To Downhome Magazine Ramea is my hometown, I think the first man who came to the island was a man by the name of Thomas Janes, that was before I was born but he was still around when I was a small girl. He used to have a squeaky voice and sometimes kids would laugh at him and one day he heard them and was very upset. There was only cod fishing here then. There was about four skiffs but there was no fish plant then John Penny & Sons used to lay their fish and pay someone to salt it and then boats used to come from Portugal and pick it up, but at one time there were boats who used to take it to Portugal from here in fact. My bother had an uncle on the Edith Cavell who got lost on her, and I think everyone on her lost their lives. There were three brothers who came here from Portugal as stowaways but they never went back. There wasn't much to do here at that time but when they opened a fish plant here there was employment for anyone who wanted to work, there was only one grocery store here and a small cash shop as we called it then, but after the plant opened Ramea was a prosperous little island. There wasn't many people here but after the plant opened, people came here to work and built homes here. I think there was 1400 people here then but the plant closed down in 1982 and there wasn't much to do then so they had to go away and look for work elsewhere, I guess there is less than 500 here now. I don't have any old pictures because there wasn't any cameras then only the well-to-doers had them. Before the road from Burgeo to Corner Brook came to be we had coastal boats from Ramea to Port aux Basques; it took 7 hours. But after then we had the Summer and Sprinter, smaller boats but it only took about 4 1/2 hours or so to go to Port aux Basques. Some of the coastal boats were the first one I can remember was, the Glencoe then we had the Portia, Barhaven, Baccalieu, Burgeo and we went to Isle aux Morts on the Kyle in 1941. C Keeping   Submitted By: NULL