Snowmobile #FolklorePhoto

Photo courtesy the Julia Ann Walsh Heritage Center's collection. Date unknown.

This week's #FolklorePhoto is of a snowmobile outside the Bonne Bay Cottage Hospital. It was common, and convenient, for people to be transported by snowmobile in the past.

Doris Randell recounts a memory from her childhood when she went home on a snowmobile:

I was [at the Cottage Hospital] as patient when I was eight years old. I remember being on the ward, and some of the girls that worked here were local girls. They’d bring me a little treat when they’d come from the kitchen. My next door neighbour had a baby here at the same time, and my cousin was working here. So the next day she showed me this coat, and I was only eight years old, and she asked me, “Do you know who owns this coat?” I said, “Yes, that’s Bessy’s coat.” She said, “Bessy is here.” I was right overjoyed. She said, “Bessy had a baby girl.” Of course later in the day Bessy was moved on the ward - the same ward that I was on - so I got to see the baby several times in the day. It was a fairly pleasant experience . . . And when I went to go home from the hospital, she was going home the same day, and a friend of theirs - actually I think it might have been a relative from up in Portland Creek - came in a snowmobile, you know one of those big ones that you could take many people? So that’s how we went home from the hospital Sunday; her with her new baby and myself.