Photo: © Courtesy of Fishing for Success
Healing Waters
Girls Who Fish
For Meadus, the experience led to something even bigger—co-founding the Girls Who Fish program with Orren. The fishery has long been dominated by men, but Orren and Meadus are working to change that. In 2016, the two co-founded Girls Who Fish, a program that provides women with skills and confidence in fishing, boating, and outdoor leadership.
“We wanted to create a space where women weren’t being taught by their dads, brothers, or boyfriends,” Meadus explained. “Just women teaching women.”
The program challenges stereotypes and breaks down barriers in a field where only 23 per cent of participants are women. From fly fishing and filleting to navigating a dory, Girls Who Fish empowers participants to take the helm—literally and figuratively.
“We teach everything from fly fishing to cod jigging,” she continued. “But what we’re really doing is building confidence.”
Learning from the Sea
Not everyone in Petty Harbour embraced the initiative at first. A necessary safety fence stirred controversy. Some locals questioned the visibility and growth of a project founded by an outsider. But over time, those who experienced it, especially children, became its biggest advocates.
And now, Fishing for Success is a registered museum, a social enterprise, and a sought-after destination for tourists, schools, and nonprofits. It’s hosted women’s long-table dinners with locally caught seafood, partnered with Memorial University, and earned national recognition, including the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Inspiration Award. But it’s always been the little victories that matter most, like seeing children’s lives change in real-time.
“When a child catches their first fish and says, ‘I did it,’ everything else falls away,” shared Orren. “It’s magic. And it’s medicine.”
Fishing for Connection
Fishing for Success also partners with groups like the Association for New Canadians to run Women Sharing Heritage (WiSH). This six-week program brings together immigrant and refugee women with local women for shared activities such as berry picking, fish preparation, and cooking traditional meals. The goal, as Orren explains it, is to give people a space to feel proud of their skills and to be a part of something.
Deliberate in its language and practice, Fishing for Success avoids terms like “recreational fishing” and doesn’t teach catch-and-release. In doing so, the organization reintroduces values that once defined coastal life in Newfoundland: sustainability, stewardship, and community reliance.
“We teach responsible harvesting,” Orren explained. “If you take a life, you eat it. You use all of it. You respect it.”
And while there’s joy in the catch, there’s also beauty in the learning. Kids do citizen science, participate in microplastic research, and learn to read the sea through the eyes of elders.
“Fishing is just the hook,” she continued. “It gets people to imagine what they might do around the water.”
The impact speaks for itself. Many of its alumni have taken their skills into new realms—entrepreneurship, psychology, sustainability, even international development. Young, for example, started a tourism-based youth employment project in Haiti, inspired by the values she learned on the wharf in Petty Harbour.
Sometimes, all it takes is a line in the water.
