Enjoying fresh fish on Manitoulin? Thank the Purvis family
Visitors to Manitoulin Island are spoiled for choice when it comes to a fresh fish feast. Ranging from chip stands to restaurant dining rooms, you’re never far from a fresh-caught meal.
But no matter where you choose to dine, a vast amount of the Island’s fish come from an iconic family: the Purvises.
For nearly 150 years, the Purvis family has been plying the waters of Lake Huron, pulling in the day’s catch and selling it near and far. They supply a majority of restaurants on Manitoulin Island with their local fish and also offer fresh, frozen and smoked fillets for the home cook.
“There’s lots of fun to it. There’s lots of not-fun to it too, but it’s a totally different, interesting business to be in,” said Denise Purvis Sheppard, who manages and co-owns Purvis Fisheries. She and her brother Drew represent the fifth generation in the family business.
The fishing trawler ‘The Purvis’ returning home from a days fishing in Island waters.
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The Manitoulin Purvis story began with William Purvis, who emigrated from Scotland to Canada in 1851. His life was one of adventure, starting his career as a cabin-boy on a ship to Egypt, later becoming a coffee farmer in India, then finding work on the railway in Canada, opening a store in Kincardine and becoming the town’s police chief.
In the 1870s, William took up a job as the first lighthouse keeper on Great Duck Island, off the south shore of Manitoulin Island. It wasn’t long before he started his fishing business, first using a sailboat and then with a tugboat.
“We had probably the first commercial fishing licence ever issued in northern Ontario,” said George Purvis Jr., the patriarch of the family. “The ministry actually came to take a picture of it a year or two, because they didn’t have a copy in their archives and I still had it.”
In 1902, William’s son Alex built a fishing tug to carry on the family’s tradition. He officially formed the Purvis Brothers Fishing Company, alongside his four siblings and by 1930, they had three boats in their fleet.
The business made its headquarters at Burnt Island, on Manitoulin’s south shore. It was not far from the Great Duck Islands that first brought the family to this region.
Alex’s son George would continue on the family tradition. So did his son, George Jr., who oversaw the company until early 2025.
It wasn’t always a given that George Jr. would enter the family business. He completed a university degree and got a job with Algoma Steel, but two weeks after he graduated, his father had a severe heart attack and died, leaving nobody to run the business.
“I didn’t have a lot of options, but I wasn’t displeased either,” Mr. Purvis said.
The business evolved during George Jr.’s leadership. Mr. Purvis oversaw the conversion of his boats from steam to diesel power and he also bought another tug that he operated himself.
Mr. Purvis’ own daughter, Denise Purvis Sheppard, grew up into the fishery and naturally became one of its employees. She and her brother Drew became the fifth generation of Purvises in the family business, starting out as teenagers, selling their catch from a truck at Island businesses and markets. Now, she manages the business, while Drew manages the on-water operations.
This generation brought a major shift for the family business. Previously, it dealt in whole fish, which is sold to far-away markets like Toronto, Chicago and New York City. Now, they were introducing their fish to local consumers and building relationships across Manitoulin.
Ms. Purvis Sheppard would later go away to study in a business program, but she returned home to carry on the family tradition. That pattern has crossed several Purvis generations – parents encouraged their children to go away to school, before deciding whether they wanted to help out in the family business.
“Getting educated helped me make sure I was running the business right and helping it thrive,” said Ms. Purvis Sheppard. “Plus, you never have those regrets of whether you should have tried something else before jumping into the business.”
Mr. Purvis said he was pleased to see both his son and daughter join the fishery. Drew has run many of the boats, putting in extra work during the seasons when the company couldn’t hire enough crew. Mr. Purvis said it was easier for him to step back from the family business in recent years, knowing that the next generation had it in good hands.
The family patriarch George Purvis, standing left, at the historic ‘Company Store’ on Burnt Island in the 1980s.
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There have been changes since the fifth generation came aboard. When Ms. Purvis Sheppard and her brother began marketing their fish to local consumers, rather than just exporting whole fish, they had to build a processing plant and gather a skilled team to fillet the day’s catch.
Finding crew to work on the boats and in the plant remains a perennial challenge, she said. And that’s tied to the health of the fishery itself.
In places where fish stocks are plentiful, it’s easier to attract a crew and pay them top-dollar, Ms. Purvis Sheppard explained. And while there are many fish in Lake Huron, the most plentiful species aren’t always the ones that customers want.
Purvis Fisheries once specialized in lake trout, which were in high demand, far and wide. But a combination of overfishing and invasive species pressure caused a complete collapse of lake trout in the 1960s, decimating the business.
