Women of the water: Thriving in the fishing community

August 11, 2025

When Colleen Burns first captained her late husband’s boat in Margaree Harbour back in 1991, she didn’t imagine she would inspire other women in the county to try their hand at fishing.

Despite growing up in Main-a-Dieu with lots of fishermen in her extended family, she hadn’t spent any time on the water until she met Johnny Burns in 1978.

“He was fishing with his dad at that time, so that’s when I first started going out in the boat whenever I had the chance to,” Burns recalls, “I really liked it.”

“And then his dad passed away in 1981 and he took over the license. We got married the next year,
so I used to go fishing with him between having children, so it was a bit sporadic at times.”

Johnny Burns passed away in 1991, and, with the help of her in-laws, she was able to take over his boat.

“My brother-in-law used to fish a bit in Main-a- Dieu,” she says. “So, he helped me, and I had two other brothers-in-law who helped me quite a bit.”

“With their help I started running the boat and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Burns says the other fishermen at Margaree Harbour were also very supportive when she started.

“They all grew up with my husband and they knew I had three boys, so they were very generous in helping me out in any way they could,” she adds.

Their oldest son passed away and the middle son, Howard, also fishes out of Margaree Harbour. The youngest, Chris, fishes with his mother.

“He’s pretty much running the boat,” she says. “I’m just there to help out in whatever way I can.”

“Chris is preparing to take over this license, I’m hoping by next spring. I’m 67 years old and I’m feeling it. But he’s more than capable of taking it over.”

Burns says it’s great to know she’s been an inspiration to other women.

“It makes me feel amazing, because I kind of fell into it, and I was pretty nervous,” she says. “To see females getting into it now, I think it’s great.”

One of those women is Amanda MacDougall, who fishes out of the wharf in Inverness.

“I’m very proud of Amanda,” Burns says. “She’s done really well.”

Unlike Burns, MacDougall spent a lot of time fishing before becoming captain of her own boat. Her father, Jordan MacDougall, has been fishing for nearly 40 years.

In fact, since she started running her own boat 18 years ago, she’s watched her sister, Sabrina Carpenter, do the same six years ago, and her brother Patrick also fishes out of Inverness. She says Amber, the youngest of four siblings, plans to take over their father’s license when he retires.

“I’d fish with my dad on the weekends through high school, and then I did a couple of years after I finished school,” MacDougall recalls. “I was in Halifax, and I’d come home every spring, and I’d fish.”

“So, he asked me one day if I wanted to do this as a career, and I said ‘no,’ so he fired me!” He told me to go find another career.”

But MacDougall wouldn’t be off the water for very long.

“How I ended up fishing, a good high school friend had bought a lobster license in Margaree so I fished with him that next year,” she remembers. “I saw this woman, Colleen Burns, fishing. Her husband had died and she had started running the license.”

“I thought, ‘if she can do it, then I can do it,’” she adds. “She was the first woman I ever saw run a boat and then shortly after that I got my own. It’s really important for women to see that you can do this.”

MacDougall says she was a bit of a novelty at the wharf when she first started fishing, but that the other fishermen have been very supportive.

“At first, I think they didn’t think I was going to do much,” she says. “But I’d fish on the bad days, and they were like, ‘okay, she’s really doing it.’”

Along with driving the boat, MacDougall is involved in every other aspect of fishing with her crew.

“I’m in the thick of it,” she says. “I run the boat and do the traps. But I don’t touch bait. I used to do it, but with all the electronics in the cabin, you would get bait all over it. With all the technology now, it’s very different from when I started.”

When asked what she likes most about her career, there is no hesitation.

“On setting day, I was driving out of the harbour telling one of the people helping us, ‘Coming out of the harbour as the sun rises, this is my favourite part of the day. If anything ever happens to me, this where I want my ashes spread, right here.’”

For now, she’s waiting for the day when all four MacDougall children are captaining their own boats.

“We just need my father to retire, but he loves it.”

Sabrina Carpenter laughs when she recalls that, like her sister Amber, she too had planned to take over their father’s boat when he’d be done. A nurse at Inverness Consolidated Memorial Hospital, Carpenter takes a three-month leave of absence every year to go fishing.

After completing her nursing degree at St. F.X. University, she worked out west for several years and was on a maternity leave when she ran her sister’s boat while MacDougall was pregnant with her twins. She fished with her sister the following year and then moved back home in 2019 and bought her own license.

“I always thought in the back of my mind that I’d do it,” she says. “My plan was when my father retired, I was going to take over his license. But then after fishing with Amanda that year, I thought ‘you know, I really enjoy this.’”

“I just like being on the ocean. And then there’s a competitiveness to it. I’m a pretty competitive person, so you’re always trying to outdo the next person, so it’s good to have that aspect of it. It’s like a constant challenge. Every day you’re trying to think, move gear and analyze everything. A different day brings a different challenge.”

As much as she enjoys fishing, she says she’s always more than ready to be back at the hospital.

“It’s a nice balance.”

Finding that balance in life was a big reason Jessica Hinkley decided she wanted to captain her own boat. The third female captain fishing out of Inverness, she grew up in Port Hawkesbury and had no connection to fishing before meeting her future husband.

“When I first met my husband, he had just gotten into the fishing industry himself in 1998,” Hinkley recalls. “In 2000 he got his own license, so I got on the back of the boat with him.”

