Place to Belong: Community Order and Everyday Space in Calvert, Newfoundland 9780773562707

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A Place to Belong

G E R A L D L. POCIUS

A Place to Belong Community Order and Everyday Space in Calvert, Newfoundland

The University of Georgia Press Athens and London

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal and Kingston

© 1991 by the University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 30602 All rights reserved Designed by Sandra Strother Hudson Set in Janson and Gill Sans by G&S Typesetters, Inc. Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Printed in the United States of America 95 94 93 92 91 C 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Pocius, Gerald L. A place to belong: community order and everyday space in Calvert, Newfoundland/Gerald L. Pocius. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8203-1330-0 (alk. paper) 1. Calvert (Nfld.)—Social conditions. 2. Calvert (Nfld.)—Social life and customs. 3. Human ecology— Newfoundland—Calvert. I. Title. HN 110.C35P63 1991 306'.09718—dc2o 91-7334 CIP Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Pocius, Gerald L. A place to belong : community order and every day space in Calvert, Newfoundland Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-0805-8

1. Human geography—Newfoundland—Calvert. 2. Sociology, Rural—Newfoundland—Calvert. 3. Spatial behavior— Newfoundland—Calvert. I. Title. HN110.C29p63 1991 304.2'3 C91-090319-0 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA AVAILABLE

for my landscape teachers,

Henry Glassie and John J. Mannion

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We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

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Contents

List of Tables

xi

Preface xiii Acknowledgments xvii PART ONE

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Chapter One

Places to Belong

3

Chapter Two

Places in History

26

PART TWO

PRODUCING SPACES

Chapter Three Landscapes and Gender Chapter Four

Property and Work

59

102

PART THREE CONSUMING SPACES \53

Chapter Five

Settlement Clusters to Visit

Chapter Six

Houses

Chapter Seven

Interiors and Exteriors

Conclusion

The Spaces Between Tradition and Modernity 272

197 227

Notes 301 Bibliography of Published Sources 327 Index ix

345

CONTENTS

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Tables 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

xi

Population of Caplin Bay, 1676 32 Census of Capeland Bay, 1800 33 Categories of time in Calvert's past 43 Mediation of Calvert's historical concerns 53 Names of early residents found on the landscape 87 Calvert Place-names with English or Irish backgrounds 88 Major furniture items in three Calvert houses 229

TABLES

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Preface

This

is a study of cultural space in one particular Newfoundland community—Calvert. In 1968 I first visited Newfoundland, wanting to travel to a place different from the ubiquitous suburban landscapes of my childhood. I came partly out of curiosity, and I quickly became fascinated with a landscape dimly seen through the fog and rain as the ferry arrived at Port aux Basques that early July morning. Here were a people living with a terrain and climate barely hospitable, and ecological constraints could not explain the order of the spaces that I was seeing for the first time. Years later I moved permanently to Newfoundland, never having expected on my first trip almost ten years before that I would ever be more than a visitor. Over the years, I became more and more interested in the study of landscapes, and how human beings socially construct the spaces in which they live. But along with this concern, I realized that to understand Newfoundland cultural space, I would have to deal with a fundamental dichotomy that runs through much of Western scholarship: the perceived difference between traditional and modern cultures. I became convinced in my study of Calvert spaces that many theories of modernity are inadequate. My book, then, has become as much a critique of life in what is often considered by the modern world a traditional culture—not a culture under threat but one in a creative interrelationship between past and present. Since the meaning of present-day spaces primarily interested me, I relied to a large extent on my own participation in day-today life as well as on verbal explanations to understand these complexities. Participant observation and taped interviews provided contemporary ethnographic detail, and family photograph albums, census and court records, land grants, and travelers' accounts added historical background material.1 In many cases, Calvert residents xiii

PREFACE

did not normally think about the issues that I was interested in, unable to articulate the rules of spatial order around them. I asked Doris Sullivan several questions one evening about Calvert's landscape, and her response simply was: "Things like that you never think about." I thus often had to rely on my own formulations about everyday life, testing in daily contexts the assumptions I had about ordinary objects and spaces. I decided to study Calvert— located sixty miles south of Newfoundland's provincial capital of St. John's—and I experienced it, to a large extent, through the eyes of a number of individuals whom I got to know. They answered my questions in countless informal contexts and during more than forty hours of taped formal interviews. All of them contributed to my understanding of the place where they lived. Why did I choose Calvert? When I thought about selecting a community to study, Calvert seemed a logical choice since I knew it relatively well. I first visited there in February 1974, while researching a local singer. Frequent weekend trips throughout the summer of 1975, several prolonged stays during the summers of 1974-80, and periodic visits since then provided the basis for my research. For most of these visits I lived with one family, and through this immediate contact I quickly gained acceptance. I could move easily from house to house when doing my formal interviews, and participated readily in community life. MacEdward Leach had recorded singers in Calvert in the early 1950s, and I initially was known as being interested in the same kinds of things as "Mr. Leach"—understandably, because I often taped my interviews and asked what, in normal circumstances, would be obvious questions to a Calvert resident. By the summer of 1974, I frequently was stopped on the road by a passerby with the question: "What are you at today, Jerry?" followed by an amused smile as I stretched my measuring tape around a house or took "a few snaps." During the summers of 1975-77, I made many short visits to Calvert. I spent most of the summer of 1978 photographing, measuring objects, and interviewing friends—in many cases clarifying information that I had gradually learned over the preceding years, but had not systematically set down on paper, taped, or photographed—never thinking that I would someday "research" Calvert. By the end of the summer of 1979, a preliminary version of this study was complete—much different in form from this present work, although drawing on much of the same data. I made a couple of photocopies, had them bound in paper covers, and gave them to xiv

PREFACE

several of my friends in Calvert. Soon, what became known as "the book on Calvert" began to circulate throughout the community, and many others asked for copies. During much of the summer of 1980,1 conducted a survey of vernacular architecture in the region, while based in Calvert. That survey, and the everyday experiences in Calvert, added to my study. For research in Newfoundland, a focus on community is one of the most fruitful of research methodologies and reflects the approach taken by many studies conducted over the past twenty or so years in the province. Because of the agglomerated settlement pattern that characterizes most Newfoundland outports, their boundaries are quite distinct. Indeed, Calvert is separated on either side by several miles of forest—uninhabited space—and the trip from St. John's to Calvert consists of minute or two drives through intensely settled communities alternating with several miles of nothing but forests and ponds. Whereas in other regions the definition of a particular community might be problematic, boundaries in Newfoundland are clear. And although the social and economic networks of each geographic community extend to neighboring communities, local residents recognize each outport as distinct, with distinguishing social as well as geographic features. In short, there is a local indigenous category of community. So even though my geographic choice of looking at one community might be considered arbitrary, I feel it is the least arbitrary geographic focus for any research in Newfoundland. My study of the spaces in this small community should suggest how vernacular landscapes generally might be investigated. I look at a number of various spatial levels in the community, drawing links between spaces and material culture at each level. First I examine the social activities that contribute to how space in the community is actually produced, with specific units involving particular kinds of knowledge and work. Next I discuss consuming spaces, those filled with mass-produced objects, but still governed by the social relations considered appropriate. The final section deals with the old and new in Calvert, how the total socially constructed landscape reflects attitudes relatively recent or long standing. At the same time, this addresses the more basic issue of tradition within the modern world. For Calvert, finally, is not just another community needing to "catch up" with the rest of modernizing North America. The things of the modern world are there, but looks are deceiving. xv

PREFACE

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Acknowledgments

M

any colleagues and friends are to be thanked for their help and support over the many years that this study has developed. My teachers in folklore obviously shaped my initial theories and methods, and the heads of the Department of Folklore at Memorial University as well as the directors of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive have provided numerous resources that made my work possible: Dan Ben-Amos, David Buchan, Tom Burns, Kenneth S. Goldstein, Herbert Halpert, Violetta Halpert, David Hufford, Dell Hymes, Peter Narvaez, Neil Rosenberg, John Szwed, Dick Tallman, Gerald Thomas, John Widdowson, and Don Yoder. The Department of Folklore's secretaries helped to prepare this manuscript in innumerable ways: Sharon Cochrane, Lin Kirby, and Karen O'Leary. Fieldwork funds from the Department of Folklore supported various field trips to Calvert over the years. A grant from the academic vice-president at Memorial funded a visit to the West Country of England to help clarify the architectural background of Calvert's buildings. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided field expenses for a survey of vernacular architecture in the area, and much of that research appears in this study of Calvert. The president of Memorial University, Leslie Harris, and the dean of arts, Michael Staveley, provided funds to redraw the maps and illustrations. My research on Newfoundland was encouraged and assisted by a number of colleagues here at Memorial: Gordon Handcock, James Hiller, William J. Kirwin, Raymond J. Lahey, Patrick O'Flaherty, Shannon Ryan, and George Story. Colleagues in the Archaeology Unit have, over the years, especially offered advice and constant support, particularly Ralph T. Pastore and James A. Tuck. Walter xvii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Peddle of the Newfoundland Museum has served as one of my most important tutors on Newfoundland culture. Photographic Services of Educational Television at Memorial has supplied high-quality reproductions, in spite of often impossible deadlines; Ben Hansen, Jack Martin, and their staff are to be thanked. Most of the maps and illustrations for the book were designed and drawn by Gary McManus and the MUN Cartographic Laboratory; their quality makes it obvious why the MUNCL is among the leading cartography labs in North America. The staffs of Memorial University's Queen Elizabeth II Library, the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador—especially Tony Murphy and Edward Tompkins—and the Newfoundland Museum have all provided courteous help whenever needed. Computing Services personnel at Memorial University have kept my hardware and software in order, and have patiently answered my mundane questions; especially helpful were Jiri Husa, Alan Kearley, Phil Kirby, and John Read. The archivists of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive have helped me locate numerous studies relating to Calvert: Patti Fulton, Philip Hiscock, and Paul Mercer. The current director, Martin J. Lovelace, granted permission for the use of these MUNFLA contributions. Figure I, an aerial photograph, © 1978 Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, is reproduced from the collection of the National Air Photo Library with permission of Energy, Mines and Resources Canada, Ottawa. James Yonge's map of Caplin Bay appears with the permission of Commander P. E. Yonge and was provided courtesy of P. Smith of the Plymouth Athenaeum, Plymouth, Devon. Figures 112 and 113, building plans, are included courtesy of Ed Noseworthy, Chester Dawe Ltd., St. John's. Colleagues throughout North America have kept me happy in my work over the years with references, advice, and words of encouragement. These include Charles Bergengren, Simon Bronner, Hal Cannon, Thomas Carter, Laurel Doucette, Elaine Eff, Peter Ennals, Sara Selene Faulds, Burt Feintuch, Bernard L. Herman, Sandy Ives, Michael Owen Jones, Richard MacKinnon, Eugene Metcalf, Shelley Posen, Warren Roberts, Caroline H. Roston, Brian Rusted, Robert B. St. George, Gary Stanton, Michael Taft, David A. Taylor, Mary Tivy, Diane Tye, Dell Upton, John M. Vlach, and Michael Ann Williams. Preliminary drafts of this study were read by a number of xviii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

friends, and their comments shaped the book, improving it in many ways: Christine Cartwright, Alan Gowans, Bernard L. Herman, William Kelso, Robert B. St. George, Denis Sullivan, and especially Miles Richardson. John McGuigan offered useful guidance that led to this book finally seeing the light of day. Malcolm Call at the University of Georgia Press has been the model editor to work with at all stages of this project; Debra Winter, Madelaine Cooke, and Sandy Hudson at the Georgia Press offered superb advice in turning my manuscript into a book; Cynthia Carter Ayres acted as an astute and perceptive editor, greatly improving so many sections of my study. My family has given me remarkable love and support; my parents—Lewis and Val—provided the word processor and a lake view for the final revision, and my brother, Ron, furnished needed supplies as well as the Cowboy Junkies. Heather Pocius drew the preliminary versions of the maps and helped with love and support as this study progressed. Henry Classic and John Mannion guided my work on Newfoundland landscapes, making me recognize the richness of place; their intellectual influence on me is profound, and it is fitting that I dedicate this book to them. Shane O'Dea, a colleague at the Centre for Material Culture Studies at Memorial, has offered support and guidance and continues to serve as a source of inspiration in my work. He is grateful that he will not have to read one more revision. Finally, the people of Calvert opened their doors to me, patiently answered my questions, and shared hospitality and love. Those who helped include: Chris and Sheila Boland, France and Kit Boland, John Boland, Robert and Diane Boland, Will Boland, Eddie and Anne Brophy, Len and Marcella Canning, Mike Clancy, Tom Clancy, Bertie and Bridie Condon, Josephine Condon, Kevin and Harriet Condon, Ronald Condon, Bob and Jean Anne Gollop, Bill and Alice Hayden, Aidan and Mary Ellen Kavanagh, Edward and Rhoda Keough, Maggie Keough, Robert and Marion Ledwell, Vince and Monica Ledwell, Wayne Ledwell, Bennie and Aggie Murphy, Mary Murphy, Mikey Murphy, John and Shirley O'Brien, Clarence and Annie O'Toole, Desie and Monnie Paul, Greg Power, Harold and Evelyn Power, Tom and Ellie Power, Jose Reddigan, Vince and Madeleine Reddigan, Jeanette Roche, Essie Rossiter, Hanorah Rossiter, Austin Ryan, John Ryan, Adrian and Dot Sullivan, Aidan and Maude Sullivan, Blair Sullivan, Chris xix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

and Sheila Sullivan, Clarence and Denise Sullivan, Colin and Louise Sullivan, Connie and Eileen Sullivan, Craig Sullivan, Cyril and Jean Sullivan, Denis Sullivan, Denise Sullivan, Eddie Sullivan, Elaine Sullivan, Fabian Sullivan, Fred and Marie Sullivan, Gerard and Sheila Sullivan, Harold and Catherine Sullivan, Jackie Sullivan, Jimmy and Michelle Sullivan, Johnny and Maggie Sullivan, Kevin and Stella Sullivan, Larry and Kitty Sullivan, Laurie and Diane Sullivan, Len and Diane Sullivan, Lloyd and Linda Sullivan, Lorraine Sullivan, Mike Sullivan, Noel and Gen Sullivan, Patrice Sullivan, Rita Sullivan, Rob and Alice Sullivan, Rodney Sullivan, Ross Sullivan, Shannon Sullivan, Stevie and Regina Sullivan, Theresa Sullivan, Tommy and Darlene Sullivan, Vincent and Kitty Sullivan, Alfred and Betty Swain, Dorothy Swain, Jack Swain, Mary Margaret Swain, Peter and Carmel Swain, Thomas Swain, Ambrose Walsh, Kevie and Diane Walsh, Kevin Walsh, Leo and Ella Walsh, Neil Walsh, Phonse Walsh, Shawn Walsh, and especially Tom, Ida, and Doris Sullivan. They are the real authors of this book.

xx

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PART ONE Preliminary Places

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CHAPTER ONE

Places to Belong

Alongdepharboindetsaprticularspot nherocky

long deep harbor indents a particular spot on the rocky eastern coast of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula, one of the thousands of cuts that create sheltered water spaces on the edges of the sprawling island (figure I); during Capt. James Cook's survey of the area in the early 1760s, he called the harbor "the most remarkable of this coast."[ The bay is more than two miles long— local people claim two miles and two feet—and almost a mile wide, with stunted spruce and fir trees encroaching its cliff-lined edges. Around the inner part of the bay people have lived for generations, creating the landscape that makes up this place called Calvert. Back up on the hills overlooking the water, green patches of forest and bog stretch for miles, northward toward Cape Broyle, southward to Ferryland. To the west, for 150 miles, the forest loses itself in wilderness, a space dotted with broad expanses, few names, and fewer uses. The drive south from the provincial capital of St. John's takes about an hour and a half, with the road winding back toward the sea after traveling inland over these bogs and forests (figure 2). This Newfoundland community of slightly fewer than five hundred people is lived as a series of spaces, each filled with sights and sounds, objects placed appropriately. Calvert residents do not speak of living there; rather, each individual "belongs" to the community. In Newfoundland generally, you do not live in a town, you "belong to" a place; you are not asked where you live, but rather, where you belong to.2 Belonging, then, is directly tied both linguistically and experientially to place, and in a community like Calvert this means sharing the knowledge of a series of common spaces. Calvert residents see the familiar around the harbor; close to the 3

PLACES TO BELONG

Figure i. Aerial view ofCalvert. (Courtesy of National Air Photo Library, Energy, Mines and Resources Canada, Roll Number A250$2.)

Figure 2. Looking across the bay at the north side of Calvert from the High Road.

4

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure3. Tom Sullivan's cow Beauty wandering up Sullivan's Lane.

edges on cleared patches of land the houses nestle, built along the single road that skirts the water's edge. One can walk along this road, walk along it for the three or so miles, and see all the houses that make up the clustered settlement pattern of the community. One can see and be seen, for faces will peer out of windows to observe the passersby, whether stranger or friend. House is located close to house, stable to stable, house to stable. Nearer the water, old buildings where fishing gear is stored still stand, some in good repair, others not. To those unfamiliar with the place, the landscape seems confused; the order of experience often looks like chaos to an outsider.3 The order of ownership appears to have given way to the disorder of use: stable in the front yard of a house, house close to another with space to spare. No clear lines exist, no clear beginnings or ends, just meadows, gardens, lawns, paths; cattle here, sheep there, sometimes penned in, other times roaming the lanes. Horses graze on the roads, cows near houses, waiting to be milked or left to wander (figure 3).

5

PLACES TO BELONG

Figure 4. Tom and Rob Sullivan having a cup of tea in the woods after a morning's work.

