In 1997 my first published novel Ice Break was released, a story of eco-terrorists who hijack a Canadian icebreaker and take it out to the Grand Banks to destroy Spanish and Portuguese trawlers for their overfishing practices. I know this sounds like something Tom Clancy thought up after too many margaritas but it is based on an episode that actually happened in a bar in Halifax.

Ice Break

In 1993, I was a musician enjoying a dead night in an empty lounge, talking to Jonathan the bartender and wondering where all the people were. It was October and the summer rush was gone and the only action downtown were kids at the party places. Just as we were going to pack it in a group of 20-ish aged people came in and sat up at the bar beside me. They were very affable young people and I remember they ordered Guinness in the can because it had a charge of CO2 that frothed the mixture when it was opened.

When the conversation got going it turned out that they belonged to the crew of Paul Watson’s ship The Sea Shepherd, a former Canadian Coast Guard vessel painted entirely black. The ship was in for repairs before they headed out to the Grand Banks where it was said foreigners were using “nets as small as screen” and were vacuuming the oceans of the last of the cod stocks. Watson’s’ ship would use guerrilla tactics to try and persuade the ships to go home.

One young lady went on to say how they were in the South China Sea during the past year using their metal boat to ram Taiwanese junks, which were made of wood. The Taiwanese were fishing with 100-mile long drift nets. She described how the boats would shatter when hit. The bartender asked, “Was there anybody hurt?” Wherein she replied, “Oh, no, we were in a metal boat and we just felt a big bump, that’s all.” We could scarcely breathe thinking about those poor, if not greedy, fishermen. “But they wouldn’t be killing all those beautiful fish,” she added without a touch of remorse.

The next night we watched the dark shape of the “The Sea Shepherd” slide out of the harbor whereupon Jonathan remarked, “Can you imagine if those yahoos got hold of a real icebreaker?” And that’s how the book started.