Symposium on Music, Folklore, and the Public Sector - May 15

You are invited to attend a half-day symposium on Music, Folklore and the Public Sector on Thursday, May 15, 2014, hosted by the Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media and Place (MMaP). A group of internationally renowned ethnomusicologists and folklorists will join with local experts, activists and entrepreneurs for a lively exchange on issues that range across local culture, politics, and social well-being.

 his afternoon event will feature presentations by the Board members of the Society for Ethnomusicology: Gregory Melchor-Barz (medical ethnomusicology, Vanderbilt University and the University of the Free State, South Africa); Anne Rasmussen (musical labour in Oman, gender and Islamic arts, College of William and Mary); Tina K. Ramnarine (cultural mapping, heritage sites, Royal Holloway, UK); Harris Berger (popular music and performance studies, Texas A&M University); Zoe Sherinian (Tamil folk music, politics, film-making, University of Oklahoma); Margaret Sarkissian (minority groups in Malaysia, Armenian immigrants in Toronto and Chicago, Smith College); Andrew Weintraub (music and human rights, repatriation, Uganda and Indonesia, University of Pittsburgh); Stephen Stuempfle (SEM Executive Director, Caribbean musics, Indiana University);

It will also highlight ongoing public sector initiatives in Newfoundland and Labrador: Dale Jarvis (Intangible Cultural Heritage, HFNL); Zainab Jerrett (Tombolo Multicultural Festival of Newfoundland and Labrador Inc.); Jillian Gould (Public Sector Program, Folklore, MUN)

When: Thursday, May 15, 2014, 1pm-6pm, followed by a reception.

Where: MMaP Gallery, 2nd floor of the Arts & Culture Centre, St. John's NL
Admission is free.

For more information and a full schedule of events, please visit the website: www.mun.ca/mmap, or contact Meghan Forsyth (709-864-2051, mforsyth@mun.ca) We hope you will join us for this exciting event!

Photo by Chris Hibbs, 2010.

Tuesday Folklore Photo: Stormy Old St. John's

I feel like this happens every year - we think we are out of the woods with winter and that spring is on our doorstep, when suddenly another big storm hits! I've been fooled a couple times this year already. This trend, unfortunately, is nothing new, and something that St. John's has been dealing with for decades. Newfoundlanders have become very adept at dealing with the harsh weather, and sometimes need to rely on back up plans for transportation when your regular vehicle just couldn't cut it.

This weeks folklore photo is of New Gower Street from 1925 - and as you can see, even this young man riding on his trusty Tauntaun is having a tough time with the winter weather! Tauntauns were used as pack animals, and also served as patrol mounts when the Rebel Alliance's vehicles couldn't deal with the cold weather. I could have certainly used one this past winter!


(Just kidding - only a little April Fool's fun! This photo actually comes from the Tumblr Old Timey St. John's - you should check it out - it's incredible!)

A Lovely Cookbook Treat

Yesterday we had a lovely little visit from Sue Crichton, who reached out to ICH office after seeing our posting for the Nan's Cookbook: Tea and Talk event that is happening today. She had a few old cookbooks that belonged to her mother and mother in law (and likely their mothers as well!) that she didn't want anymore, and so donated them to us so we could share them at the event! They are some great looking cookbooks, and date between the 1920s and 1940s.

Sue's mother in law was Emma Angel, whose mother was a sister of Captain Bob Bartlett's, the well known navigator and Arctic explorer.

Sue's grandmother, Bertha Dicks, was a daughter of the Dixon family, and met her husband, Thomas Foot, after moving to Grand Banks. Thomas was a merchant before the market crashed in 1929, and is a brother of the J.B. Foot and Sons Company merchants from Grand Banks.

This was Nicole's favorite snippet from one of the books: how to make the perfect pot of tea!

The Tea and Talk is this afternoon, Friday March 21st, from 3-5pm at the Cupids Legacy Centre - it's free, and open to everyone! We would love if you joined us for a hot beverage, some baked treats, and had a chat about old cookbooks and recipes!