Yet, within this apparent confusion, residents know the order that makes all places familiar. Men walk into the woods, cut for several hours, and then eat a hearty lunch before resuming their work (figure 4). Out in the harbor, a boat steams quickly to its own fishing space even in the fog (figure 5), and men reach down into the icy water to slowly haul a net filled with cod (figure 6). Visitors are frequent, always arriving at the back door, where entry is made without knocking, simply a few steps into a kitchen. Kitchens are warm, noisy, crowded, filled with many people and few objects. And the stranger is usually ushered into the parlor (figure 7): cold, dark, cluttered with things, not persons, a space with formal chairs, formal conversations, formal drinks, where ancestors stare silently at visitors (figure 8). One never sees the upstairs, the bedrooms— places for sleep and little else—filled with objects functional, plain, personal (figure 9). Calvert is this: clustered settlement, crowded kitchen, cluttered parlor. Fields are worked here and there, friends visit next door or across the harbor, wood is cut and left in the 6

PRELIMINARY PLACES

forest for half the year—untouched. Travel is by foot, by horse and sled (slide), by pickup. Teenagers walk the road to visit, to court, to watch others. The textures of artifacts quickly change as one moves from outdoors to indoors: fences with bark still on the rails, a painted house facade (figure 10), shiny varnished ceilings. The sharing of a cluster of spaces links those who "belong to" Calvert: spaces filled with the human acts of entertainment, solemnity, and subsistence. Mr. John Ryan rhymes off the recitation about the mummers as a bottle of black Demerara rum travels the spotless kitchen.4 Aidan Sullivan is waked in his front room, a stream of neighbors, relatives, and friends wishing the family condolences, some whispering a prayer. But others repeat humorous anecdotes about Aidan: he would no doubt sit up in his coffin if his old nemesis, politician John Crosbie, came to pay respects. Tom Sullivan squeezes the last drop of milk from the family cow Rose, who shifts impatiently during the daily ordeal that takes place in the family's stable just a few short steps from the house. The land and the sea are still crucial for Calvert's daily life. For the shiny kitchen wood stoves, young men cut black spruce along the steep faces of Cape Broyle Head in the fall of the year; families pick partridgeberries near the marshes or on the islands in the harbor on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon; brothers and sisters both lend a hand to make the hay on hot July days. In short, Calvert, like other Newfoundland communities, is a bewildering mixture to the stranger of rooms, yards, fields, and forests. Daily experience fragments for the scholar into categories like "artifact" or "space," but for Larry Sullivan hauling wood with horse and slide on a snowy November morning, knowledge is not abstract but an experiential series of familiar places: the morning kitchen warmth from the crackling stove and bubbling tea, a step to the outside and the cold air, a few steps to the stable where the horse waits, and finally the ride down River Path to the patches in the woods where good timber can be cut. Where one belongs to, the place of home, is fundamentally a series of emotionally based meaningful spaces.5 The concern of this book, then, is what I believe to be the central organizing feature of Calvert daily life: space. After researching many different kinds of artifacts over the past two decades in Newfoundland, I began to realize that where people actually placed objects, how they organized the spaces of their day-to-day life through those artifacts, was more fundamental. Although spatial relations are part of any artifact ethnography, material culture 7

PLACES TO BELONG

Figure 5. Heading toward a trap berth in the early morning fog.

studies sometimes start by choosing a particular category of object—houses, furniture, textiles—and then discuss them in their wider spatial matrix. I realized that I had to understand a people's material world in a different way: to start with space and discover the social relations that individual objects fostered within that space. Whereas much research on Newfoundland has focused oddly on "rituals that may be performed once or twice a year" as somehow representing the "quintessential realms" of the culture, I was more concerned with the ordinary and the everyday—in this case, the structure of space.6 Part of my decision to focus on spaces and the artifact patterning within them had to do with the current direction of material culture studies. Artifact research in North America often focuses on historical European objects and explains past behaviors by using social theories worked out in the ethnographic contexts of other cultures. Insights from the fieldwork of Clifford Geertz in Bali, Victor Turner in Zambia, or Claude Levi-Strauss in Brazil are transferred to a house or a chair built by an eighteenth-century farmer of English ancestry living in North America.7 The everyday 8

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure 6. Jimmy and Kevin Sullivan hauling a cod trap.

objects of our European ancestors are often studied by researchers who have no extensive experience in actually doing ethnography, and who may well not realize the problems of bending the theories derived from ethnography conducted in other cultures to fit our own recent past. Ironically, within anthropology—where many of the theories currently used in artifact research have developed—material culture is essentially neglected by ethnologists,8 and only ethnological studies of ecology touch on the material world. Those scholars in9

PLACES TO BELONG

Figure 7. The front room of Hanorah Rossiter's house.

terested in things end up working as archaeologists;9 by necessity, then, their methods are often shaped by the unique form of an archaeological data base: interpreting objects without an opportunity to observe how they were used. In recent years, under the rubric of ethnoarchaeology, archaeologists have begun to borrow from contemporary fieldwork in order to interpret the archaeological past.10 But these studies must by necessity concentrate on aspects of current artifact use that parallel the archaeological evidence, so as to understand past behaviors. Few material culture researchers—either historians or archaeologists—both have a detailed knowledge of the characteristics of typical North American historical artifacts and have conducted contemporary ethnographies involving similar kinds of objects. While archaeologists were attempting to cautiously apply the findings of ethnologists to their studies of similar historical objects, I realized that in my own work in Newfoundland I was doing the opposite. I was relying primarily on a number of standard studies 10

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure 8. Family photograph in Tom Clancy's front room.

of the historical artifact to interpret how similar objects were now being used. It was clear how problematic this was. My decision to conduct an ethnography of cultural space comes from a desire to combine the methods of both fieldwork and object-centered research in order to provide an alternative approach for current material culture work, cautioning scholars who research historical objects yet rarely study living cultures. Many of the artifacts used in Newfoundland were those I had read about in historical studies; yet in Calvert the same objects had vastly different meanings than similar objects used in distant times that had been interpreted using theories based on fieldwork in very different cultures. Looking specifically at Newfoundland over the years, many researchers have assumed that it occupies some vestigial role in North American culture—much like such regional cultures as Appalachia. Because Newfoundland culture is often thought to be geographically and economically marginal, the landscape is seen to be littered with artifact survivals. Small Newfoundland communities are considered the epitome of Robert Redfield's folk society, and scholars hope to investigate disappearing practices, archaic survivals (such as verbal genres), and technologies assumed to be the remnants of preindustrial work routines. Such cultural traits are assumed to be threatened by change and rapidly disappearing—so many argue—with outside contact and economic prosperity. The threat to these indigenous cultural traits presumably comes from the mass consumerism of the late twentieth century with its modern houses, cars, VCRs, cable television, and easy access to a wide range of manufactured goods. The obvious reaction is that Newfoundland's vestigial culture has only recently vanished, and that scattered survivals—be they oral, customary, or artifactual—still can be found. I myself saw modern objects filling the houses of the people I studied and initially assumed—true to the tradition of much social science research—that the influx of mass-produced goods had negatively affected indigenous culture. Much that I had read led me to what I later realized was a naive view of material goods. Incorporation of new objects into a culture did not necessarily mean that they would have a negative impact, and in fact, they were often accepted because they appropriately coincided with existing values. Scholarship often makes a distinction between the attitudes of traditional and modern societies: the former rejecting, the latter accepting innovation. Either I could assume that modern 11

PLACES TO BELONG

Figure 9. Vince Ledivell discussing a chest of drawers in his bedroom.

objects in Calvert meant that local culture was, indeed, rapidly becoming like other parts of North America, or I could pay more attention to the attitudes that structured spaces. Some items of material culture were certainly new, but much of the moral culture— to use Robert Redfield's notion—I observed more closely fitted the stereotypes of traditional societies.11 Newfoundlanders owned many of the modern material goods that cultural critics point to as symptoms of mass consumerism, yet the relative value placed on these artifacts seemed different from that of other regions. My di12

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure 10. The stark facade of the typical turn-of-the-century Calvert house, owned by Tom and Ida Sullivan.

lemma was clear: Newfoundlanders owned many of the artifacts that so many people in other parts of the Western world did, but their daily culture was often remarkably different. I had to understand objects, then, not just as isolated survivals of an earlier culture, but as products of a more fundamental spatial system. My concern with space also made it clear that whether objects were made locally or were mass-produced and imported made little difference when everyday spaces were examined. Some spaces were produced through certain cognitive orderings as well as attitudes toward resource sharing, and these spaces were often rilled with local artifacts. Yet a number of spaces were ordered with massproduced objects, and this ordering reflected local beliefs as much as any indigenous object would. I realized that I had to be concerned with both producers and consumers in order to understand spatial meaning. How a group appropriates an artifact and attaches a cultural value to it becomes as revealing as the design of the artifact. Cultural consumption was obviously not limited to the intentions of those who produce, be it with object or space.12 There were other reasons why I wanted to understand the eth13

PLACES TO BELONG

nographic dimensions of the contemporary spatial organization of objects. A number of important recent material culture studies had claimed that major changes in historical objects reflected a profound cognitive shift in Western society. Several had argued that a medieval organic community worldview was transformed into a modern mechanistic individualized order, displaying both an increasing visual order as well as spatial segmentation, all mirroring a major shift from community culture to individualistic norms. The rise of Georgian house forms, the use of a number of individual serving vessels in daily eating, the emphasis on the individual in burial practices and iconography, the shift from communal to individual types of furniture—all material signs, so it seemed, pointed to the emergence of the individualistic worldview characteristic of contemporary Western society.13 When people decided to finally break with the medieval worldview, so the argument goes, the signs of that break would be this new order of material culture. But was it possible that such a cognitive shift and its attendant structuring of the material world had emerged in only specific places—such as the major centers of industrial capitalism—or was led by certain elites—such as the literate, the monied, or the articulate—and that it was not pervasive? Could it be that this change in the artifact world had not permeated other societies—those removed economically or geographically from the centers of such revolutions? Could the new object forms produced by dominant cultures have been adopted and altered by what have often been labeled peripheral groups without necessarily reflecting the profound cognitive reordering of the originating culture? Studies on the role of modern technology in indigenous cultures often take an implicitly negative view of the impact of new things on existing ways. Exemplified by the classic account of the detrimental impact of steel axes on Australian aboriginal culture,14 such research assumes that the introduction of any new thing will automatically cause social disruption and move a people one step closer to assimilation with mass culture. Typical are the sentiments of one theorist who points to an ever increasing homogenization of culture brought on by "big government, national education, information networks, and a worldwide marketing system," resulting in a cultural "grey-out" where few differences are evident among peoples.15 Machinery and mass-produced goods, and the increased use of cash, according to such a view, lead quickly to cultural decline.16 Yet in spite of these assumptions about material goods, I realized that new artifacts 14

PRELIMINARY PLACES

were often incorporated into Calvert culture only when they were compatible with existing spatial values, past experiences, and needs.17 People in one culture, in fact, might adopt artifact innovations from another culture, but use them for purposes other than those for which they originally were intended. Certainly this has been the case with contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples around the world. Native Americans borrowed Western objects and used them to suit their own cultural needs in ways other than those originally intended. Beothuks in Newfoundland used discarded nails to make projectile points, which they formerly had chipped out of stone.18 Even in Western historical contexts, an innovation did not necessarily have a cultural consequence, for example, when rye was substituted for wheat or barley in medieval France. Some traditional societies are open to innovations and quite easily incorporate them into existing norms.19 Could the same dynamics occur within what were often labeled as conservative Western folk groups? I had seen the objects of the modern world used in many small Newfoundland communities, but in ways vastly different from their makers' or designers' original intent— and from artifact researchers' interpretation of them in other regions. With these questions in mind I turned to ethnography in the region I knew best for answers. Much of my thinking about material culture had been shaped by my Newfoundland fieldwork. Even today, many Newfoundland communities seem to have those characteristics often considered typical of traditional cultures: they are usually based on kinship ties, free access to resources, little social differentiation and specialization, and a high degree of social equality.20 One of my folklore friends once remarked that all fieldworkers should conduct ethnography in Newfoundland in order to learn what a folk community really is like. Unlike many face-to-face societies, however, Newfoundlanders were not isolated, they commonly traveled to other regions, and although not wealthy they enjoyed a reasonable economic income. Their day-to-day life, then, could not be explained by geographic isolation or economic need. People were not living a vestige of an earlier cultural life that would soon disappear with wealth and outside contact. Indeed, although theorists have sometimes argued that the first cause of a modernistic worldview is an increase in geographic mobility, Newfoundlanders in places like Calvert were a highly mobile people before the advent of the auto15

PLACES TO BELONG

mobile.21 With transportation by sea available to every community resident, and the first hundred years of English contact marked by a migratory fishery, Calvert residents in the past often traveled more than their present-day descendants. Mobility is not a recent norm introduced by modern means of travel. In short, then, many aspects of daily life seemed to fit the typical models of peasant societies, whereas other aspects epitomized modern mass culture. But what about the specifics of the community I studied? Calvert is much like the other communities located along this stretch of coast south of St. John's known as the Southern Shore. Permanent English settlement dates to the early seventeenth century—the same time that other English folk were arriving in Massachusetts and Virginia. From the start, West Country Englishmen played a major financial role in the settlement process, but as the eighteenth century wore on, migrants from Ireland were joining their ranks. By the nineteenth century, a majority of residents could trace their ancestors back to southeastern Ireland, and culturally the region had become predominantly Irish.22 Many of the established English families moved on or intermarried, and their presence is visible today mainly on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gravestones in the region's cemeteries (figure 11). Like all communities on the Shore, then, Calvert is Irish and Roman Catholic. Calvert's livelihood is primarily dependent on the sea. Men fish in small boats—trap skiffs—generally around twenty-five feet in length. Cod is the mainstay of the fishery, caught in boxlike nets (traps) during the short summer fishery that lasts from June through September; during these four months the stocks migrate into the many harbors and coves all over the island. Each crew (consisting of two to four men—often brothers or cousins) has one or two cod traps, which are hauled twice a day, morning and evening, six days a week. In the past, the cod was soaked in salt brine and then sun dried, but now it is sold fresh to local processors who quickly freeze and ship it by the tractor-trailer load to "the States." Interspersed with fishing, some families keep livestock, set vegetables, and tend gardens. In the winter months, nets are mended, fishing gear repaired, and the necessary boat built. Wood is cut, as well, for next year's building projects and next year's heat. Rarely do men work outside the community, except for a handful who are employed at a nearby fish plant. Many Newfoundland communities have similar histories and even today are based on resource sharing. And space structures so much of Calvert's culture, I believe, because the entire commu16

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure n. Gravestone in the old Ferryland cemetery of Esther Graham Merry, daughter of Matthew and Ann Morry; she died November 25, 1810.

nity's daily existence is based fundamentally on the spatial concerns of shared resources. Unlike urban or suburban communities, where people simply reside in close proximity to one another, Calvert's residents depend on the equal allocation of resources in their midst for daily livelihood. Indeed, most studies of urban and suburban cultures provide little insight into Calvert's settlement pattern, which appears similar superficially, because such research pays little or no attention to ecological and environmental factors.23 Calvert residents both live and work in one space and must share a series of resources. Like most people in Newfoundland communities, Calvert residents do not manage their resources; rather, they manage their space.24 The prime resource of the fishery is equally divided, everyone having a fair share of the water rights of Calvert harbor. Most residents' contact with the market economy, then, is on an equal basis. The same is true with subsistence activities on the land. Forest and agricultural spaces are allocated so that general community livelihood is ensured, in contradistinction to the common Western pattern, which guarantees individual livelihood through the institution of private property. The sense of commu17

PLACES TO BELONG

nity cohesiveness is enhanced not only by this common property situation, but also by the people of Calvert having the exclusive right to secure these resources. Common property and common resource usage are social institutions that permeate other aspects of daily life.25 Participation in community life is accompanied by user rights for community resources. This spatial commonality, in turn, shapes the artifacts that are incorporated into the community: new things that would facilitate the sharing of resources can be accepted, objects that would strain the community toward competition have little impact. When new objects find their way into the community, they must be subservient to this commonality of space use, no matter how they might be used in the context of other cultures. Sharing of resources acts to discourage the accumulation of goods not considered essential, especially with what is primarily an egalitarian economic base.26 Calvert is not so much a material as a spatial culture, since the essence of its fundamental livelihood is a commonality of space. The social relations contained in those spaces shape both artifact choice and placement and ultimately group relations. The sharing of space, then, is the metaphor for all of Calvert life. For people who belong to Calvert, their immediate spatial concerns surround them in day-to-day life; within each space certain appropriate activities literally take place. But many other Newfoundlanders perceive threats to the everyday culture that revolves around such spaces that produce a unique place. Many Newfoundlanders grew up in communities like Calvert, but in recent years have moved to cities and towns across the province. And from these new locations, many see themselves and the places they left, like Calvert, caught in the throes of change brought on by the influences of the modern world. Many Newfoundlanders wonder whether they indeed belong anywhere, whether they have a place to call home. Not surprisingly, the idea of nostalgia originally meant a feeling of homesickness—the desire for home space—and the nature of Newfoundland's cultural identity has become linked inextricably to the experience of place.27 Trying to describe the essence of Newfoundland culture, many writers have turned time and time again to the question of place, remembering how they once lived in a community where every spatial detail was known and shared. Sense of community belonging is tied to specific places like Calvert. One leading commentator on Newfoundland culture remarked: "We were on an island and 18

PRELIMINARY PLACES

stayed there most of the year but it gave us the opportunity to learn and love one spot of God's earth well and to call it our own."28 In sacrificing their place-related identity, Newfoundlanders sometimes see themselves torn between holding on to what is important and incorporating the benefits of the late-twentieth-century industrialized world. Some writers have seen this as a clear struggle between "traditional" and "modern" worldviews.29 Many see cultural change as a diminishment of activities fostered by places like Calvert. Sharing spaces in a community meant sharing social obligations, and once daily life did not depend on commonality of resource space, new values had to be fabricated. Some believe that ties to this network of community and therefore social space were typical in a not-so-distant era: before Confederation with Canada in 1949. For others, leaving places like Calvert was a matter not of political vote but of government policy during a community resettlement program. Ideal places are often believed to have existed, then, before what are seen as the upheavals of these two major events: Confederation and resettlement. Colonized in the seventeenth century, Newfoundland was an independent territory of the British Empire, achieving selfgovernment in 1832. However, a number of overambitious development schemes had brought the colony to bankruptcy by 1933. Britain agreed to resume financial responsibility in 1934, but in return the colony had to give up the right to govern itself.30 In the late 19405, the governing commission held a referendum to determine the future status of the colony, and residents voted for Confederation with Canada. Newfoundland became the tenth province of Canada in 1949, one of the few cases in recent history where a nation voluntarily relinquished its sovereign status to join a larger country. Increasingly, however, some Newfoundlanders question the wisdom of that decision, feeling that economic stability was achieved at the expense of local culture. Indeed, Confederation with Canada in 1949 is viewed by some as a major blunder that opened the floodgates to let in all forms of "mindless vulgarity," eroding everything considered distinctively Newfoundland.31 For many, pre-Confederation life is thought of in the same nostalgic vein as a European homeland for other New World immigrants—a homeland that sometimes was left because of economic or political turmoil. In Newfoundland, life before Confederation is often perceived to have been simple, less complicated than today, and—although people were poor—the culture was intact. The 19

PLACES TO BELONG

transition from Newfoundland's quasi-independent status in 1949 to becoming part of Canada is surrounded by the same ambivalent rhetoric that other North American cultures have used when looking back at their own European origins. Like the Highland Clearances for the Scots or the famine for the Irish, Confederation is considered the great catastrophe that is blamed for much perceived cultural decline, where people were forced to leave one way of life and accept another. All things local were downplayed or discarded, so it is assumed, after Confederation. Typical of this sentiment is a comment made to one artifact researcher in explaining the disappearance of locally made objects: "After Confederation a scull of fellas came from the Mainland, mostly from Quebec. [Locally made furniture is] all on the Mainland now."32 Although Newfoundland society was going through the same basic changes as much of North America at the time, today any cultural change can be attributed to Confederation, rather than to the broader forces of technology, education, and economics. Declines in distinctive aspects of Newfoundland culture—such as subsistence gardening—were blamed by the province's recent nationalistic leader on joining Canada, rather than on a general North American trend away from such activities.33 Gerald Squires, one of Newfoundland's leading visual artists, is more direct in this criticism: "You see, in 1949, Newfoundlanders were made to feel the most inferior people in North America. As if there were some great monster out there telling us we were 200 years behind the times."34 Many Newfoundlanders willingly left the places where they were born to experience an everyday life where commonality of habitat and resource played little part. After Confederation with Canada, the provincial government began to expand the network of roads, as well as the educational, health, and welfare benefits available throughout Newfoundland. By the mid-1950s, a number of people living in communities on isolated islands and remote coves realized that they could be closer to these new services by moving into larger regional centers. The provincial government soon realized, as well, the benefits of not having to provide services for these remote communities, and offered cash incentives to families who would resettle. This Centralisation Programme, as it became known, was strictly voluntary, and between 1954 and 1965, 110 settlements were abandoned and more than 8,000 people moved.35 In 1965, however, the government became much more actively involved, with direct pressure on particular communities 20

PRELIMINARY PLACES

to resettle. The Fisheries Household Resettlement Programme was started, with increased cash incentives and the encouragement of immigration to specific "growth centers." During the five-year period up to 1970, 119 communities were moved, and from 1954 to 1972, more than 27,000 people left the places where they belonged. Initially, as several researchers found, few people disagreed with the idea of resettlement per se, only with the administrative mechanisms used.36 But disrupting the ties of place gradually had a major impact on cultural perceptions, for communities and the way of life that remained soon became traditionalized—like pre-Confederation life—as the genuine Newfoundland culture. Indeed, during the provincial election campaigns of 1971 and 1972, the resettlement program became a major issue, and the reigning political party suffered defeat, partly because of its relocation policies. By 1974, a new government had abandoned plans to continue the program. The loss of a perceived way of life due to resettlement surfaces in the popular culture of today; one song dealing with resettlement, for example, comments: They're outpon people with outport ways, But there's nowhere to use them, and now it's too late, And they curse on the ones who uttered the phrase, Resettlement now while resettlement pays. He sits on the dock and he looks cross the Bay, And he watches his memories, as they pass on the waves, And he wonders what cards fate might have dealt, If he'd told those officials to go straight to hell.37

