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Another important commercial species which formerly existed in Lake 
Ontario in marvellous abundance, but which is now so rare as to be an object of 
curious interest when seen, is the Atlantic salmon. Sixty years ago, each season 
it ascended the St. Lawrence in vast numbers, and swarmed in all its tributaries, 
Following both shores of Lake Ontario, it ascended all the smaller stveams which 
fall into it and which afford suitable spawning grounds for the mature fish and 
favourable nurseries for the fry during their period of river life. 
The following extract from the annual report of the Department of Marine 
and Fisheries of Canada, for the year ending June 30, 1869, will be instructive as 
well as suggestive :— 
Special Report of Messrs. WHITCHER and VENNING, on Fish-Breeding at 
Neweastle, Ont. 
“We proceeded yesterday to Newcastle, Ontario, in compliance with your 
directions, and made a personal inspection of the fish breeding establishment 
there under charge of Mr. Wilmot. The premises are situated on Baldwin's or 
Wilmot’s Creek, a small stream traversing the township of Clarke, in the county 
of Durham, and discharging into Lake Ontario, about forty miles east of Toronto. 
This creek is well situated for salmon, as it forms a natural inlet of the sheltered 
bend of the lake between Bondhead and Darlington. Although at its entrance 
into the lake it passes through a marshy lagoon, the bed of the stream farther 
inland is of a gravelly nature and the water is pretty clear, regular, and lively in 
its flow. In early times it was famous for salmon, great numbers of which fre- 
quented it every autumn for the purpose of spawning. They were so plentiful 
forty years ago, that men killed them with clubs and pitchforks, women seined 
them with flannel petticoats, and’ settlers bought and paid for farms and built 
houses from the sale of salmon. Later they were taken by nets and spears, over 
1,000 being often caugit in the course of one night. Concurrently with such 
annual slaughter, manufactories and farming along the banks had obstructed, 
fouled, and changed the creek from its natural state, and made it less capable of 
affording shelter and spawning grounds. The yearly decreasing numbers at 
length succumbed to the destruction practiced upon them each season from the 
time of entering the creek, until nearly the last straggler had been speared, netted 
or killed. 
The history of the salmon fishery of Wilmot’s Creek, so graphically told by 
the Canadian Commissioners, has been repeated in every stream of the State of 
New York which drains into Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. All 
were frequented by the salmon, and from each, each season, went out a numerous 
colony of parr and smolts, which descended the St. Lawrence to the gulf, where 
they remained until they had attained size and maturity, when, obeying the 
impulse of reproduction, they ascended the St. Lawrence and distributed them- 
selves to all the tributaries of lake and river, carrying back to these inland waters 
the rich harvest of the sea which they had gathered. 
This magnificent fishery has ceased to be. Did it exist to-day, and were the 
conditions which made such a fishery possible prevailing to-day, a hundred streams 
now barren would afford salmon fishing as attractive as the more favoured waters 
of Canada, and the catch by net in the lake itself would furnish the motive of a 
valuable commercial fishery. 
The cause of the disappearance, practically, of salmon from the streams of the 
St. Lawrence Basin, has been chiefly and primarily the erection of obstructions in 
all the rivers, which have prevented the salmon from reaching their spawning 
grounds, and so natural reproduction has been absolutely inhibited. 
