Tag Archives: The Shipping News

In which I get it right.

02 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in Discovery, Food, Geography, Travel

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As I wrote earlier, when we were sitting in the airport, my lovely bride happened upon a postcard for a perfectly wonderful B&B. And as I wrote, I through my infinite wisdom had booked us for three nights in this wonderful place. Am I good or what?

We are now on our way to this wonderful Newfoundland version of Brigadoon, but without bagpipes. Since we are departing from the southern tip of the Avalon Peninsula and driving up to Port Rexton near Trinity, about 260 miles. Not a bad drive, 4-5 hours with stops especially if we can find a Tim Horton’s.

Typical Newfoundland bog. (eoearth.org.)

Newfoundland has been settled almost exclusively on the coast line. It is a very big coast. As we drive from Burin north, we travel mostly inland. Lots of bogs, ponds, no moose sightings, and lots of rocks and birch trees. Since everything revolved around fishing, there is hardly anything resembling a town. This is not to say no one lives out there. We pass small enclaves of homes along the way. Just what they do for employment is something we haven’t been able to determine. Still, I wouldn’t mind living there either.

As we head towards that days destination, we start to see more small towns. They are different from the outports since they are still a ways inland from the water. But it lets us know we’re almost there. And then we crest a hill and a sign for our destination appears. Hot damn! This is where I really start to look like I know what I’m doing on this trip. Fisher’s Loft is even better in real life than the beautiful image on their postcard. The views are spectacular and it’s getting on towards dinner.

We check in to our room (it’s a suite!) with an incredible vista of the bay with some small islands in it. In the distant is a fog partially covering a small mountain/hill(?) – beautiful whatever its nomenclature. We clean up and go downstairs to enjoy a drink on the front porch of the main building. At the bar is a picture of Kevin Spacey and the entire crew of the film The Shipping News. They stayed there. Oh, yes, this is getting better by the minute.

Fisher’s Loft (been-seen.com)

We finish our drinks and head into the dining room. OK, this is getting ridiculous. The dining room is decorated beautifully with hand-made furniture from a local craftsman. His furniture also occupies our room. Wait, it gets even better.

The menus arrive and this is foodie heaven. And locavore heaven. They grow all their own produce. And wine heaven. Oh hell, it’s just heaven! And this is just dinner! We almost can’t wait for breakfast. The food is marvelous.

Breakfast doesn’t disappoint – along with regular fare, there are fresh pastries from the oven and partridgeberry jam. I wrote about partridgeberry jam in an earlier post, but it bears repeating. This jam is incredible.

I don’t want to leave. I wonder if they need a groundskeeper!

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“Oil is strong and fish is weak!”…Tert Card.

31 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in History, Photography

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So where is Newfoundland today in regards to where it was 20 years ago?; 10 years ago? Now? Changes have been occurring with breathtaking speed and with consequences unforeseen, almost.

         An incredibly beautiful place beset by the loss of fish and the discovery of oil.

I’ve written and photographed about the back story in my upcoming book “Arn? Narn.” throughout this blog. But to recap, 20 years ago Newfoundland was about to crash and sink much as the Titanic did 375 miles off its shore 100 years ago. After independently supporting itself on cod fishing for over five centuries, the fish were gone. The Canadian government (Ottawa) enacted a 10 year moratorium on cod fishing in the expectation that in 5-6 years, the cod stocks would return to normal levels and fishing could resume. That was the plan at least. In the past, that had worked and there was no reason to believe otherwise.

After the 10 year period, the stocks were in worse shape and the moratorium was left on indefinitely. In that same 10 year period, Newfoundland lost 20% of its population to out-migration. Simply stated: no fish meant no jobs. People left in droves. Rural Newfoundland was on the ropes then and largely still is. Unless the fish return (doubtful), it will most likely remain so. As the island was settled based on how quickly one could get to sea, there are beautiful, picture-perfect, small fishing villages all over the coast. There is very little settlement in the interior. Consequently, it will be hard to sustain that culture as people continue to leave.

I returned to one village 3 years after my first visit. While it was not thriving during that initial visit, the town was active, the general store was doing business, and people were there. Jump ahead those 3 years: the store is closed and boarded up; houses are abandoned; and there are weeds growing in the road. That is the fate of almost all of rural Newfoundland. That’s the bad news.

For the entire province, the news is a bit better. St. John’s, the capital, is doing very well. Some outports quickly pivoted to tourism and are holding their own. The province of Newfoundland is rich in minerals and has a growing off-shore oil industry.

One of the several oil rigs off the coast of Newfoundland. In some places, one can see them from land. (heritage.nf.ca)

It will survive, maybe even thrive as a whole. But with a handful of exceptions, the heart and soul of this province, rural Newfoundland, may not.