Like pre-Confederation times, life before resettlement was filled with daily connections with common places, which were no longer experienced after resettlement in strange and modern towns. Newfoundland music, painting, and literature all increasingly focused on the theme of resettlement—what was essentially a disruption of place—as leading artists pointed to this particular government program as a destroyer of culture. Not surprisingly, then, many of those at the forefront of a Newfoundland cultural revival, although they may have willingly left their home communities, later became disturbed by their resettlement and by the program generally. These cultural critics now have no home to go back to, no real place where they belong.38 21

PLACES TO BELONG

How changes in Newfoundland culture are perceived has to do, then, with the nature of place in daily life. When a daily sharing of resources and space disappears, it is now replaced with a series of objectified items of culture that are removed from the social matrix of everyday life.39 Culture appears as a series of discrete items labeled "authentic tradition," canonized by what one writer has called local "culture vultures" who are looked to as cultural imprimaturs.40 Once the necessity of sharing resources and space no longer exists, a new culture must be invented that can be easily seen and is not dependent on face-to-face group knowledge. Culture change is then thought to be measurable by the sheer persistence of such discrete items. Culture is removed from any spatial matrix and transferred onto things that can be delineated, recorded, and therefore simplistically preserved. For Newfoundlanders no longer tied to place, what is considered the authentic essence of indigenous life has become objectified as expressive cultural forms: wonder tales, broadside ballads, mummers plays, fiddle music—and locally made rural outport objects. These forms presumably have not completely disappeared in Newfoundland, but are still "viable" in the "isolated" Newfoundland outport.41 Considered the essence of the "old culture," such survivals can be gathered from elderly persons, in an attempt to rescue the last stages of a distinct culture from oblivion before the outside world destroys them. Books on what are perceived as vanishing preindustrial technologies have become popular, championing a "way of life" different from that of urbanites and outsiders who often are at the forefront of promoting such studies. Simple handicrafts like rug hooking, coopering, or wool spinning have become embodiments of past culture.42 One folk-song collector in the 19605 remarked on the almost "tribal life" of the Newfoundland outport, where "natural law" governed and the best gems of this rapidly disappearing culture could still be mined. To him, Newfoundland was a "neo-primitive white culture."43 The golden cultural past for some, then, has become embodied in the expressions of amusement and entertainment. Literary writers have also focused on this lighter aspect of past life—wit and humor—with all the pain filtered out. The "hardship, dependence, poverty, isolation, and peril" of the past disappeared in a glorification of behaviors whose documentation would, it was hoped, slow the forces of change.44 The disappearance of older objects theoretically indicates the decline of older cultural attitudes, so that preservation of ob22

PRELIMINARY PLACES

jects is viewed as necessary to ensure the persistence of the culture. One heritage writer argued that essentially belonging is tied not to place but to the survival of artifacts, and that communities that discard old things discard indigenous culture; such communities "will soon lose all identity with Newfoundland's history, and simply become another place to live."45 Identity is believed to be tied to the things of place, rather than the place of shared spaces. Objectified Newfoundland culture removes items from the context of their social obligations so they can be exhibited, displayed, or performed in new social networks, all having little resemblance to their original function. This common focus promoted by revivalists—who are often referred to as "professional Newfoundlanders"—on concrete things has led to "the image of the old outport current in some quarters as a haven of bards, story-tellers, dancers, jokers, mummers, punsters, and proverb-makers, all merrily participating in their 'oral culture.'"46 Cultural change in Newfoundland is of concern, then, to people who left places like Calvert and have no place to belong to. Such placeless people (often in the forefront of cultural nationalism in many countries) usually claim that most external influences—including material goods—are disruptive to local culture. Belonging for this group has to be fabricated through easily recognizable items of some pan-Newfoundland culture, where knowledge of items common to all of Newfoundland rather than familiarity with a specific place becomes a measure of social bonding and therefore cultural authenticity. For this group, one does not belong to a place like Calvert through sharing resource space, but to a panNewfoundland culture by sharing agreed-upon indigenous items. As long as you eat cod, know songs like "I'se the Bye," own a daybed or a sideboard, and live in a mansard-roofed nineteenthcentury house, you are living the essence of Newfoundland culture. The belonging of place has given way to the objectification of culture onto certain expressive forms. As the ties of place generally weaken in any region, people perhaps increasingly create objectified signs of their culture, promoting item-oriented activities under rubrics like "folklore" and "heritage." Placeless people may not always attempt to create authentic traditions by isolating objectified things perceived to represent the essence of a group. One group of Newfoundland writers has argued that indigenous culture cannot be linked so simplistically with concrete items. Several critics have claimed that intangible atti23

PLACES TO BELONG

tudes and social obligations are the real, distinctive characteristics of Newfoundland's past, which should be more accurately examined when cultural erosion seems imminent.47 Such advocates believe that modernity can be embraced without fear of outside contamination. Could it be that the social obligations generated from the equal sharing of resources are among the intangible characteristics that dictated the form of Calvert's artifact traditions? Leaving such shared spaces meant leaving social obligations of place. Are the newly objectified symbols of Newfoundland culture really reflective of indigenous concerns? Or is knowing where to place your cod trap or harvest your wood—knowing where, in short, to place yourself-—the fundamental framework for so much of everyday life? Such knowledge cannot be performed on a festival stage or filed away in an archive or museum but might finally be more important than objectified culture. Could the essence of Calvert life—indeed, life in much of Newfoundland—be placing oneself in a particular space and being expected to share that space? These differing interpretations of the cultural changes occurring in Newfoundland do not explain how artifacts relate to place—how objects fit into these contemporary perceptions of the nature of Newfoundland tradition. But just as important, this role has to be understood from the viewpoint of ordinary Newfoundlanders themselves. Recognizing my own ethnocentric notions of the necessity to preserve the artifactual past, I did not want to merely repeat the arguments of item-oriented nativists, who see any influx of consumer objects as another indication of the recent loss of regional identity. I wanted to know whether Newfoundland culture— what appeared at first glance to be a preindustrial culture—had been fundamentally changed by our mass-consumer society. Were the new things before me symptomatic of a culture already changed in other respects? I did not believe that my friends in Calvert should eschew all modern objects so they could lead a museumized existence on the margins of poverty, providing a place for researchers to search for personal images of curious indigenous folkways. One Newfoundlander, recognizing that what often are considered quaint customs are believed to flourish in economically marginal conditions, commented that the implicit attitude among some cultural nationalists is to let "the economy stay down, so that our customs stay up."48 But the material well-being of any people should be capable of enhancement without necessarily destroying important cultural values.491 did not want to naively assert that 24

PRELIMINARY PLACES

particular objects appropriated as "traditional" were now in decline, and that values were as well. Belonging to Calvert, I finally realized, means maintaining a series of spaces that are created again and again in certain ways, and are filled with the appropriate objects for specific kinds of behaviors. Community existence is not just residing in a place, it is belonging—with attendant benefits and obligations. Again and again, with the commonality of resource sharing and the subsequent leveling of the artifact world, this belonging occurs not in terms of material goods but in common spaces. Residents recognize this belonging when they are forced to leave, even temporarily. Denis Sullivan lived in St. John's as a student for several years; when asked about his belonging to Calvert, he replied: "I can nearly feel a kind of almost gentle shift in me, where I was living in St. John's for so many years, right? You went to school and that. . . you don't know if you're as full fledged member as you were, almost . . . as much as the fisherman who's, you know, fishing all the summer and in the woods all the winter. . . . It's not as whole as it was. . . . But still, you'd never say you were from anywhere else." Denis then explained that belonging essentially means this familiarity with spaces: "If a fellow, you know, [was] moose hunting and that, you know, you name up a couple of places. And if you're not familiar with them, you don't feel like asking where exactly is that. You feel like you should know, because you belong to the place." Once the necessity to share space is removed, people are forced to create new images of culture based on things rather than on obligations within shared spaces. Once people decide to leave places, culture becomes objectified. In Newfoundland generally, there is increased interest in a select group of items—stories, songs, and objects—that are believed to embody the essence of indigenous values. But these items now must accumulate meanings even if they are literally "out of place," where people have ceased to "belong to" a community—with its network of social values and obligations. Such items are of most concern to those who, by choice or because of political or economic pressure, no longer have connections with the Calverts of Newfoundland. Much of Newfoundland culture has been place related, but as these places are left, belonging in everyday life must be measured by an accumulation of items, whether verbal or material. But for people in Calvert, belonging is still tied to a series of spaces that make up the place, spaces that extend both throughout the community and back in time. 25

PLACES TO BELONG

CHAPTER TWO

Places in History

A

idan Sullivan jumped into the seat of my pickup, and we slowly pulled away from his house on a hot July afternoon in 1979, riding the several miles to Stone Island. The dirt road was narrow, filled with potholes; branches of spruce and fir trees scraped against the sides of the truck as we drove, producing a faint smell of fresh tree sap. I had asked Aidan about the history of Calvert, the "old days," and he responded by saying "I'll show you." We passed a few cleared fields here and there, but mainly saw forests edging the narrow track; we finally reached a large stretch of meadow that bordered the sea at the end of the road. We got out of the truck, Aidan paused to light a cigarette, and with his nicotine-stained fingers, he pointed to the past. "This is where old Joe Sullivan first lived when he came over from Ireland." A few grass-covered mounds and piles of stones indicated where houses had stood. Faint traces of ridges from potato beds could be seen nearby. We walked over Flake Meadow, now nothing more than a field (figure 12), but obviously in both name and memory a place where fish flakes once were perched. As I stood and tried to imagine this early activity of humans on the landscape, I realized that after asking about the past, I had been shown a place—not a building, a photograph, or a personal possession. Could this be how the past is perceived in Calvert? A number of places that are connected by oral account to specific persons and events? Was there more of the past around me than I had recognized? For any outsider, the first visit to Calvert is not what might be expected. The entire region has seen European settlement since the seventeenth century, and the age of Calvert is not greatly different from that of other early English colonies that dot the east 26

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure 12. Stone Island, with the remains of a summer house on the left. The cleared patch of ground at the right is Flake Meadow.

coast of North America. Calvert should convey the same sense of the past, with just as much artifactual evidence of longevity, so I thought, as a New England village or a Quebec farm. If Calvert's past resided in things, then its physical appearance as a latenineteenth-century community was puzzling, given that settlers lived here from at least the late i6oos. The relatively recent origin of artifacts in this settlement is the end result of a cultural attitude different from other regions of North America that are the same age. Indeed, Calvert has a long chronological history, but one not immediately evident through its surviving objects. We often assume that the past lives on through objects; if we can see tangible products of past behaviors, then there must be a historical continuity. Because our culture connects past deeds with 27

PLACES IN HISTORY

particular things, we feel that by saving these objects we can preserve the past. Yet regions where objects become the visible signs of the past are places where original families have disappeared, where recent migrants with little or no connection with earlier times now live.1 Objects, it seems, become the vehicle through which people with no direct genealogical link to a region attempt to create a sense of the past. In communities like Calvert, however, where continuity with the past exists over several generations, there is less need to consider objects as repositories of earlier ages. The past, instead, lives in memory, and centers around the activities of human beings in particular places. Indeed, some traditional societies make little distinction between recent objects and those used in the distant past; artifacts are simply houses or chairs or rugs, some having seen more use than others.21 first arrived in Calvert looking for older things; but it was the spaces—particular portions of the landscape—that Calvert residents recognized as old. These spaces were old not because of any inherent appearance, but because of the activities that had taken place there that now lived on in local memory. Objects are continually replaced, the new quickly pushing out the old, but the earlier spaces—the sites of earlier actions— remain. Calvert in many ways looks new, but essentially history has settled not on things but on place. By the 15005, migratory fishermen from many different European countries were anchoring in the harbors of the Avalon Peninsula—including Calvert's—pursuing the large schools of cod that blacken the waters during the summer months.3 Although archaeological research has not yet discovered extensive remains from the Basque, Portuguese, or French presence in the area, harbor beaches around Calvert are littered with pipe stems, glass, and ceramics from the seventeenth-century English summer habitations.4 Calvert's history as a settlement certainly is a long one; immigrants were arriving by at least the mid-seventeenth century, when the community was an adjunct to the nearby settlement of Ferryland. As happened in the colonies farther south in what would become the United States, adventurers with different motives sent small parties of colonists to several parts of the Avalon in the early seventeenth century. The most famous colony along this stretch of coast was Ferryland, founded by Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore (whose family were later proprietors of Maryland) in 1621.5 Settlers from Ferryland most likely had contact with Calvert harbor from at least this time. Much controversy surrounds the reasons for Baltimore's attempt to establish Ferryland, some 28

PRELIMINARY PLACES

arguing that the colony was settled for purely economic reasons, others that it was intended to be a haven for religious refugees. Because of financial difficulties, however, Baltimore abandoned the colony, and Sir David Kirke was granted rights to it, ruling between 1638 and 1652. He, too, left because of economic and political difficulties. Although official colonization attempts failed, English fishermen still frequented Ferryland and Calvert harbors during the summer months, leaving behind several men for the winter to watch over buildings and fishing premises. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the Newfoundland fishery was mainly migratory, and the number of permanent settlers remained small. Young men would go to Newfoundland over the summer to make a quick pound, returning to England or Ireland in the fall—migrant workers picking fish instead of fruit. The English fishing vessels that frequented Newfoundland were almost exclusively out of West Country ports, which dominated the fishery at the time. Supplies for the summer voyage—such as foodstuffs—were often obtained from southeastern Irish ports, primarily Waterford and Wexford, convenient stopping-off points for ships headed west. Soon, however, Irish were also recruited as fishermen to join the English crews. Because of the structure of this early fishery, therefore, the men and women who eventually remained permanently in Calvert came from the West Country of England or the southeast of Ireland—a small focused source area for Newfoundland's expanding population. The earliest visitors to Calvert indicate that there were at least summer residences in the harbor by the mid-seventeenth century. The earlier name of the community—Caplin Bay—was listed on John Mason's map of 1629 (figure 13).6 One summer fisherman living in Calvert, John Staughton, testified to visiting officials about Lord Baltimore's recent activities, his account recorded on August 31, i652. 7 James Yonge sailed into Calvert just over ten years after David Kirke's colony in nearby Ferryland had failed in 1652. Although Yonge did not comment on Calvert's inhabitants, his map of the area (figure 14) shows what appears to be a dwelling house at the head of the bay, with two fisheries outbuildings—known as stages—located on the Beach.8 Another stage is located on the north side of the harbor—probably the present-day Merry's Cove. The Caplin Bay planters listed in a 1676 census may well have lived in nearby Ferryland, given the seasonal migratory pattern of many early Newfoundland settlements (table i). These planters had summer shoreline properties (fishing rooms) in Caplin Bay, with 29

PLACES IN HISTORY

Figure /j. Detail of John Mason's 1629 map showing the Avalon Peninsula, including Caplin Bay (Calvert). (Courtesy of Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland.)

30

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure 14. Map ofCaplin Bay (Calvert) from James Yonge's 1662 diary. (Courtesy of the Plymouth Athenaeum and Commander P. E. Yonge.)

31

PLACES IN HISTORY

TABLE ONE Population of Caplin Bay, 1676 Boots

Servants

16

Children

Christopher Pollard and wife

3

4

Jer. Kirke

1

2

John Good and wife

1

4

4

Sam Adams and wife

1

3

3

Henry Dench and wife

1

1

Ezek. Dibbely

9

2

Source: Great Britain, Colonial Office Correspondence, Newfoundland, ser. I, vol. 38, 1676, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's.

servants working for them. One of those listed in the census— Christopher Pollard—had a plantation that was burned by the French in 1697. ^is father, William, was a Bideford merchant who had established a warehouse in the community by the 16705 to supply inhabitants of the harbor. In 1674, "the Dutch plundered Will. Pollard's house . . . of fish, stuff, provisions, and household . . . and burnt 40 fishing boats, warehouses." After the Kirkes, the Pollards had the largest mercantile operation in the area during this period. By 1708, Dibble (probably Dibbely) was the only surname that survived, explained, in part, by the French expulsion of settlers in 1686-1687.9 Throughout the eighteenth century, West Country and Irish fishermen came and went, usually employed by the merchants of nearby Ferryland to fish Calvert harbor during the summer months. Many of these names were recorded by visiting English officials—usually naval commanders—during the summer fishing season when the Royal Navy patrolled the local bays. These summer census returns, as well as later documents, are filled with names that are no longer found in Calvert—Byrne, Foley, Hearne, Houlihan, Howley, Keefe, McNamara, Madden, Sheehey, Stephenson— indicative of how migratory the settlement pattern initially was. The Southern Shore was filled with many superb harbors, all sparsely populated until the early nineteenth century; one visitor to Caplin Bay, for example, remarked, "The number of excellent ports on this coast cannot be made to appear more manifest from any circumstance, than from the few fishermen who have settled in this noble bay."10 Yet by 1800, five families comprising twenty-two members were recorded as living in Calvert; three of these families (Power, Ryan, Welsh) are still there (table 2). 32

PRELIMINARY PLACES

TABLE TWO Census of Capeland Bay, 1800 Household Head

Occupation

Wife

Children

Total Family

Parents

Boys

Girls

—

Mary

Mary (b. 1793) Michael (b. 1796) David (b. 1798)

5

2

2

1

Lawrence Houlahan

Master

Mary

James (b. 1794) Mary (b. 1797) Joseph (b. 1798)

5

2

2

1

Michael Power

Master

Alice

Joseph (b. 1783) James (b. 1787) John(b. 1789) Eleanor (b. 1796) Alice & Catherine (twins b. 1 800)

8

2

3

3

Matthew Ryan

—

Ann

—

2

2

0

0

Edmund Welsh

—

Catherine

—

2

2

0

0

22

10

7

5

Thomas Hearn

Total

Source: Register of Families, Ferryland District, Pole Papers, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's, January I, 1800. (Courtesy of John J. Mannion.)

From at least the eighteenth century, most of Calvert's settlers were Irish. But the English dominated in one crucial area—they were merchants. Whereas the eighteenth century was marked largely by a migrant servant fishery, by the end of that century fishing had become increasingly a family endeavor, with yearround residents working for a merchant in a kind of barter arrangement. Each fisherman sold his fish to one merchant, and in return he received goods needed for his livelihood. Debts or credits would be carried over to the next year, depending on how much fish was caught. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the English merchant families that had moved into Ferryland had begun to expand their business to include Calvert. Two families dominated the fish trade in Calvert—the Morrys and the Sweetlands—both heavily recruiting Waterford labor for their operations. The Morrys seem to have been the more prosperous of the two, eventually having houses and fishing establishments at the Point, the Beach, and Morry's Cove. Like other communities on the Avalon Peninsula, then, Calvert changed from a migratory fishing station used primarily in the summers to a permanent settlement by the close of the eighteenth 33

PLACES IN HISTORY

century. English families dominated the mercantile life of the community whereas Irish laborers made up the bulk of the population. Hundreds of transient fishermen spent a summer or more in Calvert harbor over the years, but only a handful decided to make it their home. Unlike other regions of North America, Calvert's history has not been marked by any kind of extensive settlement continuity until relatively recently. Names and events that sprinkle a document dealing with one summer in Calvert often have no bearing on the group that fished there the next summer. Impermanence becomes an important factor in trying to explain Calvert's own version of its past. The framework I have just sketched, while providing the chronology for Calvert's history, is not the community's own history that lives today. This outline is an academic chronology that deals with the general past—bold sweeping trends over long periods of time. Calvert's own version of its past is filled instead with specific deeds and pervasive attitudes, all connected to particular locations. The past lives on in Calvert not in surviving objects, but in talk about people's actions connected to specific places. As Doris Sullivan commented when asked about the history of her community, there "always [is] a story to go along with something." Calvert's past is talked about, and the locational component is the unifying factor in such discussions. Narratives are not consistent with regard to chronology or characters. Not everyone knows precisely the same amount of detail or the same version, but people take certain places as starting points for discussion. When Calvert residents do talk about the past, their discourse centers on three main concerns: time, motivation, and space. Talking about the past involves characters and events that fit into particular chronologies and time periods. Actions from the past are usually ascribed to a reason: people were motivated to act the way they did. And, most important, the discussions themselves deal with a community space, a specific landscape feature, a particular space.

