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Longtime fisherman Jon Taylor, a resident of Sointula off northern Vancouver Island, shares uproarious tales of life in the remote community of Malcolm Island in his memoir, Fried Eggs and Fish Scales: Tales from a Sointula Troller (Harbour $24.95). Portraying the "rough but reasonable" freedom of this locale, Taylor recounts the eccentricities of a fisherman's life—dealing with "haywire tightwads" for skippers and transforming rotten fish into a bizarre soup of "three thousand humpies." With a family history on Malcolm Island dating to 1917, Taylor's Finnish grandparents initially intended to settle in Sointula but opted for Cuba upon seeing the island. Taylor, who moved to Malcolm Island in 1976, embraces the fishboat life, vividly preserving a disappearing way of life with his humorous and vibrant vignettes aboard seiners, gillnetters and his own troller.
Taylor is a retired fisherman and a boat builder who has lived outside Sointula, BC, on Malcolm Island, for many decades. He has been a lifelong writer of poetry, memoir, essays and fiction, and is also an avid musician.
BOOKS:
Fried Eggs and Fish Scales: Tales from a Sointula Troller (Harbour, 2024) $24.95 9781990776656
[BCBW 2024]
***
Fried Eggs and Fish Scales: Tales from a Sointula Troller by Jon Taylor
(Harbour $24.95)
Review by Graham Chandler (BCBW 2024)
A career in fishing is not for the faint of heart. Things we take for granted, like the privacy of a bathroom break, take on new meaning as Jon Taylor reveals in his humorous memoir.
“Some fishboats have a toilet,” he writes. “Some of these work, and some of them are used. I have also been on boats where the toilet didn’t work, but was used anyway. All boats have deck buckets, they are all used and they all work.”
It’s just part of life when you’re afloat for days on end aboard a troller or other fishing boat like a gillnetter or a seiner says Taylor who calls the seaside town of Sointula home.
According to its website, Sointula (population 576), on Malcolm Island off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, means “place of harmony” in Finnish. It was established in 1901 when a colony of Finnish settlers arrived with utopian dreams of building the perfect community. Taylor writes that his own ancestors came in 1916 attracted by that dream. But “when they saw what this place looked like, they didn’t even get off the boat. They booked passage to Cuba. None of us came back until 1976.”
That was the year Taylor returned to Sointula, and he’s still there. Now largely retired, he writes about his love of the fishboat life on Malcolm Island. It comes through in spades in his down-to-earth prose in Fried Eggs and Fish Scales.
For example, when a massive school of sockeye is detected, word gets out almost instantly and every troller wants a lucrative piece of the action. Taylor’s description of what’s known as a “circle” is vivid:
“Imagine a hundred trollers, each dragging at least a hundred lures, packed so tightly together that they are only a few feet apart. The bow of each boat is right up between the lines of the boat ahead, and the tips of the trolling poles of the boats on either side are barely feet apart. Now add vast numbers of fish, and levels of testosterone, adrenalin, and rude machismo that no football game could match. There’s a fortune in the water, a gold rush—and it’s all in one place. It’s a feeding frenzy.”
You can learn a good deal about commercial fishing and its lifestyle from this book. Taylor provides a glossary at the end in case you’re unfamiliar. It includes a description of fishing vessel types from trollers to gillnetters along with their roles and crew types. And, oh yes, beer-drinking techniques when you’re under way.
“Beer is, of course, usually kept in the fish hold because it is cold and rolls about less down there,” he writes. “Although there is usually a small access hatch to facilitate getting into the hold, it is by nature an unpleasant place (wet, cold, and slimy) and it is only natural to avoid entering it if possible. The wise fisherman always leaves a few cans or bottles directly below the access hatch, where they will be within easy reach of the gaff.” However, Taylor writes, this calls for a steady hand.
“First of all, the can or bottle may slip and fall back into the hatch, thus rendering it unfit to open for some time. Or secondly, you may accidentally pierce the can and have to drink the fine spray coming out the side. A true aficionado, drinking from cans, catches the pull-tab with the point of his gaff and then, with a deft flick of his wrist, opens the can without having touched it with his hand. The finest practitioner of this art that I have ever had the honour to see in action could tip his head full back to drain the last drop from a can, while at the same time opening the hatch with one foot and gaffing a fresh beer, seemingly by instinct—sight unseen!”
The text is peppered with talk like “I’ll give her a little tickle and you can hug my pigs.” Which, he says, is troller-speak for “I’ll speed up a little and you can slip in close behind me.” Now if the fellow slipping in were to actually kiss your pigs, well that would of course cause problems, he writes. Touching isn’t allowed.
Taylor writes in a fun, folksy style; you feel you’re sitting with him on the deck of a troller, or over a pint at Sointula’s Whale’s Rub Pub. But don’t show up too late: the pub closes at 8:00 p,m., which hints at the quietness of the town.
