62 American Fisheries Society 



and the methods by which fishes may be taken, while the enforce- 

 ment of the laws belongs largely to the province. 



At present there is a dispute between the Federal Government 

 and the Province of Quebec as to whether or not the Dominion 

 has absolute control of fisheries in tidal waters, but by mutual 

 consent the interpretation of the constitution on this question has 

 been left to the courts, with the understanding that the case will 

 go to the highest court of the empire, the Imperial Privy Council, 

 for a definite decision. 



Our sole control of the inland waters is unquestioned. No 

 less than ten million acres of our territory are covered with water. 

 We have thousands of lakes, large and small, some of them hun- 

 dreds of square miles in extent. Many are richly stocked with 

 the largest and gamest specimens of brook trout and others contain 

 lake trout or black bass. Our salmon rivers are in a class by 

 themselves. They flow for the most part into the lower St. 

 Lawrence and the Baie des Chaleurs. The entire St. Lawrence 

 River, from the Ontario boundary down to the Gulf, is in the 

 Province of Quebec and upwards of a hundred and thirty rivers, 

 large and small, flow into it. It has been estimated that our 

 coastal fisheries cover approximately 4,500 miles of coastline along 

 the two shores of the St. Lawrence and the Gulf, the north shore of 

 the Baie des Chaleurs, the eastern shore of Hudson and James 

 Bays and the entire shore line of Ungava Bay. In the St. Law- 

 rence River we have also the lakes St. Francis, St. Louis, Two 

 Mountains and St. Peter. 



The Federal Government operated all the fish hatcheries of 

 Quebec Province up to two years ago, when it abandoned four of 

 the inland ones. Our province accepted a transfer of these and 

 assumed their cost." 



Mr. E. T. D. Chambers of Quebec, in charge of the fish hatch- 

 eries of the province, Secretary of the North American Fish and 

 Game Protective Association, and well known as an author on 

 Canadian fishes, was introduced and responded with a brief 

 address. 



"No one could listen to the presidential address this morning 

 without appreciating how many sided is this question of North 

 American fisheries, their commercial value and the large contribu- 