She had planned to be a teacher and had finished her arts degree at St. F.X. when they had their first child, and “that changed everything.”

“So, I stayed on the boat,” Hinkley says. “It made it a little easier that I was able to fish and be a mom and stay home with the baby.”

“There was a license coming up for sale in Inverness, so my husband asked me if I thought I’d like to run a boat. That was 2014 and this is my 11th season.”

She says fishing has afforded her and her husband a good work/life balance.

“It’s a good career while being a mother,” she explains. “I’m two months on the water, and we’ve always been able to attend all our kids’ sporting events or anything at school. The schedule allowed us to do those things.”

“I’m not one of those ones who loves fishing. It’s a good job. Financially it’s great, but I’m not one of those people who have salt water in their veins. I often tell people, ‘I have the best job in the world on a nice day, and I have the worst job in the world on a dirty day.’”

Hinkley says since her first day on the water, the reaction from the fishermen at her wharf has been nothing but welcoming and supportive.

“As a woman in this industry, I think I’ve always felt I had to prove that I can do it,” she says. “It’s a pressure that I put on myself. Nobody’s ever made me feel that I was out of place.”

Erin MacLean, who fishes out of Maryville wharf, near Judique, says she’s also encountered nothing but acceptance among her peers.

MacLean, who has proudly earned the nickname “Captain Eyeliner,” says she hasn’t changed who she
is, as she’s taken on the role of fishing captain.

“I still get my nails done every three weeks,” she says. “I’m the girl with the sunglasses, the pink oilers and
the nails. I still don’t want to lose that part of me.”

“I’m not like the women captains who run the license, drive the boat, and everything else. I’ll get there eventually. I’m only four years in.”

MacLean grew up just down the road from the wharf where her father, Harold MacDonald, fished for 40 years. She’s taken over his license and gear, but concedes it wasn’t in her plans years ago.

“My dad was heading for 80 and wanted to hang up his oilers,” she explains. “I’m the oldest of seven and my brothers had initially planned on doing it, but their lives took them elsewhere. My husband Trevor turned to me one day and said, ‘I think we should do it.’”

“I said ‘are you crazy?'”

“He said ‘why not, we’re doing it anyway and it would be a nice thing for Cam (their son) to have eventually down the road.’ So, we approached dad about it, did the paperwork, and now I’m owner/ operator of Family Tides Fisheries.”

MacLean’s husband has been fishing lobster out of the Coal Mines wharf, near their Mabou home, for almost 25 years. She says he’s the big reason it works.

“We both get up at 3 a.m., we have our coffee and our breakfast, and Trevor goes one way, and I go the other way,” she says. “At the end of the day, everything is down to Trevor. He’s got two licenses to get ready; 500 traps and two boats.”

Nancy Cameron-Dykens, who fishes out of Murphy’s Pond wharf in Port Hood, is also running her father’s gear this season, since Scott Cameron passed away suddenly last fall.

“I fished with him since my first year of university,” she says. “That was 2007. So, it’s been about 15 years that I was out with him.”

“I knew it was something he had wanted me to do. It wasn’t even a question for me. I knew that’s what he wanted, and I wanted to do that for him.”

Cameron-Dykens says she and her brother, who also fishes out Murphy’s Pond wharf, are at least the fourth generation of her family that’s fished for a living. Her brother is fishing their grandfather’s gear.

“I’m pretty new here,” she says. “But so far the fishermen have been so supportive, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s a lot different than being at the back of the boat. It’s a little more responsibility and more mentally exhausting versus physically.”

“My dad was a good teacher, and he loved to talk about fishing and fill me in because he knew he wanted me to do this eventually. We just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

Cameron-Dykens says although she didn’t hesitate about taking over her father’s license, she did have some concerns about how it might go.

“I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to do it because it would be too difficult emotionally, but I’m finding the exact opposite,” she explains. “I’m finding it brings me a lot of comfort being out there and knowing that it’s what he would want. It was a place for he and I to bond and we spent so much time together. I think that really helps.”

Darlene Sutherland, another captain at Murphy’s Pond wharf, says she couldn’t be happier about Cameron-Dykens taking over her father’s boat.

“I’m so proud of Nancy,” she says. “Her father was my confidante, my go-to person. He was always the guy. No question was stupid. He was amazing.”

Sutherland had her own baptism by fire when it came to launching her career as a fishing captain. She began fishing with her father when she was 16, but about 13 years ago he had a heart attack on setting day, and she suddenly found herself at the helm.

“I have a brother who was on the boat too at the time,” she recalls. “There was never a day that I thought I would be the one taking it over. I always thought it was going to be him.”

She says her brother had just gotten into the Boilermakers Union and got a call to work the same weekend her father had the heart attack.

“So, my father had the heart attack on that Saturday,” Sutherland remembers. “I think it was Saturday night my brother got the call to go to work, and he had to fly out Sunday night, and Monday I was left to pull the boat off the wharf.”

“My nerves were bad; I’m not going to lie. I called a few of my friends that had fished with us over the years, and I said, ‘I need you guys right now. I don’t care if you’re going stand on the stern and just encourage me, but I need you guys,’ and that’s what they did.”

Sutherland says despite those first tense days, she has no regrets about taking the plunge.

“I’m proud of myself for sticking with it, and I’m doing pretty good,” she says. “Keeping it in the family is a huge thing. But it’s the peace of mind I get out there. Everything on land is forgotten.”