I chaired a session at the 2002 British Association for Canadian Studies' Conference were Dr Nick Baxter-Moore Of Brock University,Ontario, gave a very good paper on the song's origins. I'm pretty certain it's been published in a relevant journal. One thing I remember his his assertion that the fishermen of Port Erie don'tlike the song, particularly the line about 'poisons with names that we can't understand' - they found that patronising.