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magazine / apr08
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April 2008 issue |
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Into Battle
In its heydey, yaffles of cod were hauled from its waters off Labrador.
Today, Battle Harbour offers a charming look at 18th-century living.
Story and photography by Jerry Kobalenko
We pull into Battle Harbour
on what locals call a mauzy
morning, or simply R.D.F.
- rain, drizzle and fog. Mike Earle offers
a friendly welcome as we step from the
Zodiac that has transported us from our
cruise ship onto the rain-slickened dock.
Earle has been working at Battle Harbour,
Newfoundland and Labrador’s last
remaining pre-Confederation fishing
village, since it became a National
Historic District in 1997. He was one of
20 ex-fishermen who retrained as heritage
carpenters to faithfully restore the buildings
to their original state. Now he also
interprets the site for the 2,000 visitors
a year who come to the remote outpost.
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Earle, 40, leads us from building to
building, followed by his little dog Lucky,
a mutt so charming that even the nondog-
lovers in our group joke about adopting
him. I’m more interested in adopting
Earle, at least for the morning. He is like
one of those unforgettable high school teachers who can captivate even reluctant
students. Earle delivers his stories in a patter
rich with terms from the Dictionary
of Newfoundland English: “yaffles”
and “kittles” and “waterhorses” of fish,
“crackies” and “flakes” and “hangashores.”
In his 17 years at Battle Harbour, Earle has
learned not only how to restore a derelict
village with traditional carpentry but
something even harder — to bring it back
to life with old-fashioned storytelling.
Battle Harbour has had its share of
colourful characters since it was founded
as a cod-fishing centre in the early 1770s.
Its location, just north of the Strait of
Belle Isle, opened the virgin waters of
southern Labrador to an expanding fleet.
The fishing diversified from nothing but
cod to a year-round operation that
included salmon, herring and seal. The
experiment was so successful that in 1848,
records show 92 ships based around Battle
Harbour. The town — whose name is
derived from batel, the Portuguese word for a small boat, rather than an actual
battle — became the informal capital
of Labrador until Confederation.
In its heyday, 300 people lived here
full-time, but by the mid-1960s, the
once rich waters were nearly empty of
cod. Soon after, most of the 64 remaining
residents moved under a relocation
program to Mary’s Harbour, on the
Labrador mainland. The village lay vacant
for years, its buildings slowly rotting
away, like so many Newfoundland outports
established during what Earle calls
the “In Cod We Trusted” era.
Then, in the late 1980s, Gordon Slade,
a former provincial deputy minister of
fisheries, took on a personal mission to
save Battle Harbour.
“Over a couple of bottles of Scotch
and a few meetings, Gordon Slade almost
single-handedly raised most of the money
himself,” recalls Earle. Slade worked to
have Battle Harbour designated a
National Historic District, and little by
little, the heritage carpenters painstakingly
restored 22 of the buildings, some of
which date back to the 1700s. (In 2002,
Slade was awarded The
Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s Gold Medal for
his initiative on the project.)
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