One of the most moving experiences this Boomer can recall from the time I have spent near Wreck Cove on the Atlantic Coast of Cape Breton is the disc of the rising sun spreading light on the ocean and revealing tens of small crafts of lobster fishers that have been “hauling traps” with the day’s harvest of lobster for hours before dawn.
The recent movie “Little Lorraine” reveals some of the danger and economic returns of this fishery that Atlantic Canada has shared with Maine since my grandfather’s time when the status of this particular catch moved from “poor peoples” food to a high end, high value, offering of the best restaurants.
Fifty years ago my first job, in my novice time as an electrical engineer, was with NB Tel in Saint John, about an hour away from the US border at St Stephen/Calais where you could work in St. Stephen and show your driver’s licence to US Customs and have lunch in Calais.
At that time, the Cable TV from the United States, that NB Tel carried on the microwave network, originated in Bangor. The audience in Maritime Canada came to understand our human connection to Maine as another phase of a much longer relationship of cooperation and competition with New England. The bottom line of my appeal is this: The economic damage to Maine, and perhaps lobster processing in New Brunswick threatens to be great.
The political gain of pinching Trump in an electoral cycle threatening the reelection of Maine US Senator Susan Collins is likely to be at the cost of hardworking American cousins with whom we share life on the Atlantic that can be challenging.
In many ways this tariff will devalue Canadian policy toward neighbours in the same way that Trump has devalued the relationship of the Presidency with Canada as merely a financial transaction.
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