Time

First, the issue of time. When I began fieldwork in Calvert, I had hoped to obtain a clear picture of at least the past hundred years. Like people who live in the community, I would ask Calvert's historians—Vince Ledwell or Clarence O'Toole—about the past, and I would be told a narrative dealing with the first settlers who came 34

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to the community. My questions about the past were being answered with what these Calvert residents assumed I should know initially: details about the first settlers. There is a pervasive concern with incidents that are "the first" in much of Calvert's talk— as when making his hay one day Ronald Condon discussed the first stove that came to Calvert, or when Johnny Sullivan remarked about the first cement ever in Calvert that was used in Harold Power's house. It is not surprising, then, that a concern with firsts should influence the community's collective past. Two major accounts are given in response to questions about the early history of the community; these are stories about "the first people." These two narratives, however, provide different explanations for the settlement of the community; they deal with different groups of immigrants, who arrived at seemingly different times, and settled in different places. One concerns the exploits of an Irishman named Nash; Clarence O'Toole related the standard version (figure 15): They lived up here [the head of Calvert Bay]. And during the winter, they weren't allowed to get ready for the fishery. There wasn't anything to [do] 'till the vessels from the west coast of England arrived. In fact, they weren't allowed to till the ground or build houses or anything. They lived in little huts that winter. They had nothing to do, himself [Nash] and his sons, so they decided they'd build a boat, take a chance on it. And here in Calvert, now there's a pond right next to the ocean, and this is where they built the boat. They didn't have material enough to finish the boat, sail 'er, so when the spring came, they covered her with boughs. Now apparently the first fishing captain that came in, he was the boss in the settlement for that year, he was the admiral, and the second fellow was the vice admiral, and third fellow was rear. But anyway, he sent his crew up to the waterfall which is up to the head of the pond to get fresh water. And they apparently found the boat. When they [were] aboard they told it to, ah, the skipper, and told him the story. "We had nothing to do during the winter so we decided to build the boat." So he said to him, "Well now," he said, "I know you're not allowed. But," he said, "I think this is the kind, these are the kind of people, you're the kind of person that should get to settle out here, industrious." So he said, "Write down what you [need] to finish your boat and if it's aboard this vessel you can have it." Alright, he did. 35

PLACES IN HISTORY

Figure 75. Clarence and Annie OToole. A photograph of Clarence's father, James O'Toole, hangs behind him.

And so the skipper gave him whatever he had aboard was necessary to finish the boat. And he said, "When I go back to England, I'll report it and I might get something done for you." So when he went back to England he brought back Nash a grant of all the land from Stone Island to Scoggins Head, that is, the shoreline of all Calvert. Anyway, next year Nash got the boat going and he left Calvert to go fishing up at Cape St. Mary's, up around St. Mary's Bay. And they put into 36

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Branch one time and the salmon were so plentiful, that he thought that this would be a better place for 'em to fish, so he took his roots away from Calvert and he settled in Branch. The other account places the first Calvert settlers in an area known as Stone Island, a small cove located at the mouth of the harbor several miles from the present-day community (figure 16). Stone Island today contains nothing more than a few overgrown foundations and several fields with the outlines of old potato beds; it is the place where Aidan Sullivan first took me when I asked about the past. According to several accounts, the potato famine in the nineteenth century drove a number of Irish settlers from the Old World to eventually find their way to Newfoundland. Many died of thirst on the voyage, but six settlers (two Swains, a Keough, a Wade, a Sullivan, and a Meany) ended up at the entrance to Calvert harbor to begin the Stone Island settlement—a settlement that was later abandoned. The birth of Stone Island marked the birth of Calvert, so this version goes, although not even a rough date is specified. The following account is Vince LedwelPs: And the first of the Swains during one of the potato famines in Ireland. There were a couple of them, I think, wasn't there? They come out to Newfoundland. But there was a lot of 'em,

Figure 16. The fields and meadows of Stone Island, seen from Calvert harbor on a foggy morning.

37

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Figure 77. Mr. Vince Ledwell.

they was a long time on the passage, and they got short of water, short of food. There was some of 'em died of thirst. This is a story. I don't know how true it is, but they landed in Aquaforte. . . . And there was some people on the beach dead, more people dying. This woman came along, she saw this man, she saw 'im breathing. She gave 'im a drink of water. And he survived, anyhow. But they finally got to Stone Island. According to Vince (figure 17), this Swain first lived in Ferryland, but a choice had to be made because "the wood was scarce in Fer38

PRELIMINARY PLACES

ryland, and the rum was plenty," whereas at Stone Island there was plenty of wood but no rum. Heat from the stove won out over warmth from the bottle, however, and Stone Island acquired this settler. No one account explains Calvert's past, nor do most residents know specific details. Discrepancies consequently arise between one text and another. When such contradictions occur, no one is really concerned with dismissing one account or the other to arrive at a "real" truth. People are able to accept inconsistency in such texts, unlike literate cultures, which identify contradictions and claim to isolate what is true from what is not true. Calvert residents can quite easily live with variation, for each text may provide important information on past values or events. Indeed, Calvert's historians are never sure whether their account is completely true; they often conclude a narrative with the comment: "That's what the old people used to say." In other words, narrators claim: this is what was handed on to me and I myself am not sure of its validity, but people before me were convinced that it was true. The listener simply feels: this is the story Mr. Vince tells, this is the one told by Clarence O'Toole. The listener takes the same stance as the narrator himself: this is being told to be used in whatever way is valuable; validity rests on social relationships rather than on content.11 Returning to the narratives of Vince Ledwell and Clarence O'Toole, both accounts deal with "the first" settlers but mention no fixed chronological time. A date for the events using other data can only be approximated. From documentary sources, the Nash account appears to be set in the middle if not early eighteenth century. A Thomas Nash was living in Calvert by at least November i, 1765. And a Roman Catholic priest from Callen, Ireland, Father Patrick Power, after a dispute with his bishop stayed with his cousin Thomas Nash in Calvert during the fall of 1787. Nash was described at this time as "an old planter" of the community. Voter lists indicate that Thomas and Tobias Nash lived in the section of the community known today as the Point (figure 18). Oral tradition indicates that the Nashes left Calvert for Branch around 1795.12 The Stone Island account seems to refer to the early nineteenth century. The documentary records do not indicate the presence of any Stone Island families in Calvert before 1800. Joseph Sullivan, for example, one of the original Stone Island immigrants according 39

PLACES IN HISTORY

to oral tradition, did not arrive in Newfoundland until i829. 13 The Sullivan surname does appear in earlier records, but it likely belonged to impermanent summer residents.14 At first glance, then, the oral accounts are contradictory, one placing the earliest settlement around 1700, the other around 1800. The Nash narrative may well be more accurate as to when earliest permanent settlement began. But it mentions that settlers lived at the head of the bay, which would be at odds with the typical settlement pattern in other Newfoundland communities. Newfoundland 40

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure 18. A view of the Point at the head of the bay, ca. 1900. (Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's.)

fishermen more frequently settled first at the mouth of a harbor closer to the fishing grounds, a location like Stone Island. Although Stone Island might have been the logical place of initial settlement, the account seems inaccurate in terms of chronology (iSoos), as well as the families listed as the earliest settlers. That one narrative might be dated more than sixty years before the other is not important to Calvert residents simply because accuracy of dates is not considered necessary. Indeed, fixing these oral narratives to certain time periods can occur only with the use of written documents. For the Calvert resident, the important point is that they deal with the first inhabitants of the place, with two specific areas of the landscape. These narratives set the zero point for Calvert's history. No series of accounts chronologically connects these first settlers to the present. Rather, the progression of time is connected to the specific lives of known human beings. In other cultures, the unfolding of the past might be visible on the present-day landscape through a series of personal objects connected to particular individuals; these visual markers are the embodiment of historical chronology. In Calvert, however, the past is not visible in ordinary artifacts, but instead is linked in people's memories (and thus in narratives) to the activities of particular people. Two major divisions of time exist: an event is measured chronologically in terms of whether it occurred during a specific person's lifetime or before. If the activity happened during the lifetime of an individual, then it is usually linked to a certain event in that person's life. Rather than happening in a neat chronological slot, like 1934, an event happened the year after Aidan Sullivan got married, or the year the stable burned down; time and event are linked. Time is measured, therefore, either as it relates to one person's life, or as having happened in that great expanse before his or her own specific lifetime. The life span of an immediate ancestor may enter into this dating process: an act may have occurred in a grandfather's or aunt's time. But if the event cannot be linked to a certain individual, then actual chronology—an actual date—is not remembered and is not important, and the event is simply one of hundreds that occurred between the period of "first" settlement and the individual speaker's lifetime ("before my time"). At any point, the extreme limit of experiential age is measured by actions that occurred during the life of the oldest living inhabitant of the community. When I asked Aidan Sullivan, for example, 41

PLACES IN HISTORY

how old certain place-names might be, he responded: "As far back as, I bet, Mr. Vince, I betcha, Mr. Vince Ledwell, as far back as his time." Since Mr. Vince was the oldest living Calvert resident, Aidan essentially was saying that these names were at least as old as the longest experiential life span in the community. As each generation passes on, historical events separate from individual lives and enter the great store of past events that occurred "before my time." At one extreme, therefore, is the community's collective time: the time when the first settlers arrived to transform the place into what is known today as Calvert. At the other extreme is a specific individual's time (referred to quite literally as "my time") when memory links events to a particular person's life. Calvert's past is not chronological time, but cultural time: accounts that explain the initial settlement, accounts of a general past, and accounts linked to known individuals. The past thus belongs either to collective narratives or to the actions of specific people; the recent past does not generally exist apart from human lifetimes. What I found in Calvert, then, was a concern with time that was divided into three major chronological categories. The first period dealt with the arrival of the initial group of permanent settlers in the community, the second with the lengthy time between initial settlement and the lifetimes of living residents today, and the third with events that current residents had experienced themselves (table 3). Depending on an informant's age, the longest time category covers most historical events in Calvert between 1800 and 1920. Events in this category are not date specific, but before present experiential time. Chronology becomes more specific when events in an individual's life can be linked with occurrences that are of interest in a particular discussion. Why is there no neat unfolding of chronological happenings after the initial texts dealing with the first settlers? Why no clear links between present and past until the lifetimes of present inhabitants? In part, the migratory nature of Newfoundland settlement seems to play a large part in explaining why more accounts were not passed on from generation to generation. During the initial years of Calvert's settlement—like most Newfoundland communities—fishermen returned only for one or two summers to this particular place. There were few permanent residents to be concerned with a knowledge of their community's collective past. Past people and activities might be spoken about, but probably little attention was paid to these accounts if a person suspected he or she 42

PRELIMINARY PLACES

TABLE THREE Categories of Time in Calvert's Past Category of Time

Event

Chronological Time

1700 to 1800

The "first"

Arrival of first settlers

Before my time

Historical events

Up until ca. 1 920

During my time

Personal events

Ca. 1 920 to present

would not return to the same community next year. This uncertainty surrounding settlement continuity meant a lack of concern with permanent artifacts; shelters were temporary, possessions minimal when working for only several months in this remote land. The migratory nature of the fishery may have ensured that historical accounts would be fragmented and few. Little need seems to have been felt to maintain connections with the Old World; in part, this is indicated by the relatively few placenames in the community transferred from European homelands. Rarely were unknown spaces made familiar by using conventional names. No narratives dealing with the homeland survive. Many residents in Calvert today know little about their ancestors; when I asked Mike Boland when his people came to Calvert, he replied, "Now you're asking me too much." Many people are even unsure whether their ancestors came from England or from Ireland, or from what part of these countries they originated; France Roland's brief explanation of his background is typical: "My great-grandfather came from Ireland." Other details are unknown or unnecessary. Motivation

The past exists for Calvert residents partly through a series of narratives that explain the arrival of an initial group of settlers in certain places in the community. But for the Calvert resident, a major question that is answered through these accounts is why? Why did people settle in Calvert to begin with, choosing this specific harbor, this specific place? Oral accounts deal with the motivation behind this spatial choice. When discussing the past, most accounts posit some reason as to why the first settlers came to Calvert. As with many Newfoundland communities, early settlement is attributed to the hardship or oppression in the Old World that led 43

PLACES IN HISTORY

migrants to begin a new life. Several people, including Vince Ledwell, mentioned that the earliest settlers were fleeing a famine in Ireland. Rob Sullivan told me one day: "The Irish came out here as more or less refugees. They fled Ireland. There was a famine or something." Other Calvert residents had vague notions that their ancestors had been deported from England or Ireland, perhaps for petty crime, or were fleeing general poverty and want. Clarence O'Toole's account stresses another important motivating factor that appears in Calvert's narratives: once there, settlers braved all kinds of harassment at the hands of government authorities in order to remain. Official English policy at the time was to dissuade settlement. The Nash in Clarence's narrative had to hide in the woods to avoid being caught by the English fishing admiral—the government representative in the area. This migrant was first arrested, but eventually rewarded for his skill in adapting to his new homeland. Many comments about Calvert's past assume the illegality of settlement and mention the lengths to which people had to go to survive in hiding; as one man stated: "They must have [had] a job to live [in] them times," living on "wild meat, wild fruit." Recent Newfoundland historiography has shown how inaccurate these assumed motives for the permanent settlement of a community like Calvert really are. Most Irish, including those in Calvert, came to Newfoundland before the time of the major famines, although widespread food shortages were obviously common among the poorer classes in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century homeland.15 Accounts that explain Irish migration as a reaction to famine may well have originated in Boston. The Irish who arrived in Calvert could have come simply looking for work, having left a declining economy at home where land and money were scarce. And although British law technically prohibited settlement, apparently little was done in practice to discourage it. If settlers wanted to remain in a community over winter, they did not have to hide in the woods fearing for their lives, as in the Nash account. English officials had more to worry about than evicting settlers from the countryside and sending them back to England. Then why is it assumed that the characters in Calvert's historical texts were motivated by these factors? The answer seems to lie in print, specifically in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular accounts of Newfoundland's past. These oral narratives were likely influenced by textbook versions of history taught in the local 44

PRELIMINARY PLACES

schools throughout the province. Standard textbooks, until recently, were filled with vignettes of Newfoundland migrants fleeing famines back home. Such texts also painted a picture of the brave Newfoundlander struggling against the oppressive English official, the settler attempting heroically to start a new life. Several nineteenth-century Newfoundland historians emphasized this struggle, without basis in substantial historical fact, to bolster a growing Newfoundland nationalism.16 The argument found its way into more streamlined language for school texts.17 Typical of the portrayal of this period of history was one book containing a school play that pitted characters like John Smith, a colonist, "his clothes neat and clean," against William Jones, a fishing admiral, "a coarse and vulgar man, . . . besmeared with pitch and tar."18 These are the visions of the past that Calvert residents heard in school, and no doubt these attitudes became incorporated into oral accounts. With the advent of public education and the familiarization of people with the academic pursuit of "history," local oral accounts in Calvert are considered less accurate than the written word. Print has become sacred, especially for an oral culture that is aspiring to become a written one. Anything that appears in print is assumed to be true. The history texts used by Calvert children describe the struggle of the first settlers, the hardships of the journey, and the famine back home. These accounts were not only believed, but were also gradually incorporated into what was known orally. Indeed, the assumed accuracy of knowledge of the past as it borrows from written historiography is specifically recognized in Calvert. Both Vince Ledwell and Clarence O'Toole were considered to know more about the past than other residents; both had been especially concerned with learning oral accounts of Calvert's history. One day when discussing the knowledge of both men, however, Aidan Sullivan remarked that although both could tell me about Calvert's past, "Clarence Toole'd be better'n Vince because he read more about it." Clarence not only read it, he taught this history as well, having worked as a schoolteacher for several years before turning to carpentry, the profession he followed most of his life. That oral accounts are inferior to and less accurate than printed histories is accepted without question. What I was actually recording in my discussions with Calvert residents were, in part, oral accounts of late-nineteenth-century textbook history. This acceptance of the academic written word as the epitome of truth was evident, again, in my own writing. When I finished the 45

PLACES IN HISTORY

initial version of this study in 1979, a photocopy—referred to locally as "the Book"—circulated throughout Calvert. Included in it were my initial assessments of the community's history, along with supplementary documentary materials. Several years later, Bernard Herman, a friend of mine and fellow academic from the United States, came with me to visit Tom and Ida Sullivan's family in Calvert. As the three of us—Tom, Bernie, and myself—rode along the road to Stone Island, Bernie asked Tom when his ancestors first came to Newfoundland. Tom replied, "Ask Jerry. He knows more about our history than we do." When I recently asked Doris Sullivan where she learned about Calvert's past, she answered "from you." And when I mentioned to Annie O'Toole that I had found Thomas Nash's name in a court record, she who had heard her husband's account for so many years commented: "So it is history." With the writing of an entire monograph on the community, people turned to this written work for information—much like the textbooks of the past—some of which will likely be enshrined in tradition. A year after I completed my initial study, a researcher working on an article about Calvert for Decks Awash, a popular local magazine, arrived at one house in the community looking for information on local oral traditions. The researcher immediately had a copy of "the Book" thrust into his hands, since it contained—in the viewpoint of the Calvert resident—all the correct data that anyone ever needed to know about the community's past. And recently Clarence O'Toole told me the construction date of a house, verifying its accuracy with the comment: "that was in a book over to Harold's [Power]," a reference, obviously, to the Decks Awash article that drew on my preliminary study. Space

For Calvert, the past lives through spaces. People talk about past events and past ancestors motivated by specific concerns, but ultimately their actions are centered around specific places in the community. Objects come and go, but places in the landscape continue to be in need of explanation, no matter what the present-day artifact appears to be. Objects are transitory, made and discarded. The spaces on the land remain, are talked about, and thus are the focal point of the past. The past is spatial, and talk about it reflects this. First and foremost, the narratives concerning Calvert's past deal 46

PRELIMINARY PLACES

Figure 19. The spatial dimensions ofCalvert's historical accounts.

with spatial anomalies. They are concerned almost exclusively with areas of the landscape that are considered in need of explanation. On a fundamental level, oral narratives discuss the question of landownership: who first owned all of the land in Calvert? Clarence O'Toole's account maintains that a Nash was awarded the first land grant for the entire harbor (figure 19). This is important information for current inhabitants; the question of initial ownership, how Calvert's landscape passed into personal hands, how public wilderness was transformed into the community, has been resolved. People know that a nebulous landscape was transformed into their landscape by this initial settler's act. On more specific levels, other questions about land anomalies must be answered. Stone foundations and faint traces of potato beds mark the area of Stone Island today. A few people remember the inhabitants, but the reasons for habitation must be accounted for. Vince LedwelFs narrative maintains that this was the site of the first settlement in Calvert (figure 19), a settlement that later moved up the bay. All other documentary evidence, however, points otherwise. Calvert seems to have started its life at the head of the harbor (figure 20); Grant Head noted that "Caplin Bay was an open bay, with a small population sited on a bar at its head" in the late seventeenth century.19 The Stone Island residents arrived later, obviously settling there because of the unavailability of land elsewhere. Even though it was closer to the fishing grounds, its 47

PLACES IN HISTORY

48

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Figure 20. The Beach at the head of the bay, ca. ipoo. (Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's.)

