Seals, Stigma and Survival

On October 9^th, 2025 “Seals, Stigma and Survival” secondary investigator Jim Winter, a retired award winning CBC journalist, conducted an interview with Mike Kehoe. Kehoe previously worked for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador as a director of marketing support services navigating the province’s challenges with the fallout for anti-sealing activism on the fisheries industry.

In his past roles Kehoe participated in backroom discussions with industry and government players across Canada, and engaged with local community members in rural and coastal Newfoundland and Labrador seeing in real-time the impacts of anti-sealing activism, federal and provincial responses and the first European ban (European Economic Community) on seal products in 1983 and activism against sealing thereafter. Furthermore, Kehoe also worked in various roles in the fisheries and sealing industries including being a former manager at Fishery Products International and part of the Canadian Sealers Association.

In this interview Winter facilitates a space for Kehoe to reflect on his experiences working with and observing rightholders and stakeholders in the fishing and sealing industries and his positionality as an employee and civil servant while also being a Newfoundlander. The reflections, opinions and personal experiences expressed in this interview are Kehoe’s. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of team members of “Seals, Stigma and Survival”.

Given its length, this interview is broken up into two parts.

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Jim Winter: I really appreciate you being open to coming here today and discuss your experience with anti-sealing activism, government responses and the fisheries industry. I’m going to start with your background. We go way back, but could you please start off by telling me a little bit about yourself and your background on this subject.

Mike Kehoe: Yeah, sure. OK, I guess for the relevant period that we’re talking about here would be in the mid-80s and we’re speaking of which is the seal hunt, the Atlantic Canadian seal hunt and had gone through what is usually referred to as the Seal Wars. These were the active days of protesters and hate mail, of misrepresentation of threats and things like that. I recall that you were a frontline person on that and had already been, you know, active in both local and international representation.

When I came into it, my first initiation to the seal issues really of any consequence would it be as a manager of a retail store for Fishery Products International and as a Newfoundland sales manager and part of the sales team, we had a very excellent business, a couple of shops and something at the airport. They were doing really well. Of course you may recall Fishery Products International in scope, they had a lot of primary processing, but they had a lot of value-added processing and what’s called private label processing. They packaged their fish for other companies in other company packaging and it was used like that.

So at the time I came into it and came into contact with you perhaps working or at some point in time after I came into that eight or ten years, but in the middle of it, Jim joined Fishery Products International, as my memory goes back that far. We became friends and acquaintances at that point in time. I didn’t really have a full understanding of what you had been doing, as most people don’t have an understanding to this day as to what was going on in the province and then the national team on the sealing issue and the protest movements and the policy development and things like that.

So I have left fishery products and accepted a job with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador as a director of marketing support services with the provincial department officials. And I had in that capacity, one of my responsibilities was for overseeing the province’s commitment. To the redevelopment of a sustainable wise use seal hunt or seal products, which was one of them. And when I entered that position, there really wasn’t anybody involved in doing all the activity. The real hate mail and the protests and everything else, for the most part, had come and gone. There were some while I was there, but Jim would have been one who would have been experienced a lot of it in his previous roles in his capacity as  the founder of the Canadian Sealers Association which really brought harvesters together, who experienced a lot of this hate. Jim, is that a fair representation? From your view of how that?

Jim: Yes, that covers it pretty well how we got together and where we both realized that we had a similar interest.

Mike: Yes, absolutely, and our interest was to promote the well-being of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador as much as possible, to get out truthful messaging of what was happening.

Jim: Exactly.

Mike: What had happened and what is happening based on science, on fact. But when I got into it, it was pretty well a done deal in that I came into it at a point in time where people in the department from the provincial Department of Fisheries before me, well, if it were a war comparison for the seal wars, they were shell shocked. They had just completely undergone a lot of intimidation.

