Explore the NWT’s new commercial fishing exhibit with Fran Hurcomb

“We’re trying to preserve the history of it because otherwise, it was all being lost fairly quickly.”

Fran Hurcomb accepts she may be the only fishing historian, at least in the Northwest Territories.

Not only did she write a recent book about the territory’s commercial fishing, but she has now helped to curate an exhibit about the industry at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

Fish For Sale opens on Saturday, September 27 with a special session from 4-7pm. You can enjoy complimentary Great Slave Lake fish in the Museum Café, listen to Hurcomb introduce the exhibit and take part in a celebratory outdoor fish fry.

After that, the exhibit – a partnership with the Hay River Heritage Centre – is open Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10am to 5pm.

Cabin Radio received a preview of the exhibit with Hurcomb earlier this week. Here are some excerpts from the conversation.

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This interview was recorded on September 24, 2025. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Ollie Williams: What does it mean to be the community curator?

Fran Hurcomb: I got to dig up all the information, all the written reports, interviews, photos, maps, old films, everything. Then we had to work out how to do it. All I had to do was keep feeding the information I got, which I had mostly gathered over eight years of research for my book on commercial fishing called Chasing Fish.

As you come in, there is a Boats of the Big Lake sign and a whole boat here.

We’re looking at a fishing yawl.

We looked far and wide to try to find an intact wooden fishing yawl on the lake, and they are just pretty-well gone.

Luckily, Susan Weaver of Yellowknife had preserved this one, which she fished in for over 20 years out at Wool Bay. It had been on Jolliffe Island for about 20 years, covered up off the ground and in really pretty darned good shape. It has become the entrance to the whole exhibit.

It’s a beautiful boat, built in the early 1950s on Lake Winnipeg, shipped by Carter Fisheries of Hay River to the lake and then fished from there. I think Susan bought it in 1980. So this boat is 75 years old. This was a standard boat on the lake for one or two fishermen in the 50s, 60s, 70s and even into the 80s. This yawl was the Cadillac of wooden boats on the lake.

There’s a diorama with a Bombardier parked on the left, people setting a net on the ice and a video of fish beneath. There are obviously plenty of serious things we could talk about when it comes to fish, but there’s also a lighter side to this exhibit.

It’s cute. It’s from the Hay River Heritage Centre and it was done by kids at Diamond Jenness Secondary School in 2004. The little fishermen are all carved out of wood. The minute we saw it, we just knew we had to borrow it.

What do you hope people take away from coming to this exhibit as a whole?

I don’t think many people really realize what a vibrant commercial fishing industry there has been and still is on this lake. It has employed thousands of people since the 1940s.

I hope this opens people’s eyes to what people do on the lake, what they have done, the history. It’s brought people from all over, especially western Canada, specifically to fish. We’re trying to preserve the history of it because otherwise, it was all being lost fairly quickly.

You’ve done your part to stop that happening because you wrote a book!

I knew a little bit about commercial fishing from personal experience, but I didn’t really know much about the history. I was shocked to find out that, for instance, at Gros Cap in Devil’s Channel, by 1948 there were 175 people living there and fishing all summer.

I mean, there’s nothing there now. If it’s really calm, you can kind-of see the skeletons of old wooden barges on the bottom at one point. Everything is gone. But there was a really large community of people and Gros Cap was really the beginning of the commercial fishing industry.

It’s about to open. What do people need to know about coming to visit?

The exhibit opens Saturday afternoon at 4pm. The Museum Café will be open with fish chowder and maybe a little fishy treat of some sort. There’ll be about an hour when people can look around in here.

I’ll be here. Shawn Buckley is coming up from Hay River. He’s a fisherman, he’ll be here to talk with people. And then there’ll be a fish fry outside to celebrate the whole thing.