That winter in February I got a call one day and they wanted to know would I take over the management of all their plants. They had one up in English Point, one in Long Point, one in Red Bay, and one in West Ste. Modeste. So anyway, that's what I done. I was all over the place. I might be in Red Bay 9:00 in the morning or I might be in English Point, anywhere.

One of the plants was costing them a lot of money. With the Salt Fish Corporation you were allowed so much per pound in terms of your labour cost and your overhead. There was a formula in terms of your salt, you were allowed so much for every 100 pounds of fish. You knew if you had 20,000 pounds of fish gone down, exactly how many bags of salt that was. One of the first things I'd do was go check the pile of fish and see if the salt was on in the right areas because I didn't want my fish under-salted either. When I started up at this plant in 1986 they couldn't account for hundreds and hundreds of bags of salt at the end of the season. And I started showing the women there how I wanted it salted. The second year I was seven bags over at that plant.

Skipper H.B. couldn't believe it. He didn't know how I did it. And I remember one time during the summer of '86 one of the truck drivers told me, "You know what the Skipper told the crew down in Cupids yesterday? He's going to fire the whole goddamn lot and have that woman come up from West Ste. Modeste and do it for him." He had a lot of confidence in the job I was doing for him.

I was told by the Salt Fish Corporation or Earles when I started with them, we had 7 cents per pound for labour to work with. And at the end of the day I put up fish for Earles for 3 1/2 cents a pound. I never ever went more than 6. All hand splitters and 75 percent of them women. I always worked below my cost. I was conscious of other people's money. I don't think I overworked anybody, I don't think I undercut anybody. I thought I was always fair as I could possibly be to the workers. I didn't only just walk around with the workers and look over their backs. If I needed to jump in and grab the box of fish that was on the weights, I jumped in and did it. If there was no one around to weigh the fish, I done it myself. I was always a part of the operation.

I was also doing a lot of work now in terms of supplies and one thing and another, shipping a lot of stuff up to Cape Charles and Domino and doing some work down on the Quebec side, like in Old Forte and those places. We were buying caplin at times, got into a bit of herring, and had a go at the whelks. I bought the first caplin in the Labrador Straits. That was the first dollar that fishermen made from the sale of caplin here, and they made some damn good money in those two weeks.