Saturday, November 22, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
No sign of any leaving visible
July was an astonishingly beautiful, and swelteringly hot, month. I was completely taken by surprise by the heat and glorious sunshine. It's a peculiar experience to be striding about on a rocky headland, in shorts and tee shirt, reddening under the sun's burning rays, and also admiring icebergs slowly drifting by.
The spouts of whales burst the oceans' surface as they feed on the migrating capelin.
Along the trails wildflowers have exploded in a rush of colour - brilliant blue iris speckle the heaths, and groups of deep red pitcher plants populate the marshy bogs. Vivid yellow water lillies flower on the ponds, and are followed by blooms of a fluffy white variety.
In the cool of the evening, hoards of ravenous mosquitos appear. Everyone scrambles to find where they stored the window screens last Fall, and for a couple of nights my home on wheels is a movable feast for the mosquitos, until I too find a window screen solution.
The opening of Nicole's Cafe is a great success - the food is fabulous and beautiful, and the kitchen has been working at maximum capacity ever since. Word quickly spreads of the new dining experience, and the other fine restaurants - from the West of Newfoundland to St. Johns - come to sample the fine cuisine and atmosphere.
On several occasions we gorge ourselves at Pete and Margarets' house on the last of the seasons' crab and lobster, fresh off the boats, and very affordable. It proves impossible to stop eating the exquisite crustaceans until all that remains is a towering pile of shells on the table.
The 'Personal Food Fishery' for cod also opens for a few weeks, and many people take the opportunity to harvest and salt their allowance of five cod a day.
The summer music Festivals occur in July and August and the ferry lines grow as more and more visitors flock onto Fogo Island. There's lots of traditional music, as well as traditional foods such as Fish and Brewis, and Toutons, on offer.
The communities of Stag Harbour and Fogo have their 'Come Home Year' festival too this year, which makes for a bumper crowd. The 'Come Home Year' is a curiosity that can only exist in a place where so many people have been forced to leave. There are half a million Newfoundlanders that live in Newfoundland. But there are a million and a half that live outside the Province - forced or lured by higher paying jobs elsewhere. In each community there are many houses that are sadly empty, save for one or two weeks a year, when owners come back to visit family and friends.
The residents of Fogo Island may have rejected Joey Smallwoods call to burn their boats and resettle to the mainland in the 1950's, but since then the ever shrinking fishery has proved a more sinister and effective force in depleting the population of the Outport communities.
So the challenge now is how to create sustainable rural economic transformation?
How to create an outport economy that pays a living, competitive wage, allowing people to continue to live here, and encouraging others to move back?
That is the challenge the Shorefast Foundation has been created to meet.
Nicole's Cafe is part of the answer, as are the new farming and bakery initiatives, the professional Theatre production, and The Great Punt Race to There and Back.
The Punt race is a ten mile race, across open ocean, to Change Islands and back, for significant prize money. Last year, the first year, there were ten punts competing. This year there were twenty-one punts in the race, built by ten different builders, each with a crew of two, and it's a hard row too.
All the punts must be built on Fogo Island or Change Islands, and crewed by residents, the objective being to stimulate local boat building, and revive interest in the heritage of the wooden boat.
Every fisherman used to own a punt - most would build their own - and cod jigging with a one or two man crew was the way almost everyone made a living. Now the sight of twenty-one punts all moored on a collar in the harbour is a spectacle not seen for decades and it attracts a lot of attention.
Even the Lieutenant Governor, John C. Crosbie - the Queen's Representative - chose to attend this Punt Race rather than the Regatta in St. Johns this year. Despite dodgy weather the Race was a success, as well as a lot of work, and it's another step forward in establishing the new reputation of Fogo Island as the place to go for an unforgettable geotourism experience.
The play, Fighting Fire With Snow, is also a wonderful success. Performed outdoors by local people, in several different communities, the story explores the Resettlement issues of the 1960's and provokes a lot of discussion. Every performance receives a standing ovation.
