Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Short in Riverhead, Harbour Grace, in the early summer of 1975. Mr. Short, like his father before him, was a stationer and spent approximately forty-five summers on the Labrador coast at the family's fishing stations of Smokey and Indian Harbour. Like others of his generation, he worked in mines in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, spent a number of springs "to the ice" and sometimes worked as Master of vessels to and from the Labrador. He continued to fish during the World War II construction boom when his was the only crew in the region, but he deserted the Labrador in the early 1950s to work at the U.S. Airforce Base in Goose Bay, Labrador. He then became an inshore fisherman out of Harbour Grace and when the Newfoundland Government's new longliner program was initiated in the early 1950s, Mr. Short acquired one and continued to fish inshore on various parts of the Avalon Peninsula, selling his fish to the fresh fish plants until he retired a few years ago. His sons continue to represent the family in the fishing industry.
Descended from a long line of fishermen, his ancestors came from the West of England to settle in Newfoundland about three hundred years ago and very likely had come to the island as summer fishermen in earlier years before deciding to settle. Mrs. Short's people were farmers from County KiIkenny, Ireland, but like the vast majority of immigrants who flooded into Newfoundland in the early nineteenth century, they learned to live from the sea. Her grandfather and father were coaster-floater-stationers and she worked with her father, uncles, and brothers in these activities before her marriage. In the background is the port of Harbour Grace which has never found a substitute for the Labrador fishery. Also in the background is the rusting remains of the Kyle. Purchased by the government in 1913 for the Labrador Coastal Service, the Kyle became an institution and a symbol of the Labrador fishery.
