Fishing Stage - Fishing Shed – Shed Stage

Guest blog post by Jennifer Murray, P.Eng

Ever notice the stages in rural Newfoundland? No, not the fishing stages – the performance stages. Nearly every small town and outport in Newfoundland has one these days.

These are the places where the summer festival is held, where local teenage bands play their first gig, and touring entertainers put on the big show of the summer. It’s the spot where local mayors announce the winner of the raffle, thank all the volunteers, and ask the owner of the red pickup to please move his vehicle because he is blocking traffic.

Mostly simple structures – a shed with the door on the wide side – they are cleverly designed to their purpose and climate. Unlike many amphitheatres and outdoor stages in other parts of the world, the shed-stage has a roof and walls on three sides to protect performers and their equipment from the wind and the rain which are a common feature of summer festivals in Newfoundland.

During performances, the doors can be opened out of the way or made into an extension of the stage; when not in use, the doors are secured and the building becomes a storage facility for equipment.

With the closure of many rural churches and schools, and the decline of fraternal organizations which once maintained large halls, these stages and the fields and recreational areas they typically adjoin have become the spaces where the community can come together for celebrations and special events. This infrastructure also supports the expression of many aspects of our intangible cultural heritage. These small stages represent a relatively new form of vernacular architecture, and demonstrate an adaptation of an existing type of building to meet the needs of small communities.

Quidi Vidi Village: BOOKLET LAUNCH PARTY!

Quidi Vidi from above, taken Sept. 2013 by Xuan Wang (M.A. student in Folklore)

Documenting Pinkston's Forge in Brigus

On Monday of this week, I travelled to Brigus to help the Brigus Historical Society with their work of documenting the history of Pinkston's Forge.

Pinkston's Forge has been a fixture of the community for a long time, and up to now has been in the hands of the Pinkston family. But maintaining a heritage building like the forge has been a challenge for the family, and the forge itself sits on a lovely piece of corner property. Recently, the family has decided they want to develop the property, but were concerned about the potential loss of the forge. So, the family has decided to turn the building over to the town, on the condition that it be moved.

Moving a heritage building from its original location is rarely the first choice for heritage conservationists, and moving an old forge will pose challenges for the historical society, but it will ensure that the building sees a new life, and hopefully, more educational opportunities.




Local heritage volunteers will be working on the documentation of the building and artefacts, and the ICH office has offered to help with collecting the associated oral histories of the building. On Monday, we helped with the first interview. The photo above shows (l-r) Muriel Pinkston-Wells and John Charles Pinkston, whose father and grandfather started the blacksmithing business, along with  local heritage consultant Dale Russell-Fitzpatrick, who conducted the oral history interview.

We’ll be posting more on the project as it unfolds.

If you have a memory of Pinkston's Forge, email me at ich@heritagefoundation.ca or comment below.

- Dale Jarvis

Tuesday’s Folklore Photo - Flakes and Fish

Thomas Ruck fonds
VA 45-1; Petty Harbour in the 1860s
Photo: Courtesy of The Rooms

Today’s folklore photos are pictures of the flakes, stages and stores of Petty Harbour’s past. Throughout my interviews in Petty Harbour a major change that has been mentioned has been the change in the fishery.  The move from making fish to catching crab has meant a shift in the physical landscape of the harbour.  

Petty Cove [Petty Harbour]
VA 143-18 [between 1892 and 1904]
Photo: Courtesy of The Rooms

The loss of the fish flakes from the island rooms has been mentioned in a number of interviews as has the shift in the fishery.  Several of my informants have memories of the responsibilities of making fish and cutting tongues for the fishermen.  

Mike Hearn

Mike Hearn described walking into the Goulds to sell the cod tongues 10₵ a dozen as opposed to selling the tongues for 10₵ a pound in Petty Harbour.  He also mentioned making flickers out of his mother’s old cotton reels filled with lead in order to catch tom cods in the harbour.        

Petty Harbour VA 15a-43.1
Newfoundland Tourist Development Board photograph collection
Newfoundland Views Photographs
Photo: Courtesy of The Rooms

The lack of children involved with the fishery today has caught the attention of people in Petty Harbour and a non profit organization called Fishing for Success has been established.  Check out their website and facebook page as they reintroduce fishing knowledge to the children of Petty Harbour Maddox Cove and beyond.

