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Wedgeport, N.-É.
My name is Blair Boudreau from Lower Wedgeport. My father was Jerry, the son of Nelson à Rémi à Gros Jos, and whose father was Amable, and Amable was supposedly recognized and known as the bishop of Wedgeport and well. His role was to baptize and bury people and do funerals and so on until a priest could come forth and recognize all of this. I've been a school teacher for the past over 35 years, I've been president of the Acadian Seniors of Nova Scotia and also, I am also now president of the Wedgeport Sports Tuna Fishing Museum. I've been brought up near the sea. I've been brought on the sea. My father was a fisherman and, a lobster fisherman and a tuna fisherman. So stories abound in Wedgeport during the tuna fishing era, which was known as the glory days, and the glory days basically is recognized between the years of1935 to 1976, whereby we developed the International Tuna Fishing Cup matches, where 26 different countries came to Wedgeport to fish. Basically the teams and the people who came to fish were fairly rich people, and since money was not an object, Wedgeport did, was able to reap some of its revenues from this, and but many bonds were created with the anglers, and with the captains, and the local people. So we do have people coming in, you know, people like FDR, Franklin, yes, Jean Belliveau was among us, incidentally, I took care of him, I took him on the islands lately. We have excellent pictures of him and I fighting the tuna. We have Gene Cunny. We have Al Capone's hit man by the name of Tony Arcado, and Kate Smith and quite a few well known, basically Americans, came but we had the teams that came from Japan, Australia, at that time Yugoslavia and so, Wedgeport became known internationally. But one story in particular was the story of Outer Boldonia, where a well known writer for Times Publishing, by the name of Rex Arondel came to Wedgeport to fish, and I imagine with money, he bought the Outer Bald Island. He ordered the local people to build a mansion on the island, all of stone and so on. And he created a principality called the principality of Outer Boldonia. And on this principality, men only were allowed, no women of course, no taxes were imposed, where men could lie, cheat, swear, drink, whatever. They didn't have to shave, they could stay up all night, sleep all day, but basically the story was that if you were seasick you could land and watch the fishing boats fish for the famous tuna, which would under tuna rip would jump clear out of the water. You could see, and I have done that, I have seen this tuna and I have sailed with my father and we have seen a lot of tuna, I've hooked a tuna, lost it because I only had a fishing line but we tried, no luck, and I would remember seeing my father coming in through the wharf loaded with tuna. So the season in the summer time, basically, was the months of August and September, and you had to be careful because radios was scarce and hurricanes were always visible in the area, so you know, you had to learn to live with that and cope with whatever nature came across you. We had a monetary issue called the tunar, and so these brought fame and glory. Also if you could swear and if you could drink, it brought laws against morality that the people of Russia and the people of Germany and the governments were a little bit worried about what would happen. But this story out of Outer Boldonia is known as one of the ten biggest hoaxes of the world and it's still a record to this date. Can I even mention the story that as I mentioned before that Tony Acardo, who was Al Capone's hit man came to Wedgeport to fish. Of course, he wanted his vacation too, but on a few occasions, he had to hide and make himself not too well known, but he was loved, he was fun, he was OK. He had asked once the captain "aren't you scared of me". And the captain answered "mister, if you want to get back to the wharf, you're gonna leave me alone". So he just laughed about the story and so this is what went on in Wedgeport.
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Titre : Wedgeport, N.-É.
Description : Blair Boudreau de Wedgeport, N.-É., parle de la renommée internationale dont bénéficie la pêche au thon dans la région.
Sujets : familles; villages
Source : Connections Productions
Langue : anglais
Date : 2007-02-19
Créateur : Connections Productions
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