ie

ONE LOVELY summer long ago I sailed south from
Rupert in Bill Tocher’s fishpacker, bound for Kemano.
Why Kemano [ don’t remember, and it isn’t important

now,

‘fwo important things about
that little voyage remain. One was
‘that the wine-dark sea was alive
with phosphorescence and by
night the salmon and porpoises
made flaming tracks in the water
beside our. bow.

The other memorable thing was
that Bill Tocher taught me to ap-
preciate quaiity fish, an ability not
‘universal among the British Col-
‘umbians, many of whom can’t tell
‘cork from tuna. |

“On the first day out Bill chop-
ped up a small spring salmon for
‘bait and with it we caught red
snappers at depths so awesome

.that when they camie to the sur-
face their eyes and tongues were
bulging because of the pressure

hange. .

Bill’s living depended on the
act that people had been taught .
‘0 pay for salmon and sneer at ~~
‘ock fishes, but, as he pointed

out, if they trusted their own taste
uds instead of listening to what
other peopie told them, they
; Might recognize that red snapper
‘as at least as good as salmon
and, to some like tim, better.

That was almost 40 years ago.
It has taken most of that time for
red snapper prices to catch up to
and occasionally pass salmon
prices atthe supermarkets. That’ S
how we are.

Our first suspicions are of
‘things foreign — foreign meaning
anything or anybody from the

ast wastelands beyond the

“Our second suspicion, almost as
trong, is for things unfamiliar,
even though they may be native to

‘If we weren’t introduced to red
napper before age six, to hell.
ith it. The same went for
mussels and a bale of other fine
‘oods of the ocean.

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

We're the same way now about
the mackerel which have come
nozth to Vancouver Island, riding
that erratic warm Pacific current
we call El Nino; which is also
responsible for flooding the
Mississippi and giving us a lousy
summer,

Once again, we are hostile. Like
the eight-year-old who comes to
dinner and won’t eat baked
potatoes because in his house they
eat mashed potatoes and rejects
brown bread because kis Mum has
white bread. You don’t know
whether to leave the little wretch
hungry or throttle him.

No matter what the popular
negativism, my vote is for
mackerel ahead of either salmon
or snapper.

T hold so strongly to that view
that some unpleasantness devel-
oped between me and a waiter in
an Edinburgh fish restaurant -
because he insisted I should have
Scottish salmon instead.

I didn’t want pale pastel sal-

Incoming framing
order min. $30

LONSDALE QUAY
NORTH VANCOUVER

988-6321

‘PAUL MARTIN TO |

VISIT SOJONKY
CAMPAIGN

HEADQUARTERS

Alam pleased to invite you to meet Paul Martin M.P., Official
: Opposition Critic for Environment and Associate Finance
Critic on Tuesday, July 20 at my campaign headquarters -
207 1331 Marine Drive. We look forward to seeing you
between 5:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.in.”

Audrey Sojonky
Liberal Candidate

_ Federal Riding of Capilano-Howe Sound : |

mon. | wanted the richest, red
blooded fish of the sea, mackerel,
the flesh slightly off-white and
laced with a dark strip of fat
down each fillet.

I didn’t get them in Edinburgh
and if the fishermen of B.C. have
anything to say in the matter, I
won't get them here. They are
strange. Away with them.

The mackerel is one of a family
of piratical oceanic fish. They
never stop moving.

Like their relatives, the tuna,
they have no swim bladder and
carinot hover in the water. They
are torpedo shaped, very fast and
fun to catch on a rod.

There is some excuse for their
unpopularity. Just as a cob of
corn begins to go stale the instant
it is pulled from a stalk, so also
the mackerel deteriorates from the
instant it is caught.

The fat of its flesh changes
more rapidly than that of most
fish.

Even fast-freezing isneta
complete solution; as sports fish-
ermen with home freezers have
learned, all fish fat can develop an
unpleasant taste while still frozen.

4&4 They are torpedo shaped, very

fast and fun to catch on a rod.39

The fish is not spoiled but it is
what is called ‘‘off.’’ One off
mackerel is enough to put some
people off for a lifetime.

But is this an insuperable x prob-
lem?

Our fishing indastry found ways
in past years to process shark
flesh for food. That wasn’t easy.

Sharks extrude their urine
through the flesh and skin and
unless handled properly at the in-
stant of being caught present a
toilet training problem, something
sharkmeat eaters don’t think
about much.

And although my taste is for
mackerel so fresh you still feel pi-

from B43, 990

ty for them, they have been popu-
lar for generations on the Atlantic
Coast as salted fish. .

Just don’t call them junk fish,
that’s all, because a lot of us
know better.

We have memories that are
sweeter, brighter, stronger and
finer.

Mackerel nourished bones and -
blood. :

Mackere! turned us into greater
lovers, fonder fathers and made
us smarter than the ordinary run
of people, which is why we like -
mackerel.

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