Living Heritage Podcast Ep086 How do Newcomers Experience Newfoundland? Part 2

Part Two of “NL Stories: How do Newcomers Experience Newfoundland?” - excerpts from an evening of storytelling with new residents of Canada. The event was recorded live on Thursday, June 29, 2017. It was hosted by the Refugee and Immigrant Advisory Council, with support from the Helen Creighton Folklore Society and the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. The MC and organizer for the event was Marissa Farahbod, a graduate student in the Department of Folklore at Memorial University, with stories from Leonardo Linares Gutiérrez (from Cuba), Maria Moreno (from Colombia), Yohei Sakai (from Japan), and Ellie King (from the UK).

Download the mp3

#AdaptingHeritage Forum 2017 - Introducing Grace Shears

Grace Shears is the Risk Manager at AbbyShot Clothiers Limited in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador. Grace holds the advanced level certificate in Health, Safety and Environmental Processes through the University of Fredericton, NB. She is a former Military Veteran and has also served as a volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross on the Disaster Management team.  In 2014, Grace joined the AbbyShot team and has been dedicated to quality control, product development and supply chain management. She is a major contributor to the empowering energy and culture of AbbyShot.

At the forum, Grace will be discussing her work with AbbyShot with particular focus on the incorporation of traditional knitting into their Outlander products.

Forum on Adapting NL's Intangible Cultural Heritage will take place on October 25 and 26. The cost of registration is $75.00, and $18.75 for post-secondary students. For full program details click here. To register click here.

#AdaptingHeritage Forum 2017 - Introducing Clare Fowler

Clare Fowler grew up on Bell Island. She spent time working in fish plants and other food processing plants before moving to Ontario in 1999 to do the Chiropody Program at the Michener Institute for Applied Health.  She moved to St. John’s in 2004 and worked for a decade before switching gears and following her passions for art and craft.  She completed the Textile: Craft and Apparel Design program with College of the North Atlantic in 2016 and is now a full time crafts person and maker with an open studio at the Quidi Vidi Village Craft Plantation.  Her body of work focuses on the use of seal fur and seal leather.

At the forum, Clare will be discussing her work where she utilizes traditional Newfoundland and Labrador sealskin to develop couture products. She explains:

"My work is exploratory.  I’m not afraid to use colour, texture, and to pair it with different materials.  I’m compelled to be bold and unapologetic in my designs.  I see truth in the material.  The resiliency, hard work, the beauty produced by harsh conditions.  It is successful evolution; it is a smart textile.  Anything a synthetic textile would try to emulate, Nature has already perfected in this fibre.  The creative potential I see in sealskin is nurtured by my emotional relationship to it.  It embodies so much of what the world needs right now.  It is local, sustainable, humane, and possesses the most wonderful combination of durability and biodegradability.  You can wear it a life time, and it will then return to Mother Earth.  I’m inspired to push the limits / boundaries / properties of what the material can do.  I’m inspired by the sealers themselves and their strength in the face of adversity."

If you would like to learn more about Clare's work, you can listen to our Living Heritage podcast episode with her by clicking here.

Forum on Adapting NL's Intangible Cultural Heritage will take place on October 25 and 26. The cost of registration is $75.00, and $18.75 for post-secondary students. For full program details click here. To register click here.

Barn in Freshwater, Conception Bay 1995 #Folklorephoto

Photograph taken in Freshwater in 1995 and is part of the Baccalieu Trail Heritage Corporation slide collection.

“Folklore Lives Here!” - A storytelling night in Bay Roberts

Do you remember the spot where teenagers went for their first kiss, where fairies marched, or the rock haunted by the woman in white? Have you collected water from brooks or picked berries from a marsh? What was the best place for playing hockey?

A group of Memorial University folklore students, along with the Heritage Foundation of NL and the town of Bay Roberts, wants to know!

“We are looking for people’s memories about local places, neighbourhoods, swimming holes, skating ponds, and old paths,” says the foundation’s folklorist, Dale Jarvis.

Jarvis, and a group of Memorial University folklore students, will be hosting “Folklore Lives Here” at the SUF Lodge, Bay Roberts, on Thursday, September 14th, 2017 at 7:00pm.

The event is an informal story sharing session for students to meet local residents and seniors, where people can gather, have a cup of tea, and share memories of growing up in Bay Roberts.

The folklore students are part of Memorial University Folklore Department’s Graduate Field School. Students will be living, studying, and researching in the area for three weeks, where they will receive training in folklore interviews, and will work together as a team to document the folklife of Bay Roberts.

The information gathered will be used by the students to create a booklet about the folklore and historic places and neighbourhoods of Bay Roberts.

Come for a cup of tea, share a memory or two about a special place in Bay Roberts. If you have old photos of your favourite place, bring them along!

