711.428/1261
The Chargé in Canada (Mayer) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 21.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to the Department’s instruction No. 476 of March 13, 1929, regarding seine fishing in the Missisquoi Bay section of Lake Champlain, in which the Legation is requested again to take up with the Canadian Government the matter of the appointment in the near future of a joint fact-finding commission to investigate this fisheries question and to make recommendations regarding its solution.
On February 27th the Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs was good enough to furnish the Legation with a copy of that Department’s instruction of the same date to the Honorable Vincent Massey, Canadian Minister at Washington, directing him to ascertain [Page 71] whether the Government of the United States would be prepared to participate in a further conference between fully accredited representatives of the two governments, looking to a satisfactory solution of outstanding fishery questions. Mr. Massey was further instructed, in view of the approach of another fishing season, to endeavor to arrange “some date in March or early in April as a suitable occasion for the convening of such a conference”. (A copy of the instruction is enclosed).39
I venture to enquire whether, in the circumstances, the Department still desires me to take up the Missisquoi Bay question separately with the Department of External Affairs.
In this general relation I have the honor to inform the Department that the Canadian authorities still continue to express a lively interest in the status of the discussion of a treaty on the subject of the sockeye salmon question on the Pacific Coast.
I have [etc.]