49

PLACES IN HISTORY

Figure 21. Meany's Island, Big Island, and Goose Island seen from the cliffs of Stone Island.

high cliffs and offshore rocks made landing and processing fish more difficult (figure 21); as one resident remarked, it was always "a hard place for fishing." As the English merchants such as the Morrys and the Sweetlands moved away, land was freed and became available up the harbor for Stone Island residents. Stone Island was really a separate community from Calvert, as several early documents mention,20 and gradually was abandoned. Vince LedwelPs narrative explains it otherwise, but the crucial point is that the narrative was generated—and continues—because landscape features require explanation. Anomalies found in other parts of the landscape have similar narratives that look to past events for explanation. A cleared space in the woods—like the field above Church Cove, "handy an acre" in size—is explained by Mr. Vince: 50

PRELIMINARY PLACES

But in old times, in old times when the old Irish people came here and they were supposed to go back—you read this history I suppose about Newfoundland and old times—they come here from England fishing. They were all supposed to go back, but there was a scattered fellow that'd get out of the ship and get ashore, you see. They had to get out and live themselves out in some queer place, you know out of sight of the people. And I suppose that's what happened, someone lived there. But the place was cleared, the grandest sight you'd ever seen in your life. The standard motivation for settlement is applied to this anomalous space near Church Cove. Other cleared areas in Calvert— such as a field on the north side of the community known as New Holland—are similarly explained as the work of early illegal settlers. Along one of the cliffs near Church Cove, ringbolts are lodged in the rocks, put there—according to one account—by settlers who were hiding from the authorities and anchored ship at that spot. Of all three major concerns—time, motivation, and space—the last is the most important for Calvert's past because it is the most experiential. Explanations are needed for why a particular place became Calvert, why one cove was chosen over another. Because people see and experience spaces like Stone Island every day but do not know who created them, these areas generate narratives. Spatial questions provide the impetus for people to ask why something is there, and perhaps to correlate it with a certain time period (the first settler), as well as with a particular character (Nash) or group (the Irish). That spaces have to be explained means that they generate the narrative per se. Chronologies and motivations may vary from person to person or generation to generation, and are much more dependent on the cultural values of the time. Residents know that Calvert is filled with historical spaces. They often have a vague notion of the details of the settlers and their motives, and sometimes they have their own vague speculations. Mike Sullivan, for example—when asked who were the first people to come to Calvert—postulated that it was the "people up in the house where Harold Power's living"—a reference to the Sweetlands. But everyone knows who to ask for more detailed information, residents like Vince Ledwell and Clarence O'Toole—and now, this book! A narrative about an Irish refugee jumping ship will quickly solve the 51

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questions about that particular space. Yet some people have no real need to explain ancestors, to trace roots, for these usually have no experiential dimension in daily life. Oral accounts mediate the need of Calvert residents to explain certain aspects of their past over time (table 4). The lack of a clear chronology—due to the early migratory nature of settlement—is solved by a narrative dealing with the first settler. Textbook versions of history appear through oral examples of famine victims and heroic refugees. And the pervasive experience of daily spaces determines which narratives are actually needed. In a place like Calvert, where everyone knows everyone else and, until recently, strangers were few, the lack of a recent explanation for a particular space could mean only one thing: some past event caused it. History for the Calvert resident becomes spaces to be explained. Over time, the reasons given as to why certain settlers used sections of the landscape have changed, largely because of the fleeting influence of migratory fishermen and textbook histories. The spatial core of these narratives remains, still the fundamental reason why people talk about their past, puzzle over it, speculate about it. Calvert residents remain satisfied with these accounts—no matter how incomplete or inconsistent. Calvert's past lives not in things but in spaces. Traveling from one part of the community to another brings to mind narratives of early settlers and their efforts to transform the community's landscape, altering it from wilderness to a place of human habitation. In recent centuries, Western cultures have increasingly asserted that the past lives through objects; that artifacts made in previous times keep alive past values and ideals. But the source materials of Calvert's historiography are not things, but space. The crusades of preservationists to rescue artifacts from destruction, to be saved for future generations, are often met with little support in communities like Calvert where the past lives by other means. People in Calvert have an understanding of their history through direct daily contact with particular spaces and accompanying explanatory oral narratives. Only when cultures lose this experiential spatial link can sentiments like artifact preservation gain hold. Believing that saving things can save the past occurs only when the day-to-day contacts with spaces and their explanations have been lost, when knowledge of things replaces knowledge of talk. Communities like Calvert—where social networks are still important—pass on information about the past verbally among people who know one 52

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TABLE FOUR Mediation of Calvert's Historical Concerns Theme

Mediation

Influence

Time

Oral accounts

Migratory fishery

Motivation

Oral accounts

Textbooks

Space

Oral accounts

Daily landscape experience

another. A culture that considers its past primarily artifactual obviously is concerned with an audience made up largely of outsiders and tourists. For Calvert, however, the past is all around, with memory keeping spaces alive. The nature of the past in Calvert is almost exclusively intangible. I gradually realized that people did not necessarily save older objects simply because they were products of the past. When no longer of use, old things are quickly disposed of. Several times I commented on the early local furniture that Len and Marcella Canning had in their home, how important it was that they keep these things and perhaps pass them on to their children or grandchildren. I naively believed that they agreed with my sentiments; however, when I arrived one July afternoon in 1979, Marcella told me excitedly that they had sold most of these artifacts to an antique picker from Quebec. "He gave us two hundred dollars for that old junk," Len incredulously reported. They were slightly richer, and had ridded themselves of objects considered by their own community not as "heritage" or "tradition," but as things no longer wanted or useful. They would buy better things. Similarly, Denis Sullivan commented on the wastefulness of attempting to "preserve" the old stone Ferryland church, a common attitude about all buildings that have outlived their practicality: Ferryland church down there, right, you know, a very historical spot, an old stone church that was, you know, one of the first havens of Roman Catholics in the New World, we'll say. But still now, where they're spending oodles and oodles of money the place hasn't got. There's very little sympathy for trying to restore it. A lot of people are saying there's a brand new church in Calvert, and it's plenty big for the people that's going to church now. Why waste all this money. . . . You can't see the practicality of throwing good money after bad. 53

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Fostered by such sentiments, since 1974 f°ur of Calvert's oldest houses (Tom Clancy's, France Boland's, Mary Margaret Swain's, and Hanorah Rossi ter's) have been demolished; one—Hanorah's— was quite possibly the earliest extant house in the community. I and a graduate student, Richard MacKinnon, helped tear down Hanorah's house during several August days in 1980; never once during our work did Josie Swain—Hanorah's great-nephew—or his friends comment that the house should be saved. The building had outlived its usefulness, was too expensive to renovate, and should obviously be demolished. History was not part of the consideration. Given the attitudes in Calvert, it is not surprising that a preservation movement in Newfoundland has had little support over the years. Any successful preservation efforts are those of outsiders and a local social elite; those "who came from away or who had been away and returned with a genuine response to something interesting and a masked desire to be upper class antiquarians."21 Preservation of the past through objects receives little local support not because Newfoundlanders are less educated or appreciative of their past than Mainlanders, but simply because in so many communities the past continues through talk about spaces. What one writer has described as a marked "heritage zmconsciousness" in Newfoundland makes sense because things matter less.22 Ironically, cultures like Newfoundland often become more interested in delineating an artifactual past when the community ties that bind it to the everyday spaces of history weaken. Calvert's past today comes from talk in the context of sociability and thus depends ultimately on ongoing social relationships. The past cannot be preserved by saving things because the past does not consist of fossilized static items that are conserved and stored away. Talk about Calvert's spaces goes on, and with it an awareness that ancestors performed specific deeds to create the spaces seen today. When people matter less, and individuals are not willing to accept the social obligations that talking about the past entails—the numerous occasions when visiting and hospitality occur—then artifacts, instead, become repositories for that past. Objects demand nothing in return from their audience when they become shrines to a culture's past. As shrines, they can be worshiped without words, without discussion. To talk about the past, people have to deal with one another; when this becomes burdensome, silent things are easier to confront. Calvert's modern appearance betrays 54

PRELIMINARY PLACES

its seventeenth-century origins because talk remains the key to the community's history; the past continues not in a central chimney hall and parlor house, but in a gathering around a warm kitchen stove on a winter's evening. As long as socializing takes precedence over accumulation of things, the past will continue in specific spaces, with human memory and voice animating the dim actions of settler and ancestor.

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PART TW o

Producing Spaces

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CHAPTER T H R E E

Landscapes and Gender O

n.September 26, 1794, Her Majesty's Ship Boston anchored in Caplin Bay. On board was Aaron Thomas, an able-bodied seaman who watched as his ship settled in a sheltered cove beneath the rocky cliffs, finding refuge from an impending storm. The next day Thomas set foot on shore, exploring the nearby landscape. He paused to pick mushrooms on the edges of a bog as his ship waited for the rough seas to subside. He soon came upon the house of an Irish family with a surname he recorded as "Poor"—the local pronunciation even today of "Power." He described Mr. Power as "a man of about 40, who had marry'd a young wife, very fair and beautiful. They had four children, were tolerably well-to-do in the world and seemed a happy couple. In this House I domesticated myself for some houres." He went on: The chiefe complaint of the Weoman was that her Fowls and Ducks laid their Eggs in the woods, then sat upon them, and before the Young Brood had sufficient strength to travel home after the old ones, they all died of fatigue in the march, or else the Wild Catts found their nest and destroy'd old and young togather. So heavy were her complaints on this head that she said her Geese, Cows, Horses, Ducks, Goats and Chickens would all get into the woods for a week and she would never be able to find one. She said that a few days ago she sent her eldest children after them and they got themselves lost and were a whole night in the Woods exposed to the Foggs. In the morning they were brought home in a Boat from Cape Broyle Harbour, to the head of which place they had straggled.1 Nearly two centuries after Thomas's visit, I sat in Len and Marcella Canning's kitchen. The sound of the blower on the oil stove 59

LANDSCAPES AND GENDER

hummed in the background as we talked about the spaces surrounding Calvert. I had heard of a place in the woods called Suse's Cross, a spot where as a young boy Len Canning had found the bones of a girl—Suse Hayes—some seventy-five years before, in 1902. Suse had gotten lost in 1879.1 had asked Len about the details of her disappearance. He recalled: Well, I'll tell you how she come now [to be lost]. You know, that part of the beach, going across the road there? Well, Costellos lived there in the meadow, on this side of the pond. And she [Suse Hayes] left that day to go cow hunting in the woods for a cow. And when you come across the beach coming up that first hill, that's the way she went up over the hill that way. There was a fellow on the beach had a boat, kinda foggy, you know, John O'Dea it was. He said, "Be a job for someone tonight," he said, "to go after her." The job did come. But the next day, they got her sunbonnet, you know, the women's sunbonnets. Oh, I suppose, what? Was it on Daniel's Marsh they got it, Mom? They got her sunbonnet the next day and that's all they ever found. Len found Suse's bones near Red Hill Slide Path and brought them back in a wooden biscuit box to be buried. He soon made a wooden cross that he placed at this spot, now known as Suse's Cross. These two accounts deal with what are subtle yet pervasive aspects of Calvert daily life. Fundamentally, they discuss not knowing one's way through the landscape, getting lost. Outsiders are usually lost in a new place. During my initial visits to Calvert, I was no different from any stranger who comes to the community for the first time. Around me I saw houses, lanes, paths, fields, and woods: all bewildering, all strange. Yet for the people who live there, it is all familiar. I listened to conversations about cutting wood near Cape Broyle Head, setting a cod trap at Blow-Me-Down, looking for buried treasure at Church Cove. Space for my friends in Calvert first and foremost had been structured so they could get around. People not only needed to travel from one location to another, they also had to have a system of reference points that allowed them to think about space, to talk about it, sharing information that enabled the many chores of daily life to be carried out. I realized that the accounts dealing with the Power family and Suse Hayes were primarily concerned with how Calvert's space is structured. 60

PRODUCING SPACES

That Suse Hayes and Mrs. Power's children became lost indicates an important aspect of the community's structuring of space: knowledge of Calvert's cognitive map is gender specific and related to appropriate gender divisions of activities. To say, however, that there is male space and female space within the community is too simplistic. Certainly men spend more time in particular places than women. But members of either sex can interact in any of the community's domains, even if such spaces fall under the assumed control of the other sex. Thus men talk in the home; women pick berries in the woods. What becomes important in understanding the spaces ordinarily considered male and female are the different ideologies that govern these gender spaces. To understand the nature of Calvert's space, three major issues must be examined: how space is ordered, how exactly it is explained by its residents, and, finally, how it manifests particular gender ideologies. Imposing Order on Space

Placing order on the spaces that become Calvert means first establishing a series of points that are clearly identifiable, and have specific boundaries that are visually recognized. These units are the intersections on a grid system that culturally transforms Calvert from unworkable space into a specific place. Besides these units, there are interconnections, accepted paths of movement that are also visually recognized. These are the connective lines among the grid points. Such points and their interconnections can be considered an area's cognitive map.2 For both categories—points and connections—cultural recognition and acceptance are indicated by their being named, permitting this knowledge to be shared by the entire community. When I thought about the actual units in Calvert's organizational grid—the divisions of the community—I realized that many spatial categories subsumed others. Indeed, Calvert is part of a larger conceptual area, and the community is subdivided into spaces and subspaces. Calvert is part of a vernacular region, and the community itself contains different categories of landscape within it. But first, this larger region. Like villages in many areas of North America, Calvert fits into a larger conceptual framework—what has been called a folk or vernacular region—that enables community residents to orient themselves with regard to other similar regions in Newfoundland. 61

LANDSCAPES AND GENDER

Figure 22. The Southern Shore.

62

PRODUCING SPACES

Most Newfoundland vernacular regions share a body of water (Conception Bay, Trinity Bay) or a stretch of coast (South Coast). Once you pass the suburban sprawl south of St. John's, you reach the region known as the Southern Shore (figure 22). This cliffmarked rocky coastline bravely faces the Atlantic for the next eighty or so miles, until turning west near Trepassey. In name, this vernacular region obviously owes its identity in part to being south of St. John's—it is the Southern Shore. Contact by water among the various Southern Shore communities has a long history. Connections by land between Calvert and nearby settlements go back to at least the early nineteenth century, although travel was somewhat difficult. One writer described the path between Calvert and Ferryland: "This path is, in many places, so swampy, that we journeyed with considerable difficulty. The bogs and quagmires were here and there covered with branches of trees."3 The expansion of overland contact in this region seems to go back to the late nineteenth century.4 Both the name Southern Shore and an increase in interchange among communities in the area may be linked to the building of a railway branch line from St. John's to Trepassey in 1914. Contact certainly existed before then between various shore communities and St. John's. An early-nineteenth-century writer referred to the region as the "southern coast," attesting to the importance of the capital city.5 A rough road linked the communities between Bay Bulls and Renews by 1840, and horse and carriage travel to St. John's was possible by i865.6 The railway only increased this contact; when it was closed in 1933, horses and carriages or sleds (slides), and later, motor vehicles traveled between the communities along the Shore and St. John's. Aidan Sullivan (figure 23) described one of his trips on horse and slide: "I left here one morning on a, on an old slow fellow [horse], and I went to Bay Bulls. I left home seven o'clock. And I went to Bay Bulls and I come home again, and we drank four bottles of rum in the transaction. And I was home again at seven o'clock. We were after visiting a few places." Today, the same travel link predominates, for this single road is still the main connection of the region to the capital and the outside world, and communication flows in this north-south direction. The drive from Calvert to St. John's takes approximately an hour and twenty minutes. Twenty-two communities dot the Southern Shore, each separated from the others by several miles of forest, barrens, or bog, with not a building or a field to be seen in these uninhabited 63

LANDSCAPES AND GENDER

Figure 23. Aidan Sullivan.

stretches. Each community is thus spatially distinct from the next, and a drive on the Southern Shore highway is a constant alternating of miles of ponds or forests with descents into the small village that nestle close to the natural harbors gouging the coastline. Half way up the Southern Shore—traveling south in Newfoundlan means going up—is Calvert. When we turn from this larger vernacular region of the Souther Shore to the specifics of the community itself, it is soon obvious tha Calvert residents know their spaces well. Living in a place with settlement pattern characterized by close proximity means that residents socialize in virtually the same spaces day in and day out As in many communities, knowledge of the landscape in Calvert i 64

PRODUCING SPACES

based largely on so much travel being done by walking.7 In other regions of North America, the automobile has been instrumental in making intracommunity contact the norm, and with such mobility often comes a consequent loss of a sense of place. In such areas it is more likely that someone will drive several miles to see a friend than visit the person next door. Only after rapid modes of transportation have been developed can a wide network of contacts be maintained in a dispersed settlement pattern. People in communities along the Shore, however, still socialize primarily among themselves, and walking provides the easiest form of travel. You can walk through Calvert in ten or so minutes, and after years of walking every path, road, and lane in the community, residents are familiar with major and minor points of orientation. The surrounding Calvert landscape is used constantly for ordinary activities, and thus is known as well as any of the more visually obvious domestic spaces. People walk from house to house, from pond to meadow, from hill to marsh, passing by the specific details of their landscape. In spite of the intimate spatial knowledge that comes from this frequent walking, residents rarely talk about how the landscape itself is actually known. It is not verbally learned. Younger community members experience various spaces and the ways to travel not through oral instruction but by accompanying an older person to a particular place. The wooded landscape surrounding the community, for example, contains visual clues for directions, landmarks that each person idiosyncratically learns to use in his or her own orientation—perhaps a particular tree or rock. Landscape literacy is accumulated over repeated experiences, until even the wooded areas become perfectly known. I was discussing with Clarence O'Toole how a person would learn about landscape features, and he used an example about one hill—Round Hat—to show how experience teaches about particular spaces: Round Hat "was about an hour's walk from the head of Long Pond. You walked in, and there was a little round knob. And you were bringing stuff in the country then on your back, you were bringing in a week's grub or there around, and there was, in the center of this, a hill. [It'd] be awful warm, you'd be sweating when you get up on top of Round Hat. You'd always lie down there and get cooled off." Mike Sullivan (figure 24) summed up this landscape literacy, referring to his knowledge of the wooded areas: "When you're sixty year going through the woods, I mean, there's nothing strange to you then, is it?" 65

LANDSCAPES AND GENDER

Figure 24. Mike Sullivan.

When I first started visiting Calvert, I knew that people had acquired a complex and pervasive knowledge about the large areas surrounding the living spaces where such natural resources as wood and berries were gathered. Calvert residents knew about these vast expanses of terrain—like woods and marshes—that had only a minimal visible imprint of human beings on them. A complex system of naming orders the wooded areas so that they are as familiar as other places. Aidan Sullivan commented: "But now you'd be surprised, y'know, Jerry. In there, all that woods in there, every place is named. Everyplace." The miles of forests around Calvert are known as well as the more immediate yards and meadows surrounding the home. 66

PRODUCING SPACES

Figure 25. Hills and ponds in the woods and country.