  There’s a line from Annie Proulx‘s wonderful book “The Shipping News“: Tert Card, the editor of the local newspaper The Gammy Bird and a very distasteful character declares: “Like I say, the hope of this place is oil.”

Other characters within the book go on to dispute the benefits of that and what would occur if the oil boom were to happen. Crime, prostitution, vandalism – Tert Card wants to hear none of this. His bellicose response: “Oil is strong and fish is weak!”

Quoyle, the protagonist in the book, then writes a column for The Gammy Bird entitled: “Nobody hangs a picture of an oil tanker on their wall.” That exchange largely summed up that particular issue. The tanker is not a thing of beauty even if it were a solution. The fish were disappearing and oil riches were on the horizon. But at what cost? The fish were not to return – but the oil was there.

Proulx was completely accurate and prescient in her description of both sides. Oil will be a boon to the province; it will also mean the further deterioration of the cultural side of Newfoundland. It is not an object lesson of one over another; it is that survival depends on what kind of hand you’ve been dealt and how you play it. In this case, the oil will allow the province to survive – only not as it once did. Arn? Narn.

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Musings on the road(s) taken and not taken.

29 Tuesday May 2012

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  HOW DID I GET HERE? (the halfofit.blogspot.com)

Up until this point, the arnnarn.com blog, has been a pretty straight path from beginning to where it is today. But, in reality like any other journey, it has not been a straight track. As such, this entry will be a little off the familiar and beaten path.

Like many others including David Byrne (above), this is not where I thought I would be. Had different roads been chosen, who knows what the outcome might have been. I think it’s fairly safe to say I would not have been photographing and writing about Newfoundland had I traveled one of those other roads. I think.

When I look back on the roads I did take and where they took me, I’m amazed how everything came together to bring me to this point. Leaving New Jersey for Vermont. Hmm. Not exactly a straight line to Newfoundland but definitely in the right geographic direction. However, Newfoundland was not anywhere in my conscious thought much less my sub-conscious mind. So that was just a move on my personal chess board to something at sometime which would eventually, hopefully pass for maturity.

Vermont (could’ve gone to Oregon while there, but that’s another story for a night over drinks. I’ll buy the first round.) to upstate New York. Big change in every way possible. New York to mid-Atlantic states (could’ve gone to California; well actually I did but didn’t like it much). Just weird. Then back to New England because of a major life passage – thank you Gail Sheehy!. Then to the South. So, roads taken and not taken.

But Newfoundland? Really? At that point, the only frame of reference I had was the book “The Shipping News” by Annie Proulx. Wonderful book, but igniting any interest? Nah. The movie of the same book put a face on it and I did like what I saw. But I’m a sucker for snow covered mountains, plains, anything. So, nope on that as well.

It was the major life change that opened the possibility of really doing something significant, at least for me. And that was to start something, take a leap of faith in one’s self, get off my butt, pick up the cameras, and shoot something! That was my beautiful wife in my beautiful home telling me to start something…etc.!

And I did. And it’s almost ready. Approximately four months from now, “Arn? Narn.” will be published and you’ll see why and what I got off my butt to do. But this, like everything else we do, is still on the road to where it’ll eventually wind up. Until then, I going to try and stay off my butt. Do the same.

Launching a…house?

13 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Culture, Discovery, History, Observations

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House launching scene from the film “The Shipping News”

Moves are never fun in spite of what it might say on your U-Haul rental – “Adventures in Moving.” Hah! It doesn’t say what kind of adventures though. Broken china, strained backs and relationships, and an absolute, total lack of energy or enthusiasm for anything to do with the new home…at least for the next few days.

When you’re young, you move yourself and all your belongings because you can and probably can’t afford to hire someone to do it. When you get older, you hire someone to do it for you because you can now afford it and you probably can’t or least don’t want to do it.

Now imagine this: you’re a Newfoundlander and you want to move to a different part of the island. But you really, really, love the house you’re in. You know you’ll never find another like it and you do own it (that’s a plus.) And it’s winter. Geez. The trifecta of moving.

Do you call Allied Van Lines? Or do you call some friends with a truck? Ehh, yeah, sort of. What you do is what is commonly and historically known in Newfoundland as launching the house. (Since you don’t own the land, you’re not liable for leaving it behind. It’s the Crown’s land anyway.) Yes, pack up the house(!), lift it up and put it on a large purpose-built wood sled, hook up the men or horses or both, and pull that sucker across the ice in the harbor. Of course, if it’s not winter, you could float it across the harbor pulled by a boat. Get it to the new site and congratulations, you have now successfully launched a house. Think how good that will look on your resume.

It does pose some questions though: What schools do the kids go to? Are we still in the same time zone? Where’s the liquor store? These are all important questions that should be answered before one launches their home. Adventures in moving indeed.

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.