For more information please contact Dale Jarvis with the Heritage Foundation toll free at 1-888-739-1892 ext. 2 or email ich@heritagefoundation.ca.

“Folklore Lives Here!” - A storytelling night in Bay Roberts
SUF Lodge, Patterson Street, Bay Roberts
Thursday, September 14th, 2017 at 7:00pm.

"Adapting Heritage…Engage, Innovate, Rejuvenate!" - St. John's Oct 25-28

www.adaptingheritage.ca

Less than 6 weeks left to register for “Adapting Heritage…Engage, Innovate, Rejuvenate!” - an exciting forum that examines various aspects of how heritage needs to change and adapt in the 21st century. Hosted by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland & Labrador, in partnership with Memorial University, the conference consists of three individual events:

Wednesday, October 25 – Thursday, October 26 (Morning): Forum on Adapting NL's Intangible Cultural Heritage - The Lantern, 35 Barnes Road: A day-and-a-half forum highlighting past efforts to safeguard NL's Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and considering future directions.

Thursday, October 26 (Afternoon): Workshop on Adapting NL's Historic Religious Places - Cochrane Centre, 81 Cochrane Street
A half-day workshop on the management of NL's historic ecclesiastical buildings.

Friday, October 27 – Saturday, October 28 (Morning): Conference on Adapting NL's Historic Places - Gower Street United Church, 99 Queen's Road
A day-and-a-half conference that considers the various ways that NL's built heritage can and should change to meet modern needs.

Join conference participants and presenters from across Newfoundland and Labrador and across Canada to learn about new strategies for preserving and safeguarding the province’s heritage and to share your own experiences. Sessions will be of interest to a wide variety of individuals and organizations including historic property owners and managers, municipal officials, heritage professionals, architects, planners, academics, community development organizations and others.

Travel subsidies are available on a first-come, first-served basis so register early!

A generous student discount is available as well.

Visit www.adaptingheritage.ca for full details and to register.

Occasional Paper No. 008 - A Social and Architectural Analysis of the Harbour Grace Railway Station

Harbour Grace Railway Station and Freight House c. 1980. Photo by Joe McMillan. 

For the past couple of months, I've been researching the Harbour Grace Railway Station. I interviewed several people who have memories of the station, conducted archival research, and visited the building on various occasions to document its architectural features. The final result of this project is an occasional paper.  

If you would like to download the full PDF click here.

-Katie Harvey

Today's Catch and Earle Freighting Service LTD. Carbonear, 1994. #Folklorephoto

This photograph was taken in 1994 and is part of the Baccalieu Trail Heritage Corporation slide collection.

How to Sew Up a Horse with Buttons

On August 8, I interviewed Dave Dunn about growing up in St. John's. We talked about his early years in Georgestown (which, as Dave said, was "a bustling community, lively as heck"), his dealings with "longshoreman gangs" on the waterfront (who were always nabbing transistor radios, "the iPhones of the day"), and his later life in Makinsons, where he gardens, picks berries, hunts and forages for most of his food. Towards the end of our interview, Dave brought up the matter of tending to injured animals. "If a horse is in trouble," he said, "if they need to get a pill in them, you've got to get a pill in them. You've got to figure out ways to make things work." With that, he launched into the tale of the time he sewed up a horse with buttons.

Diagram drawn by Dave Dunn, showing how he stitched up an injured horse with buttons and a shoelace. The diagram shows the position of the cut, the shape of the open wound, and his method of repair.

When Dave's horse, Prancer, first received the injury, Dave initially called up the local doctor. However, the doctor didn't want to be known as a "horse doctor," and thus refused his services. Dave then took matters into his own hands, and attempted to sew up his horse with sutures, but the stitches wouldn't hold. After giving the operation a couple of tries, he recalled a story of the time that a Clarke's Beach cow had a wound sewn up with buttons. And so, a woman named Myrtle brought out her button collection, and Dave decided to give it a shot. He explained:

“I think it was about seven buttons—four on the bottom, and three on the top. One in the centre on the top, a couple of flanks, and then the ones on the bottom to match it. … The buttons held. And then afterwards, when the buttons were held, then I used a shoelace. Pulled it together with a shoelace, and tied it up with a little bow.”

Dave used orajel to ease the horse's pain, but as he said, "The repercussion of it was that it was a hot day, and while I was in there trying to do it, I was rubbing sweat off my head—and next thing I knew, my forehead went dead, and my nose went dead, and my mouth went dead, and my fingers went numb—oh, it was so funny trying to do it. That was the funny part. It just made it into such a lark."

Dave had called up a nearby vet to inspect his operation. After sizing up the job, the vet told Dave, "I couldn't have done any better." Dave cut off the buttons once Prancer had healed (after a week or so), and that was that. The cut was set at the very point where Prancer's black and white hair met, so nobody ever saw the scar.

Prancer the horse. Photo courtesy of Dave Dunn.