Book Review: David Macfarlane’s The Danger Tree (2014)

The Danger Tree artfully combines family memoir and historical nonfiction. Just as author, David Macfarlane, introduces readers to his maternal family, the Goodyears of Newfoundland, he establishes the major events of the early twentieth century. The event Macfarlane most prominently features is the First World War. For the Goodyears, WWI means “three dead sons paraded […]

CORNER BROOK IS PLANNING A COME HOME YEAR IN 2019. YOU SHOULD COME. HERE’S WHY.

At eighteen, I moved away from Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador for university in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I didn’t fully know then what a gem of a hometown I was leaving behind. Fast-forward twenty-plus years and I now get goosebumps driving into this city. Tree-covered and nestled in a valley at the bottom of the […]

Dory Stories

My father told me about the one-room variety school he and my uncles attended in Little Bay East, Newfoundland. The community didn’t have an adequate number of students to accommodate separate classes. So, the school children up to grade five shared their own classroom, while the preteens and teens from grade six onwards shared their […]

Landscape Art Exhibit: Gordon Harrison and his Apprentices

Manotick Art Gallery and Framing is hosting its vernissage weekend at the gallery, Saturday, March 24th and Sunday, March 25th with Gordon Harrison and his apprentices. Harrison and all of the painters (that includes me) will be at the gallery for the opening weekend to chat about our landscape art and answer any questions. This exhibit […]

IF POP COULD READ THIS NOW: LITERACY LESSONS FOR NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

The spring 2018 issue of Maisonneuve magazine includes my story called “Letters from Pop.” In this reported feature, I explore a legacy of low adult literacy in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). There, people traditionally learned their skills on the land and the sea more so than in the formal classroom. For […]

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, […]

Featured

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 […]

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.

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 […]