by Jim Wellman
Possessing a life story worthy of a book, Bon is probably best known as the designer and builder of the largest fishing catamaran to fish commercially in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Bon Pelley relaxing at home in Springdale
Bon grew up in Wild Bight (now Beachside). He moved to Toronto in his late teens and worked as an autobody mechanic.
He lived in the big city about six years or, as Bon puts it, “until I could save enough money to get out of it.”
Back home in Beachside, he started his own body shop. Bon says he hardly made enough money for a coffee, and though he liked having his own business, he was happy when a new opportunity came along.
The Pentecostal Church minister asked if he’d be interested in providing a school bus service to transport students to and from school in Springdale. It sounded like a good idea, so he bought a bus and things went fairly well for a couple of years.
Then the church decided to put the bus service on tender. Bon was very surprised that someone he figured wasn’t even eligible to bid got the contract. He thinks he lost the contract because he would often pick up Beachside kids from a different school or church than were also going to school in Springdale.
“Sometimes they’d be out on the road in a snowstorm hitchhiking home and I thought it [giving them a ride] was the decent thing to do, so I’d stop and pick them up.”
Bon’s brother Melvin was a fisherman and, seemingly, doing well in the industry. Sometimes Melvin would drop by Bon’s body shop and poke a bit of fun at his brother.
“He’d say that he was finished work for the day and I’d still be slaving away all hours of the day and night, six days a week,” Bon says.
Bon mulled over the fishing concept and decided to give it a go. Never one to follow the customary path, Bon heard about a “boat with a difference” that was for sale. It was a former PT boat used at the US Navy station in Stephenville. PT boats were built of fine mahogany and oak wood and designed for high speed. It seemed like an unlikely fishing vessel, but Bon bought it anyway and prepared for his first fishing voyage: a sealing trip. Just after leaving port they ran into ice, but not enough to force them back to port. The inexperienced skipper was not fully aware of the serious damage that even thin ice can do to a vessel, and it wasn’t long before the former PT boat was taking on water at the bow.
Fortunately, Melvin and his crew were nearby, but by the time Melvin got a line on the stem of his brother’s boat, it was too late. When Melvin tried towing Bon’s boat, she dug in deeper and kept on going down. Fortunately, Bon and the crew made it safely on board Melvin’s boat.
Bon laughs today at his introduction to the fishing industry, also noting a sidebar story to the incident. He says several mean-spirited people circulated rumours that he deliberately sank his boat to collect insurance. However, the insurance paperwork had not been completed and he got nothing, a fact that he was painfully aware of as he watched his boat slip beneath the seas.
Bon tried his luck again and bought a boat in Fogo—one designed as a fishing vessel. Even this one got off to an ominous start.
“We went to Fogo to get her that winter, but she was frozen solid in about two feet of ice. We had to blast her out with dynamite,” he laughs.
Bon fished cod for a while, but it was a tough business with small returns, so he tried something else. In the 1980s, he took a job as skipper on a Fishery Products International steel trawler and fished crab off northern Newfoundland. Crab sold for a mere twelve cents a pound in those days, but it was plentiful.
“We’d haul up a pot and the steel frames would bend under the strain,” he says.
Bon Pelley is a natural storyteller: a raconteur. He delights in spinning endless and detailed yarns about his life’s journey, melding the fun times with his troubled days. Now in his seventies and retired, he laughs at them all, especially the ones that weren’t funny at the time.
He’s one of thousands of fishermen who have been frustrated to no end by government bureaucracies and senseless policies that cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. He talks of guidelines crafted in St. John’s and Ottawa by people who knew nothing about life on board a fishing vessel. He talks about skulduggery in the industry and he talks about bureaucrats strictly enforcing laws for some and turning a blind eye for others.
Even carrying out a good deed cost him dearly.
A boat close to Bon broke down while crab fishing far offshore and Bon was asked by government authorities to tow the disabled vessel to port. By the time he got back to the fishing grounds, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) had closed the fishery, so he missed the last several days of lucrative fishing that season.
Besides the initial loss of income, the biggest cost of that deed came later. His future quotas would be forever small because they were based on his current season’s landings—a small catch that year meant a small quota in future.
The catamaran Atlanticat
“It cost me thousands and thousands of dollars.” It seems that being a good Samaritan doesn’t pay for Bon.
Of all Bon’s endeavours, the design and construction of a large wave-piercing catamaran in Springdale would be his boldest. The three-year project was done in conjunction with various government agencies, and whether the venture was a success or not depends largely on what you consider to be the fundamental purpose for the project. Capable of travelling at nearly double the speed of traditional vessels and using the same amount of fuel seemed to make sense to Bon.
Safety was also a consideration, due to a close call he experienced personally. He and his son Paul got caught out in a vicious storm off northern Newfoundland on a crab fishing trip several years prior to building the innovative twin hull. Bon says when they heard the forecast they knew there wasn’t time enough to steam the 150 miles to port. They could have made it if they’d had a faster vessel, and that was when he started thinking about a catamaran.
