Newfoundland is well-known, both in Canada and around the world, for its place names. It’s as if you and your friends, when you were very young, played in a woods along the shore, and wanting to identify to each other your favourite spots, made up some names. They were simple, with no references to historical events or kings or queens, but often had a little bit of humour thrown in just for fun.
And that’s the way it is with Newfoundland. You’ll find River of Ponds, Trouty and Camp Boggy, as well as Logy Bay, Boxy Harbour, Old Shop, and Ha Ha Bay. And verging into the realm of shear whimsy, how about Tilting, Seldom and Little Seldom, Happy Adventure, and the ultimate in the art of naming, Nameless Cove.
Then there are the places using more coastal navigation terms, like a bight (a little indentation that’s not quite a harbour), such as Manful Bight, Lushes Bight, and of course Snakes Bight; or a tickle (an inlet with both an entrance and an exit), as in Leading Tickle, Main Tickle, and Tickle Cove.
And of course, there are those rocks and other geographic features that look (or at least sound) a bit anatomical, like Bald Head, Peters Snout, Jerrys Nose, Joe Batt’s Arm, and the very descriptive (if not quite socially acceptable), Pissing Mare Falls.
Last, but most certainly not least, though, we have the famous settlement of Dildo, which you’ll find just up the coast from Heart’s Desire, Heart’s Delight, and Heart’s Content, but on the other side of the peninsula from Conception Bay (and no, my dears, we’re not making any of this up!).
Moon’s Handbook of Atlantic Canada says the name may have been bestowed by Captain Cook in reference to a “phallic-shaped offshore island” at the entrance to the harbour. Cook, you see, charted the waters of Newfoundland before he went on to explore (and give names to) a somewhat more substantial part of the world.
Far be it from me to challenge a leading tourist guide, but having read a biography of the famous Captain, as well as at least some of his journals, I find it hard to believe that he even knew of such objects.
The much more likely explanation is that the name is an Anglicisation of the French (since Frenchmen once fished in the area), as in “d’iles deux”, because there are actually two islands at the entrance, or “d’iles d’eau”, since one of islands has at its centre a freshwater lake. Complicating the matter somewhat, however, is the fact that in true Newfoundland style one of the islands is called (wait for it…) Spread-Eagle!
To be fair to Dildo, it’s a lovely coastal settlement, with a quite well set-up harbour, and a restaurant that serves the best chowder I had on my entire trip. Still, I’m sure the post office (in its obligatory style-less building) does a land office business. It has to be one of the more sought-after postmarks in the world.
ooOOoo
You find lots of graffiti in Newfoundland, but not the sort of gang-tagging we’ve come to expect (and loath) in much of the rest of the world. There are so many rocks along the sides of the roads here that kids just can’t help themselves. Their decorations, though, tend to be either old-timey, or a bit cheeky, or both.
For instance, just outside Harbour Grace, young people have festooned a large outcropping with hearts, and inside them are messages of undying love for various boy and girl friends. One bright spark, however, wrote the following: “Melissa loves Nanny & Poppa”.
And then there was the granite face on the side of the Trans-Canada Highway, just before St.John’s, the metropolitan area that is the capital of the province and home to 40% of Newfoundland’s total population. Using at least part of a term of warning that would be familiar to seafarers of old, the scribe wrote in huge letters “BEYOND HERE BE TOWNIES→”.
Decorating the countryside doesn’t stop with the kids, however. Older Newfoundlanders love nothing better than festooning the outsides of their houses with all manner of garden ornaments, gnomes, and wind-propelled whirly-gigs.
Miniature hand-made sea craft can often be found parked on the lawn, or floating in a pond. And they even sometimes put a very large rock in a prominent position, and then use it as their “canvas”, painting a scene of rural idyll, or perhaps a fishing boat sailing into a picturesque cove.
My favourite lawn ornamentation was in the wonderful wee village of Tilting, a very Irish settlement (or outport) on the tip of Fogo Island. I couldn’t quite bring myself to take a photograph, though, because the owner was working at the time in her potato patch.
But what I saw suggested that the veggies were being very well-protected, because in front of the garden was a statue of The Blessed Virgin, and a retinue consisting of all Seven Dwarfs!
ooOOoo
Most of the outports are now gone, thanks to the radical relocation policies of the government once Newfoundland became a Canadian province in the 1950s. And of those that do remain, the advent of vinyl siding and new construction has altered considerably the historic nature of coastal settlements.
There are at least two villages, however, that have preserved almost all of their houses and sheds in the old style, but for very different reasons.
The first is Trinity, on the Bonavista Peninsula, which is arguably the oldest continuous European settlement in North America. None of the buildings from that period have survived, of course, but a lot from the 1800s are still there.
And they were patched, painted and preserved in order to act as the backdrop for the movie The Shipping News, the dramatization of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name written by E. Annie Proulx.
The book and the movie are for many outsiders their only reference to the province. Proulx, though, is certainly not a local, and there are many fine local writers who in my opinion have much more artistically captured the uniqueness of both the place and its people.
We’ve heard many Newfoundlanders say that Trinity is a bit too touristy, but we really loved the town. We went to a performance of one of the shows at their local summer theatre, and spent parts of two rainy days taking photographs. The low-lying fog just added to the atmosphere (pun intended!).
The other place I’ve already mentioned — it’s Tilting, on Fogo Island. In this case the locals had their village declared an official Heritage District. They haven’t made it all twee and put up lots of flashy tourist shops, though. They just decided to keep it more-or-less as it is.
They did take the opportunity to tell you a bit about their home, however, by erecting very informative signs, including several explaining that in the past they used to sometimes drag their houses around, and move them by boats.
Tilting would therefore seem to be appropriate named, given the precarious slant of some of these peripatetic structures. The actual reason behind the name, though, has been lost in the mists (or rather fogs) of time.
The quiet, unassuming character of Titlting is set to change, however, thanks to someone named Zita Cobb. Zita grew up on Fogo Island (famously in a house without running water or electricity), got a business degree on the mainland, then “scored” a wind-fall from stock options (I refuse to use the verb “made”) when the company she worked for hit the big-time.
She’s spending $10 million of her own money (along with matching grants from the Canadian and Newfoundland governments – this is Canada after all) to build a high-end eco-sustainable resort at nearby Joe Batt’s Arm. The resort, Fogo Island Inn, will be gifted to the people of the island, and run as a community-based asset.
Just what the equally high-end guests are going to do once they get there (and for that matter, how they’ll arrive, given that it’s a ferry ride from nowhere), I have no idea. Suffice to say the edifice that’s under construction is easily as big as if you jammed together 40 of the more normal-sized houses in Titling. There’s no way it isn’t going to stick out.
Zita has also set up an artists-in-residence project, and so far two very modernist studios have been erected out on windswept points at Tilting and nearby Barr’d Harbour. They at least aren’t anywhere near so massive, and I’m sure locals and artists alike will find the residencies worthwhile.
(Part three of a four-part series)
~first composed in August, 2012~
I’ve got so many photos I love from Trinity and Tilting, as well as other attractive spots like Rocky Harbour, Bonavista, Rose Blanche, and etc., that I’ve decided to include a special gallery. I hope you enjoy them.