By mid August the blueberries are ripe for picking, and seem to be in abundance everywhere, but the weather is fickle - changing from sunshine to torrential rain several times a day.
Karen has been back for a couple of weeks now, and the astute reader will have noticed there's been no talk of us driving home any time soon.
In fact it looks like we'll be volunteering here through the winter. The experience and opportunity is just too tempting to pass up.
And there will be moose meat to eat.
The spouts of whales burst the oceans' surface as they feed on the migrating capelin.
Along the trails wildflowers have exploded in a rush of colour - brilliant blue iris speckle the heaths, and groups of deep red pitcher plants populate the marshy bogs. Vivid yellow water lillies flower on the ponds, and are followed by blooms of a fluffy white variety.
In the cool of the evening, hoards of ravenous mosquitos appear. Everyone scrambles to find where they stored the window screens last Fall, and for a couple of nights my home on wheels is a movable feast for the mosquitos, until I too find a window screen solution.
The opening of Nicole's Cafe is a great success - the food is fabulous and beautiful, and the kitchen has been working at maximum capacity ever since. Word quickly spreads of the new dining experience, and the other fine restaurants - from the West of Newfoundland to St. Johns - come to sample the fine cuisine and atmosphere.
On several occasions we gorge ourselves at Pete and Margarets' house on the last of the seasons' crab and lobster, fresh off the boats, and very affordable. It proves impossible to stop eating the exquisite crustaceans until all that remains is a towering pile of shells on the table.
The 'Personal Food Fishery' for cod also opens for a few weeks, and many people take the opportunity to harvest and salt their allowance of five cod a day.
The summer music Festivals occur in July and August and the ferry lines grow as more and more visitors flock onto Fogo Island. There's lots of traditional music, as well as traditional foods such as Fish and Brewis, and Toutons, on offer.
The communities of Stag Harbour and Fogo have their 'Come Home Year' festival too this year, which makes for a bumper crowd. The 'Come Home Year' is a curiosity that can only exist in a place where so many people have been forced to leave. There are half a million Newfoundlanders that live in Newfoundland. But there are a million and a half that live outside the Province - forced or lured by higher paying jobs elsewhere. In each community there are many houses that are sadly empty, save for one or two weeks a year, when owners come back to visit family and friends.
The residents of Fogo Island may have rejected Joey Smallwoods call to burn their boats and resettle to the mainland in the 1950's, but since then the ever shrinking fishery has proved a more sinister and effective force in depleting the population of the Outport communities.
So the challenge now is how to create sustainable rural economic transformation?
How to create an outport economy that pays a living, competitive wage, allowing people to continue to live here, and encouraging others to move back?
That is the challenge the Shorefast Foundation has been created to meet.
Nicole's Cafe is part of the answer, as are the new farming and bakery initiatives, the professional Theatre production, and The Great Punt Race to There and Back.
The Punt race is a ten mile race, across open ocean, to Change Islands and back, for significant prize money. Last year, the first year, there were ten punts competing. This year there were twenty-one punts in the race, built by ten different builders, each with a crew of two, and it's a hard row too.
All the punts must be built on Fogo Island or Change Islands, and crewed by residents, the objective being to stimulate local boat building, and revive interest in the heritage of the wooden boat.
Every fisherman used to own a punt - most would build their own - and cod jigging with a one or two man crew was the way almost everyone made a living. Now the sight of twenty-one punts all moored on a collar in the harbour is a spectacle not seen for decades and it attracts a lot of attention.
Even the Lieutenant Governor, John C. Crosbie - the Queen's Representative - chose to attend this Punt Race rather than the Regatta in St. Johns this year. Despite dodgy weather the Race was a success, as well as a lot of work, and it's another step forward in establishing the new reputation of Fogo Island as the place to go for an unforgettable geotourism experience.
