Before the biological reality of what we Canadians were doing to our fish stocks hit home, it was just too late. That reality dropped like a bombshell in 1992. It emerged that cod stocks were in free fall, estimated to be at less than one per cent of the levels of the 1960s. Despite a decade-long moratorium, the cod still have not returned in significant numbers. A mystery indeed. And one that just might be telescoping future environmental and ecoystem destruction today. And while there are many different theories for the collapse -- botched science, timorous and fluctuating political will, a boom in the seal population, the failure of the government to extend the fishing ban to the edges of the Grand Banks; to go beyond Canada's territorial waters -- the ecosystem of these chilly waters has changed dramatically. Despite a decade of rhetorical hand wringing -- served up with dollops of Canadian sanctimony -- there emerges one indisputable truth: The Grand Banks cod fishery has been wiped out because of greed and made-in-Canada stupidity.