Thanks again to Sue who was sweet enough to drop these off for us to share at the tea today - they are beautiful books, have some interesting recipes in them, and I'm sure will be a great conversation piece this afternoon! We really appreciate it :)

-Sarah

Dance to Your Heart’s Content - Dance Workshop March 22nd

A Workshop with the Mizzen Heritage Dancers

Memorial University’s Folklore Department is thrilled to present a public dance workshop with The Mizzen Heritage Dancers from Heart’s Content on March 22 from 1-3:30pm at the MMaP gallery in the St. John’s Arts & Culture Centre. This workshop is open to dancers of all ages and all skill levels. A panel discussion with the dancers will take place immediately following the workshop.

The Mizzen Heritage Dancers are a group of 12-14 residents of Heart’s Content who have enjoyed performing their regional square dancing tradition for the past 15 years. This group has offered dance workshops at schools and community centres across the Avalon in hopes of recruiting dancers who may like to share in their tradition. The Mizzen Heritage Dancers are proud to announce such a workshop will be held on March 22 for the people of St. John’s. Put on your dancing shoes and join them at the Arts & Culture Centre’s MMaP Gallery for an exciting foray into the tradition of Newfoundland square dancing.

Admission is $10 or $8 for students & seniors. Refreshments will be served courtesy of Starbucks and Sobeys. Free parking will be available.

Dr. Jillian Gould, provincial folklorist Dale Jarvis, and folklore/ethnomusicology graduate students of Memorial University have organized this workshop as part of a practical exercise in public programming and cultural presentation.

Space is limited! To register, please contact nicole@heritagefoundation.ca

or call 1-888-739-1892.

***
For all publicity inquiries:
Michelle Robertson – Memorial University, M.A.
michelle_robertson23@mac.com
709-764-5000

Finding Folklore in Foxtrap

Today the ICH office visited Queen Elizabeth Regional High School in Foxtrap to talk about local folklore and supernatural belief. Dale and I visited with Lori-Ann Ash and Darrell Sneyd's grade ten English classes to discuss local superstitions, charms, ghost stories, fairy stories and urban legends. We also explored oral tradition, the transmission of folk belief and offered advice about collecting oral histories. To help the students out, we developed a one-page questionnaire for them to take home and use while interviewing parents, family members, friends, or neighbours.

During our visit the students told us some great stories of the supernatural. The following is an urban legend recalled by a female student:

In grade three or four the older girls at school would tease the younger girls about a monster in the toilet. The legend is that one stall, identified with a mark of red spray paint, has a creature living in the toilet and if you flush it, a green slimy hand reaches up, grabs you and pull you down. When I got to grade six, I realized this was made up but by that time we used it to scare the younger girls too, and kept it going. My younger sister goes to that school and that urban legend is still told today.

Another young woman, whose mother is from Denmark, told a Danish folktale about a man who was plaqued and tormented by the nisse, which are elves. The story the student told is as follows:

An old man was out in his garden, smoking his pipe and tending to his horses, when the nisse began to torment him. The nisse stole his pipe and used it to fill his home with smoke. The old man,thinking his house was on fire, called for help. Firemen arrived to put out the fire but they couldn't find any flames. When the old man suggested it was the nisse and that 'the fire was in his mind', the firemen promptly dowsed the man's head with a bucket of water.

We were also very excited to receive a little narrative regarding fairy belief in the area. According to one student, "in the elementary schoolyard there is a fence and we were told that if we went near the fence while wearing green, the fairies would take you away."

We are heading back to Queen Elizabeth Regional High School tomorrow afternoon to see what the students collected and to help them write up their folklore findings.

Here are the questions the students are using:

1. Is there a place in your community that people say is haunted? ....a haunted cemetery, a haunted walkway, a haunted cliff or rock, a house, or other building? What are the ghostly stories connected to these places?
2. When you were growing up, were there any places you were told not to go because the fairies would get you? Where was this and what are the stories you were told?
3. What are the local stories about shipwrecks? ...buried treasures? What about ghost or weather lights seen on the water?
4. Are there any people who are believed to be witches in the community? Why do people think this? What kind of powers does this person have? 
5. Have you ever had a visit from the Old Hag while you were sleeping? What happened and do you believe that this experience was real or just a dream?
6. Do you know of any special charms, superstitions, cures or remedies that are used in your community?

