I'm a Newfoundlander allergic to seafood. I often feel like a fish out of water
Can I even call myself an Atlantic Canadian when so much of the culture is inaccessible to me?
This First Person column is written by Lindsey Harrington, a Nova Scotian with roots in Newfoundland. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
The frozen fish is curved like a question mark. It swims through the air toward Dan's face in Trapper John's, a dim, taxidermy-filled bar in St. John's.
"Is you a Newfoundlander?" the Newfie caricature holding the freezer-burnt fish hollers in his over-the-top accent. (While some consider Newfie an insulting term, in this case, the sou'wester fits.)
"'Deed I is!" Dan puckers his lips and gives the cod a big wet one as onlookers whoop and applaud.
I'll have to remember not to kiss Dan until he brushes his teeth and washes his face, I think to myself.
Dan kneels on the floor, which is tacky with dried beer, and gets "knighted" with an oar.
"I declare thee an honorary Newfoundlander. Long may your big jib draw." Another chorus of cheers fills the small space, including mine.
It's my first time visiting Newfoundland with my boyfriend, Dan, since I moved to Nova Scotia and met him. Like so many Newfoundlanders before me, I was forced to leave the island in search of work and a partner. Both the job market and the dating pool aren't so hot on the island.
After the Screech-in, my high school friends bring us to another pub for supper. It's renowned for its fish and chips.
"I'll have the veggie burger and salad. And FYI for the kitchen, I'm allergic to all fish and seafood." I close my plastic-sheathed menu and hand it to the waiter, preparing for what comes next.
This allergy has been a lifelong hindrance. If fish hangs too heavy in the air, I break out in a rash, and my lips swell. My eyes get puffy and bloodshot. But if I ingest it, it's not only cosmetically embarrassing. My throat swells shut while my body forces the food up and out. The danger of choking or asphyxiation is real. My many trips to the ER over the years are evidence of that — Epipens only bought me enough time to get there; they weren't a permanent solution.
"We'll do our best, but we can't guarantee anything…"
"I know," I snap.
How many times have I heard this rote disclaimer, tarnished from overuse? Yet it stings anew each time, like salt cod rubbed on an open wound. You're from Newfoundland and you're allergic to fish? It's almost always the reaction when anyone finds out. I'm an oxymoron, a walking contradiction, a punchline to a joke that I'm not in on. How can I truly be a Newfoundlander when such a large part of the culture and culinary tradition is unavailable to me?
Fishing has always been Newfoundland's raison d'être. Fish was the main sustenance of the island's first inhabitants, the Beothuk and Mi'kmaq. Fish was one of the reasons Britain and France established colonies on the island in the 1600s and why waves of European immigrants moved here. While the role of fish has evolved and changed, like when the cod moratorium was declared in 1992 in large part due to overfishing, it still defines us as a people and is embedded in everyday life.
I was so young when my allergy was discovered that I have no memory of it. According to my mother, she tried giving me some fish when I was a toddler and the reaction was instantaneous. We were lucky the hospital was close by. Growing up, when relatives gathered to boil crab legs and crack them open on the splayed pages of the Southern Gazette, I was told to stay downstairs as a precaution. More than 20 years later, I still remember sitting on the basement's concrete floor, reading Jean Little books by the woodstove as snatches of laughter made their way through the ceiling, along with a faint whiff of the sweet meat. I didn't begrudge them the seafood — I only wished I could join in.
Fish have always been elusive to me, all around but just out of reach. Fish and brewis, baked squid stuffed with dressing and capelin fried whole are all Newfoundland delicacies I will never taste. Touting the superiority of cod over haddock or crab over lobster are never debates I can engage in. Yet I'm drawn to fish.
As a child on the Burin Peninsula, on Newfoundland's south coast, I whiled away countless hours trouting with my best friend and beside my father in his small skiff. I've dug clams, gathered capelin, and caught sculpins off the community wharf. But I can't consume any of it, and that consumes me to this day.
With its 7,500 kilometres of coastline, fish loom large in Nova Scotia too. Lobster rolls and oysters are menu mainstays — but so are hodge-podge and rappie pie. It's not the backbone of their identity in the same way. Eyebrows don't rise quite as high when I explain my allergy. It feels safer. Easier.
As we walk past St. John's jellybean houses to our hotel from the Screech-in, I shiver in the cold. It's colder here than in Nova Scotia. Some friends teasingly call Halifax "St. John's Light," as if it's a watered-down version of this place I've left behind. Has the mainland made me soft? I burrow deeper into my coat and pick up my pace, pulling Dan along by the hand.
Dan is a bluenoser through and through. Bluenoser has been a nickname for Nova Scotians since the 1700s, allegedly because of the cold noses early settlers would get while working outside, or the prevalence of blue potatoes in their diet — depending on who you ask.
"Did you have fun?" I ask.
"Ya knows!" Dan mimics the dialect and performs a little jig down the street. "The fish was right deadly, sure."
And for me, it is. But paradoxically, "deadly" means "good" here on this rock in the Atlantic. I roll my eyes but smile.
Am I a Newfoundlander? 'Deed I is. And a bluenoser, too. Long may your big jib draw.
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