The cat cost a lot more than projected, but Bon thinks it might have worked better had they been allowed to build it twenty feet longer. Government fisheries regulations forced him to build the vessel less than sixty-five feet—too short to be totally functional. The Atlanticat later wound up working for the Marine Institute in St. John’s as a research vessel.
Bon’s last business heartache came in 2006 when the Sealer, his wooden-hull vessel, burnt at the wharf in Springdale, just a few feet from where the Atlanticat was docked. The blaze also destroyed expensive fishing gear that was stowed on the wharf nearby. The Sealer was beyond repair and insurance covered about two-thirds of his loss. The nets and seines were not insured.
But Bon Pelley also had a lot of success.
Today, he and his wife live in obvious comfort in a very nice home in Springdale, with several other expensive possessions, including a large motor home parked in his driveway when I was there. The fact that he had been just a stroke of bad luck away from so many potentially successful ventures that could have meant significant wealth for him now provides great fodder for his storytelling. His successful ventures don’t make for as many laughs.
Bon is a pleasant and jovial man who laughs heartily at his own folly. His memoir would be a most compelling read.
Chapter 12
Season of Small Mackerel
In southwest Nova Scotia, a fishing season that produced catches of mainly small mackerel used to be considered a harbinger of bad luck or a bad omen—a sign that something bad was going to happen before the season was over. Well, in July 1957, the mackerel run produced mainly small fish, and for the fishing village of Sluice Point, near Yarmouth, something awful did happen.
Paul LeBlanc was a happy fifteen-year-old that year.
“He loved everything and anything to do with the outdoors. He was always smiling and laughing,” recalls his good friend and school classmate at the time Alain Meuse
(the same Alain Meuse who has contributed to the Navigator magazine).
Alain says he doesn’t recall Paul saying what he wanted to be when he finished school, but Alain said it would have to be something that involved working outdoors because his young friend was an outdoors natural. Paul’s sister agrees.
“He probably would have been a fisherman, because he was in a boat every chance he got,” says Anne Marie (LeBlanc) Surette, who is one year older than her brother Paul.
July 18, 1957, was a nice summer’s day in Sluice Point, located about a ten-minute drive from Yarmouth. Paul’s uncle Zachary “Cario” Surette was owner of a Cape Island–style lobster boat, and on Wednesday, July 17, he had mentioned to some friends that he was going digging for Irish moss the next day, but first he would likely try and catch some mackerel.
Small mackerel was especially good lobster bait, and with the good summer run of young mackerel, it would be an opportunity to stock up on bait for the lobster fishery later in the fall.
Sluice Point is a small community of approximately 200 people, and everyone was like extended family. When word got out that Zachary was going mackerel fishing the next day, several young teenagers asked if they could join him, because mackerel, especially the small ones, were fun to catch. One of those looking for a fun day was young Paul LeBlanc. Joanne (Bourque) Moulaison was another.
Joanne remembers that they were waiting for Paul to arrive on Thursday morning. Zachary didn’t want to leave without his nephew, so they waited a few minutes longer when finally they saw Paul running toward the wharf as fast as he could. Joanne says there were several people on board the Cape Islander, so Paul decided to get in the small skiff that was tied to the stern of the larger boat to be towed to the fishing grounds just offshore.
Memories of precise details of what happened next on that Thursday morning have faded—after all, it was nearly sixty years ago—but one thing they know is that when the fishing vessel steamed under the Sluice Point bridge, the bow of the small boat was pulled down and sea water came flooding into the skiff.
Southwest Nova Scotia is known for extreme tides that run almost as high or low and as fast as tides in nearby Bay of Fundy. Alain says that, at high tide, motoring underneath the bridge was relatively comfortable, but at mid-tide the current was very fast, making it difficult to manoeuvre a vessel, especially boats with small power. With a fast running current, it is likely that the skiff was behaving with a jerking or zigzagging motion that would cause the tow line to slacken and tighten involuntarily and ultimately might cause the towed boat to submerge its stem. Whatever the case, fifteen-year-old Paul LeBlanc was thrown overboard in a heavy current that would have been difficult even for a strong swimmer to navigate, but Paul couldn’t swim at all and most likely panicked.
Joanne says she saw Paul fall overboard, but like most other people who witness a tragedy unfolding at a young age, she doesn’t recall any other details of what happened next. She says she never could remember much other than seeing Paul falling from the skiff and disappearing beneath the water with his arms raised above his head.
Zachary turned the big boat around as quickly as he could, but with the strong current impeding his ability to control the boat, by the time he eventually returned to where Paul had fallen, there was no sign of his nephew.
The same current that gave Zachary trouble turning around also meant that, in a few short minutes, it would be impossible to know where to search for Paul; he would have been pushed rapidly along with the current. After circling the area several times, Zachary went back to port and notified the authorities and, along with other boats, returned to search for the missing teenager. But it was in vain.
Alain remembers grieving for his friend in the days following Paul’s drowning.
