My name is Matthew Slade and I’m from Long Island, Newfoundland and currently residing in Cornerbrook on the west coast.

I’m a leading seaman/deckhand with McKeil. I’ve been working with McKeil for 4 and half years, it’ll be 5 years in August. My most powerful memory of water is being from an out port in Newfoundland, growing up in a fishing community. Getting up at daylight, going out on a speed boat with my grandfather hauling lobster traps, and with my uncle. In mid-morning, going out on the beach, light a fire, have a lunch, get back on the boat, finish all the traps and get back home in the afternoon – that’s my most memorable moment. I guess you can water is in my blood, I am from Newfoundland.

Ever since I’ve been making money, that’s where I made it is on the water and from the water. I started working on the water, I’d say when I was 13-14 years old when I started fishing. Now I currently work with McKeil. I stopped fishing because in Newfoundland the fisheries started going downhill so the money just wasn’t there and I figured I wanted bigger and better things. We should protect water obviously for resources, mainly pollution and stuff for fisheries. One of the big reason it is going downhill is because of over-fishing and different things. So it’s good to protect it because a lot of goods and services come from it, and ships need the water.

My family’s connection to the water is that most 90% of my family were fishermen and are still fishermen. So all of my family grew up in Newfoundland around the water, we all just love being on the water. I can’t really pick one favorite story, but fishing – there were a lot of favorite stories from there but the one that I said is the main one. Getting up in the morning and going out on the water and just being in the fresh air and going on the beach and having lunch and a fire… was my favorite.