The late George Roach was a fisherman. He also operated the War Surplus Store on Knight's Lane in Souris. He passed away in 2001. This is his story, in his own words, as told in the early 1990's

I was born here in Souris in 1915. My mother came from Newfoundland and I think my father came from Malpeque. My mother died in about 1918. My oldest sister was eleven and she kept the house. There were eight in the family - four girls and four boys. There was a child every two years. The school up here had four rooms in it. They taught, I think, up to grade ten or eleven. There was a couple of grades in each room.

My father was a fisherman. Two of us fished, my older brother went away and he was in the Marine Service, the navy, and from the navy, to the RCMP, and he was there for about 36 years. He died just about three or four years ago. My other brother died a year ago last spring. I had another brother, just two or three years older than I, who died in 1992. My oldest sister lived up in Vermont. She drove her car down here and was here a couple of weeks - drove the car down and drove back - and she's 85.

I started fishing when I was pretty young. The fishermen didn't do much of anything here in the winter. The Harvest Excursion was over by that time - we didn't get old enough to go to the harvest. There had been two or three different doctors in my younger days. Dr. Gus was the old backbone of the thing in those times. Dr Gus, he had the whole town and half the county. He got through them all. Then Dr. Kassner; he did the same and he was here by himself for a long time. He was a pretty busy man but he kept the thing going. Sulphur and molasses was a great cure.

I was of the age and I thought it was about time to go into the anned services. I went in the air force for a couple of years - I went in 1942 -I was only in Canada. I spent most of my time in Dartmouth - Shearwater in the small marine section. I was working mostly on the water. They had some crash boats, small patrol boats, and a couple of larger ones. They never had a big section. They serviced those flying boats with the big pontoons on them - they used to go over there and get serviced. They had one stationed here at the time of the war, I guess a couple of years or more. Oh, they'd go about 50 miles an hour. That was fast then but they were more or less just something -I don't think they were very much of a sea boat - something to go for a rescue or something.

I was married before I went into service. We had one boy and three girls. I just got the notion of the surplus store from someone else. There used to be a guy over in Wood Island, MacMaster. He'd wait around for the boats there. He had been there for a long, long time. I got to going there and got to know him and I figured I must try that for a sideline when I was fishing. I used to get supplies from the anny base - the surplus crown assets - they had all the surplus there. They'd send out tenders describing what they had in different places and you could go looking and send in your tenders to bid on them. You used to be able to get it fairly easily but now, they still do it, but they've cut down in a lot of ways - they sell it more by poundage than anything else. For textiles or something like that, it comes by the ton or two ton - all in big lots. Very seldom do you see small lots. They have three or four bases, like Halifax and Moncton. Places where they have a depot and they gather up stuff from all these small bases and put it there and then they have those big sales for three days. You go over there and look it over and tender for about two days. You get uniforms first, clothing and working clothes. You'd get pretty near anything. They have all different sections of everything.

But they quit that altogether and now it is almost all by poundage. The poundage went way up. Then I buy some new stuff from Montreal. I have an agent up there and I just call him and he will send me whatever I want. So I just buy what I want from him. I get combat boots and good work boots for men. I don't have to bother going through all these tenders. It is something to do. I started long before I stopped fishing.

I started just for a sideline - something to do. I'd come home in the afternoon, open it up and my wife used to go over in the morning and she'd look after it. So I kept right on going after I retired for something to do. When I used to have all kinds of surplus, people, funny they're curious as hell, and they'd come in no matter where they were from. I should have kept a log book. There have been people here from all over the world - yeah, I guess, pretty near from everywhere. There was a woman from South Africa and she got me to send her blankets. I had about a thousand - oh they were dandy blankets - navy woolen blankets. They came out in a great big bunch; I think about five hundred white ones and five hundred grey ones. She was visiting a friend here and they come and they got a bunch of them. The friend gave us the address - I forget what part of Africa it was - I said, "If she wants them I'll send them". I got them all wrapped up and boxed and sent them to her. Three or four months after, I got a letter from her. Down there was what they called winter; it was just coming on. It gets chilly, not real cold, but chilly, and they just come in time she said. And then the boats come in here and they'd be buying stuff; they'd be from the Philippines and they'd be from all over. We had a lot of people from the Madeleines and we'd get the potato boats and the pulp boats.

We used to have a dragger in the fifties and I was in the engine room getting tuned up one morning. I started the bilge pump and the pulley stopped going. So, of course, sand or something got in it and I always had a wrench there to give it a pull. This time, I was in too much of hurry so I put my hand down to get it started. It started and just whopped my finger right off. It happened so quickly I didn't know what happened. It pulled it off just like the end of a banana. It just came right off the bone. Dr. Kassner said, "It is not good to put it back on; your finger would be sticking out straight - if I take it off at the joint, you'll never know it was off." It bothered for a while for I was going lobster fishing in the next two weeks. But it never bothered me after that.

I didn't actually get out fishing until I was about 16 or 17. My brother and I fished together for a long while. We both got established ourselves. Lobster, at that time, cod and hake, - fishing in small little boats then. About 1952, I think, the draggers come out first; so I decided to get one of them. They take five men on the crew and you go out for a week. I was on it for about ten years. I didn't always take it out myself. I took it for a couple of years - skippered it. Then I got a Newfoundland skipper to take it out. He used to bring up a crew of his own. We'd get the boat ready and I kept on lobster fishing.

We'd get flounder, sole and all that groundfish; they stay more on the bottom and you drag nets to scoop them out. They are still dragging but they have more modern nets that they can put up or down - wherever you want to put them. At that time, there were big rollers that just rolled around the bottom. You couldn't lift off the bottom - you just had to have real good bottom to fish on. We got to know the area and fished those areas and you'd get fouled up lots of times. At that time, we had a sounder for the depth of water. You'd be pretty near over it before it would show.

As for navigation equipment, all as we had was a second-hand loran gear. But then, you had a plate that just looked like your heart tracing at the hospital - you know the up and down - the short meant so much, and the longer ones meant so much, and long ones would be 10, 10, 30, 40, 50, and you'd read them off, and then you'd have to count the loran charts. And the chart had markings on it and you'd have to apply to the chart to find out what bearing you had through that - now they just press a button and you know exactly. Then you'd have to make your own leeway for wind and tide; you'd have to figure it out for yourself. We'd take a short course in navigation, just the bare essentials, then you had to learn from xperience.