Bauline Memory Mug Up

Bauline Memory Mug Up. 2018.

 On Sunday, October 21, 2018 Dale and I headed to Bauline to host a Memory Mug Up at their History and Heritage Fair. The event was organized by the town's heritage committee and including several themed displays, an ugly stick demonstration, photo identification, and the screening of several videos focused on the community and filmed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Model of the United Church in Bauline by Alton King.

30 residents came together to share stories and memories of growing up in the community. One of the first things we were told was the difference between under the hill and on top of the hill, and who was a gully rat. There were several stories about the dangerous fun people had as children including scaling cliffs, and sliding on dogsleds, canvas, and car bonnets. There were stories about a pair of mischievous boys who would often play tricks and were known for stuffing the chimney of the schoolhouse so they could have the day off school.

I also learned a new Newfoundland word when some of the women discussed keeping their quoit from year to year. I learned that a quoit is flat rock used for playing hopscotch. If you found a great rock you would keep it and use it for each game you played.

There were memories of jannying during the holidays, attending the watchnight service on New Year's Eve, and shooting off guns to ring in the New Year. Several people were able to sing the songs that local singer Edgar would sing to start and end the dance that followed the Orangemen's parade.

At the end of the day we were take to two of the local cemeteries including one where the stones are no longer visible above the ground. It was a great heritage event and we look forward to working with the heritage committee on some of their future heritage projects.

United Church Cemetery.

Did you grow up in Bauline? Do you have any memories to add? Let us know in the comments!

~Terra Barrett

Memory Mug Up - Bell Island U-boat Attacks & Sinkings, July 20

The two German U-boat attacks in 1942 sank four ore ships off Bell Island and left 70 sailors dead. Do you have memories or family stories you can share of the attacks or the sinkings? Or of the care of the survivors or the funerals for the dead? If so, then we would like to invite you to a Memory Mug Up at the Bell Island Community Museum on Friday, July 20 at 7:00 p.m.

The Memory Mug Up is an informal story-sharing session, where people gather, have a cup of tea, and share memories. The goal of the program is to help participants (especially seniors) share and preserve their stories.

Join folklorist Dale Jarvis of the NL Heritage Foundation and members of the Bell Island Heritage Society for an evening of memories. This event is part of a larger project which the Bell Island Heritage Society is working on with the Shipwreck Preservation Society of Newfoundland & Labrador, to create a new website on the WWII sinkings and how they affected Bell Islanders.

To register for the Memory Mug Up, please call Teresita McCarthy at 709-488-2880 or email bellislandhs@nf.aibn.com

Facebook event listing

#CollectiveMemories Monday - Mug Ups with Martha MacDonald

This February, we'll be running some Memory Mug Up programs for seniors, as part of our Collective Memories project. The programs are designed to get seniors out and sharing stories, a type of community oral history sharing time, with a cup of tea and snack, of course!

Back in 2010, Dale Jarvis talked by phone with Dr. Martha MacDonald of the Labrador Institute about the Mug Up programs she had been running in Labrador communities. If you want to know more about how the programs work, and to get some tips and tricks for running your own version, make yourself a cup of tea, settle in, and listen in to their conversation here.

Sharing Community Oral History Workshop – West St. Modeste, Labrador

On Thursday, 7 May 2009, a group of eleven women from communities along the Labrador Straits gathered at the Oceanview Resort in West St. Modeste to take part in a day-long workshop on sharing community oral history. The group included business owners, tourism operators, heritage volunteers and workers, oral history researchers and community development officers, all of whom shared an interest in preserving the oral traditions of the Labrador Straits.

The event was organized by SmartLabrador, an organization founded in 1997 to ensure effective utilization of information technologies (IT) in business, human resources and community economic development in Labrador. The goals of SmartLabrador include:

- Increased awareness of the benefits and potential of information technology;
- Equal access to the information highway, for all communities;
- Skilled population to meet the demands of the knowledge economy;
- Increased development of IT business opportunities and partnerships.

Facilitated by Dale Jarvis, Intangible Cultural Heritage Development Officer for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the day started with a discussion of local community memories and the material being collected as part of the Smart Labrador oral history project. Part of the goal of the overall project is to return the stories to the community, and to develop programs that see the collected stories shared and performed by community members.

Participants talked about personal memories and the link between place and oral history. The group worked on a short individual mapping project, drawing personal maps of the communities of their childhoods, then guiding other participants through their map, eliciting stories and memories of those locations.

The afternoon saw the participants work with some of the primary research material collected by the SmartLabrador workers. It also utilized material collected along the Straits as part of earlier oral history projects, particularly those related to adult literacy projects, such as the publication “Crooked Top of a Safety Pin” published by Partners in Learning. Using a basic six-frame storyboard process, the participants took the historical source material and shaped it into stories that followed a more narrative, rather than purely descriptive or anecdotal, format.

The day concluded with a group discussion on next steps, returning to the issues raised at the beginning of the day. The group decided that they would hold a further organizational meeting by the end of the May, with the goal of holding a public oral history sharing event, or storytelling circle in June, possibly based on the community “Mug Up” model developed by the Labrador Institute. The “Mug Up” sees a theme or topic of discussion set, and then community members gather over a lunch to share traditional knowledge, stories and memories about that topic.

Stay tuned for more news on the project as it progresses!