“The nights were especially hard,” he says. “I recall looking out over the ocean at the islands in the area and thinking that he’s out there somewhere and he needs to be found.”
Even as a teenager, Alain seemed to understand that families needed to see the body of a lost loved one. Otherwise, finding closure is very difficult, if not impossible. When Alain became a fisheries reporter in later years, he would have that belief confirmed many times.
“I remember one night about a week or so after Paul fell overboard—it was almost a full moon and I kept thinking that his body should be coming ashore sometime soon because there was an incoming tide,” he says.
Sure enough, on July 28, ten days after the accident, searchers found Paul’s body washed up on the shoreline of one of the outlying islands near Sluice Point.
Three days later, Alain experienced one of his most unpleasant tasks. He was a pallbearer for his classmate and good friend Paul LeBlanc, who had made his final voyage at the tender age of fifteen.
It was indeed a tragic “season of small mackerel” for a close-knit community in southwest Nova Scotia, where every family was touched by sorrow with the loss of a vibrant young person who had what seemed to be a bright future ahead, but who was suddenly was snatched away.
Chapter 13
I Died Once and That’s Enough
Lesley Peddle admits that she is a little different than most women. Now in her thirties, Lesley has owned motorcycles since she was sixteen. She currently owns a Harley Davidson. She is a scuba diver and also owns a bright orange Chevy 4 x 4 truck. Lesley is mate on a sixty-five-foot steel crab vessel out of St. John’s, Newfoundland, but she has also captained vessels as well. And she loves to cook.
Lesley on her Harley
(Photo courtesy of Lesley Peddle)
Lesley’s parents are Newfoundlanders, but her dad was a military man, so they lived in several regions. However, the place she calls home is Oromocto, New Brunswick, because that’s where she spent her most memorable years.
After high school, Lesley was intent on following a career in veterinary medicine.
Lesley (third from left) and crew of Newfoundland Explorer (Photo courtesy of Lesley Peddle)
An owner of two purebred dogs, Lesley’s love of animals is as strong as her zest for life. But then, in her late teens, Lesley developed a relationship with a man in the fishing industry and decided that she’d take a look at that line of work. The thought of being the only woman working on a fishing vessel with a bunch of men was daunting, especially for an eighteen-year-old landlubber.
Her first boat was a sixty-one-foot vessel that was not equipped with many of today’s technologies or creature comforts.
“There was no shelter on deck and you could barely stand up in the hold,” Lesley remembers.
But none of that mattered much on her first fishing trip.
“I didn’t get out of the bunk for five days. Seasick,” she says.
However, despite a less than auspicious start to a new career, she persisted in the stubborn and determined style of her military upbringing and stuck with it. Lesley eventually took on more and more responsibility and became a mate. It was then that her comfort level in the business increased and the seasickness disappeared.
Along with her survival instinct, Lesley went to school and studied her craft. She now holds a Master Class III certificate and has nearly completed all requirements for her Class II. Lesley is now qualified as an oceangoing master of a fishing vessel.
Lesley battled seasickness for a couple of years, but the sickest time of her life happened in 2009 when she was a victim of an R2 refrigerant gas leak in the hold of the vessel Rebel’s Pride.
On watch in the wheelhouse, Lesley noticed two crew members on deck near the fish hold behaving erratically. Sensing that something was seriously wrong, she pulled the engine out of gear and ran to the deck to investigate. She saw that not only were the two deckhands affected by something odd, she saw the vessel’s skipper, Chris Peddle, sprawled at the bottom of the hold. Lesley climbed down the ladder into the hold, and within
a few seconds, as she was trying to drag Chris on deck, Lesley suddenly went as limp as a rag doll and passed out. Due to the quick thinking and action of shipmate Lisa Heffern, along with the help of one of the deckhands, Chris and Lesley were eventually brought back to life, but for a while it appeared that Lesley was dead.
Lesley’s close brush with death was a life-altering experience.
“I died once and that’s enough for now,” she laughs, adding that the experience changed the way she approaches life on a daily basis now.
Lesley started to pay more attention to safety practices, especially at sea. She’s taken all the safety courses available to prepare for any possible accidents. Not only does she caution others to make sure their vessels are equipped with life-saving technology, she insists that her new crew members are also trained to respond appropriately if anything happens to her again.
“It’s fine for me to know what to do, but I need them to know in case something happens to me, too,” she explains.
Lesley’s scuba diving expertise came in handy in the Davis Strait off Greenland once. She was captain of a turbot vessel when word came in that a nearby ship, the Nain Banker, had rope tangled around its propeller. Leslie donned her diving gear and successfully cut the ropes and freed the prop, allowing the vessel to resume operations. Lesley’s help saved the company a lot of money because it allowed the vessel to go back to work in just a matter of a few hours. Otherwise, the Nain Banker might have required towing to port to effect repairs.
Besides battling a tendency toward seasickness, Lesley had other negatives to contend with in her early days at sea.