Folklore Photo - Painting the Jenkins House, Twillingate

I have been working on compiling an oral history of the Jenkins House in Blow Me Down, Durrell, Twillingate. The above photo is of the house at the end of its restoration project. Here, owner Corey Sharpe talks about how he selected the colour for the house, in consultation with George Chalker, HFNL's Executive Director:

So colour was another thing. What are we going to put on it for colour? I can remember it always being white. So I said, “I’m not a big fan of white. White’s everywhere. It’s not even a colour, in my opinion. But anyway, it did look nice on the house and stuff.” So I said … I spoke to George Chalker, and he said, “Well, take a look at those heritage colours that we had Templeton’s do for us.” I said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” 

So I picked out a colour. I think it was Dory Buff or something like that. Am I going to drastically change the colour of the house, or what am I going to do? So the siding, the local siding, had been replaced on the house in different places on the house over time. It was never all stripped and replaced. I could do one side one year, then 15, 20 years later they probably did a patch on the other side, whatever. So anyway, I got down to a patch that was original to the house. It had the cut nails, and I said, “What colours were on that house?” So I slowly scraped the paint down. When I got down to the last colour, apart from say the red ocher-ish stain that they had on it, that was the colour. It was almost like exact. That just made up my mind right there. So that’s the colour we painted the house.

Photos courtesy Corey Sharpe.

Abandoned Sacred - Unmaking and remaking sacred places

Guest post by Dr. Barry Stephenson

Places of worship have life histories: they are conceived, grow and develop, pass through transformations, perhaps even die. My work examines sacred sites that have, for one reason or another, been abandoned by their users. Abandonment does not necessarily bring down the curtain on a place’s religious significance or use. There is a rich history of religious buildings being “converted” from use by one tradition for use by another. Alternatively, religious architecture, built for liturgical purposes, may be “converted” into seemingly secular sites; for example, a church becomes a theatre or a condominium complex. The language of conversion applied to sacred architecture uses a metaphor to evoke the sense of heightened emotion, import, and transformation associated with a religious experience and maps this transformative process on to a material site or natural landscape.

The phrase “abandoned sacred” then refers to processes of unmaking and remaking that take place at sacred buildings and locales. And even when this process moves in the direction from sacred to secular, there may be residues of the sacred, or a mixing of cultural domains, or a change in how the sacred is understood. The premise is that studying sacred sites during moments of crisis and change offers valuable insight into the dynamic relationships between religion and culture.

Goal:

My work, using a combination of ethnographic, visual, and historical methods, examines this dynamic of abandonment-conversion at a number of sacred sites. Typically, research on sacred places has focused on the symbolic meanings of religious architecture; my work, in contrast, emphasizes moments of change in the use and meanings of sacred places. I’m interested in the eventful nature of architecture, the ways in which spaces are used, especially their connection to ritual and performance. My aim is to build relationships with partners and organizations in Newfoundland and elsewhere that have an interest in the question of church closure and transformation, in order to identify case sites for ethnographically informed study and research. As much of my research is in the area of ritual studies, I am particularly interested in the role and functioning of deconsecration rites, which have received very little study.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Barry Stephenson
Dept. of Religious Studies
Memorial University
bstephenson@mun.ca
Ph: 709-864-8113

Photos: top - Hebron from the cupola of the Moravian Church; 

middle - stone foundations of one of the Moravian buildings, OKaK; 

bottom - the former Double Island Church, Uviluktok, Labrador. 

All photos summer 1995, by Dale Gilbert Jarvis.

Fashion, alcohol, and religion in Regency Conception Bay, Newfoundland

A Tale of Two Houses: Fashion, Alcohol, Religion in Regency Conception Bay Townscapes

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

7:30pm

Benevolent Irish Society, Harvey Road.

Robert Pack—English Methodist Politician and Merchant—and William Innott—Irish Catholic Publican and Horse Breeder—shared the streets and social circles of their respective towns of Carbonear and Harbour Grace. Wealthy and prominent, they built summer dwellings away from their urban households and business interests. Constructed in the 1820s, the summer dwellings were part of the architectural fashion of villa and cottage—retreats from towns of noise, crime, prostitution, and wayward pigs. These juxtaposing houses become an entrée into the material, social, and aesthetic life of Regency Newfoundland townscapes.

Folklorist Dr. Gerald Pocius will present on Pack and Innott at the Annual General Meeting of the Newfoundland Historic Trust on Wednesday, March 19, 2014, at 7:30pm, at the Benevolent Irish Society on Harvey Road.