As a result, a generation of consumers were never introduced to lake trout. Instead, they opted for species like lake whitefish and walleye.
Conservation efforts would later restore the health of the lake trout fishery, but this hasn’t restored the business to its former glory. The waters around Manitoulin Island are good habitat for lake trout and many stocked fish have migrated to this region and built a strong population.
However, major parts of the Great Lakes continue to lack a self-sustaining population and governments on both sides of the border stock millions of lake trout every year.
A strong lake trout fishery might seem like a good thing, but after multiple generations have grown up without the fish in their supermarkets, there is little consumer demand for this salmon-related fish. Lake trout are also a top predator species, which adds pressure to the other, more profitable species that the Purvis family targets.
Ms. Purvis Sheppard says the overabundance of lake trout will continue to be a problem for her business, unless consumers shift their interest back to this particular fish (“Try it, you’ll love it!” she says).
“The population is just way too big,” she said. “We saw this coming and have been working on it for 20 years, but haven’t seen much of an improvement.”
Fishermen aboard The Purvis pull nets in the hopes of filling the boat with whitefish.
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The sixth generation of the Purvis family is now reaching adulthood and starting to chart the course for their working lives. Ms. Purvis Sheppard’s daughter, Avery Sheppard, has so far followed a similar path to her mother – going away to school and using that knowledge to innovate.
While Ms. Purvis Sheppard’s innovations added a fish-processing operation to the family business, Ms. Sheppard’s take has brought their fish even further, right to your plate.
It started as a summer job back in 2021, for a work placement credit in her business degree. But every summer since, Ms. Sheppard has been cooking up some of the freshest fish on Manitoulin Island at Gore Bay’s Purvis Fish and Chips.
The relatively new restaurant is located in an iconic octagonal building, right next to the waters of Lake Huron.
“My mother thought I was crazy,” said Ms. Sheppard with a laugh. “They told me they didn’t know anything about the restaurant industry, so they’d help where they could, but I really had to figure it out on my own.”
Fish and chip restaurants abound on Manitoulin Island, making it tough to gain a foothold. What Ms. Sheppard had going for her, however, was the family name, which is deeply tied to Island-caught fish.
The Purvis family already supplies fish to a vast majority of the restaurants on Manitoulin, making it even tougher to set her shop apart. She still has to purchase fish from the family business, like the other restaurants, but she does have a unique advantage when it comes to access.
“I live next door to the processing plant. So, while we send out our deliveries on Wednesdays and Fridays, I get to go down and pick up the fish every morning, so whatever comes in that day, I’ll get. I usually have the freshest fish on Manitoulin.”
There is a bit of extra labour involved in that deal, however. She pays for that access with her time, having to go in early and cut up her portion-sized pieces by hand every morning. Then, they’re brought to the octagon-shaped restaurant on the Gore Bay waterfront, to be battered and fried up for the day’s hungry customers.
Ms. Sheppard also says she doesn’t heavily season her fish, instead opting for a neutral-flavoured English-style batter. Then, the customers can dial in their preferred taste through their choice of three tartar sauces – including an old family recipe that she grew up with.
Those efforts seem to be paying off. Last year, sales were twice as strong as her inaugural season in 2021.
It’s giving Avery a fair degree of optimism for her future. She’s already begun dreaming about what the future may have in store, whether it’s for this business or another one of her concepts.
“I have a couple of business ideas to explore on Manitoulin and expand, but right now I’m at school,” she said. “The biggest thing with it is, I make a good profit but it’s hard to make it support your lifestyle if you’re only open three months of the year.”
Sixth generation Avery Sheppard is the proud owner of Purvis Fish and Chips located on the Gore Bay waterfront.
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That still leaves some questions about the future of the 144-year-old Purvis Fisheries legacy. At this point, there is no natural heir waiting to take over the business. Ms. Sheppard has some siblings, but they are still figuring out the direction of their careers.
However, Drew Purvis, brother of Ms. Purvis Sheppard, has a son who has taken a very active role in the business. She hopes he’ll continue to find it fulfilling and make it his life’s work.
But all of the potential successes will hinge on how well the lake whitefish and walleye stocks perform in the decades to come, or whether consumers can be persuaded to take a bite out of the abundant lake trout that surround Manitoulin.
One thing that the six generations have cemented, however, is a deep legacy as a hard-working, dedicated family. They have built their reputation by feeding tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people with some of the best and freshest fish that Manitoulin Island has to offer.
When you make your visit to Manitoulin this summer, make sure you try some fresh fish at one of the Island’s many restaurants. No matter where you choose to dine, chances are good that the Purvis family helped bring the catch of the day onto your plate.