Osborne Burke sported a shameless grin. Most days, as the general manager of one of the last surviving independent seafood companies on Cape Breton Island, it was his business to get along with people. But not today. Today, he recalled the “open letter” he had recently written to the current president of the United States, where, for decades, Victoria Co-operative Fisheries had exported its local lobsters.

“It was bee-ooo-tee-ful,” he said from his dockside office in Neil’s Harbour.

“Dear Donald,” the missive, published in the Cape Breton Post on February 18, began. “I am a proud Canadian citizen and a resident of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. There has been a lot of media coverage in recent weeks regarding comments you’ve made directed to your northern neighbours, some of which have been somewhat threatening and upsetting to many of my fellow Canadians.”

So far, so Canadian: polite, measured, bordering on diplomatic. Then came the reminder that “Canadians do not appreciate threats, intimidation or bullying… We have been your friend through many challenges—world wars, terrorist attacks, floods, wildfires. Remember the horrible 911 attacks? No? How about this, then: Canadians have universal free health care. Women have freedom of choice. We welcome all races, religions and genders. We enjoy much lower violent crime rates.”

“Quite frankly and with all due respect not everyone wants to be a citizen of the United States… It’s NO THANK YOU.”

Burke’s letter made waves—across Facebook feeds, morning radio and the seafood trade press. Even the Wall Street Journal wanted to run it on their opinion pages. But the bravado masked something bleaker. In all his 30 years at the helm of Victoria, Burke had never seen anything like this. And, frankly, he was scared. Writing that letter was an act of self-absolution—a way to rid himself of the terror of watching the market that sustained his community begin to slip away for no “goddamn good reason.”

Victoria had been shipping Cape Breton seafood to the U.S. for decades; mostly live lobster, but also snow crab, halibut and frozen value-added products. In 2023, it exported roughly $25 million worth of product, much of it to New England.

Then, on March 4, the U.S. slapped a fresh 25 per cent tariff on a suite of Canadian exports, including seafood, igniting fears of a full-blown trade war. That same month, China—once Nova Scotia’s fastest-growing seafood customer—announced new tariffs of its own against Canadian fish, including lobster, snow crab and shrimp. The move came in retaliation for Canada’s 100 per cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles announced the previous October.

With American buyers spooked by price jumps and Chinese importers hedging against tariff risks, orders began to slow. Containers once booked weeks in advance sat idle. The global lobster pool was shrinking. Fast.

“Lobster is not a luxury to us,” Burke said. “It’s payroll. It’s trucks. It’s fuel.”

And not just in Neil’s Harbour.

According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Nova Scotia’s seafood exports are valued at approximately CAD $2.5 billion a year—roughly 4.2 per cent of the province’s $59.6 billion in overall annual economic output. The United States accounted for about half of that—approximately $1.23 billion—while China and Hong Kong contributed another $666 million.

“We’re in the business of relationships,” Burke said. “But when this happens, those relationships don’t always survive. The buyer doesn’t pay. The consumer doesn’t. We do.”

—Osborne Burke

And then there’s the human cost. In Nova Scotia, the fishing and fish processing industry employed approximately 9,500 individuals in 2023, representing 1.9 per cent of the province’s total workforce. These jobs were predominantly located in rural, coastal communities where alternative employment opportunities were limited. A significant downturn in the seafood sector could lead to catastrophic job losses, threatening the socio-economic fabric of entire regions, putting whole families out of work.

“We’re in the business of relationships,” Burke said. “But when this happens, those relationships don’t always survive. The buyer doesn’t pay. The consumer doesn’t. We do.”

The co-op’s workforce, more than 150 strong during peak season, was already bracing. But if any group of people was built to weather a storm like this, it was them. Multi-generational fishers and plant workers, raised in a part of the world where livelihoods rise and fall with the tide, they’d endured collapsed stocks, hurricanes, market crashes, and now, a geopolitical punch-up between global powers. They don’t flinch easily.

“People look out and say, ‘Oh shit, we’re done,’” Burke said. “But we don’t quit. We figure it out.”

That grit is baked into the model. Victoria isn’t a faceless corporation—it’s a co-operative, owned by the people who work in it and, often, land their catches at its wharf. “We’re on the ground. We’re in the community,” Burke said. “There’s no head office to call. We can make decisions right here, right now.”

That autonomy makes a difference when the sky falls—literally. In September 2022, when Hurricane Fiona tore the roof off Victoria’s processing plant and left its second floor hanging in the air, Burke didn’t wait for permission to act. “We picked up the pieces,” he said. “Not once did I hesitate. We were going to build it back and build it back better.”

“My philosophy was: ask for forgiveness, not permission. We talked to the bank, and they stood behind us. We just went.”

