THE ISLAND THAT BECAME A PENINSULA

By Cheryl Lyon

Once there was a small island lying a few oars lengths off Newfoundland’s southwest coast, up ‘round Cape St George.  Now it is a peninsula.

On a map, its jagged, arrowhead shape points defiantly west, away from the mainland, as if straining to still be an island, to unmoor and push off on its own path across the Gulf of St Lawrence. Maybe that contributes to the independent-minded folk living there.

As Newfoundland’s road network grew  west beyond Stephenville, it encountered a shallow, gravelly spot west of the town on the shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence , with Port au Port Bay to the north, Bay St George to the south. To the builders of Route 460, adding a little more gravel rather than erecting an expensive bridge did the trick to lash the island permanently to the mainland. The spot, unsurprisingly, is now called The Gravels.

Route 460 carries on to the town of Lourdes, where Route 463 veers northward, up a second peninsula – a very narrow one, jutting up like a needle stuck in the pin cushion of the bigger one. It ends about 20 kms on at a small government harbour officially called Blue Beach but known locally as “the Bar.”

That second skinny peninsula is less visited but it’s not to be outdone by Newfoundland’s tourist hotspots in supplying stories of local characters and happenings.

As a “come from away,” I’ll simply contribute a few vignettes from extended summer visits to Black Duck Brook/L’Anse aux Canards, half-way up that “needle” off the main Port au Port peninsula.

This spit of land ends in a jumble of loose shale continually eroded by the sea. That erosion periodically forces the tiny, unmanned lighthouse there to be relocated to avoid being drowned. But the “needle” does not end at the surface there. It extends on under the sea for about thirty more kilometres.

I met Joe Young, a lifetime resident of the area, on one of my visits with family in L’Anse à Canards/Black Duck Brook. (Joe’s French ancestors were Le Jeunes but with the influx of English-speakers and Irish Catholic missionaries in the early 20^th century, French surnames began to be anglicized.)

I encountered Joe on a walk one day. When I told him my brother lived up the road a ways, he immediately invited me in to his small home where the steam and smell of lobster boiling hit as soon as he opened the door. In our lively conversation over buttery fingers, Joe said “I don’t fish no more. Too old now.” But his long and deep community connections sent Joe out of his small home into his rattley old blue pickup truck almost every day looking to help out a neighbour and maybe crack out a few jokes or a bit of advice.

Joe knew whose fishing boats were on the water, each man or woman in them, and when they ought to be coming in. Then he’d be down to the cove to help wind the boats in. Maybe crack out a few jokes and bit of advice too.

Black Duck Brook threw a party for Joe’s 90^th birthday at the local French Community Centre/Chez les Français. He never showed up. No problem. Everyone still partied in his honour. Next Day, Joe explained “I still gets up at 4 o’clock in the mornin’ but I’m too old to party like I used to.” And everyone understood.

On another occasion, I was present when a local fisherman (let’s call him G), licensed for that year’s short halibut season, told the about his encounter with a local Officer of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (the source of many fishermen’s stories).  These licenses state the exact limit by weight, of that season’s catch.  Each fish must be separately weighed in the boat before coming ashore, then again on shore by a Fisheries Department officer.

1. told how he’d brought his boat into the wharf earlier than planned when rough weather set in, causing him challenges in accurately weighing and recording the weight of each fish in a pitching boat. At the wharf, the fisheries officer weighed his catch. But his tally was different than G.’s so the officer slapped him with a hefty fine.

“Can ya believe it!?,” sputtered G. “So I told that guy, ‘my son, yous try weighin’ fish in a swell wit’ da boat pitchin’ and da fish thrashin’ and da waves over da sides! I gets just a few days to catch my limit but what if four of dem days is rough seas?”He still had to pay the fine.

And then there’s JD who hails from up the road. Someone onshore saw him go down to the wharf in the cove one day and kept a lookout when the weather began to turn. When it turned real bad, and JD hadn’t returned, word went out by phone up and down the road. Vehicles began to line up on the road and parked to face the sea. They all turned on their headlights to guide JD home – one of the many common acts of community in Newfoundland, I learned.  He made it back alive. Said he’d just lost track of time.

Newfoundland’s history and character are evident in such small stories be they of weather, history, hardship, disease or accident. One author’s account I read from the Lourdes Public Library records an officially listed Cause of Death as “exhaustion.” *

Today, the many buffers of affluence, technology and social benefits soften the impacts of Mother Nature. But Newfoundlanders know only too well her role in survival day-to-day.

And here, on the Port au Port Peninsula? Over time, modernization may have made life easier, but most folk I meet in my stays here seem to never have forgotten how wind can twist and stunt the strongest trees, how storms wreck boats of all sizes, how waves shape rock, and still sometimes fisher folk don’t make it home. And they always pull together in hard times.

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*  “The Never Forgotten Days: The Resettlement Program of 1934-36: From Fortune Bay to Lourdes”. Bill O’Gorman, 2006.

Image: P. Parsons. Pictorial Map of Newfoundland