And I said, "What do you mean? When the time comes to settle up, is it going to be $7.10, $7.20, or $7.25, or what's the price going to be?"

"Oh well, we'll pay $7.30 too."

And I said, "Okay. You can have it."

I love taking up tasks like this because the tougher it gets the more determined I get. It's a full-time job. Where we're an independent operation and not backed by a large company, it's an uphill battle the whole time. I've had to go to the loan board and speak with the chairman and put my point across. I've had to deal with lawyers and bank managers. The only support we had was the union.

But I'd like to speak about what women like me have to go through - you're nothing when it comes to the workforce. UI turned me down this year because of the "arm's length" policy of Revenue Canada. Women are discriminated against by being in business with their husbands. Ray could have hired an unrelated person for the same length of time and paid them the same amount for the same work, and they would qualify for their UI. The work I did was essential to the business. There's more women like me. All the shore skippers were dropped by TAGS, like I was in 1994. I went through two appeals with TAGS and lost both. Now I'm appealing this UI ruling, and I'll go to an independent judge if I have to.

There's times we get ourselves into situations and we wonder why we ever got involved in the fishery. There's no family life when the fishing season begins. It's a constant struggle to keep the business successful. The fishery has its ups and downs, but I think our hard work will pay off. I always said when the children got old enough I was going to go and do my nursing. But I got involved into this business and I enjoy it.

We're in it for the long run, and this is going to be our business now for a good many years. I think this is why you're so determined to make it work. We've put all our life earnings into it. We're one of the bigger enterprises and we're one of the ones that's after surviving the moratorium so far. It's going to be another rough year now that we have invested in freezing equipment. We'll be able to freeze fresh fish at sea and it will mean hiring more crew. But after next season, hopefully we're on the road to recovery.