William Ford Coaker

In the early 1900's the fishery was working the way it had for many decades. The guys with money had the upper hand because many rural families were trapped in poverty through an outdated system of credit where the fisherman never seemed to get out of the debt he owed to the merchant.

William Coaker's answer was a fishermen's union to take on the merchants and change the course social and political policy in Newfoundland. Nineteen fishermen from Herring Neck signed up for the Fishermen's Protective Union in 1908.

The union did an end-run around the merchants by setting Fishermen's Union Trading Co. (UTC) to import goods to sell to fishermen directly. Meanwhile, the FPU grew in size and influence and on election night 1913 eight union candidates were elected to the House of Assembly.

After WWI, Coaker became the Minister of Marine and Fisheries in the Liberal Reform government of Richard Squires. Finally he was in a position to make the changes he believed would improve the lives of families in rural Newfoundland. He brought in a series of reforms for the fishery but the "Coaker Regulations" collapsed when the fish exporters chose to ignore them.

But Coaker could not ignore his vision and he went on to establish Port Union on the Bonavista Peninsula as a town that was supposed to be for, by and about fishermen. But despite the protection of the union, the Great Depression slapped the town as hard as any in Newfoundland.

After making his mark on the fishery and politics, Coaker finally moved away from Newfoundland in 1932. He died in Boston in 1938.

Has much changed since Coaker's day? The oppressive St. John's merchants have been replaced by suits in the world's stock markets, Newfoundland is still economically frail and many rural fishing families are still calling for the respect William Coaker promised their grandparents.