Teachers, librarians or museums: you can download a pdf of these questions right here.

Well, Well, Well, a Google Map

Last summer when I was doing wells and springs work, I not only measured wells and photographed them, but I also recorded their GPS coordinates. I though it would be neat to look back after the fact at the distribution of some of the wells I'd seen. I was able to record the location of 35 wells over my summer of fieldwork, and have finally had the time to do something interesting with the information.

Google maps works really great for this, because you can create your own personalized maps, and store them either privately or publicly. Creating a map is incredibly simple - you can type either the address or the GPS coordinates to the points you want into the search bar, and then add a pin to mark that space on your map. Pins are customizable, so you can pin multiple types of spots onto a map, and then hide or show layers, depending on what you want to see.

If you want to take a look at the interactive Wells, Springs, and Folklore Google map you can find it here! Some of the points have links to videos or other information - and of course, all the wells and springs photos and information can be found on the DAI.

Folklore Photo: The Cupids American Man circa 1930

Today's folklore photo comes courtesy of the Newfoundland Historical Society archival collection. The photo shows the "American Man" - a cairn of stones located at the top of Spectacle Head, in Cupids. The original photo was taken by A.C. Hunter, and the back of the photo has an inscription which reads:

Photo by A.C. Hunter, about 1930
The "American Man" on the hill between Cupids +
Clarke's Beach. Mrs Hunter in photo
There was another one between Brigus and Cupids.
They were used as landmarks for Vessels
coming in, we supposed. We also wondered if
they came from "Marking Man"???
                             Muriel H. Hunter, 1976
Negative of this is in the A.C. Hunter Collection, Memorial Univ.
                                                                                Audio Visual.

The cairn, which has been rebuilt several times since the 1930s, is much taller today, and a secondary, smaller cain has also been constructed nearby.  I've heard it referred to as both the "American Man" and the "Merican Man," and have also heard the theory, given by locals, that it is indeed a corruption of "Marking Man."

Here is how the structure looked during the Cupids 400 Celebrations in 2010. I believe the photo is by Dennis Minty:

At some point after the 2010 celebrations, the structure was damaged by vandals, and rebuilt by local volunteers. Here is what the cairn looked like on 13 October 2013. Note that it is slightly more symmetrical here, than in the 2010 photo.

This note is the first I've heard of a similar structure located between Brigus and Cupids. If anyone knows of that particular cairn's current or previous location, email me at ich@heritagefoundation.ca

- Dale Jarvis

UPDATE:

On 5 February 2013, Mike Sexton wrote me and noted the following:

"...years ago I met an Icelander in L'Anse Aux Meadows, he was on the hill looking for a third cairn at the viking site. He was an old mariner and he told me that there should be three if they were used for navigation. they always have the sky as a background,and you have to keep one in the middle for safe water. This one in the middle could be a considerable distance behind the ones closest to the coast. so you sail by, and when you have them positioned right you turn towards shore. (Safe water)"

Reaching The Bottom of the Wells and Springs Project

Now that the winter is rearing it's head, the wells and springs project I have been working on over the past five months is finally being wrapped up. Over this time I have met a lot of great people, done some really interesting interviews, seen and measured dozens and dozens of wells, and learned a lot about traditional water sources here in Newfoundland and Labrador. And now that everything is coming to an end, I want to share with the blog what it is I have accomplished, and what's coming next!

At the most basic, water is crucial for daily life and survival, and so the majority of the traditions and folklore that I came across fell into three basic categories. The first is daily life, which includes securing, collecting, and cleaning your water sources. The second is community, which covers elements of protection, safety, and tragedy, and support between families. The final category is spirituality, which appears in a few different ways. These different categories mean that there are lots of different stories, traditions and folklore surrounding wells and springs in the province.

My favourite tradition around daily life is the trout in the well. All summer I hoped and actively looked for a trout in a well, and while I heard lots of stories and memories about their being trout down in wells (and one great story about a trout being fished up and fried) it took my until late in the summer to finally see one, out in Carbonear. The owners, the Fitzgeralds, have had trout in their wells for as long as they can remember, and the current one had been own there for almost 10 years!

