Notes from the Netshed

Mrs. Amor de Cosmos has become a favourite among readers, warming the hearts of commercial fisherwomen and fishermen alike with her wit, wisdom and insight.

Mrs. Amor de Cosmos has been entertaining British Columbia''s commercial fishermen for over 15 years with her popular "A Letter From Home" columns. In 1981, her letters became a feature of the national tabloid newspaper Canadian Fishing Report, and in 1992, her columns began appearing each month in British Columbia''s leading commercial fishing magazine, The Westcoast Fisherman. Her work has also been published in the anthology Working the Tides: A Portrait of Canada''s West Coast Fishery (Harbour, 1996).

No one knows who Mrs. Amor de Cosmos is, and she prefers to keep her identity a secret. But she comes from a fishing family, learned the trade from her father, and became owner with her husband of a small combination troller-gillnetter and then a small seiner. Since her divorce she has also tried to make a living in the shrimp industry and the roe herring fishery. She reportedly lives in Steveston, where she prowls the docks, visits her Uncle Ed the irascible troller and gets gossip from the Scientific Fisherman. Along the way she comments upon everything from a left-handed halibut to fishermen''s taxes to the difficulties in getting a job - in short, life in the industry from an unusual perspective.