While I have highlighted a few of my relatives with the help of 52 Ancestors I thought I would do something different this week. This week, instead of a person, I am going to focus on a government institution that employed a number of local men from Mowat and beyond, including my great-grandfather, who lived along the shores of Lake Winnipegosis.

This week I will be looking at the Snake Island Hatchery.

Now what exactly is a fish hatchery you may ask? Well, as Wikipedia has neatly written a fish hatchery is a place where artificial breeding, hatching, and rearing of fish occurs and is typically done to support the aquaculture industry.

Much of the information below can be found in the Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Branch 1984 report The Past, Present and Projected Demands on Manitoba’s Freshwater Fish Resources. The first records of commercial fishing in Manitoba date back to 1872 when a few men from Winnipeg established a fishing station on the Little Saskatchewan River, now called the Dauphin River. This early venture failed due to a number of factors such as poor transportation, the abundance of fish, and heavy competition with the Great Lake fisheries. Only in the following decade, with the introduction of efficient freight and fishing boats and the expanding market, did the industry became more commercially successful.

The success found on Lake Winnipeg opened up opportunities for commercial fishing on Manitoba’s other lakes including Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipegosis. Growth in the industry can be attributed to the development of the railway as well as other modes of transportation. The commercial fishing industry on Lake Winnipegosis developed rapidly when the rail-line to the town was completed in 1897.

Lake Winnipeg, Lake Winnipegosis, and Lake Manitoba have been the three most important fisheries in the province while Whitefish was the most important species caught until their decline in the 1920s and 1930s. Advancements in equipment such as gasoline powered boats and stronger gill-nets made fishing quicker and easier than ever before and consequently with all the success there were also concerns of sustainability and depletion.

As early as 1892 a number of regulations were enacted in order to restrict and confine commercial fishing, some of these regulations include the size and limit of fish, the type of nets and boats used, as well as the start and close of the fishing season. The first fish hatchery in Manitoba was built at Selkirk and was constructed in 1894. This hatchery, however, was closed in 1914 and replaced by another at Gull Harbour that was later moved to the mouth of the Dauphin River. A number of different hatcheries were built to support the fishing industry on the three major lakes but I will only be taking a closer look at one of them.

The Snake Island fish hatchery was the first to be built on Lake Winnipegosis, 1909, and was located on the south end of the lake. In fact, Snake Island is one of the closer islands on the lake to the town of Winnipegosis, it was only five miles away. I can only speculate why it is called Snake Island but a note in a 2001 letter to the editor of the Dauphin Herald mentions little red Garter Snakes swimming out to the island on Lake Winnipegosis. While snakes might not be afraid to swim, five miles seem like a long way from the mainland, but I suppose the island could have made a good nesting ground for the snakes away from predators.

Below is a picture taken of Snake Island and what is suppose to be the hatchery however I believe the building in the photograph might actually be the building for the department of forestry that was also on the island.

c. 1916

The first mention of the fish hatchery is in the Winnipeg Free Press in 1907. This small article writes that the building and its equipment have been put into place and they now wait for a dock to be built but it would be some time before the buildings would see any proper use. Two whole years would pass before the fish hatchery would officially open its doors and even then it was a rocky start.

In 1911 a large scale report of recommendations was published by the Manitoba Fisheries Commission. Commissioners J.B. Hugg, D.F. Reid, and Edward E. Prince traveled all across Manitoba in 1909 and 1910 in order to examine the fishing policies and procedures of the day as well as to speak with fishermen in order to determine how to sustain the commercial fishing industry.

Two whole years would pass before the fish hatchery would open and even after it was a rocky beginning with the commissioners coming to inspect the building and its workings as part of their inquiry.

In their interim report the commissioners indicated that more attention needed to be given towards hatchery operations to increase their efficiency. A starting note is that the commissioners found that the Winnipegosis scheme was a serious failure.

“We referred to the prevalent feeling in the province respecting the serious mismanagement which happened in certain seasons formerly, whereby some hatcheries practically were not in operation for one or two seasons…The evidence brought before the Commission clearly provided that on Lake Winnipegosis this was emphatically the case and that there was a serious lack of proper management, and that the system adopted for securing spawn was an altogether unreliable and undesirable one. We are aware that the department, when the matter came to its attention, had a special officer sent to Lake Winnipegosis and we have every reason to believe hat recently a great improvement has taken place and that matters have been put on a more workable basis (p. 15).”

Here is a picture take from the inside of the fish hatchery. My best guess is that it was taken sometime around 1916 as the individual with the X is my great-grandfather who worked at the hatchery. It is interesting to see the inside the of the building given the description of a hatchery from the article above that described the process of hatching.

c. 1916

Snake Island was not without accident or tragedy as seen in the following articles which mention destruction of property and even death.

Between 1914 and 1918 there was an increase in commercial fishing in Canada due to the demands of the first world war, however with the removal of these demands at the end of the war there was also a decrease in fish production. Another increase in production would be felt again in the 1920s when the international market opened up, however this did not last long as there was another decrease in production at the beginning of the 1930s. This dip proved to be the breaking point of the Snake Island hatchery. The Great Depression also effected how the government managed its budget and the tight purse strings can be seen in the following articles that make mention of debt.

The Annual Report of the Department of Mines and Natural Resources for the Fiscal Year Ending April 30th, 1933 reported it was found necessary in the interest of economy to close down the Winnipegosis (Snake Island) Hatchery. The Superintendent was placed in charge of the Hatchery at Gull Harbour on Lake Winnipeg (p. 150).

It wasn’t till more than a decade later, after the second world war, that the buildings on the island were put up for sale.

In the 1970s and 1980s various youth groups such as the Boy Scouts and the Cubs would visit Snake Island just like those who had taken pleasure trips to the island in the early years. These pleasure seekers would walk and camp among the interesting flora and fauna that made the two mile island their home.

In the 1984 report on the department of Manitoba fisheries there is mention of rebuilding the Snake Island fish hatchery. Furthermore, in the late 1980s there is also mention of developing Snake Island into a sheltered picnic area to be marketed first to the local people in the Parkland and then to all of Manitoba and beyond. To the best of my knowledge nothing came about on the development of Snake Island though I am interested in visiting the place one day. It would be interesting to walk along the shoreline and see where this institution stood as it had such an impact on the area just over 100 years ago.