The play, Fighting Fire With Snow, is also a wonderful success. Performed outdoors by local people, in several different communities, the story explores the Resettlement issues of the 1960's and provokes a lot of discussion. Every performance receives a standing ovation.
By mid August the blueberries are ripe for picking, and seem to be in abundance everywhere, but the weather is fickle - changing from sunshine to torrential rain several times a day.
Karen has been back for a couple of weeks now, and the astute reader will have noticed there's been no talk of us driving home any time soon.
In fact it looks like we'll be volunteering here through the winter. The experience and opportunity is just too tempting to pass up.
And there will be moose meat to eat.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Staying on, on Fogo Island
The wedding of Amanda to Jason went off very well.
After the actual service, there is a vehicle parade around town, horns honking wildly. Along the roadside small groups of men gather at intervals, firing off their grandfathers powder muskets in celebration. These old guns are often over five feet long, and the booming report bounces around the bay.
Pete, father of the bride, is undoubtably the most dashing man in town this day - in a tuxedo suit, raising the long barrel into the sky and firing a sonic boom salute.
We have decorated a Stage for their honeymoon night.
A Stage is a building traditionally used to land codfish, from the skiffs, and split them, ready for salting.
The Stage we have transformed is one Zita had rebuilt where her fathers' used to be, so it's only fragrance is of fresh wood and saltwater.
As the evening darkness draws on, the party is just beginning. At around midnight it's low tide so Karen and I heat up some large flat beach rocks and then lug them over the seaweed strewn rocks out to the Stage where they will warm the bed. We've decorated the Stage with voluminous fabrics hung over the bed - which is adorned with a beautiful quilt - cloths and rugs on the floor, armchairs, candles, Champagne, chocolates and on and on.
If the sun shines in the morning, throwing open the big front doors will reveal a vista across the bay and out to sea. We devised a series of coloured signalling flags for the morning - yellow for 'send coffee', orange for 'breakfast', and blue for 'rescue us'.
It's past three before the designated rower is called upon to row the couple out to the Stage for their nuptials.
Poached lobster and bacon for breakfast.
This morning, mid June, there were bergy bits in the tickle.
Small chunks of melting iceberg, over 10,000 years old, about as big as a punt, bobbing about in the narrow channel.
A thin fog hesitantly hovers on the hillsides. The sea is still and grey.
Fogo Island is about 21 miles long, by 14 miles wide, with a population of about 2300 people, spread between ten fishing communities.
We cruise around it in our own gleaming iceberg.
Where the thin soil has accumulated, gardens are being planted, the caribou kept at bay by rustic stick fences.
It's the kind of place where people don't lock their doors, and you're welcome to drop in for tea, even if they aren't home.
Talking of which, Karen is now home for July. But only for July. So give her a call.
We have decided to stay in Newfoundland as long as possible, which means one of us had to return home for July to take care of business. Then we will both spend August here, and return home in September, probably via Sooze's birthday bash at the incredible City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
Here on Fogo Island there are many formative arts & crafts projects we can help move forwards, and the daughter of a friend is about to open a Cafe - the first ever here in Joe Batt's Arm - so there is much we can assist with.
We have decided to offer our help, in any way we can, in a 'summer of service'.
Julie, friend and fabulous ceramicist, from Guemes Island, Washington State, and just down the road from us at home, is also here for the summer and beyond. She is working on creating the planets' largest codfish mural in a tile mosaic.
On a sunny day the rocky coastline, with its red and white buildings, looks like the most beautiful place on earth.
Newfoundland is such a wildly rugged, and beautiful place, and the people are so welcoming.
About every three days, there is a day when the light is so amazing everywhere you look, that it can take all day
just to cross the Island.
Yesterday was the Student Punt Launch - a punt built by students mentored by a Master Boat Builder, which went very well. The weather was bright and squinty, but windy, and there was a good crowd down at the old longliner shipyard site in Shoal Bay for the races.
Lobster season is over now, but the limited, personal fishery, for cod, is about to start.