One of the last traditions I heard about communities was one from Shea Heights, where families would gather on a communal well in front of the general store to take photos, or kids would meet there after school to plan the afternoons activities. Wells represent not only a water source, but can also mean a gathering place in the community, a location accessible and recognized by all. This is my favourite community folklore memory around wells and springs - the imagery of men, women and children gathered around a public well to gossip, take photos or play is a great one, and reminiscent of a time when life wasn't as busy or distracting.

The most endearing memory I hard around the final category, spirituality, had more to do with personal attachment than religion, and that was the stories of loved ones on death beds requesting water from a particular source. The best story was one which said that when their mother asked for water from a well far out of the way, they tried to skip a long trip to an old spring by bringing a grandmother water from somewhere else, but she could tell the difference, and sent them on their heels for the real thing.

Of course throughout the last few months I updated on my progress through the blog, which you can find in the archived blog posts by searching the keyword "wells" or "springs". I also wrote articles for the July, August/September and the October/November ICH Newsletters, available to read on the DAI website.

One of the first end goals we decided upon with this project was to create an infographic which neatly displayed all the interesting factoids and stats about wells and springs in one poster. Graham Blair did an amazing job taking my stats, measurements, quotes and imagery and turning them into a really grand looking display of everything I had done!

Finally, I've had the opportunity to share my work in a unique presentation style at a presentation through the Harris Centre at the end of last month, call a Words in Edgewise 20/20 presentation. This is essentially a set of 20 slides that cycle every 20 seconds out of your control, so while you're presenting you have to keep up! I will be presenting this work again at the ICH mini forum next month, which is open to the public through RSVP with me or on Event Brite. Information for both of these can be found here.

The biggest lesson I learned through meeting everyone and seeing all I did this summer is how important water really is. As someone who has always had the luxury of turning on a tap any time I was thirsty, I never really thought about how important it was to protect and care for your water. I met several people who had experienced dry wells, or were going through it when I visited, and had to deal with the issue of wondering where your water was going to come from. I have a much greater understanding and respect for water that I didn't have before.

It's been a great 5 months, and I'm happy to share that I'm able to stay on at the Heritage Foundation for another contract, with a few new projects to facilitate and help out with! If you have any stories about wells or springs you'd still like to share, or any other interesting folklore memories you want to chat about, feel free to email me at sarah@heritagefoundation.ca or call me at 739-1892 ext. 5

A Ghost Ship Called the Blue Jacket

In preparation for Halloween, I've been listening to some spooky tales that I've recently had the pleasure of recording in and around the Bay Roberts area. Here is a clip of 92 year old Greta Hussey of Port de Grave talking about when her father saw an infamous ghost ship called the Blue Jacket. Greta is a fantastic story-teller and it was wonderful to have the opportunity to spend time with her.
-Lisa

Sea Lion Woman: the biography of a song

The Isaac Mercer Murder Gate, Bay Roberts

The ICH office is currently working with the Bay Roberts Cultural Foundation on a project to record local stories. While the focus is on stories and memories concerning folk belief, traditional cures and charms, and superstitions, we are also recording some general oral histories with locals.

Last Friday, I sat down with local historian and author Mike Flynn to talk about the Bay Roberts of yesteryear. Mike had lots of stories, including some great bits of local folklore, including legends about the Devil and buried treasure.

We also had a chat about janneying (mummering) in the region, and in particular, about the murder of Isaac Mercer by mummers in December 1860. You can read a bit more about that case here.

After we talked, Mike took me to see an old wrought-iron gate, the location where the murder took place a century and a half ago. It is near a spot once known as Wilcox's Lane, a now mostly-forgotten laneway that today is on private property. It is a spot I've driven past hundreds of times, but which I'd never explored. It is a good example of the history that is right under our noses, and often overlooked. So here it is, in the photo above, the gate to the former Wilcox's Lane, with Mike Flynn standing guard.

The interview with Mike will eventually be up on Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative, as part of our ICH inventory, in the Bay Roberts collection. Stay tuned!

