You Win Some You Lose Some: Recollections of a Newfoundland Fishery Officer

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

The life of a conservation and protection fishery officer is, at the
best of times, difficult and onerous—especially in small rural
communities such as Branch, Newfoundland, where the author lived. By its
very nature, the profession makes for considerable unpopularity because
to be successful the officer must suppress illegal activities that might
otherwise cause normal law-abiding citizens to look the other way. For
Billy Roche, a fishery officer from 1971 until his retirement in 1995,
the daily danger associated with his previous work experience in the
Canadian Navy as a member of its Weapons Underwater Department must have
paled by comparison on occasion.

In this brief memoir, Roche details his experiences enforcing the law
against the captains of oceangoing vessels, both large and small, off
Newfoundland’s southern Avalon Peninsula. To do so necessitated using
much resourcefulness and ingenuity to outsmart the captains who were
catching fish illegally within certain territorial limits and with
various illegal equipment. Roche’s responsibilities also included
patrolling inland waters, where illegal salmon poaching with nets was a
constant problem. This task was particularly difficult in his hometown,
where he might suspect who the poachers were.

You Win Some ... You Lose Some is a very interesting memoir, and
Roche’s accounts of winning and losing court cases will find a
universal common bond with conservation and protection officers
elsewhere in Canada. The book provides much information, and will be
especially useful to those pursuing studies of conservation issues in
general.