ABSTRACT
One afternoon in late January I flew into St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland. A gusty wind laden with coarse crystals of cheek-pricking snow swathed the town in a white blur, and as we slithered our way through the icy streets my taxi driver reminisced about the good old days. When the cod were plentiful, he said, up to 30 foreign vessels would be anchored a short distance up the coast from St. John’s, as new crews were flown in from Iceland, Spain, and elsewhere to replace the old. “When the Icelanders were in town,” he said with a shake of his head, “they’d tear the place apart. You’d hear stories of them having four hookers at a time apiece! Oh, yes, we loved it. It was great money for us cabbies.” Those busy and riotous days have long since gone, as have the cod.
