Living Heritage Podcast Ep170 Wyatt Shibley's Research on Newfoundland's Lebanese Community

Folklorist Wyatt Shibley. Photo by Natalie Dignam.

In this episode, Wyatt Shibley talks about his research on the Lebanese community in Newfoundland, including food traditions, material culture, and the big bands in St. John's, Newfoundlands that used to play popular music. Wyatt is a graduate student in the Folklore Department at Memorial University.

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The Living Heritage Podcast is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.
Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

Photographs from Bowring Park, St. John's, taken in the 1930s.

Bowring Park in St. John's was officially declared open on July 15, 1914 by His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught. At the opening, the Duke hoped that "May it ever be a source of pleasure and enjoyment to the citizens of St. John's and to Newfoundland in general."

These 1930s-era photos are from a collection donated by Ruth Noseworthy Green, and for the most part feature the family of Arthur Taylor, of Southside, St. John's.

Arthur Taylor, 1932

Bowring Park, 1932.  

Max and his brother Arthur Taylor in Bowring Park, 1936.

Arthur Taylor, 1932, Bowring Park Boat Pool and Wharf.

Bowring Park Boat Pool, 1932. 

The "Boat Pool" or "Boat Lake" is now known as the Duck Pond. It was designed by landscape architect Rudolf H. Cochius and completed in June, 1913.  If you look very closely at the centre of the above photo, you can make out a small octagonal building:

Bowring Park Boat Pool, 1932, detail, sharpened.

Could this structure be an early duck house? In 1946, the park became home to six white swans, and a Chinoiserie-style octagonal Swan House was constructed, which you can see clearly in the photo below of the Boat Pond from 1946, taken from the History of Bowring Park.

Boat Pond, 1946, possibly by TB Hayward.

Do you have an early photo of Bowring Park? Email me at dale@heritagenl.ca

Knit, Purl, Listen: exploring connections between sound + textile

FOLK6740 - PUBLIC FOLKLORE is a graduate-level folklore course at Memorial University, which addresses the various ways in which folklorists present their research back to the communities from which the material originated. As part of their course, students interviewed local knitters, compiled the stories into a booklet, and edited some of the sound clips used in an exhibit at the Craft Council of NL Gallery.

• Download the pdf version of the booklet here. 

Do you have a favourite memory or recipe from North River, Conception Bay?

Hungry Month of March Mug Up at Marjorie Mews, March 12th

Join us for the final (for now) mug up storytelling session at the Marjorie Mews Library. We want your food memories! Tell us about jam-making, preserving food, root cellars, recipes, favourite (or least favourite) dishes, flipper pie, and the correct term for a bit of left-over bread dough fried up in a pan.  Do you have a memory of Jell-O salads with bits of things floating in the gelatine? Or a memory of the smell of fresh-baked bread? Come have a cup of tea, a treat or two, and trade your table-top tales!

Hosted by folklorist Dale Jarvis, Heritage NL

Thursday, March 12th
10am
Marjorie Mews Public Library 
12 Highland Drive, St. John's

This is a free event, all welcome.


photo:  Mrs. Janie (Herb) and Mrs. W. Milley with table full of bottled preserves. Item MG 63.2217, Item A 57-153 [ca. 1930]. International Grenfell Association fonds, The Rooms. 

Living Heritage Podcast Ep169 Weaving with Jessica McDonald

Jessica McDonald weaving on a loom. Photo courtesy of Jessica McDonald.

Jessica McDonald is a textile artist and researcher based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and a recent graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Jessica creates her own textile art, teaches, and researches weaving and craft in Atlantic Canada. She is is currently creating a piece for the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland while also working on a grant for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (also known as SHHRC), and preparing to teach with the Hand Weaver’s Guild of America in Knoxville, Tennessee this summer.


See more of Jessica's work here.

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The Living Heritage Podcast is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.

Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

Come Home Café: Celebrating St. Paddy's Day - Tilting Style

Come Home Café: Celebrating St. Paddy's Day - Tilting Style
Friday, March 6, 2020 at 7:30 PM
The Rooms, St. John's

Ticket information here

Join us as we celebrate St. Patrick's Day in true Tilting fashion. Tilting was originally founded by the French in the 17th century as a base for their transatlantic fishery, and eventually became a station for the English and Irish migratory fishery sometime after 1713.

By the 1770s, Tilting had become a predominantly Irish community, and the cultural milieu in which those early Irish thrived is seen today both in the material culture and vibrant oral traditions for which Tilting is so well known. Today, Tilting is registered as both a National Historic Site and Provincial Registered Heritage District.

Folklorist Dale Jarvis will interview community members as they share stories, music, and much more from their beloved town.

What is a Come Home Café?
A Come Home Café is a celebration of rural community life, culture, and history. You can think of it as a return, in spirit, to a home town. It is both a mini-reunion, and a way to share a taste of the unique culture of our local places with those who grew up elsewhere. Each Come Home Café will focus on a different, special Newfoundland and Labrador town, and includes stories, memories, music, and more. Whether you are returning home or coming from away, the Come Home Café has a spot saved for you!

This event is a partnership between Heritage NL, The Rooms, and the Tilting Expatriates Association.

Living Heritage Podcast Ep168 Tilting Expatriates Association with Winnie Hamilton

Winnie is president of the the Tilting Expatriates Association, a group of former citizens of Tilting, Fogo Island. Since 1983, the Association has served as a means of contact between members, worked to preserve the cultural heritage of Tilting, and provided a way to organize charitable assistance to present and former residents of Tilting. The Tilting Expatriates Association publishes a quarterly newsletter and annual magazine. 

Learn more about the Tilting Expatriates Association here.
Learn more about the Feile Tilting here, an event organized by the Tilting community.



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The Living Heritage Podcast is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.
Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

A rare look inside the St. John's Tuberculosis Sanatorium.

This week, we were in North River helping scan photos and recipes as part of an ongoing community project. One of the participants, Sylvia Hurley, had a great collection of family photos, including some which were taken at or inside the tuberculosis sanatorium in St. John's. They give an interesting peek inside "The San" at Christmastime, decorated for the season.  The photos are undated, and the people in the photographs are unknown. Comment or contact us if you have any information!

The idea of a sanatorium in St. John's was supported by Governor Sir William MacGregor in 1908, and meetings on the tuberculosis crisis led to the formation of the Newfoundland Association for the Prevention of Consumption. A tuberculosis camp for women was established near Mundy Pond in 1911, but the outbreak of the First World War put plans for a larger facility on hold until 1916-17. After the Second World War, drugs to fight tuberculosis improved, and by 1972, all the sanatoria beds in the province had been closed.

If you have photos or memories of the sanatorium, email dale@heritagenl.ca

update: 4 Aug 2025.  A reader writes, "My name is Ted White. While doing research on a book I am writing about my Great Uncle Ralph White, I came across your blog. In one of the photos lies my great uncle Ralph. He is the second person on the left. We have a few other pictures of Ralph, definitely him. Ralph was at the San in 1946-7, where he recovered from TB, only to die from an aneurism months later."

UPDATE: 27 April 2020

Christina Penney send on this photo, also from the san, featuring her great aunt. She writes,

She's the patient in the bed on the left. Her name was Christina May Alexander, born in Bonavista in 1915, and died in the Sanitorium in St. John's in 1942 (age 27). Looks like another Christmas photo, but I'm not sure the exact year, but probably early 1940s.

Can you identify any of the other people?

UPDATE: 1 May 2020

Robert "Bob" Francis sent us three more photos, and some more photo-identification work. He writes,

The first picture us of my mom, Lucy who was in the San in the mid 1950s. The second picture is of my mom and her sister in law, Dorothy who was also in the San. The third picture is of myself, on the left, age 5, the other person is unknown.

If you have a memory of the sanatorium, post below, or if you have old photos, send them to me at dale@heritagenl.ca and I'll add them here.