The first named distinction that is made on the landscape is between cleared land and forested spaces. The word/orat is not specifically employed in Calvert, but I use it to include all the wooded regions surrounding the immediate living spaces of the community. Residents themselves do not consider the forest as one entity, but instead categorize it into two separate spaces: woods and country, each having different uses, each a different system of cognitive mapping (figure 25). When people in Calvert go out during the winter to cut smaller pieces of wood for their stoves, or during the summer to pick berries, they usually go "in the woods." This category refers to those immediate forested areas adjacent to the dwelling spaces in the community. Surrounding the "woods" is a boundless, only partially known region called the "country." Going "in the country" conjures up entirely different images and purposes; a trip is made here usually to obtain larger wood not available nearby, or to hunt animals not found close to home. The trips into the country are longer—often lasting all day; they are less frequent and usually require someone who knows the region well so that one does not 67

LANDSCAPES AND GENDER

become lost. Becoming lost is much more likely in the country, since experiential contact has been less. Because this region is not as frequently used and not as well-known, many of the features have no place-names. Features that are named are the visually predominant, such as bodies of water: Frank's Pond, Long Pond, Polter's Pond. Other aspects of the terrain such as trails and smaller hills or gullies remain unnamed, unlike the more intensely used woods. Travel in the country requires both greater skill and greater caution than going in the woods. Within the perceptual regions of woods and country are a series of points that make these spaces usable in daily life. These points are spaces with clearly recognizable boundaries, in either the horizontal or the vertical dimension. On the horizontal plane, broad stretches of forested terrain that cover most of the spaces surrounding the community are not designated as particular "woods"; they have no names. Instead, discrete spots found within these forested areas are cognitively set apart. Such spaces are usually bodies of water or marshy areas; they are visibly defined since they are surrounded by some barrier, usually trees. Bodies of water are named in the forested areas, usually as ponds if they are large, or as gullies if small (figure 25). Along with these water spaces, large wet areas—marshes—are clearly distinct, and they are therefore named as well. They are flat, have little vegetation, and are bordered by trees or bushes. Besides these horizontal units, spaces that deviate from the vertical are culturally designated, notably hills and ridges. Yi-Fu Tuan notes that humans tend to cognitively categorize the vertical;8 it is therefore logical that the other named features in forested areas are those that provide the most visual contrast with the level horizon. The same system of signifying visually contrasting units also operates with coastal spaces along the ocean (figure 26). Where the land protrudes into the water, it is designated a point. Stretches of coast slightly indented between two points are designated as coves—again, a bounded space. Those portions of coast that are straight receive no name and are referred to simply as stretches of "straight shore." The naming of points and coves facilitates the placement of nets in the water at specific locations, spaces that would otherwise be difficult to locate and therefore only sporadically used. The spaces where nets for catching cod and salmon are set are 68

PRODUCING SPACES

Figure 26. Coastal features.

referred to as berths, and they are located at the same fixed points from year to year using features on the land. Cod traps—boxlike nets used to catch cod—usually have a leader net that funnels fish into the container. These berths, determined by trial and error over time, are spots both where cod are caught in large numbers and where the ocean bottom is suitable for a cod trap. You could not set a trap just anywhere along the coast, for as Mike Sullivan commented, "there are certain areas out here, too, you can set a trap; the next morning it would be tore up in strips, the twine'd be on rough bottom." Clarence O'Toole explained that "nearly all traps were tied onto the shore. There was an iron post driven down 69

LANDSCAPES AND GENDER

Figure 27. Trap berths.

Figure 28. The Sullivan fishing crew hauling a cod trap off Blow-Me-Down Head. 70

PRODUCING SPACES

Figure 29. Conceptual subdivisions ofCalvert, with the hills found along the road.

into the land, so that's where you tied on your bar [leader] net." The cod-trap berth is often designated using the name of the coastal feature where the leader net is attached (figure 27). Some of the berths—such as Piglidge—are not located precisely next to the land; triangulation—lining up a series of landscape features— would locate the correct spot. Clarence described one such set: "Down at Cape Broyle—Stair Rock—you had Peter Yard's house around the bill of the cape, and some other place up in Church Cove, and another landmark was up over Goose Island, a little knob in the woods." Sometimes new marks on the land are needed to locate water spaces; at the site of old Kitty Wade's house at Stone Island, for example, a pole was placed on the pile of rocks from the old chimney. Called Wade's Chimney, this is used as a marker for the Middle Ledge berth across the bay in Ferryland. Unlike all other spaces in the Calvert landscape, the placement of a cod trap depends completely on an arbitrary designation. No visual boundaries exist on the water surface to distinguish one place from another. Without complex attention to land features, no one could clearly recognize the location of trap berths (figure 28). Calvert as a community is divided by its bay into two natural conceptual sections: the north side and the south side (figure 29). These sections designate the living spaces found immediately around the houses and do not extend into the surrounding forested areas. The

71

LANDSCAPES AND GENDER

Figure 30. Looking across the bay toward the north side, -which ends at the patches of cleared land to the left. Stone Island is at the extreme right of the far coast.

north side specifically includes the houses stretching along the road from the pond at the head of the bay all the way to Slaughters Pond (figure 30). This north side is subdivided into smaller units, spaces recognized by changes in land pitch. GatheralFs Hill and Sullivan's Hill are two of the major sections, the first named after a family who lived in the community in the nineteenth century (figure 31), and the other for the Sullivans, who still occupy this portion of Calvert. Although the north side contains such subdivisions as particular hills, these names are not as frequently used as those of similar smaller spatial units found on the south side of the harbor. In fact, the term south side is rarely used, and instead the actual subdivisions of this section are talked about in daily conversations. The spaces of everyday use for the south section of Calvert are the Point, the Gut, and the Cross. The Point is a body of land that extends from the southwest corner of the bay (figure 32). It is specifically land space, named because of its obvious contrast to the water, jutting out into the harbor. The Gut is a land area near the head of the bay that takes 72

PRODUCING SPACES

Figure 31. Looking across the bay at GatheralPs Hill, the beginning of the north side.

Figure j2. The Point, with the Beach in the background, ca. 1900. Several schooners lie moored in the foreground. (Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's.)

73

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Figure 33. Gut Pond, where most boats are kept during the fishing season.

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its name from the narrow passage of water that it borders: the freshwater river and pond that empty into Calvert Bay (figure 33). The Gut is neither north nor south side; in other places, a gut would refer to a body of water, but in Calvert it can refer to either land space or the adjacent body of water. The section located south of the Gut is known as the Cross; as one resident explained, it is at the crossroads of the various lanes that merge on the south side. Formerly, this area was known as the Cross Road.9 The greater number of specific spatial subdivisions—and therefore named areas—on the south side may relate to a denser settlement pattern. More houses are located behind one another, rather than along a primary road as on the north side. Such areas of extensive family settlement obviously demanded more spatial subdivisions. Where more families have constant daily contact, geographic space must be delineated into smaller cognitive units. The cognitive conceptions of space in a community like Calvert encompass knowledge of a series of spatial units (figure 34)—be they large regions or specific land features all identified by names— and the relationship among these spaces on the landscape. That these units are related to one another means simply that people are able to move, to travel in certain directions between one place and another/Few landscapes—because of ownership rights or the characteristics of terrain—permit an infinite choice of lines of movement between any two points. Instead, a culture provides designated pathways categorized by function that are the normal lines of movement through a community. The major lines of travel used in Calvert are roads, lanes, and paths. The road that runs up the entire Southern Shore and passes the edge of Calvert is referred to as the High Road, the name used in the past by the Newfoundland government for major highways. This road is now paved and is used both by people on foot and by cars traveling through. In the past, however, when highway traffic up and down the Shore was not as heavy, the High Road resembled both in appearance and use the smaller lanes found in Calvert today (figure 35). The High Road is considered primarily a connection between communities on the Southern Shore, but some houses are located along it. Calvert has one main road through it, running from the Cross down the Gut and along the north side, gradually deteriorating to a path by the time it reaches Stone Island. Travel is up or down 75

LANDSCAPES AND GENDER

Southern Shore

Hills Ponds Marshes Gullies Calvert Forest Areas

Coastal Features

Neighborhoods Meadows Gardens Yards

Stables Stages Stores Wood Sheds Cellars Shacks Houses

Kitchen Room Bedroom Porch Bathroom

Macrospace

Microspace

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Figure 34. Calven^s spatial units.

Figure jj. A ca. 1900 view of what today is the High Road, which runs along the south side ofCalvert. (Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's.)

this road, and it is the only automobile route that connects one part of the community with another. Until the summer of 1975, the road was unpaved. Branching out from this major road are smaller lines of travel known as lanes, although in the past narrow sections even of this road were referred to as lanes. A lane today is generally a one-car track leading from the main road to a house or a cluster of houses. These lanes often are named after the resident who lives there, such as Meany's Lane, Keough's Lane, Walsh's Lane, or Clancy's Lane. A lane that leads to only one house usually has a gate to keep cattle out. Lanes that lead to several houses are similar in appearance to the main road. Just as the immediate living spaces of Calvert contain cognitively designated paths of movement connecting various points on a structured grid, the landscape surrounding the living spaces possesses a similar system that permits spatial orientation and use. These lines of movement are immediately recognizable as cultural units because, again, they are named. Unlike open terrains with named features that can be connected by an infinite number of routes, the

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Figure 36. Marshes and woods paths.

wooded and marshy landscape surrounding Calvert necessitates a series of paths cut through the woods to connect spaces (figure 36). Woods paths have been carved throughout the surrounding countryside; according to Mike Sullivan, the "people here before my time . . . had slide paths cut." These paths are approximately three to four feet wide, can accommodate a horse sled (slide) in the winter, and are often traversed by foot in the summer. Such paths are identified by the name of a resident (Ryan's Path, which ends near the former site of the Ryan house on the north side), by destination (Yellow Marsh Path, which ends at Yellow Marsh), or by the name of a major feature (Barney Gill Path, which travels over a hill named Barney Gill). When the railroad went through the south side of Calvert, gates were put along the track where the woods 78

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paths met it. These paths became known as First Gate, Second Gate, and so on, depending on their distance from the High Road. Paths of movement—a road or a lane—within the dwelling areas of the community are usually clearly demarcated, and the end goal is often in sight: a house or a meadow. In the forested areas, however, a more detailed landscape literacy is necessary, especially in large spaces where a number of woods paths enter on the peripheries. A traveler on foot or on a slide can choose an endless variety of routes to traverse a marsh or a frozen pond, for example, and must recognize natural features on the other side that indicate the beginning of the path on which to continue. Knowledge of the general cardinal direction and characteristics of the trees at the opposite side of pond or marsh are two major guides, as Leo Walsh explained while berry picking on Yellow Marsh one August afternoon in 1979. Someone crossing frozen Slaughters Pond on a winter morning, for example, must know the features on the opposite side, where River Path, Juniper Knot Path, Church Cove Path, and Dirty Marsh Path can be followed. This knowledge of the edges of a pond or marsh is idiosyncratic, each individual focusing on different features. Calvert residents use other landscape features in their daily spatial movement. On a basic level, the harbor acts as a reference point for much of Calvert's orientation. Giving directions for movement often means using such terms as "up the bay," "down the harbor," or "handy (close) to the water." This reference to the water pervades many aspects of daily life: songs about the sea; houses facing the harbor; the blessing of boats in the spring of the year; fishing for the church on St. Peter and Paul's Day (June 29); prayers in church asking for protection on the water; Sunday afternoon picnics spent in a boat anchored off the Ferryland lighthouse. You "climb aboard" your truck or car, and you "haul in" to a spot when you park—the language used for boats transferred to land vehicles. The harbor is spoken of anthropomorphically as having a head and a mouth. The bay itself acts as an organizational space that provides an up and down direction—going up the bay, for example, is a common trip from the north side. The land orientation of the community is often geared to the direction of the harbor (water). These are the actual ways that Calvert residents structure their space, the specific cultural grid that orders the community through 79

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a series of discrete points and connections among these points. The interaction and therefore the naming of these units are most intense in the most used spaces (such as around the dwelling), but the creation of cultural space continues far off in the distant sections of the Calvert landscape. The first step in understanding the shared spatial order of the community is to delineate the basic units. Yet such categories are not merely lifeless terms connected to landscape features. They become names that need to be explained, the topic of discussions that link common resources. Explaining the Spatial Order

The spaces in Calvert are made usable by connecting specific names to recognizable features, designating them as important enough to locate. Place-names transform a myriad of spaces into easy reference points in people's minds. These are not arbitrary names, however, coordinates on a topographic grid. Names are placed on the land by people, and thus carry with them information about earlier residents and their actions. Actors known and unknown, from both the distant and the recent past, exist in names that people remember when they pass a familiar cove or hill. Although most of Calvert's names deal with the past, knowledge of the specific origins of these names is minimal. Residents in Calvert discuss and speculate about landscape names, but the specifics of origin are rarely known fully—nor are they important. The derivations of the most prominent names certainly are known and easily explained. Father Alfred Maher changed the community's name from Caplin Bay in 1922, to honor Sir George Calvert, founder of the Ferryland colony. Father Maher's act stands as much a tribute to the power of the local parish priest in the past as it does to Lord Baltimore's achievements; several residents claim that most of the community's inhabitants were, at the time, against the proposed change. As Johnny Sullivan put it, "The people didn't have much to do with it [the name change]." Calvert's former name, Caplin Bay, comes from the small fish—caplin—that frequent all Newfoundland harbors in early June; this name was recorded by English visitors as early as the late sixteenth century.10 Some portions of the landscape are linked to existing families or known individuals, and these spaces have names that can be easily explained: Sullivan's Hill, Meany's Island, Jimmy's Hill, Ryan's Hill, Condon's Gulch, Morry's Cove, Keough's Cove, Mart Ryan's Path, 80

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Toole's Point. Any act on an unnamed place can lead to a connection with a known individual. Giving an example of this process of linking known faces to the landscape, Clarence O'Toole mentioned a place in the country called Lar's Grove after Johnny Sullivan's grandfather. Clarence noted that Lar Sullivan used to hunt in this area, and his comments indicate the dynamics of the naming process: "These fellows used to be in the country after caribou, and wherever [you] built a little tilt [a type of temporary shelter], your name stayed with you." Some landscape names are connected with specific individuals; others recall particular activities or events. An oral explanation may link a past activity to a place. Clarence O'Toole provided two examples: "Between Shoulder Mutton Hill and Devils Kitchen there's an area of high land up there, and about a hundred years ago an old fellow Condon lost a horse. And they found 'im up here in this area, so they called it the Stable." And: "There's a little gully here. Now, a fellow, Jeremiah Conway always went trouting there. That'd be about, I suppose five miles to walk in. And this old man used to be always trouting there, and that was called Jerry's Gully." Tragedy marks some areas of the landscape with placenames handed down from recent memory. Old Womans Pond, at the edge of Calvert, is reportedly named for a suicide drowning a number of years ago (figure 37). Not surprisingly, a ghost has reportedly been seen near the pond.11 In small communities like Calvert characterized in the past not only by limited wealth, but also, more important, by limited opportunities for economic advancement, the landscape often was believed to hold one of the few means to instant success. In some isolated cove or under some obscure hill, wealth—buried treasure or gold—might be found. Several Calvert spaces were associated with this potential for economic gain. Some say that buried treasure was hidden in Gorman's Hill. Near the western end of Calvert was a place called Pete Morry's Mine, where a deposit of some type of precious metal was believed to be located. According to France Boland, the old people used to say that Pete Morry went there almost every day to find a bit of gold dust in a hole he had dug. Although only oral reports connect some portions of the landscape to wealth, several Calvert residents have actually looked for hidden treasure. Everyone in Calvert has heard that years ago pirates supposedly buried treasure at Church Cove—on the north side of the community near the Cape Broyle end of the peninsula. 81

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Figure 37. Old Womans Pond, with Gorman's Hill to the left.

When Mr. Vince Led well was young, his grandfather and another old man, Mr. Reddy, used to take him to Church Cove. They would tell him where to dig, and he would look for the treasure. Mr. Vince remembers that they would always find holes where other people had been searching. The association of wealth with Church Cove is conveyed as much through Mr. Vince's song "Church Cove." When asked about Church Cove, many residents will respond by repeating three or four lines of the song. According to Mr. Vince, this composition—which has done so much to keep alive the Church Cove buried treasure tradition—was originally about another Southern Shore cove, Shoal Bay, near Petty Harbour. He took the song from a printed collection, he recalled, and changed the place-name to Church Cove.12 This composition formalized 82

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the Calvert account and added details—like Captain Kidd—that were lacking in the original narrative.

CHURCH COVE Oh come boys 'while Til tell you a place you know well, They buried a fortune, a very long spell, A place called Church Cove on the Southern Shore, Where gold it was buried, they say, in galore. They say "'twas a pirate they call Captain Kidd, In Church Cove his wonderful fortune had hid, And for years they were digging the fortune to raise, Till the boys of the village got near in the craze. Where this money was buried a great many went, With pick axes and shovels to put up a tent, And just as they stuck the first pick on the ground, The ghost of a darkle did hover around. Oh they rushed from the spot on that terrible night, And the crackie got turned inside out from the fright, And a man from Cape Broyle had watched the quar sight, His whiskers turned foxy that always were white. Now a crew from Burin, at least so we're told, They started a diggin' and struck on the gold, And the load was so heavy to bring down the track, That a hump like a butter tub grew on their back. Church Cove and its treasure cannot be discussed today without mentioning Mr. Vince's song. The people and events of recent memory have, in some instances, marked Calvert space with names easily recognized and explained. For many other places, however, space is connected not with remembered persons and activities, but with a general collective past, a past stretching back for an unspecified period ("before my time"), peopled by unknown faces, mysterious beings, and long-forgotten activities. Unknown faces exist in this nebulous past only through surnames on the land. The landscape also hints at a time before local clergymen (who arrived relatively recently in Calvert's long history) had firm control over local beliefs and practices, when official and unofficial 83

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doctrines often blended together. Ghosts, fairies, and the devil all left their mark on Calvert space, carrying into the present a number of beliefs now held by very few. When I asked Vince Ledwell— the oldest Calvert resident—about his belief in these supernatural beings, he replied that it was "only nonsense" and "old foolishness." Even if denial concerning such supernatural beings is not adamant, there are at least doubts, and reports about the origins of supernatural landscape names are more a repetition of what "the old people" said than actual statements of belief. People learn that a certain feature has a specific name, and a narrative exists as an explanatory device that is not usually believed. Features out of the ordinary were sometimes explained as the work of supernatural beings. On the High Road near the edge of Calvert, for example, as you travel to Cape Broyle, there is a patch of wild heather. Several local residents explain it as the work of the fairies. Jose Reddigan reported that his grandfather told him how the heather got there: "An Irishman, who was a rebel, had to flee from Ireland and hike in the Highlands of Scotland. Some of his good fairy friends went along with him. They would hide out in the heather and warn him of danger. When he had to flee Scotland he put them in his knapsack with some heather to make them comfortable. He eventually got to Newfoundland to this place which was then known as Bristol Cove where he died; he was buried by the fairies who planted the heather over his grave and vowed to keep it growing for evermore." Doris Sullivan's version is similar: "We heard that there was a sailor got lost, [he] came off a boat, and had a sleeping bag or his clothes or something. And he stayed there off a boat from Scotland, got shipwrecked. And he laid down there one night, there must have been heather." Other residents claim that the heather was brought over from Scotland as seeds in a traveler's knapsack and that these grew by the side of the road. Essie Rossiter (figure 38) reported simply: "They said an old Irishman came one time and emptied his sack there." Most people in Calvert have heard the story about the fairies putting the heather there, even if they doubt the truth of the account.13 Fairies not only gave names to Calvert's landscape but also affected its cognitive grid. Belief in them was strong in previous times, especially in their powers to harm children. Mike Sullivan recalled: "If it got dark, we'd say nothing. Only for the house as fast as we could go, 'fraid the fairies would chase us." And the fairies had another direct role in Calvert's landscape; since they 84

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Figure 38. Essie Rossiter.

were often blamed for someone getting lost in the woods, these creatures were thought to lead people astray. Indeed, Doris and Lorraine Sullivan both heard that the fairies made Suse Hayes lose her way in the woods. Just as unusual forms of vegetation need to be explained—sometimes by a supernatural event—abnormal terrain features often require similar explanations. One writer has recently suggested that particularly strange landscape features are frequently attributed to acts of malevolent beings—such as the devil—thus absolving God of the responsibility for undesirable forms.14 One specific cliff near Cape Broyle Head has a series of jagged protruding rocks known as 85