Pocius has researched and written on topics ranging from joke-telling and pop music, to tract housing and religious popular prints. He has worked on many aspects of Newfoundland folklore and popular culture, publishing studies of belief, religion, medicine, narrative, and music. His specialty has been material culture, and he has published widely on gravestones, cemeteries, textiles, folk art, architecture, furniture, and cultural landscapes. While working primarily in Newfoundland and Labrador, he has also conducted fieldwork in the United States, Great Britain, France, and Lithuania.

Cable Avenue Heritage Meeting, Bay Roberts

Earlier tonight, I finished up a meeting with the heritage committee of the Town of Bay Roberts. We went over the commemorative text for the bronze plaque that will mark Cable Avenue as a Registered Heritage District. Last year, the Heritage Foundation of NL designated the avenue, and helped to celebrate its 100th anniversary; this year, we'll install a large bronze plaque to mark the avenue's historic and architectural significance.

We've tentatively set the first weekend of August for a formal plaque unveiling. Stay tuned for your invite!

Photo: Surveying site of superintendent's house, August, 1913. From The Cable Building Story.

Tuesday's Folklore Photo - Somebody's Home

Photograph of a heritage structure submitted by Teri Delaney.

A few weeks back Teri Delaney stopped by our Springdale office to drop something off. She noticed a photograph on the wall of one of our designated heritage buildings. She said that she took a photo of that same building, and hadn't realized that it was a provincially recognized structure. I asked her to send along a copy to share on the blog. Her photograph "Somebody's Home," reminds us that many of the province's surviving historic buildings once served as year-round homes for families. This one, it seems, is still in use. Thanks for sharing your photograph, Teri.

-Lisa

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)"

Heritage in Harbour Grace: when is a church worthless?

The 1892 Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Harbour Grace, which made the news last September when it was rumoured that it was to be sold to a brewery, has made the news again.

"Harbour Grace cathedral found to be worthless" read the CBC headline, a story which was somewhat buried by breaking political news of the same day.

According to the article, real estate consulting company Altus Group has determined that the building currently has a market value of zero.

Folklorist Steven Zeitlin is the founder of City Lore. Established in 1986, City Lore’s mission is to foster New York City – and America’s – living cultural heritage through education and public programs, working in four cultural domains: urban folklore and history; preservation; arts education; and grassroots poetry traditions. In a 1994 article in Conserving Culture, Zeitlin paraphrases the work of heritage preservationist James Marston Fitch, who argued that "the real value of a place is defined not by dollars and cents but by the quantifiable human energy that was put into it."

Zeitlin argues that local places have value based on the decisions that went into their use, their history as focal points for neighbourhood development, and in how they served to create community.

"Part of our job as cultural conservationists is to find ways to understand and assign value to these intangibles," he writes, "because only by assigning a measurable value can we fight to protect them."

It is an interesting argument, and it will be equally interesting to see how the debate over the future of Immaculate Conception unfolds.

- Dale Jarvis

- photo from wikimapia.org. 

Quotes taken from  S. Zeitlin , "Conserving our Cities' Endangered Spaces" 

in: M. Hufford (ed), Conserving Culture. Urbana, 1994.

Tuesday's Folklore Photo: Construction During Winter

Pictured above is the Port Union salt fish plant and retail store during construction. Though the photograph is undated, Edith Samson from the Sir William Coaker Foundation noted that the retail store (on the left) is shown here as a 4 story building indicating that this photo was taken at the time of the original construction project. In 1945 this building was rebuilt but only as a 3 story structure.

This photograph was donated to the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador and will be added to the Port Union collection on MUN's Digital Archives Initiative.

-Lisa

Happy 103rd birthday to Mrs. Freda Gillis of St. Fintan's

- A guest blog post by Andrea O'Brien. Photo by Mike Patterson.

This past June I had the pleasure of speaking with Mrs. Freda Gillis of St. Fintan’s in Bay St. George. Our chat was the end result of research into the Legge Homestead in Cartyville, which was designated a Registered Heritage Structure on April 26, 2013. On one of my work related road trips several years ago I had come across this house. Surrounded by wild, overgrown meadows, it lay at the end of a path beaten through tall grass. It looked unlived in. It looked as if it belonged in another time and place. Over the years I had often thought about this seemingly out of place house and the lives that might have been lived within it.

The designation application for the property reported that it was built in the early 1900s - strange considering its style, which is similar to an English country cottage. Similar examples of this style in the province are much older. It also named Richard Cook as the builder. A Google search led me to genealogy forum by a Stephen Gillis. Turns out Richard Cook was his great grandfather, and Richard’s daughter, 102 year old Freda, was living in St. Fintan’s, Bay St. George and was reportedly a great storyteller.

