I once boarded with Jens and Joyce Knudsen. Jens had been on founding Board of Directors for Prince Rupert Fishermen's Co-op (PRFCA). He spent a week reading my copy of A.V. Hill's Tides of Change (1967), the history BC fishing co-ops. Most Jens' stories, though, were about being an engineer- cook on other people's boats. Typically Jens' would sense something wrong; go up to the wheelhouse; peer into the night, first to port, then to starboard. "Better take her out of gear young man; I think you've missed the channel, and there's nothing but rocks ahead."

The passing of Jens' generation is one explanation of what went wrong with the co-op. These men had weathered the 1930's depression. They felt there was strength in numbers, not individual competition. Their vision (the original PRFCA had little to do with Prince Rupert, most its members lived elsewhere) in time transformed the city.

In early 1940s PR halibut fishers, feeling the price they got for fish livers was half what it should be, joined the PRFCA en masse.

The upshot was change from marketing to manufacturing. First came the liver reduction plant that produced vitamin A ('cod liver oil'); then the herring reduction plant 1950s (fish meal), a crab and salmon cannery in the early 1960s, and then the new cold storage and filleting facilities (groundfish) in the `70s.

I think Hill was dismayed by the rapidity of the growth. There have always been a conservative and an aggressive faction within co-ops. Hill says in the depression fishers weren't sure if they wanted a union, a co-op, or an association. Co-ops won out when Prairie grain farmers and "Antigonish Movement" from the Maritimes brought their experience to the BC Coast.

Perhaps the PRFCA became too optimistic about the future in the late '70s. They weren't alone. The fishing industry was diversifying and building in anticipation of the next bonanza. PRFCA bought a large freezer trawler (the Callistratis); Dolphin Seafoods of Cleveland, Ohio (fish sticks); fish farms and fish meal processing facilities. Then the double whammy of low fish prices and high interest rates burst the balloon. Some say the co-op never recovered and the recently announced sale to Macmillan has been a decade in the making.

Poor management decisions, bad luck, or over optimism as explanations all fault individuals. Another explanation is that many fishers' co-ops have failed along the west coast recently. That implies something has changed either with fishers (more individualistic) or markets.

Still the explanation I like best is that the Jens Knudsens are no longer with us. The generation that knew the "dirty thirties." The generation that would come up to the wheelhouse, peer out into the night and say, "Young man, I think you missed the channel."

 While this article is about Jens, his wife Joyce was inseparable in my memory. Joyce was the main reason Jens lived happily to an old age.

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