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the Devil's Staircase, and is considered the work of the devil. According to one account: "During the days when ships had to depend on the wind, a ship was becalmed off Cape Broyle Head. The crew, discouraged by the weather, cursed and swore and wished that the devil would get them out of there. It is said that the devil took the ship and towed her up the cliffs, leaving his footprints in the solid rock."15 Other features around Calvert are obviously connected with acts of the devil—such as Brimstone Hill and Devils Kitchen—but no one recalls explanatory narratives about these names. The activities of supernatural beings are a legacy of a time when such belief was strong and pervasive, when Christianity and folk religion shaded imperceptibly into one another. The names of supernatural characters remain few in number. Such is not the case with unfamiliar surnames. Indeed, an entire cast of historical actors placed their names on Calvert's spaces, but remain completely unknown in current local tradition. Early contact with the landscape was made by migratory fishermen and crews of surveying parties, and either group may have left their names on the land. Initial settlers of the Southern Shore came from Devon—only later from Ireland—and English surnames are the most common. Other names can clearly be traced back to individuals and families that lived in the Calvert area (table 5), but local residents know little about them. In several instances (Shortall, Glynn, Daniel), Ferryland settlers left their mark on the Calvert landscape, obviously attesting that Ferryland residents cut wood along Caplin Bay since the earliest days of seventeenth-century habitation. Even in living memory, according to Vince Ledwell, merchants in Ferryland used to send men over to cut near Stone Island, since few trees remained in Ferryland. They were paid so many dollars per hundred sticks. Vince remembered being told that near his garden at Stone Island a man by the name of Hynes, probably employed by Ferryland merchant Robert Wright, had been cutting. Other landscape surnames or place-names from the homeland— again lacking current explanations of origin—do not seem to appear in documentary sources that relate to Calvert's past (table 6). These individuals did not reside in Calvert long enough to be noted in a document. They merely stopped in the harbor, and their fleeting visits left permanent names, either their own surnames or place-names remembered from England and Ireland, on the local landscape. 86

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TABLE FIVE Names of Early Residents Found on the Landscape Place-Name

Resident

Dalton's Spelling Place

Ferryland 1730; John Dalton, Caplin Bay 1849

Daniel's Marsh

William Daniel, Ferryland 1787; Matthew, Richard, and Philip Daniel, Caplin Bay 1800; Philip McDaniel, Caplin Bay 1 8 1 1

Gatherall's Hill

Joseph and Stephen Gat he rail, Caplin Bay 1840; Thomas Gatherall, 1871

Glynn Path

Thomas Glynn, justice of the peace, Ferryland 1834, member of General Assembly, Ferryland 1842

Gorman's Hill

Richard Gorman, clerk of the peace, Ferryland 1821; Peter Gorman, constable, Ferryland 1830; Richard Gorman, Caplin Bay 1840

Kelly's Point

John Kelly, Caplin Bay 1788; James Kelly, granted land in Caplin Bay 1847

Shortall's Pinch

James Shortall, land on Scoggins Head 1798

Sweetland Hill

William Sweetland, Caplin Bay 1815

Sources: E. R. Seary, Family Names of the Island of Newfoundland (St. John's: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1976); John Lovell, Province of Newfoundland Directory for 1871 (Montreal: Lovell, 1871), p. 237; Royal Gazette, Dec. 5, 1811; Pole Papers, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's; Ferryland Court Records: Surrogate, 1786-1812, Sessions, 1829-38, 1839-56, PANL.

Unless a narrative describes the activities of a particular individual in a specific space, then once the link between person and human memory is severed, residents have little to remember about them except a landscape name. There is no reason to remember anything else. The majority of the surnames that remain on Calvert's landscape have no clear narrative specifically connected to them. I asked Len Canning how Daniel's Marsh got its name. His reply: "Don't know. Must be some old [person] or something who was around. I don't know. Was Daniel's Marsh since I can remember." Although documentary sources hint at origins, oral tradition has long forgotten such people. Clarence O'Toole remarked: "There are names like Shortall. Now there was never a Shortall here. And over here, right across here there was a place, and that name's after dying out now. None of the young fellows know. This is called Joyce's Skirt. I don't ever remember, nobody else, a Joyce living here." These names are treated as part of a general collective past that usually cannot be specifically explained today. An entire cognitive map has been handed down to present-day residents, 87

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TABLE SIX Calvert Place-Names with English or Irish Backgrounds Calvert Place-Name

Surname Background

Athlone Barney Gill

Irish English (Devon) or Irish

Bawnmore

English (Devon) or Irish Irish

Birchin Hill

English (Devon) or Irish

Castle Marsh

English

Church Cove

English or Irish

Courtney's Cove

English or Irish

Dempsey's Hill

Irish

Devil's Staircase

English (Dorset)

Gallavan's Hill

Irish

Gooselin

English (Devon) or Irish

New Goulds and Old Goulds

English (Devon, Dorset) or Irish

Jeffreys River

English (Devon) or Irish

Joyce's Skirt

English (Somerset) or Irish

Scoggins Head

English

Shoulder of Mutton Slaughters Pond

Place-Name Background

English (Devon) or Irish

English (Dorset) English

Sources: E. R. Seary, Family Names of the Island of Newfoundland (St. John's: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1976); Seary, Place Names of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971); A. D. Mills, The Place-Names of Dorset, Part I, English Place-Name Society, vol. 52 (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 1977); J. E. B. Cover, A. Mawer, and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Devon, Parts I and 2, English PlaceName Society, vols. 8 and 9 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931 —32); P. W. Joyce, The Origin and History of Irish Names of Place (1875; rpt. East Ardsley: EP, 1972); Henry B. Guppy, Homes of Family Names in Great Brito/'n (London: Harrison, 1890).

with many names simply put there by "the old people," as Essie Rossiter explained, or by the "ancestors," according to Clarence O'Toole. Because of the transitory nature of Calvert's earlier settlement history, the names of landscape features have quite frequently changed over time, as different groups and different families came and went, to be completely replaced by others. If we look at the major features of the community, even what would be the most consistent of named spaces have seen alteration. Names have been changed and some have disappeared, so that what exists today in many cases is not an unbroken naming tradition. Lance Cove was 88

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called Freshwater Bay (1762); Morry's Cove was known as Cuckolds Cove (1752); Brewing Cove was the name of the present-day Deep Cove (1752, 1794); and the Point was referred to as Nashes (1840) and Matches (1844). Other names have almost completely disappeared: Helens (i 840), Rocky Park (i 840, 1841), Oat Garden (1840), and Cottage Hill (i8 4 i). 16 Many of Calvert's landscape names contain clues about the past, but for present-day residents this past remains essentially hidden. Indeed, the unknown origins of much that structures Calvert's spaces lead to an important daily activity: talking about the landscape. Residents frequently wonder among themselves about origins, uncertain—in most cases—of definite explanations. Whereas Aidan Sullivan pointed out, for example, that he knew of no real explanation for the name Slaughters Point, Johnny Sullivan claimed that it was because so many ducks were shot, or slaughtered, there; no one mentioned that it could as likely be a family name. Although some explanations for names are community-wide, others are idiosyncratic, offered by individuals as "logical" explanations for names. Aidan Sullivan posited that Foul Cove was so named because of the foul nature of the soil there, an area that has been used as a garden but with little success. As he explained: "How we come to name Foul Cove. See all this strip of ground I just told you about. Well, that was full of rocks and we hauled 'em in the winter time, we piled 'em up in stacks and hauled 'em over the cliff, rolled 'em down in the shore. That's how we called it Foul. There's banks and banks of rocks we'd after roll 'em over the cliff, y'know, from clearing the land." Another man, however, explained that it was called Fowl Cove, because of the number of seabirds that shelter there. Since the name exists only orally, whether it is "fowl" or "foul" will never be certain, and people continue to speculate to neighbor and outsider alike. The area around Essie Rossiter's house is called Lighthouse Hill. She never knew why, but recalled that Paddy Whelan had speculated to her: "You think why they called it Lighthouse Hill, people used to be up late in the night, and they see the lights on." Landscape naming becomes a vehicle for talk. In many cases, residents explain the presence of a name simply as being there since the time of the "old people," and talk may indicate a lack of explanations. Clarence O'Toole commented: "Out here you have the Old Goulds and right here you have the New Goulds. Now . . . what is Goulds? Is it a level place or something? There's 89

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a reason, the Goulds out here. God, I heard what it is now." And more specifically, when I asked Vince Ledwell about the origin of several place-names he responded: "I don't know where they got their names to. We're often talking about that, between ourselves now. We'd be sitting down chatting, where they got the names. Down in Stone Island there's a woods path called Larry Kearney's Path. Now who this Larry Kearney was. He didn't live in Stone Island. He must be in Ferryland. Perhaps he come and haul wood that way." Unknown origins lead to speculation about the logical use of community space, in this case, the cutting of wood. More important, the landscape provides a puzzle that will never be solved, and therefore a topic for endless discussion. Names and events from the past live today on Calvert's landscape. Yet in so many cases these names are not connected in memory with known faces or acts. Like cemeteries no longer used, the landscape becomes a monument to the general past, rather than a link to the living.17 Place-names in these spaces are a focus for discussion, and a topic for pure speculation. Newer landscape names— like the names on the gravestones of the recently dead—link a known personage to living residents. But most of the landscape names are from the distant past, and like the early headstones on the Shore, are monuments to people unrelated and therefore unknown. Whereas inscriptions weather and fade on the lichencovered gravestones, the names remain on the landscape, as clear as the day their owners cut timber or hauled wood. Lack of present-day explanations leads residents to speculate, and such talk only ensures that these unknown figures and their action—even if in name alone—will survive on the hills and paths around Calvert. The large number of landscape names that have little direct oral link with present residents indicates how transitory initial European contact with the harbor really was. Impermanent economies in other areas of North America left little in the way of material culture to provide a visible sign of early exploitation. Calvert's material culture—and indeed, much of Newfoundland's—is similar, yet through names the initial impact of early summer fishermen has survived. Although Calvert residents usually do not know the ultimate origins of much of the cognitive map that is handed down to them, these early personages live on in the hundreds of speculative conversations about who they were. Yet certain groups are more familiar with certain places, depending on how these spaces are transformed. 90

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The Spatial Ideology of Gender

The ordering of space in each community is not simply a logical designation of obvious landscape features. Similar landscapes have vastly different naming systems—different cognitive maps—depending on cultural norms. Every community is made up of individuals with specific social roles, each role part of the identity of that person, and these roles in turn determine which areas are used by each resident. Space is therefore linked directly to role and identity, and these identities are governed largely by shared ideologies that ensure that certain social roles have appropriate social space.18 When social space in the community per se is examined, however, knowledge is categorized according to particular groups. Community maps and exhaustive lists of place-names give way to cultural norms of who is expected to know and use certain spaces. The knowledge of Calvert's landscape is divided fundamentally by gender rules. Men essentially know the landscape spaces beyond the confines of the house and yard. They work the woods, the country, the coast, and the water and thus learn the specifics of naming that enable such activities. Young boys travel into the woods or out in a boat with their fathers or older brothers to learn about these spaces, apprenticing to become familiar with the nuances of the spatial grid around them. All males are familiar with the spaces close to their houses, but most also know the specific woods space where they work each year. Men who live in different sections of the community know different parts of the woods. Whereas a male may have heard of a particular place-name in other sections, or even have a general notion where it is located, he essentially knows this name only out of its spatial context. He knows his own area best, and others must be consulted about the spatial grids of other areas. When discussing the woods, Clarence O'Toole mentioned several names on the north side of Calvert. Clarence lives on the Point, has only heard of these names, and was unable to pinpoint their location. He then suggested: "You have to get Mike [Sullivan], now, to get on Cargo Wit, and Barney Gill, and Sallavex." And Vince Ledwell pointed out that Aidan Kavanagh and John Boland would know about the woods around Suse's Cross better than he because they cut in that area. Men from adjacent areas occasionally relish demonstrating their spatial knowledge to one another, in particular that one man would 91

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not know the woods well in an adjoining area. One man may have heard a landscape name all his life, but not had occasion to locate it for his use. One day Will Boland, Aidan Sullivan, and Clarence O'Toole were working on Will's son's house. They had taken a break and were looking out the window, talking about the surrounding landscape. The following conversation ensued. Will: That little bare spot that's up there. Do you see that, Aidan? I betcha you haven't got a name for it. You haven't got a name for that little place you sees over there, like a marsh. Clarence: No. Will: What do you think it would be? Clarence: I don't know. Will: Raspberry Marsh. Clarence: Is it? I never heard that. Will: I allow it was only not long Tom Power was here. We were looking out through the window. He said: "What's the clear place that's up there, where [when] did somebody cut that?" And I said, "No. 'Tis a little marsh." "Damn it," he said, "that's wicked, 'tis Raspberry Marsh." Although males know only certain areas of the wooded regions, all share a knowledge of water space. Each male who fishes knows the number of trap berths in Calvert harbor, the names of each, where they are located, and their characteristics. Since who receives what berth changes from year to year, men must be familiar with all these spaces and know how to locate them. If men generally know the wooded landscape, women find it unfamiliar. Names may be known, but the experiential dimension is lacking. Doris Sullivan commented: "We knew the names like Juniper Knot and Church Cove. . . . We knew basically where they were b u t . . . I couldn't find them, could I?" referring to the time she tried to show me Church Cove and we became lost. It is not surprising, then, that the stories about Suse Hayes and Mrs. Power's children mentioned earlier in this chapter both involve females or children becoming lost. That the woods is a space used by adult males is underlined by one of its hills having two names, depending on the gender of the audience: Piss Pot Hill, used by the men who cut wood in the area, becomes Chamber Pot Hill when women are present. The woods is a male-specific space; when I asked Doris Sullivan about the woods and woodcutting, she replied, "I know nothing 92

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about that. That's the men's work." Calvert females have domain over a space of their own: the house and garden. Both are under the care of the females of the family, both are their responsibility. The house per se spatially is not only the female's responsibility, but it is her space, even when men are present; as Doris Sullivan described this women's domain, "the house was their real priority." Men spend little time in the home—except during the evenings— and generally socialize outdoors or in work-related outbuildings and spaces. Although men could gather in a house, they often prefer to be outside in their own space. When I asked Vince Ledwell about men spending time indoors, he replied: "The men wouldn't spend hardly any time in the house. That was the women's job. The men'd be always out at something." Women make these spaces their own not simply with the signs of their constant upkeep. Real signs often are displayed in the house that address directly the importance of the female's role. Kitty Larry Sullivan's kitchen has a poster that reads: "God couldn't be everywhere so He made mothers." Ida Sullivan's kitchen has a plaque with the verse: To one who bears the sweetest name And adds a luster to the same Who shares my joys Who cheers when sad The greatest friend I ever had Long life to her for there jr no other Can take the place of my dear Mother

Women's space is the home, men's the woods and water. Many researchers have made this point before, that male activities are focused toward the public realms of daily life, and women's toward the domestic sphere.19 To merely claim that men use public space and women are responsible for the home, however, simplifies the spatial complexities of Calvert community life. Except for the water, the male knowledge of space in Calvert— wooded areas—is certainly not pervasive, but is limited for each male to those sections he uses. In many cases, the knowledge is idiosyncratic, for each man knows how to read the woods in his particular way so as not to get lost. Emphasizing the extent of this individual landscape familiarity, Mike Sullivan remarked: "I could leave, now, and [take] a straight path. I didn't follow either footpath, only straight through that woods. I'd make a trail of me own, 93

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and I still knows where I'm going." Male prowess is judged not by knowledge of all woods spaces, but by familiarity with particular areas. In these utilized spaces, men must know where to find certain resources (firewood, building timber, game) and how to easily extract these materials, retrieving them by the shortest possible route. Women are required to demonstrate a more focused, more compact spatial knowledge; they are responsible not merely for knowledge of a particular space, but for its constant re-creation. Whereas males know the details of broad expanses of space, females know minute details of extremely focused areas. This, on a basic level, means keeping interior spaces clean and ordered. Women obviously are responsible for keeping the house clean on a daily basis. But times are set aside for special attention; Kitty Vincent Sullivan (figure 39) commented that in the past "Saturday would be the day for cleaning up. You'd scrub the chairs, and you'd scrub the floor." Essie Rossiter mentioned that the floors were cleaned on Wednesdays and Saturdays. General cleaning of the entire house, along with redecorating, usually occurred once or twice a year—in the spring and at Christmas. At this time, Essie said, you would "wash ceilings, wash walls and curtains, everything had to come down." More important, along with this attention to space through cleaning, the female is responsible for spatial creation involving acquisition of certain objects. The woman chooses colors and finishes in the house interior, and she often does the actual interior painting—whether the fake graining of doors or wainscoting, as in the past, or applying the layers of shiny high-gloss enamel to the kitchen ceiling. For years, part of an annual renewal included adding a new layer of wallpaper to kitchen walls. Kitty Vincent Sullivan explained that whereas most rooms in the house would be wallpapered only when needed, the kitchen would be wallpapered once a year, either in the spring or at Christmas. Essie Rossiter papered her kitchen twice a year. And Annie O'Toole said that she papered in the spring "to brighten up the place, to brighten up the house, then, after the winter." When Hanorah Rossiter's house was torn down in the summer of 1980, the kitchen walls had at least sixteen layers of wallpaper (figure 40). Given the style of the last layer, and the date of the first newspaper backing, Hanorah no doubt papered her kitchen at least every third year, if not more often. When Rhoda Sullivan Keough was papering her old house several years ago, she complained about the paper that had built up 94

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Figure 39. Kitty Vincent Sullivan and Mike Sullivan.

on the walls as well as the shape of the room, saying: "My God, they [are] some crooked." Her father, Tom Sullivan, replied: "If you were standing for eighty years, you'd be crooked too." As Lorraine Sullivan noted, "there was no such thing as tearing the paper o f f . . . that was insulation." Indeed, the practice of papering the house annually or semiannually is common throughout the province. On the southwest 95

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Figure 40. Layers of wallpaper stripped off the walls ofHanorah Rossiter's house as it was being demolished in August 1980.

coast it is "the most exciting part of spring cleaning"; sometimes old wallpaper is torn down and the walls scrubbed with lye before it is replaced.20 On the Bonavista Peninsula, walls often are papered every spring and fall, and sometimes for Christmas; thresholds also are painted annually or semiannually.21 Upon arrival for each summer's stay in coastal Labrador, putting new wallpaper on the walls is one of the first tasks women perform, as well as frequent painting.22 Frequent repainting is also the norm for the French area on the west coast of the island.23 The desire to renew, to renovate the house interior is often manifested today in the addition of paneling; in some cases, this is painted over after a few years and the cycle begins again. Whereas an annual change of furniture might be economically unfeasible and socially ostentatious, its frequent repainting—along with walls and woodwork—ensures a renewal nonetheless. The numerous layers of paint on older furniture attest 96

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to this urge. Panels on furniture have even been wallpapered. A woman may not do all of the physical work, but she is in charge of choosing pattern and color and deciding when a change is necessary. Men may have initially built the house, but women constantly rebuild it from the inside.24 Creating domestic space through decoration applies to the immediate exterior of the house as well. Males may add technological objects to create yard art (discussed below in chapter 7), but females use this area, like the house interior, to demonstrate the renewal of space through decoration. Domesticated flowers and shrubs bloom yearly, and gardens display personal taste in color and design.25 Like the layers of wallpaper that are added in the interior, flowers appear year after year, needing an equivalent amount of attention, once again indicating this norm of annual re-creation and renewal. With flowers and with wallpaper, then, new colors and new designs frequently appear inside and out. Female spatial knowledge is as varied as that of the male, but more focused, more intense. Males know the spatial features of a broad area of landscape, and females know an equal amount of spatial data, but at a more focused level. Rose bushes are often planted in the garden in front of a house. Flowers might be brought from other gardens, thus visually tracing social networks among relatives and friends. Essie Rossiter, for example, transplanted musk and boy's love from Charlotte Whelan's garden in Ferryland; they originally grew in Charlotte's grandmother's garden. As Essie explained, "one neighbor from the other would get it." When I stopped to chat with Len and Marcella Canning outside their house one summer's day in August 1977, Marcella took me on a tour of her flower garden, which encircled much of the house (see figure 144). She pointed out the name of each flower and shrub, explaining its characteristics: sweet William, bluebell, columbine, boy's love or southernwood, meadowsweet, delphinium, sumac, dahlia, stock, rock flower, rosie gosie, sweet forget-me-not, poor betsey, white lilac. Her husband, Len, stood at a distance, and it was obvious that this was Marcella's space. She was showing off her knowledge to me, just as her husband had when we talked about Suse's Cross an hour before. In addition to a flower garden, a space is set aside in the immediate vicinity of the house exterior where special food is grown and tended by women. Most houses—like Annie O'Toole's—have a kitchen garden, planted sometimes in front of but more frequently 97