Abuse, the hate mail, to the department and the government was fairly substantial, but that was before my time. I came in when just after a lot of that had happened. I had some when I was there as a director, but all the rest of it had happened largely before. So files were maintained within the department of a lot of the hate mail, which have since disappeared. I was looking for the records for another reason. I remember, you know, all the newspaper clippings from various places in the world were we’re in the possession of a minister of the day and so when I got in there, the Government of Canada and other stakeholders had already established a Royal Commission on seals and sealing in Canada.

I wasn’t there when the commission was established. I wasn’t there for the hearings. I wasn’t there for input. I looked at the printed word. I looked at internal documents relating to it as it involved. But it was clear to me, at least in my belief, that the Commission really was well intended to do a really thorough job but I also felt from internal documents that the goal was to shut down anything to deal with sealing in any way to minimize its impact because the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador had received substantial pressure from the marketplace and from the local processors, and so they were looking for a way out on the Royal Commission’s recommendations. The recommendations included $100 million for local money. That was 50 million for redevelopment and 50 million for compensation for those who were negatively impacted by bans that had already been put into place, in particular in Europe and others like the United States. I think there were possibly an additional 40 million for Aboriginal groups, if I remember correctly, but its goal was not what government officials expected or anticipated it to be.

Government officials, from the documents I saw, expected that the commission would produce a document that could be used to say, OK, well, we tried, but we have to walk away from the industry now. But here the Commission came up with very solid recommendations.
The commission’s report pointed out that people really had been victimized on this. They’ve been that they had been set up as, you know, things to be hated.

When I was at Fishery Products International, there was an incident when I requested to carry some seal meat product where the vice president of marketing for the company, it was like I gave him a heart attack. He looked at me, and he was like, what are you talking about? Then he hauled out a photo of a white coat about to be bashed over the head. I think, Jim, you may recall having seen that famous photo in your days working on this issue as well. The company was scared about getting involved in the issue. They had private label brands. They didn’t want them to be boycotted.

Jim: Yes, I recall.

Mike: They didn’t want to lose business and they just wanted this to go away. It wasn’t important to them. It was important to some coastal people, to some inshore harvesters, for some people who went out on the large fishing vessels. But it really wasn’t important overall. They didn’t see it. They feared the protesters as they saw them as a threat.

So anyway, back to the Commission, it came out and it really validated what had been going on. It validated that this was really a manipulative campaign focused on fundraising based on blood on the ice and that’s what was going on. But what the Commission did put it down into its report and recommendations. But it quickly became clear to me as the person responsible for overseeing the province’s commitment to redevelopment, it became clear to me that nobody wanted that. The only people that wanted it were some harvesters that were making money yearly. They were able to hunt, to sell for economic benefit.

But in Ottawa, nobody really cared about that. Nobody really wanted it to go ahead anyway. The processors in some other provinces were scared to death to touch this. They had already been really badly targets of hate mail and everything else, and threats to boycott their salmon and a few other things.So nobody really wanted this to happen. Federal government at that point in time, isolated the process to by really committing rather than the $100 million compensation and redevelopment plus Indigenous support, it isolated activities to a relatively small group of people, relatively being a keyword, from cost shared programming, I think over five years. It was maybe $7 million over 5 years or $5 million over 7 years. I forget what it was. People looking to access the funds had to apply and there was a tedious process for getting it. So really they tied it all up and the organisation that you had led Jim, the Canadian Sealers Association, you had already been a key figure in foundering and putting all of these harvesters together, pointing out to them the only way they had any chance of survival in getting through this was coming together but you paid a price for that.

Jim: Yes, I did.

Mike: So the organization, and as you know Jim, by this point you had already stepped down as president, was not a priority for the government. Instead, the federal government saw an opportunity to split the industry itself. So they targeted groups and people through a selective application and denial of grants and subsidies process to control what was to happen in the industry, when it was to happen, where it was now.