There’s lots of useful tips for getting the most enjoyment out of life—at least from some points of view—like minting your own philosophies. “I’m old enough now to think I understand yesterday,” he writes. “Tomorrow has always been a great blazing hope full of every promise there could ever be. But today—that one’s got me stumped.”
If you don’t have an opportunity to ride along on the fishboats, read this book—it feels like the same experience. 9781990776656
Vancouver-based freelance writer Graham Chandler has published more than 700 stories worldwide over the past 25 years. He enjoys the West Coast lifestyle.
Taylor is a retired fisherman and a boat builder who has lived outside Sointula, BC, on Malcolm Island, for many decades. He has been a lifelong writer of poetry, memoir, essays and fiction, and is also an avid musician.
BOOKS:
Fried Eggs and Fish Scales: Tales from a Sointula Troller (Harbour, 2024) $24.95 9781990776656
[BCBW 2024]
***
Fried Eggs and Fish Scales: Tales from a Sointula Troller by Jon Taylor
(Harbour $24.95)
Review by Graham Chandler (BCBW 2024)
A career in fishing is not for the faint of heart. Things we take for granted, like the privacy of a bathroom break, take on new meaning as Jon Taylor reveals in his humorous memoir.
“Some fishboats have a toilet,” he writes. “Some of these work, and some of them are used. I have also been on boats where the toilet didn’t work, but was used anyway. All boats have deck buckets, they are all used and they all work.”
It’s just part of life when you’re afloat for days on end aboard a troller or other fishing boat like a gillnetter or a seiner says Taylor who calls the seaside town of Sointula home.
According to its website, Sointula (population 576), on Malcolm Island off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, means “place of harmony” in Finnish. It was established in 1901 when a colony of Finnish settlers arrived with utopian dreams of building the perfect community. Taylor writes that his own ancestors came in 1916 attracted by that dream. But “when they saw what this place looked like, they didn’t even get off the boat. They booked passage to Cuba. None of us came back until 1976.”
That was the year Taylor returned to Sointula, and he’s still there. Now largely retired, he writes about his love of the fishboat life on Malcolm Island. It comes through in spades in his down-to-earth prose in Fried Eggs and Fish Scales.
For example, when a massive school of sockeye is detected, word gets out almost instantly and every troller wants a lucrative piece of the action. Taylor’s description of what’s known as a “circle” is vivid:
“Imagine a hundred trollers, each dragging at least a hundred lures, packed so tightly together that they are only a few feet apart. The bow of each boat is right up between the lines of the boat ahead, and the tips of the trolling poles of the boats on either side are barely feet apart. Now add vast numbers of fish, and levels of testosterone, adrenalin, and rude machismo that no football game could match. There’s a fortune in the water, a gold rush—and it’s all in one place. It’s a feeding frenzy.”
You can learn a good deal about commercial fishing and its lifestyle from this book. Taylor provides a glossary at the end in case you’re unfamiliar. It includes a description of fishing vessel types from trollers to gillnetters along with their roles and crew types. And, oh yes, beer-drinking techniques when you’re under way.
“Beer is, of course, usually kept in the fish hold because it is cold and rolls about less down there,” he writes. “Although there is usually a small access hatch to facilitate getting into the hold, it is by nature an unpleasant place (wet, cold, and slimy) and it is only natural to avoid entering it if possible. The wise fisherman always leaves a few cans or bottles directly below the access hatch, where they will be within easy reach of the gaff.” However, Taylor writes, this calls for a steady hand.
“First of all, the can or bottle may slip and fall back into the hatch, thus rendering it unfit to open for some time. Or secondly, you may accidentally pierce the can and have to drink the fine spray coming out the side. A true aficionado, drinking from cans, catches the pull-tab with the point of his gaff and then, with a deft flick of his wrist, opens the can without having touched it with his hand. The finest practitioner of this art that I have ever had the honour to see in action could tip his head full back to drain the last drop from a can, while at the same time opening the hatch with one foot and gaffing a fresh beer, seemingly by instinct—sight unseen!”
The text is peppered with talk like “I’ll give her a little tickle and you can hug my pigs.” Which, he says, is troller-speak for “I’ll speed up a little and you can slip in close behind me.” Now if the fellow slipping in were to actually kiss your pigs, well that would of course cause problems, he writes. Touching isn’t allowed.
Taylor writes in a fun, folksy style; you feel you’re sitting with him on the deck of a troller, or over a pint at Sointula’s Whale’s Rub Pub. But don’t show up too late: the pub closes at 8:00 p,m., which hints at the quietness of the town.
There’s lots of useful tips for getting the most enjoyment out of life—at least from some points of view—like minting your own philosophies. “I’m old enough now to think I understand yesterday,” he writes. “Tomorrow has always been a great blazing hope full of every promise there could ever be. But today—that one’s got me stumped.”
If you don’t have an opportunity to ride along on the fishboats, read this book—it feels like the same experience. 9781990776656
Vancouver-based freelance writer Graham Chandler has published more than 700 stories worldwide over the past 25 years. He enjoys the West Coast lifestyle.