Finding Local Folklore at Ascension Collegiate, Bay Roberts

The ICH office, and the Bay Robert Cultural Foundation, are starting a project to document folk beliefs, superstitions, charms, and cures in the Bay Roberts area. We'll be doing a series of recorded interviews with locals, and we've also started a project with Level I students in Ms Welsh's English class at Ascension Collegiate.

We visited the school earlier this week, talking about local folklore and supernatural belief. We talked with the students about doing primary research, and going out and asking questions. To help them out, we developed a one-page questionnaire, for them to take home and use while interviewing parents, family members, friends, or neighbours.

We are heading back to Ascension on Friday morning to see what the students collected, and to help them write up some of their folklore findings.

Here are the questions the students are using:

1). Is there a place in your community that people say is haunted? ....a haunted cemetery, a haunted walkway, a haunted cliff or rock, a house, or other building? What are the ghostly stories connected to these places? 

2). When you were growing up, were there any places you were told not to go because the fairies would get you? Where was this and what are the stories you were told? 

3). What are the local stories about shipwrecks? ...buried treasures? What about ghost or weather lights seen on the water?

4). Are there any people who are believed to be witches in the community? Why do people think this? What kind of powers does this person have? 

5). Have you ever had a visit from the Old Hag while you were sleeping? What happened and do you believe that this experience was real or just a dream?

6). Do you know of any special charms, superstitions, cures or remedies that are used in your community?

If you know of a story like this from the Bay Roberts area, you can email lisa@heritagefoundation.ca.

Teachers, librarians or museums: you can download a pdf of these questions right here.

Sharing stories of Quidi Vidi Village, Sunday, 7pm

This Sunday, graduate students from Memorial University’s Folklore Department will be sharing some of their fieldwork discoveries at a community gathering in Quidi Vidi. For the past three weeks, new folklore graduate students have been stationed in the village, as part of their graduate program requirements.

Students have been learning about a variety of different cultural documentation methods, all from a folkloristic perspective. They have learned how to use recording equipment and conduct oral history interviews, picked up photography tips from Newfoundland photographer Brian Ricks, and had instruction in how to draw floor plans of historic buildings. Along the way, they have interacted with locals, and gained insight into how folklorists really work in communities.

The students’ work is part of the “Folklore 6020: Field and Research Methods” course, aimed at teaching students how to document local culture and traditions, taught by instructor Dr. Gerald Pocius. The fieldschool program is a partnership between the Department of Folklore, the Quidi Vidi Village Foundation, the City of St. John’s, and the Heritage Foundation of NL’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) office.

“This is the second time we’ve partnered with Memorial University to run the folklore field school program,” says the foundation’s Dale Jarvis. “It is great for students to see how research happens outside of a classroom setting.”

Students will present their findings and research to the community at 7pm on Sunday, September 29th, at The Quidi Vidi Village Plantation, 10 Maple View Place, in Quidi Vidi. The event is free and open to the public.

(Photo: local resident China Snow being interviewed as part of a 

folklore class at The Plantation, photo by Lisa Wilson.)

Thrown blood and stolen luck - a Newfoundland superstition

Recently, I came across this quote linking blood and luck:

"The settlers had many superstitions and were obsessed by a belief in the presence of ghosts. It was common to hear of a man, who, while rowing across the harbor, had seen a phantom French ship, with many soldiers aboard, also crossing. Others had seen an Indian ghost following them from one settlement to another. Their superstitions were legion and I shall mention only one. During the seal hunt if a successful hunter saw anybody throwing blood out of his boat into the boat of another, a fight was sure to follow because the hunter believed that his luck was being stolen."

- from J. Morgan, "Recollections of Harbour Deep," September 1957, page 5, Atlantic Guardian Vol 14, no 9

Has anyone come across this folk belief before? If so, drop me a line at ich@heritagefoundation.ca.