I guess perhaps one of the telling things that happened was when, on the day of the announcement of the federal response to the Royal Commission on Seals and Sealing, I, as a provincial director, was sent to be at the conference where it was announced. It was in the Holiday Inn in Market Square and I was there with two representatives of this sealing industry. We had received a call that the minister’s office of the day didn’t want the province’s representation be at the conference. We knew and they knew we were pushing for what the Commission had recommended and the feds were deeply concerned that what they were about to say might be challenged by comments from me. So they I was told not to be at the conference.

Instead the big discussion that day took place between the two sealers in that room about who would speak first. All the money that could and should have be going to the problems of redevelopment or compensation, that was being lost around them and they couldn’t see it, and we were banned from the room to point it out. The two men who came and were invited to speak they almost had a fight. Jim you know who I’m speaking about there, with their rivalries that are going on in the family of those people. So I left the room. I got my luggage, came back to the province. One of the sealers did speak and thanked the government.

The next morning I was called in by the provincial minister of the day that I worked under and asked what happened, because he had a call late in the night from one of the people at the meeting. He was concerned that I might say something and I told him what happened and he threw his hands in the air. He said, what can I do? You know, he said I’ve got one person on one of me wanting me to do one thing and someone on the other side wanted me to do something else. After all of that I decided to stand back at that level.

After that we went down the road to where we are today. In that protest, one of the most heart breaking things that I came across, it’s overwhelmingly and I’ve shared this with you before Jim was when I visited a small community in Newfoundland where myself and one of the leaders was there and we were in this beautiful little house, very well constructed. It was in a fishing village and have a wood stove. It was very comfortable and all well done. The lady was there had a couple of children and her husband was fishing.

You have to remember the demographics of these villages. At that point in time, the men were the primary earners. The women raised families at that point in time. Up to that, there was a huge glass ceiling in the fishing industry, only cracked later in terms of managing positions and we were sitting down chatting. There in this woman’s kitchen the lady was apologizing. What happened is she broke out in tears in the middle of the conversation. Now this was no shrinking violet. This was nobody’s pushover. She was a hard worker, very accomplished mom and person in her village and everything else. She had received threats that her children will be skinned alive, things like that. A lot of people in the villages, the communities up around the coast have received threats.

But she said that she wasn’t too worried because she knew that government, the federal government and the provincial government and the association would protect them. And I knew different. I knew that the seal sellout was already in place. And I never felt so embarrassed or ashamed my life as I did that day and leaving there. Whatever it is still a triggering event.

And I think a lot of women, particularly women, carried the bulk of the hate that was there. And I think they’ve been largely ignored. The men did get hatred, but these were small boat fishermen. Churchill called them the best small boatsmen in the world. You know, they could take a 30 footer, a 45 or 65 footer and to hijack a term , they could put a camel through the eye of a needle; they could put those vessels through in any kind of storm. They were as tough as ants. They worked hard, but they were gone to sea a lot of the time and the threat to family were to people left behind on shore. The people on shore were the real victims of the abuse that was laid on communities in the campaigns. Some of those campaigners, by the way, are still around today, still receiving federal money, but they moved off into other advocacy groups and that’s sickening to watch. The federal government’s still funding them, but that was probably one of the most challenging times.

There are, you know, other things the real work that took place, the hard work and setting up of the association, the goals of the association were great, right? I disagreed with the naming of it, but the goals of it were great. What it was set up to do was great. A lot of work went into it but it made it an easy target for the feds and at some point in time in the future, I think that the depth of the manipulation that went on will become public.

I guess the federal government managed to isolate all of the parties from each other. Aboriginal groups paid a big price too. They were isolated from any kind of collaboration and other areas were subject to token meetings that took place, you know, like the Maggies [Magdalen Islands].

I believe, Jim, there wasn’t anything really that took place of any consequence. No national strategy, no going to people who had been the target of these fundraising groups, like maybe in other consuming countries, and put together a coalition. None of that happened. And it didn’t happen because the federal government did not want it to happen. And the provincial government was shell shocked. They just, they had been intensely lobbied by processors who really didn’t give a damn because they really made barrels of money on, you know, crab or whatever species they were fishing. Seals weren’t a big part of it. Seals were a small thing for processors but were a good thing for harvesters and really helped them in the dog days of winter. It was very important to them, but in the total scheme of Canada’s national GDP and everything else, sealing was viewed as a nuisance and the feds didn’t do anything. All they did was manage the to slide of the industry underneath the water were it is to this day.