Mrs. Gillis was a wealth of information. She told me how her father, born in Newfoundland in 1873 to English-born parents, was sent to England to be educated when he was 11 years old. He returned to Newfoundland in 1903 and built the Legge Homestead shortly after. She also helped solve the mystery of how this house reminiscent of much older style was constructed in Cartyville in the first decade of the 1900s.

Mrs. Gillis turned out to be a great storyteller indeed. She is celebrating her 103rd birthday today, December 5th. A full article based on my conversation with Mrs. Gillis will appear in the December ICH newsletter.

Newfoundland Folklorists in the Prairies

September was a busy month for at least some Newfoundland folklorists. Not only was I fully immersed in the amazing (and intensive) Qudi Vidi Fieldschool for incoming folklore graduate students, but I also traveled to Edmonton to help represent some of the HFNL's work at their annual Alberta Museums Association conference. The theme of this year's conference was Intangible Cultural Heritage and so who better to invite as keynote speaker than Dale Jarvis, ICH Development Officer for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In his talk, Dale offered the audience a look at the kinds of ICH work that we're doing here in Newfoundland. We also had two other Newfoundland folklorists in attendance: MA students Claire McDougall and Kristin Catherwood. It was very nice for us to sit back and reflect on everything we have achieved over the past year. It was also great to chat with people from across to country to learn about what kinds of programing is starting up in other provinces.

For my part in the conference, I facilitated a talk on digital storytelling and the different ways that oral historical information can be presented. In this session, I was able to share with participants a series of audio clips that I've collected about particular places, objects, buildings, traditions, and people. To help demonstrate how to begin an oral history interview, I invited Kristin Catherwood to sit and answer some questions about where she is from and why she decided to become a folklorist. Please feel free to listen to an excerpt of this interview where she discusses her love for the prairies and how it connects to her current studies. Given her passion, it's no wonder that she's now studying the vernacular architecture of Saskatchewan's historic farms for her MA thesis.

Follow Kristin's blog The Barn Hunter to find out all about her pursuit of folklore and barns all around the prairie province she calls home. Thanks Kristin, for sharing your story with us.

-Lisa

Exploring Our Roots: A Heritage Inventory of Newfoundland’s Root Cellars

In 2011, the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) hosted the agricultural-themed folklife festival, Seeds to Supper, to celebrate farming and gardening traditions in the province. To complement these celebrations, an architectural inventory of over 150 root cellars was conducted and has been added to Memorial University’s Digital Archives Initiative (DAI).

The research was conducted by Crystal Braye, hired through MUN’s Division of Co-operative Education, in collaboration with Julie Pomeroy of the Agricultural History Society (AHS),

Crystal has recently completed a report on her root cellar work with HFNL, and we are pleased to release it as the third in our Occasional Paper on Intangible Cultural Heritage series. If you have an interest in root cellars, folk architecture, or traditional knowledge, give it a read!

Download Occasional Paper 003 as a pdf

Cable Avenue Exhibit and Oral History Project

As you may know, Bay Roberts has put in an application for Cable Avenue to become a provincially recognized heritage district. As a part of the designation process, I am currently conducting fieldwork here to collect stories about what life has been like for residents of Cable Ave. Though I have only met with a few people so far, I already have several remarkable stories from people who have lived on the street. Please stay tuned to hear some of these stories, many of which will be profiled at the Road to Yesterday Museum this summer. The exhibit we are putting together will help celebrate the 100th year anniversary of the district, and the history of Western Union in the town.

Lorn Kirby, long time resident of Cable Ave, reflects on raising children on this street.

90 year old Eileen Starr reflects on her time living on Cable Ave. beginning in the 1930s.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any information about the history of Cable Ave that you might have. I'd be particularly interested in seeing old photographs of the district or/and the people who were connected to it. Also, any personal objects that have a connection to the buildings here would also be wonderful to borrow for our exhibit. I'm very excited about this project, and look forward to many more visits with people who have memories of the cable company in Bay Roberts. lisa@heritagefoundation.ca, (709) 739-1892 ext.3.

-Lisa

Tuesday's Folklore Photo - Dan Snow's Stone Wall

Dan Snow, a traditional stone wall maker and artisan from Vermont, has been visiting English Harbour on the Bonavista Peninsula for several years. He is a regular instructor with the English Harbour Arts Centre, and teaches dry stone wall techniques.