- Dale Jarvis

Folklore, fieldwork, and forgotten cemeteries

 

In the 2013 August/September issue of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update: students start the Folklore 6020 field school in Quidi Vidi; the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador launches its most recent publication, on lych-gates in Newfoundland; archaeologist Sarah Ingram gives an update on the wells and springs project; Nicole Penney reports on digitizing the Baccalieu Trail Heritage Corporation Oral History Collection; we have a report on HFNL's recent tombstone rubbing workshop; and notes on a little-known cemetery in Clarke's Beach, Conception Bay.

Contributors: Dale Jarvis, Nicole Penney, Lisa Wilson, Sarah Ingram, Claire McDougall. Photo of the Isaac Snow grave marker by Claire McDougall.

The newsletter is available online as a pdf document. 

Archaeology and Wells

Archaeologists thrive on finding the refuse of the past. By uncovering the remnants of meals, household items, clothing and daily life, we can try and better understand the culture we are studying, which is done through document research, surveying, excavation, and analysis. For an archaeologist, the less disturbed a site is when we arrive to do an analysis, the better the information we can collect. Excavation is all about relationships: how the different artifacts relate to the site, and how they relate to each other. 

Water has always been an important resource, and any archaeological excavation will either find a place where water was found and collected nearby, or where a well was dug or a spring was used. As a historical archaeologist, I know several 16th and 17th century sites in Newfoundland had wells, or have documentation associated with them that comments on how clean and pure the local water was. Wells hold the opportunity to not only hide within them a rich collection of archaeological artifacts, but the majority also have these artifacts still layered in the order they were deposited, allowing the archaeologist to understand changes through time much more clearly.

Ferryland, Newfoundland has at least two wells associated with the site: one that dates to the late 17th century, and one that was uncovered a few field seasons ago. While only preliminary reports are available on the newest find, Dr. Barry Gaulton from the MUN Archaeology department, the lead archaeologist at Ferryland, was able to share details about the Ferryland well.

“It was stone lined, 25 feet deep, built upon a wooden curb (found at the base of the well), and dates to the late 17th century. An elderly man from the community (Wilfred Costello, now deceased) who told Jim [Tuck] in 1994 about the location of the well … Wilfred’s grandfather told him about the well when Wilfred was only a young boy. Even at this time (about 80 years ago) the well was no longer visible, and there was certainly no trace of it on the landscape in the 1990’s”.

Photo from the Colony of Avalon Foundation (website http://www.heritage.nf.ca/avalon/arch/planters_well-2.html)

Wilfred came to Jim Tuck, the then lead archaeologist on the site, with a story that he had been told by his grandfather of an abandoned well on the Downs; “how a young boy had accidentally [fallen] into this old abandoned well and drowned. The residents of Ferryland at the time (probably late 1800’s) retrieved the boy and filled in the well with large rocks so no one else would be hurt. The archaeological evidence certainly corroborates this story. The well was [rapidly] filled from top to bottom with rocks and some 19th century debris”.

The Ford’s well in Cupids, Newfoundland, was once a simple spring coming out of the rocks, but now is surrounded with a cement base and has a recycled stop sign fashioned as a cover. William Gilbert, the head archaeologist on the Cupids plantation, believed that the brewhouse of John Guy was in close proximity to it, and although past survey work did not reveal its location, it could still be hidden closer to the shore for future excavations to uncover. Future excavations could be dictated based on interpreting this spring as an important element of the early site layout.

There is also a wellhouse in behind the current Cupids archaeological dig, where the plantation house sits. It has been sealed for safety reasons, and has not been excavated yet, though Bill does hope he can get to it in the future. An untouched well is a great situation for refuse. For one, once a well has served its purpose and is no longer used, it is likely that a community will use it to get rid of garbage, and so many wells have layers of preserved refuse from past residents. Secondly, the layers are less disturbed than those on the surface, as the natural processes and human activity that affect surface artifacts do not affect the artifacts preserved in a well. Unfortunately, Bill has yet to find the time or the funding to schedule the well excavation, and so it remains untouched for the future.

Stories like how the location of the Ferryland well was found, or how interest was sparked in the Ford’s well in Cupids that lead archaeologists to a potential feature no longer visible on the ground surface really demonstrate how important and valuable oral histories can be as a contribution to archaeology. These passed on stories and legends show how both folklore and archaeology can work hand in hand to understand and preserve the past. It’s something that I love about archaeology; combining the past and the present together to gain a better understanding of the landscape, and incorporating the community and the local tradition into my analysis to find something not readily visible from the surface. Wells especially are a great resource, and one that can easily become hidden from the ground; sometimes these types of stories are the only way they can be found!

