Tag Archives: Outports

So what? Big deal.

28 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Commentary, Culture, History

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So the fish are gone in Newfoundland. So what? Big deal. Right? Wrong. So very wrong!

After more than twenty years, our species, the virus known as man, hasn’t learned a blasted thing. We are still fishing carelessly and without regard to the outcome and the future. Gotta have our sushi. Kitty has to have it’s food too. And what lunchbox would be complete without the prerequisite tuna fish sandwich, smell and all? Yet, what is the result of this? Here’s one example.

Resettlement is not a happy word in Newfoundland. In my travels, I visited several sites where once there had been outports (fishing villages) and now there was nothing; plowed under and grown over. People used to live and work there. Now, nothing to even mark their past. Get ready; it’ll happen in more places than we’d like. This is an article from the National Post illustrating what’s at stake.

‘Our little community’s dying’: Isolation prompts Newfoundland town to ask province for ‘resettlement’

Tristin Hopper | Feb 27, 2013 8:31 PM ET
Lockes' Stage on Little Bay Islands, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Adam Norman/Wikipedia Lockes’ Stage on Little Bay Islands, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Little Bay Islands used to be just another prosperous settlement on the Newfoundland coast: Ample jobs at the local crab processing plant, streets jammed with children, dances at the Orange Hall — and all of it within surroundings befitting a tourism ad: Cosy wood houses facing onto an iceberg-dotted Atlantic.

Now, the crab plant is long gone, every shop in town is shuttered and the population has plummeted to 72 from a one-time high of almost 800. Aside from a toddler and a pair of young teenagers, virtually the only islanders left are a few dozen widows and seniors, many of whom don’t have the money to leave.

“We all know our little community’s dying,” said one Little Bay Islands resident who preferred to remain anonymous.

Now, you can’t even get a soft drink

“One time, I’d say there was probably seven or eight stores here; you could go and buy whatever you wanted. Now, you can’t even get a soft drink.”

It is why, earlier this month, the nearly 200-year-old community applied for “resettlement,” a 60-year-old program in which the province issues everyone a cheque to leave town before cutting the power, suspending the ferry service and leaving nature to take its course.

“Since the crab plant closed down there’s no work here whatsoever … and nobody wants to be on EI if they can get away with it,” said Dennis Budgell, a Little Bay Islands town councillor who raised the issue with the province’s Department of Municipal Affairs.

Under the resettlement deal available to Little Bay Islands, if 90% of the community votes in favour, every household will stand to receive between $80,000 and $100,000.

So what, you ask? Big deal. Yeah, it is a big deal.

I go, you go, Fogo!

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Culture, Discovery, History, Observations, Photography, Travel

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                                                                     From a more hopeful time.

Pardon the silliness of the title, but I’ll be off to Fogo Island on the north coast of Newfoundland. It, after arriving in St. John’s, will be the first stop in my second trip up there. It is there where I hope to find and start to photograph the newly realized core of my book, “Arn? Narn.”

Just what is that core? It’s what I had already known but not realized; then realized but didn’t understand; and now it was a growing awareness of the impact of the fishing moratorium and it’s subsequent long-term effects. It was as my Fogo Island innkeeper was to tell me, “What you see now will not be here in 10-12 years.” That wasn’t prescient; it was fact: one I was still to discover first hand.

Fogo Island is so uniquely Newfoundland. (Where else could you be greeted by The Mouse?) The name was originally Y del Fogo, meaning island of fire. There is speculation as to the origin of the name: perhaps it was the native Beothuk’s (now extinct) campfires or multiple forest fires, but no one is certain.

The island supported itself solely on fishing as had the entire province. Now it was suffering the same fate as that of the larger “mainland” island. True, it had the annual Brimstone Head Folk festival each summer on Brimstone Head, (reputed by the Flat Earth Society to be one of the four corners of the earth!) but that was in early August for only a few days. A week before that is the Ethridge Point Seaside Festival in Joe Batt’s Arm. These bring some tourists in but for a short time, not enough to make much of a difference.

I was to be here for nearly a week in which I would be able to roam and photograph across the island, talk with people directly, and get a better feel for this environment. I would learn that Fogo was the main outport/town on Fogo Island – do not confuse the two. Fogo (the town) is joined by the communities of Joe Batt’s Arm, Seldom, Little Seldom, Tilting, Barr’d Islands, and Stag Harbour. In 2006 they all came together to form the Town of Fogo, while retaining their individual personalities. More to come on Fogo soon.

Kevin Spacey slept here.

06 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Newfoundland, Observations, Photography, Sea, Travel, Uncategorized

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Scene from “The Shipping News”

There are those who believe that close proximity to fame will allow that very same fame to rub off on them. About all that accrues from these multiple degrees of separation is that one could say so-and-so slept here and well, so did they. What else could explain the countless number of roadside signs declaring that “George Washington slept here.”? Who cares? If the signs are to be believed, he was a randy father of our country and nothing much seems to have changed over the course of our history.

That stated, I slept where Kevin Spacey did, really and not intentionally, really. I walked and drove around the same places he did. And yet I am no more famous for doing so. (But then, neither is he.) However, where we both slept (not at the same time!) was on the Bonavista Peninsula, on the eastern side of Newfoundland: he, to film the movie adaptation of E. Annie Proulx’s book “The Shipping News”; me, to continue shooting what was to become “Arn? Narn.”.

A good portion of the film was shot on the Bonavista Peninsula. It, like all of Newfoundland, boasts many outports with such names as Birchy Cove, New and Old Bonaventure (you takes yer choice), and Sweet Bay. The dock shown here, typical of an outport, was used in the film in an important scene featuring a boat alleged to be “Hitler’s Yacht.” Go figure.

As I started “Arn? Narn.”, I was drawn to the outports. They, because of their importance to fishing and the survival of the province, were at once the living history of Newfoundland and its future and it was in them l was to learn what the core of my book was to be. But not yet, and not for sometime.