People are awaiting, with great anticipation and relief, the arrival of several good days in a row. It was a difficult and long winter with many terrible storms that lasted for days. Now the newly planted vegetables need a drier, sunny, period.
I've listed below a few websites that will give you a broader picture of Fogo Island, and the summer ahead.
Or just get on a plane and come on out here!
www.fogoislandregatta.com
www.fogoisland.net
www.shorefast.org
After the actual service, there is a vehicle parade around town, horns honking wildly. Along the roadside small groups of men gather at intervals, firing off their grandfathers powder muskets in celebration. These old guns are often over five feet long, and the booming report bounces around the bay.
Pete, father of the bride, is undoubtably the most dashing man in town this day - in a tuxedo suit, raising the long barrel into the sky and firing a sonic boom salute.
We have decorated a Stage for their honeymoon night.
A Stage is a building traditionally used to land codfish, from the skiffs, and split them, ready for salting.
The Stage we have transformed is one Zita had rebuilt where her fathers' used to be, so it's only fragrance is of fresh wood and saltwater.
As the evening darkness draws on, the party is just beginning. At around midnight it's low tide so Karen and I heat up some large flat beach rocks and then lug them over the seaweed strewn rocks out to the Stage where they will warm the bed. We've decorated the Stage with voluminous fabrics hung over the bed - which is adorned with a beautiful quilt - cloths and rugs on the floor, armchairs, candles, Champagne, chocolates and on and on.
If the sun shines in the morning, throwing open the big front doors will reveal a vista across the bay and out to sea. We devised a series of coloured signalling flags for the morning - yellow for 'send coffee', orange for 'breakfast', and blue for 'rescue us'.
It's past three before the designated rower is called upon to row the couple out to the Stage for their nuptials.
Poached lobster and bacon for breakfast.
This morning, mid June, there were bergy bits in the tickle.
Small chunks of melting iceberg, over 10,000 years old, about as big as a punt, bobbing about in the narrow channel.
A thin fog hesitantly hovers on the hillsides. The sea is still and grey.
Fogo Island is about 21 miles long, by 14 miles wide, with a population of about 2300 people, spread between ten fishing communities.
We cruise around it in our own gleaming iceberg.
Where the thin soil has accumulated, gardens are being planted, the caribou kept at bay by rustic stick fences.
It's the kind of place where people don't lock their doors, and you're welcome to drop in for tea, even if they aren't home.
Talking of which, Karen is now home for July. But only for July. So give her a call.
We have decided to stay in Newfoundland as long as possible, which means one of us had to return home for July to take care of business. Then we will both spend August here, and return home in September, probably via Sooze's birthday bash at the incredible City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
Here on Fogo Island there are many formative arts & crafts projects we can help move forwards, and the daughter of a friend is about to open a Cafe - the first ever here in Joe Batt's Arm - so there is much we can assist with.
We have decided to offer our help, in any way we can, in a 'summer of service'.
Julie, friend and fabulous ceramicist, from Guemes Island, Washington State, and just down the road from us at home, is also here for the summer and beyond. She is working on creating the planets' largest codfish mural in a tile mosaic.
On a sunny day the rocky coastline, with its red and white buildings, looks like the most beautiful place on earth.
Newfoundland is such a wildly rugged, and beautiful place, and the people are so welcoming.
About every three days, there is a day when the light is so amazing everywhere you look, that it can take all day
just to cross the Island.
Yesterday was the Student Punt Launch - a punt built by students mentored by a Master Boat Builder, which went very well. The weather was bright and squinty, but windy, and there was a good crowd down at the old longliner shipyard site in Shoal Bay for the races.
Lobster season is over now, but the limited, personal fishery, for cod, is about to start.
People are awaiting, with great anticipation and relief, the arrival of several good days in a row. It was a difficult and long winter with many terrible storms that lasted for days. Now the newly planted vegetables need a drier, sunny, period.
