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2100, Sunday, July 16, 2023
In the photo above , if you look carefully, you will see Tazzarin tied to the wharf at the far right. We are in Battle Harbour, Labrador. Yhe sail here today was through ever so murky fog with hidden bergs and growlers. Then, 45 minutes before we arrived, the sun burst through.The large white and red buildings are the store houses of the old mercantile establishment that managed the fishery business on this remote island.
Today, Battle Harbour survives as an historic site, managed by a non profit, preserving a unique view into old outport life on the Labrador coast, life before government programs to resettle small fishing ports, life before the cod fishery collapse. The island looks very much the way it did a hundred years ago. The experience is all the richer because the people working here grew up on this island before everything changed. People like Jan Hardy on her purple T-shirt and pig tails whose great grandfather fished here and who grew up in this community. The tales these people tell bring everything vividly alive from the past. This place was preserved right at the time of the collapse of the cod fishery in the early 1990s; people wanted to preserve a glimpse of a way of life that showed how Newfoundland and Labrador fed the world.
The harbor shores are dotted with small homes, fishing stages and old boats, up on the hill the church rises up. Wandering the foot paths, entering the old salmon and cod store buildings educates one on the rich fisheries here that fed people across the globe. From indigenous peoples to the Basques in the 1500s to the immigrant fishermen who settled here, to the hard life of the region, one breathes it all in and discovers a beautiful, daring, hard working, giving, genuine world apart. I will want to come here again. This is a gem of Canada. This place was once known as the unofficial capital of Labrador in its heyday. Today it is a window into the past and life on this coast.
Bill
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