In Gros Morne National Park: “Leave only footprints, take only pictures, and kill only time”

In Gros Morne National Park, these words are sacred: “Leave only footprints, take only pictures, and kill only time.” Plan on doing a lot of each of those things when you visit. There are countless lists of must-dos, must-sees, must-stays for the area, but let me tell you about one must item on my list, […]

Recounting a Shipwreck No one Survived to Tell

Six men boarded the 72-foot fishing vessel the Andrea Gail intended for a late season fishing trip that would end catastrophically. In late October 1991, aware that a storm was brewing, the captain and crew decided to take their swordfish catch and head home from the Grand Banks to Gloucester, Massachusetts. The mother of all […]

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Relocating Newfoundland Outports

Dr. Jeff A. Webb is a professor in the Department of History at Memorial University and author of Observing the Outports: Describing Newfoundland Culture, 1950-1980. I interviewed Dr. Webb for the January 2018 issue of Downhome Magazine (see “Abandoned Architecture As Art: Newfoundland Resettlement In Photographs”). This is our full edited interview. Q. What were […]

Book Review: Alan Doyle’s Where I Belong (2014) & A Newfoundlander in Canada (2017)

How would you like to take a cross-Canada tour on a band van with running commentary from a prominent Newfoundlander? I promise it will be a laugh-out-loud journey not to mention an entirely unique way to discover (or rediscover) this country. Last month I had the chance to meet musician, actor and author Alan Doyle […]

Pangnirtung, Nunavut: A Painted Landscape Scene in the Canadian Arctic

My latest landscape painting took me to the Hamlet of Pangnirtung | ᕼᐋᒻᒪᓚᒃᑯᓐᓄ ᐸᖕᓂᕐᑑᒥ (in Inuktitut). Pangnirtung is located on Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada, some 300km northeast of Iqaluit, the territory’s capital. I’ve never set foot there. The photo inspiration for this piece was taken by a friend and colleague who travelled throughout Canada’s youngest territory […]

Painting Landscapes: Creating what I see

I picked up my paintbrush a few years ago and just went for it. With my acrylic paints in hand and a collection of gallery-wrapped canvases, I began to paint. The results were not what I was anticipating. I seemingly could not achieve the images I had in my head. But there were a couple of […]

Ancient Bay

Have you ever hiked to the bottom of the ocean? The Tablelands in Gros Morne National Park of Canada allow you to do just that. Norris Point is an optimal place to view the Tablelands by distance. It inspired me to write a poem (Ancient Bay) and paint a landscape piece.

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Art Gallery

Features my artwork from 2015+, including works painted with and under the guidance of Canadian landscape painter, Gordon Harrison and one painted under the guidance of Canadian painter, Rosemary Leach.

Welcome to Little Bay East: A Newfoundland Outport that Offers a View into the Past

Little Bay East, where the Thornhill family has lived for more than one and a half centuries, is situated on the southeastern shores of Newfoundland. It’s an outport fishing community surrounded by other outport fishing communities along the Burin Peninsula on Fortune Bay. When the Thornhills arrived in Newfoundland from northcentral England (Dorsetshire or Dorset as […]

Saltwater Cowboys

I come from a long line of fishers and grew up hearing their stories. Twenty-five years ago this past July, the cod moratorium put some 30,000 island fishermen out of work. My book, Saltwater Cowboys: What Happened to Newfoundlanders When the Cod Fishery Closed, is a nonfiction narrative encompassing memoir and history about the life and death of the commercial cod fishery in Newfoundland.It’s a collection of stories of the people and communities across the island and how life has changed leading up to and since that time