I've listed below a few websites that will give you a broader picture of Fogo Island, and the summer ahead.
Or just get on a plane and come on out here!
www.fogoislandregatta.com
www.fogoisland.net
www.shorefast.org
Monday, June 9, 2008
Fogo Island Vortex
Where has the time gone?
This place, Fogo Island, Newfoundland, is entrancing us once again. Thrust out into the Atlantic, this island of sharp rock, with its defiant red fishing stages and enduring Outport communities, is a hard place for us to leave.
The coastline is one that Slartibartfast of Magrathea would have been proud of - never a straight line or even a gentle curve to it. Instead it abruptly juts out or cuts in with great gusto, the ancient fissured rocks refusing to be smoothed by the ocean.
The ferry docks at Man O'War cove, near Stag Harbour, several times a day, unless the winter ice is too thick even for the accompanying ice-breaker vessel. Even today, in early June, there are plenty of giant icebergs drifting by in the cold Labrador Current. It took a couple of days for a string of Arctic saltwater pack ice to pass south, visible as a starkly white crusty line on the horizon. It was about thirty miles long, ten miles across, and a very destructive force against fishing nets and lobster traps.
A road links the ten scattered fishing communities with Joe Batt's Arm, a u-shaped inlet, just past Shoal Bay and Barr'd Islands. Protestants faced Catholics across the choppy water. In the winter houses were moved across the ice, and floated around during the summer. The family land was rarely sold.
The bold red fishing stages lean out over the water, supported on a sturdy 'cage' of logs, filled with big rocks for ballast to resist the storms. Thick 'strouters' splay down into the water, deep enough for returning fisherman to tie up to. From here fish would be forked up into the stage to be cleaned and split.
One sunny afternoon we walk the Lions Den trail, passing along well worn coastal pathways, through the site of dismantled communities like Lions Den, our dogs racing ahead across flaming heathers to plunge into a snowbank, or splash through a cold beaver-made pond.
We had an afternoon picnic with many friends made on the trip to Battle Harbour, Labrador last year - which turned into an overnight stay - on Shoal Bay - where the Long-liner shipyard used to be. Now there's a beaten concrete boat-ramp, hidden behind encroaching alders and scrub, its presence overpowered by the impassive rocks, the buildings long since moved or dismantled. The view is stunning.
A hot alder fire on the red granite rocks roasts fresh crab in the afternoon; icebergs glisten offshore in the lengthening sunlight; friends and family tell stories of a hard winter passed; at dusk the chill wind dances around our fire, chasing sparks over the rocks.
As night falls, gulls nest noisily on the rocky outcrops, and the night sky comes alive, sparkling in the darkness.
Around the bay the sparse lights of the communiites of Shoal Bay and Barr'd Islands define the horizon.
Another night is spent at Sandy Cove, the surf hypnotically rolling onto the white sand. A stream flows through the peaty bogs and rocky ponds laden with trout, to the surf, crispy curly brown seaweed crunching underfoot at the pebbly high tide line.
For the last few days we've been grappling with the reality that now we have to leave if we are to meet our plan.
But a friend reminded us that if you follow the plan, you are only following what you used to want to do.
So we stayed for a crab and lobster feast at Nicole and Dave's - more lobster on one table than ever before was witnessed - and before that, delicious meals at Pete and Margarets' of roast seal flipper and moose, sauteed Wrinkles, a baked moose luncheon, salt codfish stew, salt-beef and split pea casserole, and on and on.
Abandoning ourselves to the swirling Decker family vortex, with a cup of tea and a slice of partridgeberry pie, we helplessly watch time pass by, as things get done around us.
Their daughter Amanda is getting married next weekend, and it takes us a couple of days to decorate a stage for their honeymoon suite. It's the stage Zita had rebuilt where her fathers' used to be. Curiously and beautifully it sits on a rock only accessible by foot at low tide.
Now gentle but firm Decker Vortex pressure is being applied to persuade us to stay until after the wedding on the 14th. Several 'departure' days leave without us.