And if you look at the European Commission submissions to the 2024 fitness check, and I believe you have, Jim, and have as well, there are admissions there that are not based on fact. It’s based on lobbying by groups to keep it because it’s just a good source of fund raising, quite frankly. It has no merit at all. It’s a sustainable, wise use of ocean resources, but they’re afraid. So what they’ve done now, what the EU have said it’s a moral issue and so that’s why they’ve left it in place.

So even to this day, Canada does only a token challenge as evidenced by a very poorly formulated submission to an arbitrator and get back what they expect. They know it’s not based on science and respondents tell them from the EU that yeah, we know it’s shouldn’t be in place, but it’s an issue for tomorrow and so we’re going to leave it in place for now rather than going ahead with some kind of critical exploration of the ban’s impacts and the forces that lead to it. This way the Canadian government can tell people, oh well, we can’t do anything. See, we tried and they really don’t want to do anything.

So from an economic view it probably worked for Ottawa and for the fish processors looking to do business with Europe but not for victims of the anti-sealing activism abuse. Not for the people portrayed as butchers and barbarians, names they were called and labeled used to justify targeting them and their families with threats, destroying equipment and more, for the compensation they lost and the redeveloped that didn’t happen. The attitude is that the government’s work is done here. And to this day, the victims don’t want to talk about it, what was done to them. Anyway, that’s a bit of a rant about it. Please, I’m open to any questions, Jim. You have a lot more experience with what happened before I came home.

Jim: Yeah, but at this point I’ve already expressed my views and so on. I was more interested in getting how you felt about the things you saw, which is what you’ve expounded on here now and what your overall take is on it? To help people understand what you observed, what you read, what you saw in relation to the roles of our respective governments on this subject. So far you’ve danced around it, but what do you think was at the core of it?

Mike: Well, it was a fear based rea reaction and other provinces were deeply concerned that their products were going to be boycotted and it was easier just to throw the sealers, the  primary fish harvesters over the boat just to get them out of the fight. That’s what happened. They still remain to this day. If it were a comic book with Superman, most people know what Superman. And Superman’s weakness is this mythical thing called Kryptonite. It brings him to his knees. Seals, the word seals is kryptonite to the federal bureaucrats. It brings them to their knees and under their desks. They do not want it around, and they will not do anything meaningful to keep it around. But if you look at even the science that has been skewed and tempered by it, and I think to this day, Jim, it remains the same. I think I may have related to you at some point in time. I was having a coffee one day at a local hotel, I think it’s called a Fairmont now, but it used to be the old Hotel Newfoundland and that day one of the primary merchants in our province, an extremely wealthy, well-known and influential businessman in Newfoundland and Labrador entered that morning and somehow we ended up in a conversation. I told him who I was and a bit about what I was doing. And he said, that’s over. We lost. And anybody who’s going back at that is a fool.

I guess depending on your perspective. If it’s from a being right perspective and having honour, then the businessman is wrong. Bit it’s an economic thing and the federal government of Canada does not want to challenge things like a ban in Europe and the use of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the United States. It really could easily help support the sale of canned seal meat abroad or the development of seal meats into a product suitable to the dietary requirements of the hungry people in the world. It can be done but they don’t want it. So it’s over. From that perspective, it’s over.

It would take quite a champion and a skilled individual right now to breathe life into the subject. Currently they still focus on the fur industry, really. And the fur industry is not the way to go because the fur industry at one point in time was a driver of the sealing industry but it’s not anymore. Society now doesn’t support that, but society would support the utilization of all products with a focus on food and health products. But that’s not taken place and anytime it has been taken place, the federal Department of Fisheries has managed to screw it up by regulations and that’s still going on today.

[To be continued in Part 2]