Saving Traditional Skills in the Tri Town Area and surrounding communities in partnership with the Great Northern Peninsula Community Place Corporation

 If you know of someone crafty or with know-how of traditional skills in the Port au Choix region, a local group wants to meet them!

The Great Northern Peninsula Community Place Corporation and Heritage NL are working together to make a list of people with traditional skills and know-how in the Tri-Town (Hawkes Bay, Port Saunders, and Port au Choix) area. 

Everyone from boatbuilders to basket weavers are wanted. Already, the project has identified people in the area who are willing to share skills around sewing, knitting, crochet work, and net making and mending.

“Every year, there seems to be fewer people who know how to make traditional crafts,” says folklorist Dale Jarvis, Heritage NL’s Executive Director. “This is an exciting local project that we are happy to support, to see who is still in the area with the knowledge of how to make the tools, objects, and crafts of yesteryear.”

The project is the idea of the new GNP Community Place, a community center located on the main street of Port au Choix NL, set up to help build on community strengths and assets. Overlooking the harbour, this community heritage building will offer a safe, accessible place for people from all over the Great Northern Peninsula to gather to participate in inter-generational health and wellness initiatives.

Local researcher Destiny Penney has been hired to interview local crafters and seniors, and to compile a list of people in the region who are willing to share their skills. For more information, or to nominate someone with local knowledge, email destinyy.penney@gmail.com.

The project is jointly funded by Heritage NL and ICOMOS Canada’s Youth in Heritage Program.

Pictured: Cutting wood in Port aux Choix. Photo courtesy of Decks Awash Photographs, Memorial University Archives and Special Collections.