Canned

Dark times in Prospect Harbor? Well, it doesn't exactly create a bright outlook when the largest local employer announces they're eliminating 130 local jobs and leaving town. In this case, they are leaving the country, too. The Stinson's Seafood sardine cannery is the last of its kind in the United States. Bumble Bee announced last week that it plans to close the plant down for good on April 18.
Some employees at the cannery - which was first acquired by the Stinson family in 1927, more than 70 years before it was purchased by Canada's Connors Bros. and then by San Diego-based Bumble Bee - think it could be rehabilitated into a multi-species processing facility, incuding lobster. And some Maine lobster industry officials have said there should be more lobster processors in the state, because so much of what is caught here ends up being processed in Canada. Keeping the product in Maine for processing would boost the value of the lobster industry to the state's economy.
The lousy global economy, however, would seem to be a big hurdle to investing millions of dollars in a significant renovation at the plant. Especially when the global demand for lobster has fallen off (see previous post). But I've also heard it said in the past week that many businesses that are established during recessions succeed. I don't know if that is true or not.
In any event, the cannery's closure will mean a profound change for the people who work there, and a profound change for the Schoodic Peninsula if nothing can be found to take its place.
NOTES: The cannery has been there for at least 100 years, according to local residents. The big yellow fishermen sign (above photo) hasn't been there as long, but long enough to become a local icon. Dana Rice, Gouldsboro's first selectman, said the sign is a little over 30 feet tall and has been there since the 1980s sometime. Before that, it was in Kittery, where it had been erected by the Maine Sardine Council to greet people as they drove over the Piscataqua River from New Hampshire. There's a photo of the sign trimmed with Christmas lights and with a huge Santa Claus hat on the fisherman's head in the Gouldsboro town office just down the road from the cannery. In the selectmen's meeting room of the same building, the sign is depicted along with other locally prominent structures on a blanket hanging on the wall. Outside, town employees have posted a sympathetic message on the town office sign: "Our hearts are with you Stinson's employees."