Discarded colas barrels sparked ingenuity in Random
By Lester Green
Growing up in Little Heart’s Ease, the two most common wooden structures near the water’s edge were stages and fish smokers. The roofs and sometimes the sides of these structures were covered in metal sheets that my dad, William Green, would pronounce as “colt tins,” or that was how I always understood the words.
Our family was never blessed with monetary riches, but our parents taught us the value of reusing materials in our surroundings. The colt tins were actually colas tins or colas barrels, discarded materials used by individuals in many projects.
Remnants of collapsed buildings with colas tin roofs can be found in communities scattered around Trinity Bay and Conception Bay, and were likely used elsewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador.
In the Southwest Arm area where I was raised, the barrel-like patterns could easily be recognized in stages, fish smokers, root cellars, sawmills, and sheeting that formed the foundations of other builds.
But where did this material originate? What was the source of these barrel-like materials? While searching the online Digital Archives Initiatives (MUN), I stumbled upon an article titled “When Clarenville was the Colas Capital of Newfoundland,” published in the Gazette on September 5, 1997.
The information about the Colas Plant at Clarenville came to light when Ann Cruickshank, the daughter of Terrance O’Meara, helped her dad move into a nursing home in England. Among his personal belongings was a report he had written about establishing a colas plant in Clarenville in 1937. She brought the report back to Canada, hoping to find someone to help place the document in the archives of Newfoundland and Labrador to preserve this historical information.
She explained that in 1927, her dad began working for Colas, a Shell Oil division that produced a product called colas, an emulsified asphalt product used to surface airport runways.
In 1937, after Colas received the contract for paving the newly constructed Newfoundland Airport (renamed RCAF Gander in 1941 and known today as Gander Airport), Clarenville was selected as the site for its new plant. Clarenville was midway between Gander and St. John’s and near the main railway line, allowing the material to be transported to the airports. Terrance O’Meara was sent to oversee the plant development at Clarenville, which had the required port facilities that allowed the docking of ships transporting barrels of colas to the plant, where it was processed and transported to the airports.
To complete the required volume of colas to pave the runways at the Newfoundland Airport and repairs at St. John’s Airport required thou- sands of barrels containing the raw material. Once the material was removed, the barrels were tossed over the nearby cliff, landing on the shoreline. Residents of the area would visit the dumping site and retrieve the barrels for personal use.
You may wonder how the retrieved barrels became useful flat metal sheets. John Spurrell, a former resident of Butter Cove, explained one of the common methods used at the time: “Father would first remove both heads of the barrel and then, using the axe and sledgehammer, would cut the barrel lengthwise. The cut barrel would be tossed on the ground, and my father would ask the kids to jump on it until it was flat- tened. We would repeat this until Dad had enough to cover the roof of the building. Sometimes, we would pick off some tarry substance and chew on it as kids.”
Lawrence Drodge of Little Heart’s Ease recalls travelling with his father in their motorboat to Clarenville, landing on the shoreline, and collect- ing barrels. They removed the heads from the barrels, ripped them in the middle, and jumped on the metal until it formed flat sheets. These were loaded into the boat and transported to Little Heart’s Ease, where they were used to construct a 40-foot metal shed that his father and grandfather used to build boats. His father would use other colas tins to cover a cellar’s roof and ditches around their house.
Joseph Seward, a former resident of the Southwest Arm area, recalls his memories of colas tins. “I grew up in Southport in the 1940s. Colas barrels, that’s what we call them, were used for many things. Sheeting for fish storage, shed roofs, and sometimes for all four sides and the roof of a structure. To fill in the basement walls beneath the main house. I once saw a grocery store, a shop, built entirely with colas barrels, except for the floor. On and on it goes. You name it, and colas barrels could be used,” he said, adding “company owners would throw the empty barrels over the cliff, and boats would arrive and flatten the barrels to get more into the boat. I made many trips with my dad to bring home as many barrels as possible.”
Leslie Dean, another former South- port resident Southport, explains, “Colas barrels were well-sought items and found several common uses in structures around the Southport Harbour. Several herring/caplin smokers were fireproof and cladded with flattened colas barrels. There were several root cellars and stages with the roofs covered in tins. All of these structures would take on the rusty reddish/ brown colour after exposure to the elements and lasted longer than the wooden felt/shingle roofs and cheaper, free for the tak- ing.”
Edgar Smith, Patrick Seward, and Joe Edward Smith used colas barrels to construct three and four-story fish smokers seen in the background of this historical photo at Gooseberry Cove, Trinity Bay.
Recollection of my Grandfather, David Jacobs, fish smoker, was that of a two-story building attached to his stage and the fall days when my father would smoke herring. The late nights as we stoked the fire after entering the dark fish smoker, and the smell of the kippers. Today, I understand that my dad worked hard to feed his family of nine children.
The Southwest Arm area was once dotted with A-frame root cellars similar to this photo of Dr. Maxwell Edgecome’s root cellar in Upper Gullies near the roadside. Its distinct barrel-patterned roof still stands as a testament to the longevity of the colas barrels, providing evidence of our historical reliance on these buildings to preserve food during the winter months.
The foundation of this cellar, once located in the abandoned community of St. Jones Without, attests to the creativity of locals using scavenged discarded barrels from Clarenville’s Colas Plant.
Visitors entering the harbour at Little Heart’s Ease are greeted by a fish smoker, once used to smoke kip- pers by Guy Drodge, now repaired and occasionally used by his son, Max.
The smoker is a testament to the passage of time and the ingenuity of people who used discarded colas bar- rels during hard times to support families when money was “scarce as hen’s teeth.”