Surely we could stay just a few more days here. We want to be persuaded.
This place, Fogo Island, Newfoundland, is entrancing us once again. Thrust out into the Atlantic, this island of sharp rock, with its defiant red fishing stages and enduring Outport communities, is a hard place for us to leave.
The coastline is one that Slartibartfast of Magrathea would have been proud of - never a straight line or even a gentle curve to it. Instead it abruptly juts out or cuts in with great gusto, the ancient fissured rocks refusing to be smoothed by the ocean.
The ferry docks at Man O'War cove, near Stag Harbour, several times a day, unless the winter ice is too thick even for the accompanying ice-breaker vessel. Even today, in early June, there are plenty of giant icebergs drifting by in the cold Labrador Current. It took a couple of days for a string of Arctic saltwater pack ice to pass south, visible as a starkly white crusty line on the horizon. It was about thirty miles long, ten miles across, and a very destructive force against fishing nets and lobster traps.
A road links the ten scattered fishing communities with Joe Batt's Arm, a u-shaped inlet, just past Shoal Bay and Barr'd Islands. Protestants faced Catholics across the choppy water. In the winter houses were moved across the ice, and floated around during the summer. The family land was rarely sold.
The bold red fishing stages lean out over the water, supported on a sturdy 'cage' of logs, filled with big rocks for ballast to resist the storms. Thick 'strouters' splay down into the water, deep enough for returning fisherman to tie up to. From here fish would be forked up into the stage to be cleaned and split.
One sunny afternoon we walk the Lions Den trail, passing along well worn coastal pathways, through the site of dismantled communities like Lions Den, our dogs racing ahead across flaming heathers to plunge into a snowbank, or splash through a cold beaver-made pond.
We had an afternoon picnic with many friends made on the trip to Battle Harbour, Labrador last year - which turned into an overnight stay - on Shoal Bay - where the Long-liner shipyard used to be. Now there's a beaten concrete boat-ramp, hidden behind encroaching alders and scrub, its presence overpowered by the impassive rocks, the buildings long since moved or dismantled. The view is stunning.
A hot alder fire on the red granite rocks roasts fresh crab in the afternoon; icebergs glisten offshore in the lengthening sunlight; friends and family tell stories of a hard winter passed; at dusk the chill wind dances around our fire, chasing sparks over the rocks.
As night falls, gulls nest noisily on the rocky outcrops, and the night sky comes alive, sparkling in the darkness.
Around the bay the sparse lights of the communiites of Shoal Bay and Barr'd Islands define the horizon.
Another night is spent at Sandy Cove, the surf hypnotically rolling onto the white sand. A stream flows through the peaty bogs and rocky ponds laden with trout, to the surf, crispy curly brown seaweed crunching underfoot at the pebbly high tide line.
For the last few days we've been grappling with the reality that now we have to leave if we are to meet our plan.
But a friend reminded us that if you follow the plan, you are only following what you used to want to do.
So we stayed for a crab and lobster feast at Nicole and Dave's - more lobster on one table than ever before was witnessed - and before that, delicious meals at Pete and Margarets' of roast seal flipper and moose, sauteed Wrinkles, a baked moose luncheon, salt codfish stew, salt-beef and split pea casserole, and on and on.
Abandoning ourselves to the swirling Decker family vortex, with a cup of tea and a slice of partridgeberry pie, we helplessly watch time pass by, as things get done around us.
Their daughter Amanda is getting married next weekend, and it takes us a couple of days to decorate a stage for their honeymoon suite. It's the stage Zita had rebuilt where her fathers' used to be. Curiously and beautifully it sits on a rock only accessible by foot at low tide.
Now gentle but firm Decker Vortex pressure is being applied to persuade us to stay until after the wedding on the 14th. Several 'departure' days leave without us.
Surely we could stay just a few more days here. We want to be persuaded.
Friday, May 30, 2008
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