This is one of the walls he worked on in English Harbour in 2010. You can check out his website at www.dansnowstoneworks.com.

"Living Spaces" book launch Monday, March 18th

Most new students spend their first weeks of school in stuffy classrooms. But in a new program through the Department of Folklore at Memorial University, new graduate students spent their first days exploring a small Bonavista Bay fishing community. During the last three weeks of September 2012, the Department of Folklore introduced a new course for incoming graduate students on cultural documentation techniques.

“I decided that I would focus on the community of Keels in Bonavista Bay,” says course organizer Dr. Gerald Pocius. “Unlike previous field courses, this one would actually take place outside the classroom, with students living away from their usual environments, focusing on a place and people different to most of them.”

Timed to coincide with this year’s 20th anniversary of the cod moratorium, the field school examined how outmigration and gentrification affected the traditional cultural landscape of the Bonavista region, focusing on the last two inshore fishing families in the community of Keels. Students lived in the town, and worked to document buildings, including homes, fisheries buildings and root cellars. Along the way they interacted with and interviewed locals about their lives and work. The results of the field school, including architectural drawings and descriptions of some of the spaces studied have been put together in a booklet, “Living Spaces: The Architecture of the Family Fishery in Keels, Newfoundland,” edited by Pocius.

“Both the field school and the booklet have been a cooperative project between Memorial University and the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador,” says Dale Jarvis, folklorist with the foundation. “These types of partnerships are a great way to help students develop real-world skills, and to demonstrate to communities the type of research that is going on within the university. It also helps us with the foundation’s mandate of promoting and preserving the important architectural and intangible cultural heritage of this province.”

The booklet will be launched at a public event at 6pm, March 18th, 2013 at Bianca’s, 171 Water Street, St. John’s. The event is open to the public, though people are asked to RSVP with Christina Robarts at 739-1892 ext 7, or by email at christina@heritagefoundation.ca

Root Cellars Rock The Rooms

Coffee and Culture: Root Cellars
March 14, 2:30pm
The Rooms Theatre

How do you keep vegetables fresh without electricity? In a root cellar of course! From use in years past to modern day, root cellars have become iconic in Newfoundland and Labrador. Folklorist Crystal Braye and Sarah Ferber from Root Cellars Rock will be at The Rooms to tell you all about them. Presented in collaboration with the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

 

Root cellar photos courtesy of Crystal Braye.

Lloyd and Pat: Heart's Content Heritage

Lloyd and Pat Smith live within the Heart's Content Heritage District. They also happen to be on the local heritage committee and have knowledge on the history of this region. I was lucky enough to spend the day with them and learn about their life experiences here. Lloyd was born and raised in Heart's Content while Pat is initially from Carbonear, yet both of them consider Heart's Content home. Lloyd showed me a photo of the house he grew up in. His family home, which is no longer standing, was built in the 1920s. It was a duplex that functioned not just as their home, but as a boarding house as well. Lloyd told stories of his mother feeding the 10-child family as well as multiple boarders at the same time. She would make sure that the people living under her roof always had something to eat--including a packed lunch for the boarders who would go off to work during the daytime. Lloyd and Pat recalled just how busy she was, and how she never seemed to need to take any naps. She worked very hard in her life and lived to be over 90 years old. "Hard work doesn't kill anyone," is a phase that came to mind for all of us.

A framed photo of Lloyd's family home, brought down in the late-1980s.

Two more images of Lloyd's family home--same house, two different eras, particularly noticeable from the vehicles parked alongside the building.

After living and working away, Pat and Lloyd came back to Heart's Content to settle down. They built a house across from the cable company staff houses in a spot that has a view of the harbuor. Right where their house is now, there used to be a car garage that people would have their cars serviced in. This is not the only building that is now gone: also gone is the Anglican church that was once in behind where they live, the hospital in the corner lot, and the Parish Hall across the way. Lloyd and Pat were able to tell me many stories about the people and places in their community. They added some of this information to a map--a collection of important memories that I will using while doing a few different Heart's Content community mapping projects this winter/spring.

Memory aids for/from my interview with Pat and Lloyd.

Pat and Lloyd allow me to photograph them (in front of Lloyd's giant record collection).

Thank you for inviting me into your home to share so many lovely photos and stories. And to everyone else in Heart's Content that I've visited, thanks for welcoming me into your community. I hope to speak with many more people over the next few months, so please stay tuned.

-Lisa