, Disputed Waters: Native Americans and the Great Lakes Fishery (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1990). 3 Travis O. Brenden et al., “Great Lakes Commercial Fisheries: Historical Overview and Prognosis for the Future,” in Great Lakes Fisheries Policy and Management...