NL GenWeb, frequently asked
questions
What is a fishing room?
By Fred Pafford
A fishing room was an area on the shoreline where a fisherman or a group
of men landed their fish, kept their boats, stored their fishing
property and built flakes to dry their fish. It most often required the
clearing of forest, building a shelter for storage of fish and material
and a dock of some type for their boats. In the early years of the Nfld.
fishery it was important to have such places to return to each spring
and not have to rebuild every year.
So a person's "room" was his shore line property and quite valuable to him.
In some places every bit of useable shoreline was taken up and a male
person wanting to go on his own would have to move to another cove or
island to find a good landing area. This was important enough that quite
often a man from one community would marry into another area to get
waterfront land for his "fishing room".
There was an official register of Fishing Rooms done for the East Coast
of Nfld. at the turn of the 19th century. It was done at least for the areas
of Bonavista Bay to St. John's.
Fred Pafford
Wesleyville
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