If you have any wells, springs or water memories that you would like to share, please reach out! You can email me at Sarah@heritagefoundation.ca, or call me at 739-1892 ext. 7

Tuesday's Folklore Photo: Riding the Rails

This is a picture of my great grandmother, Ethel Peddle (nee Ivany), taken circa 1927-1933. Her father was a roadmaster with the Newfoundland Railway and she would ride the rails with him from time to time. Originally from Bloomfield, Bonavista Bay, Ethel loved the opportunity to go clothes shopping in Clarenville or St. John's on these trips. This snap was taken in Clarenville when my great grandmother was in her late teens to early twenties.

-Nicole

Identify this Telegraph Artifact

At the ICH Office we are putting together an exhibit with the Road to Yesterday Museum in Bay Roberts to celebrate the 100th year anniversary of the cable station. As part of this exhibit, we are working on identifying some of the telegraph artifacts that are currently mysteries to us and the museum. 

One item I've become slightly enamored with is this little brass oddity. My guess is that it's some sort of manual ticker tape winder or an attachment to a teleprinter. The engraving on the top reads "Honore Patent / Creed and Co. Ltd / Makers / London. 

I did a bit of research and learned Creed and Co. was a British telecommunications company that was an important pioneer in the field of teleprinter machines. Founded by Frederick George Creed and Harald Bille, it was first incorporated in 1912 as "Creed, Bille & Company Limited". After Bille's death in a railway accident in 1916, his name was dropped from the company's title and it became Creed & Company. Then in 1928 the company merged into the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. It then stands to reason this item was most likely manufactured between 1916 and 1928.

If you have any idea as to what this artifact is, or if you have memories of the cable station in Bay Roberts, we'd love to hear from you. 

Nicole can be reached at 1-888-739-1892 ex.6 or at via email at nicole@heritagefoundation.ca 

Quidi Vidi Village Oral History and Folklore Project Launch

Memorial's Department of Folklore, Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, and City of St. John's, in cooperation with The Quidi Vidi Village Foundation, invite you to the launch of the

Quidi Vidi Village Oral History and Folklore Project
Wednesday, May 8th, 7pm
The Plantation

Starting this summer, MUN Folklore and the Heritage Foundation will be researching the folklore and oral history of the Village. On Wednesday night, folklorists Jerry Pocius and Dale Jarvis will be presenting on this exciting project, and who will be involved.

Hope to see you there!

Coffee, tea and conversation to follow.

Facebook event listing here.

Tuesday's Folklore Photo: Woodcarvings by Kevin Coates

Kevin Coates is a talented local artist who draws inspiration from traditional Newfoundland industries for the subject matter of his work. Coates, who is self-taught, picked up caricature carving about 15 years ago after reading about it in a magazine. He had been looking for a new hobby and this style of wood carving peaked his interest. Much like caricature drawings, these carvings exaggerate the peculiar features of a person or object. Coates, who grew up and still resides in Winterton, is inspired by the fishery and the majority of his carvings reflect this.

When you first see a Kevin Coates carving your eye is immediately drawn to the face, which he works on for about a third of the time it takes to complete the rest of the carving. When asked where he gets inspiration for the faces, Coates replied, “it’s something about someone I remember, especially from back when I was a kid. We spent a lot of time down by the wharf, at this and that, with the fishermen and the old fellows.”

Coates mostly uses pine or fir along with several different tools to carve his pieces. Interestingly though, Coates' favorite tool is a modified right-handed filleting knife, or splitting knife, that he cut down to about five or six inches. As Coates describes, "where I'm left-handed and it's a right-handed splitting knife the turn is perfect for me."

For more information on Kevin Coates and his carvings, check out the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Researched and written by: Nicole Penney

Works Cited:

Penney, Nicole. Interview with Kevin Coates on the Subject of Wood Carving. Recorded April 26, 2013