—Osborne Burke

The scale of damage was crushing. The storm destroyed millions in specialized equipment, much of it newly installed. Insurance wouldn’t cover everything. Financing was uncertain. But the very next business day, Burke had contractors on-site assessing the damage, supply chains working on replacement parts and a plan in motion. “My philosophy was: ask for forgiveness, not permission. We talked to the bank, and they stood behind us. We just went.”

That urgency was matched by innovation. Rather than just patching the place up, Burke and his team reimagined the workflow, adding storm doors, reinforcing structural integrity, upgrading boilers and bringing in smart systems that could be monitored from laptops and phones. “Processing plants aren’t wrenches and hammers anymore,” he said. “They’re analytics, automation, lean design. Even our crab cookers are wired into the Internet of Things.”

It wasn’t just about efficiency—it was about the people who work there. The rebuild introduced new ergonomic layouts air-conditioned packaging rooms, and better health and safety protocols. “We’ve got workers from 14 to 75,” Burke said. “We’ve shortened legs on tables, replaced heavy salt bags with ground-level hoppers, invested in training and consultants. We’ve got a health and safety coordinator on staff full time now. We’re always asking: how do we make this job sustainable for our people?”

The result: they reopened on schedule—less than seven months after the storm. And that, said Burke, is the co-op advantage. Local control. Fast decisions. And a mission that’s bigger than any one person.

“When people ask me why I put up with the stress, I tell them: look around. If this co-op wasn’t here, this community wouldn’t be either. No school, no services, no jobs. This isn’t just a business—it’s the backbone of Victoria County.”

Now, facing an economic storm of uncertain length and scale, they’re doing what they’ve always done: adapting, innovating and staying on the line. And Burke? He’s already moving. Fast.

“We’re not just going to sit back and take it,” he said. “We’re going to figure out a way to get it done.”

His first line of defense is retooling the sales model. Historically, Victoria sold much of its catch—live lobster, snow crab, halibut—directly to U.S. buyers, often without formal purchase orders. Not anymore. “Now I won’t move anything without a purchase order,” he said. “We’re selling everything FOB—freight on board—so the American buyer becomes the importer of record. They pay the tariff. Not us.”

It’s a strategy grounded in pragmatism, but it’s only part of Burke’s broader pivot. His real plan is diversification: radical, aggressive and fast-tracked. “Last year, 65 per cent of our product went to the U.S. and 35 per cent to Asia,” he said. “We’re going to flip that. And we’re going to do it in three years, not five.”

That means new markets, new packaging and a wholesale shift in mindset. Victoria is developing more value-added and retail-ready products—think two-pound crab boxes instead of the traditional 30-pound bulk packs—for buyers in Europe and Asia. The co-op is already working with Lidl, a massive European grocery chain, and has shipped samples to buyers in Germany and France. “If they want a half-pound box, we’ll give them a half-pound box,” Burke said. “We’re not going to lose a customer over packaging.”

Closer to home, Burke is eyeing Canada itself. “We’ve been too reliant on the U.S. for too long,” he said. “Now we’re finally looking inward.” The federal government’s move to dismantle interprovincial trade barriers, long a thorn for seafood producers, opens new opportunities for domestic sales, especially when some provinces have surpluses others don’t.

 

“If Quebec’s got more crab than it can process, we should be able to bring it here. That’s just common sense.”

It’s not just about product, either. The co-op is expanding its partnerships and even brokering deals on products it doesn’t produce, like shrimp and mackerel, for trusted buyers. It’s become a hub, a connector, a problem-solver.

“We used to say, ‘Sorry, we don’t have that.’ Now we say, ‘Give us a minute, we’ll find it,’” Burke said.

And while the U.S. market may be destabilizing, not all American businesses are buying into Trump’s isolationist bluster. Burke said one California company is now buying crab from Victoria and shipping it directly to its Canadian customers to avoid tariffs altogether. Others are absorbing the cost themselves just to keep Nova Scotian product on their shelves.

That loyalty, Burke said, is built on two things: “Quality and trust. You can’t fake either.” But will it be enough?

These are not normal times. Even if Burke and others like him deftly navigate these treacherous shoals, what’s to stop some new outrage, some fresh chaos, from sweeping in unannounced?

Trade wars. Climate shocks. Rogue politics. The global seafood market is a tangle of nerves and nerves are fraying. In places like Neil’s Harbour—where the economy lives and dies by what gets hauled from the ocean and shipped across borders—the margin for error is razor-thin.

Still, Burke refuses to flinch. “This is another Fiona,” he said. “But we’ll come out of it the same way: stronger, smarter and more independent.”

That’s not bravado. It’s muscle memory. It’s the kind you earn rebuilding a factory from the studs up. Or renegotiating a continent’s worth of trade relationships on the fly. Or holding your ground when the most powerful man in the world tries to make your country his.

Osborne Burke is not betting on miracles. He’s betting on work. On relationships. On the kind of self-reliance that built Victoria Co-operative Fisheries from the margins of the map. And, if he has anything to say about it, will keep it there.

Coastal, proud and still standing.