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Figure 4.1. Annie O'Toole's kitchen garden.

behind the dwelling (figure 41). Kitchen gardens may have been the prime agricultural space in early outport Newfoundland; one report from 1702 commented: "The sustenance received from the country is not worth mentioning more than the product of common kitchen gardens."26 These gardens are reserved for growing several rows of the same vegetables that are found in larger plots at greater distances from the house: such varieties as potatoes and turnips. The kitchen garden is also where more specialized vegetables are grown: salad greens, onions, herbs, and even such cultivated plants as gooseberries and black or red currants. This area gives women knowledge of the characteristics of particular growing seasons just as men have for certain staple crops, at the same time producing food considered special because of the additional care required. It permits women to obtain fresh ingredients for summer cooking. Essie Rossiter described how quickly vegetables could be harvested from her kitchen garden: "Cut off a head of 98

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cabbage or cut off a turnip or haul a stock of your new potatoes. Make a stew, you know, [with] the new vegetables. New garden stew, we used to call it." The very name kitchen garden links this space to the female's sphere; Aidan Sullivan remarked: "And then the most reason they had them [a few vegetables] in the kitchen garden was the women used to look after 'em. And they're right again the house. If they got a half an hour they'd be able to go out in the kitchen garden and weed it." Clarence O'Toole recalled: "I can remember, my mother was married in 1900, and she said you could reach out to the window there and catch hold to the potatoes. Every bit of ground was used." Both males and females demonstrate forms of community spatial knowledge. Each group is responsible for certain portions of the landscape, often unaware of the spaces known by the other. That each is responsible for a particular domain is not surprising, in part because of marriage patterns. In Calvert, as in many Newfoundland communities, after men marry they generally live in the community where they grew up.27 Females often leave the community of their birth when they marry, moving to their husband's place of residence. Combined with their newly acquired marriage surnames, women's names sometimes duplicate the names of those already living in their new community. Distinctions have to be made, and in these cases women are referred to by both their own first name and that of their husband. Thus Kitty Larry Sullivan can be distinguished from Kitty Vincent Sullivan when conversation takes place. Of the majority of couples in Calvert, husbands were born there and wives are essentially outsiders. When growing up, men realize that the broad spatial knowledge they acquire while working in the woods or on the water will be used throughout their lives. Familiarity with their resource spaces—as well as resourcerelated skills—means that eventually they can assume a man's role, spatially knowing the landscape, not getting lost. Females never know where they may live. Certainly during childhood they are taught to focus their attention on domestic spaces. But even if they did acquire the spatial acuity of their brothers with regard to the larger landscape, it would not be of any use if they move somewhere else. Women master a space that of necessity must easily transfer to any community: they learn how to create an intensely focused decorative space that can take shape in any domestic context, no matter what the community. Whereas for males the mastering of space involves primarily the subtractive activities 99

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of removing resources from specific spaces, for females such mastery comes through additive layerings of visually focused knowledge. Spaces in Calvert are not just male and female. Males have knowledge of certain portions of the landscape, females of others. Yet the responsibilities growing from that knowledge take totally different forms. Males, finally, are subservient to their spaces, but females exercise control over theirs. Males are expected to use the vast sections of the wooded landscape only to extract necessary materials, to remove things, to bring them out to more familiar spaces where they can be used. Females, by contrast, are constantly adding to their domestic space, constantly reasserting order on extremely focused spaces of the house interior and exterior. Although Mr. Vince explained that interiors were redecorated simply because women liked "to be changing it [space]" all the time, fundamentally redecoration provides women with a channel to express their continual power over a specific place. That such spaces are extremely ordered is frequently emphasized by redecorating, repainting, rearranging, or—in the case of the flower garden—replanting. The visual does not remain static once created; it is periodically changed to indicate that power continues to be exercised. The areas around the meadows and fields are known and used by all, but in the gender-specific spaces of Calvert, the community's ideology is clear: men extract, women create.28 This spatial norm is at odds with the common assumptions about male-female activities in traditional societies—that males are concerned with the products of culture, females with the products of nature. Gender spaces in Calvert call into question the legitimacy of such simple dichotomies. Women in Calvert cannot be considered relegated to a secondary spatial role because of being associated essentially with interior domestic space. To say that men operate in the public spaces of the community and women in private again sets up a simplistic dichotomy.29 Women, in fact, are responsible for one of the most public community spaces—the house interior, especially the kitchen— and they constantly demonstrate their mastery of that space through decorative change. Women have a quiet confidence in their control of the kitchen and the entire house.30 Calvert's space, then, is produced first through the ordering of a community-specific cognitive map, which imposes on the landscape a grid system that permits a shared usage of resource and domestic places. The semantic dimensions of this grid system— 100

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the place-names used—speak of a culture initially marked by impermanence and instability. Place-names link residents not so much with a specific past as with an almost mythical time filled with shadowy figures before the known community took shape. Curiosity about these faceless figures who live on through an association with a hill or a cove provides an important link between resource sharing and common conversation. But Calvert's entire space is not known by one or even several individuals; rather, different spaces are produced by different groups. In Calvert's ideology of place gender concerns have organized space so that men remove resources from broad sections of the landscape while women focus their energy on creating an extremely ordered space. Men and women alike are associated with public and private places, both producing specific spaces, but through different means. Men know wide areas mainly to extract, women focus on additive spaces. The Calvert landscape is systematically structured so that it can be efficiently used, easily worked.

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CHAPTER

FOUR

Property and Work

7)

y the end of the summer of 1784, Matthew Morry was worried. He had come once more to Calvert harbor, lucky to find shore space available at the head of the bay where he could again base his annual fishery. Space near the water—like all areas of Calvert's landscape at the time—was there to be used, not owned. But Morry was concerned, concerned that the time and effort it had taken to establish his fishing premises near the harbor would eventually be for nought. The space might be taken over by someone else in the spring at the start of the next fishing season. He left Thomas Head in Calvert over the winter to look after his fishing premises, but he could never be sure that such delegates could maintain his claim for this particular space in the upcoming spring.1 He knew that land rights in harbors all over Newfoundland were allocated on a yearly basis; whoever arrived first at the beginning of the fishing season could take the best locations. But he would gamble; Morry knew that in 1773 Francis Tree had been granted land for stages and flakes at the head of the bay by a naval governor—as had been done in similar bays at the time.2 Others had been given land that might even be used by descendants—just as in Britain—ensuring that shore space would not have to be competed for year in and year out. So Morry petitioned John Campbell, the governor of Newfoundland: That your petitioner hath cleared and begun to build a Fishing Room at the Head of Capling Bay, in the district of Ferryland, which spot of Ground, never was cleared, or occupied by any person whatsoever, its Situation being 80 yards South-West from the Pond in Length and 80 yards NorthWest in breadth with a Flake over the Pond. 102

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Your Petitioner most humbly prays, your excellency will secure a Patent—the possession of the said premises to himself & heirs and your petitioner as in duty bound will ever pray. Morry was obviously not alone in his desire to regularize the use of this space, for the justice of the peace in Ferryland—Robert Carter—wrote an accompanying plea: These certifie that the spot of ground Matthew Morry now occupieth in Caplin Bay for the Fishery appears by the ancient inhabitants testimony never to have been occupieth before by any Fishing Ships, Boatmen, or Inhabitants since their remembrance nor hath it been occupied since mine, now 42 years. But cut & cleared from the woods, by the petitioner who hath this year 2 Briggs, a Shallop & a Skiff in the fishery. The benefit fair that attends the ships-room from this spot being cleared in the manner aforsaid is very great. In testimony to which I have set my hand in Ferryland. Morry did not immediately hear back, but obviously continued to fish out of Calvert for the next few summers, anxiously waiting, wondering if his hard work in constructing fish premises would be officially recognized by government officials. Finally, in the fall of 1790, an answer arrived from a surrogate of Newfoundland, Jacob Waller. Whereas you having represented same by petition, that carrying on a considerable fishery in this Island, and not having space sufficient to spread your fish on you have this summer run a great risque of having a quantity spoiled, and, signifying that you intend to extend and increase your concern in the Trade next summer, for that purpose requesting the grant of a vacant unoccupied piece of Ground, laying & situate on the North East side of the Pond at the head of Capelin Bay, extending in length, from the centre of the Beach that separates the said pond from the Bay, one hundred & 25 yards to the southward & backwards from the side of the pond, one hundred and 25 yards likewise, at same time intimating that you are desirous of having the Flakes & other necessary bldgs. erected on this same against next fishing season— I do therefore hereby grant you Matthew Morry provided his Excellency the Governor has no objection thereto to quietly 103

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& peaceably possess the same, so long as you shall employ the said space for the advantage of the fishery.3 The shore space finally was recognized officially as Morry's, not— and this is the crucial point—primarily to own, but to use, and to remain his space as long as it was used for one purpose and one purpose only: the fishery. Like all of Newfoundland, Calvert land during the time of formative settlement in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was there primarily for one reason: to be exploited in support of the fishery. Although Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed the land at St. John's in 1583 for the crown,4 and promoters of seventeenthcentury colonization schemes on the Avalon obtained large property grants, by and large land remained subsidiary to the fishery—something not necessarily to own but to use as a base for the important resource of the sea. Land could not be acquired, was not to be accumulated; legally, it was not a commodity, as it had been for generations in the homeland. English merchants in Calvert like Matthew Morry were obviously the first to want their use of shore space recognized officially; North Devon and South Devon merchants competed for shore space along the entire Southern Shore every spring.5 Such official recognition would ensure that the same merchant could exploit the same space from year to year. Francis Tree had already done so; William Sweetland recorded in the local court his purchase of land and buildings from Patrick Clancy in 181 y.6 Yet the ordinary fishermen who made up the bulk of the population tended to ensure that no one person acquired too much land. Clarence O'Toole recounted an incident in Ferryland sometime in the nineteenth century that demonstrated this tendency: But then Carters, now, they were Englishmen. They were up farther than the ordinary person, and they claimed a lot of land down there [in Ferryland]. But apparently down in Ferryland you fenced in a piece of land; you wanted another bit of land, so you fenced in a bit and then you started to clear it. And Carter came along and said, "Now, boy, that's my land." Didn't this happen in a lot of cases. " 'Tis not much good to me, so if 'tis any help to you, I'm quite satisfied for you to have it. The only thing, you have to pay me some rent. Now, very little, a bucket of potatoes, anything at all." So, you were delighted to get the land for the bucket of potatoes, but you started paying him rent. So eventually he claimed all this land. 104

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And all the Downs in Ferryland, he claimed all that, right from the Pool to the Lighthouse. But in Clarence's account, a dispute developed. "And Mr. Delahunty went out and fenced in a part of it. And Carter sent his men out the next day to knock down the fence. So then they [Delahuntys] went out at it again, and then all the fellows went out. So they all fenced in a part of it, and Carter had no more claim to it." Community action blocked massive land acquisition by one individual. English mercantile interests generally obtained shore space first in most communities; one early government official argued that only the English should "have the Privilege of being possessed of any Fish Rooms, or Plantations in the Island of Newfoundland," not wanting the Irish Roman Catholics to have any property rights.7 When I asked Clarence O'Toole about the Morrys in Calvert, he claimed that they owned land not because they were there any earlier than the Irish, but because "the English people seem to be more for land than the Irish. The Irish just wanted to get fishing." Newfoundland laws eventually established the right to own land; a series of statutes passed in 1824 regularized ownership outside St. John's, and a Crown Lands Act was passed in 1844.® Yet early restrictions on landownership had a long-lasting effect. In the early decades of the nineteenth century around St. John's, "a perfect furore seemed to have seized" upper-class immigrants "to become landed proprietors" setting up agricultural estates on large land grants;9 communities outside St. John's were different. Most of the families that decided to settle in Calvert did not rush to register their lands when ownership rights became established. Many obviously felt that as long as they used their land, and this use was recognized by the community as a whole, transforming space into an economic commodity through land grants was not necessary. In fact, Clarence O'Toole mentioned that a surveyor, Dan Pennell, attempted to survey the Beach in the early twentieth century, but that some of the fishermen "turned him out of it."10 Simply looking at documents relating to land suggests a false picture of Calvert's attitudes toward property and resource use.11 When asked about ownership attitudes toward land in the past, Clarence O'Toole used his own property as an example: "Mr. John or Mr. Jim [O'Toole] or whoever it was fenced in a piece of land, never got permission or anything, only just fenced it in. And he 105

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claimed that over the years." Squatters' rights were the norm, and as one historian noted, "Even when confirmatory titles under the Crown Lands Act of 1844 became available to occupants of land without legal authority, many persons refused to take advantage of this opportunity to perfect their ownership, or failed to do so either through neglect, or their unwillingness, or inability to pay the expense of the required boundary survey." n Even if someone had a claim to a certain land space, it was often transferred not for cash but as barter, again pointing to its minimal monetary value. Clarence described how his grandfather Tom Meany sold ground to both Len Canning and Lar Sullivan: Old Tom Meany used to go down [to Len Canning's] and grind his ax, and he wanted to have a share, have some say. And he gave him that much ground for a share in the big grindstone. . . . Lar Sullivan came to my grandfather, and he said, "Tom Meany, do you know what I'll do for you?" "What will you do for me?" "I'll give you a barrel of flour for the Flake Meadow." And my grandfather said, "No, Lar Sullivan, you won't do that for me but I'll tell you what you can do for me. I'll give you half the Flake Meadow for a barrel of flour." So he [Tom Meany] got a barrel of flour for the Flake Meadow and he got a grindstone for a bit of ground. From the beginning, then, partly because of the law and partly because of the nature of the fishery, few people thought of land as something that had to be legally owned, to be treated as property. Not until the mid-nineteenth century did Calvert residents begin to register their land so that officially it would be their own, its use confirmed by document. In most cases, however, inhabitants were not acquiring new ground, but merely registering the lands that their parents decided to use. Although a vast amount of unowned land surrounded the community, property holdings remained minimal units that would support necessary living areas, livestock, and agriculture. In nearby Ferryland in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, for example, land holdings almost always consisted of three categories: "dwelling house, garden and meadowland"—the three accepted uses for property.13 Indeed, Sir Richard G. Keats, the governor of Newfoundland in 1813, mentioned the widespread use of ungranted land for agricultural purposes in most communities outside St. John's, noting that "the industrious fisherman has never been denied the use of sufficient 106

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land to grow vegetables and potatoes." Keats claimed that "for those necessary purposes they possess all the indulgence which it was the intention of government to permit." H Throughout the nineteenth century, as individuals acquired public lands through formal granting procedures, residents did not obtain space other than what they could use. Although grants began to be registered systematically around i83o, 15 no Calvert lands seem to have been recorded before 1847. At Stone Island between 1868 and 1890, nine residents owned on the average slightly more than five acres each. In Calvert proper, between 1847 and 1903 thirty-eight residents averaged slightly fewer than five acres each.16 All of these lands were located primarily along the main road; the size of a holding would contain space for a house and ancillary outbuildings, together with a garden and meadow grounds. In 1891, for example, 178 acres were reported occupied in the community, 168 of those being improved land.17 Government schemes to encourage the development of agriculture on the island led some residents to obtain official land grants. Under An Act for the Reduction of Pauperism by Encouraging Agriculture, revised in 1871, twelve Calvert residents received about an acre of land each for a minimal price, the government obviously hoping to increase farming activities.18 Unlimited land was available, but a limited amount was acquired. Land remained an exploited and not an economic space. Historically, then, residents of Calvert were not concerned with land as an object that was exclusively private and needed to be accumulated. Whereas in New England the first generation of earlyseventeenth-century agriculturists in many communities quickly carved up the landscape into holdings totaling twenty acres or more per person,19 the fishery-oriented Calvert landscape was divided into holdings averaging around five acres. Domination of the New England wilderness meant its acquisition and subsequent ordering through extensive field patterning, and land in other areas of North America often was a commodity to be acquired, bought, and sold to better one's status;20 as a noted historian pointed out: "There was never a time in American history when land speculation had not been a major preoccupation of ambitious people."21 In Calvert, however—like most of Newfoundland—only small patches of land along the harbor were cleared to be used as residential and agricultural space. Whereas New England settlers had to "improve" land through enclosure, cultivation, and the raising of livestock,22 New107

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foundland settlers did not have to transform land into agricultural production. Only one case seems to exist of a local resident acquiring a large property tract. The Reverend Timothy Brown, the Roman Catholic priest in Ferryland in the early nineteenth century, petitioned in 1831 for 111 acres of land near Scoggins Head;23 Brown may have had some extensive agricultural scheme in mind, for the area is still known as the Priest's Farm. His name is also attached to a small cleared meadow in the woods on Calvert's north side, the area known as Father Brown's New Holland. Regardless of his intended purpose, local residents must have found the acquisition of such a vast property difficult to understand if land was there simply to be used. This historically dominant attitude toward Calvert's space still influences the landscape. Some of Calvert's land is owned, but more of it is used. And, in fact, large portions are unowned, but used for common purposes. Certain subsistence activities require private lands, but others take place in common spaces following community rules. Land was not accumulated in Calvert and did not become a commodity partly because it did not hold the key to annual wealth— unlike in agricultural economies. Instead, the open fields of the water that were harvested every year provided each family's income. But water space was more difficult to own, and competition over this resource gradually gave way to equal allocation of its harvests. The nature of Calvert's land has to do with whether it is public or private, but more important, it relates to the social relationships that are associated with certain landscape categories. Land becomes in part a social institution with a series of relations among individuals with specific rights, duties, and obligations.24 Land is not simply private or common, for some spaces can be used in different ways: public land can become temporarily private, personal property can have public uses. Community lands have a "web of use rights" that cut across the boundaries of ownership.25 Work is scattered, not clustered into small familial units. Work takes place at a number of different locations, adjacent to the work places of others. Everyone is in full view of one another, and access through all types of land is essential. Such scattering of work sites encourages mingling as well as public scrutiny; it also requires that one's own work can be postponed for conversation or quickly suspended to help someone else with another task. Work, then, is a public performance that is constantly on view to 108

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other audience members of the community. The performance can be postponed, interrupted, or joined in with, depending on the particular day. The nature of the actual work performed, however, is an indication to other observers of the nature of the land itself. Some work rituals are signs that property is private, and that activity reflects the initiative and success of the individual owner. Other work acts signify respect for community rules that regulate the use of common resources. There are cases, however, where work indicates that space can be neither completely private nor common, but is transformed by labor from one category to the other. Finally, land is there to be used, and resources are to be shared by all. Owned Spaces

Like other areas of North America, one type of land in Calvert is essentially private, land that is owned and worked by specific individuals. Land that is private requires an extensive amount of initial preparation and continual work to be productive. Ownership, therefore, characterizes spaces that involve extensive preparation and maintenance—gardens and meadows. For such an intensive eventual use, land has to be cleared. The terminology used to define this process is specific; Aidan Sullivan, discussing his grandfather, explained: "When he came to settle here, he took in that land." And Rob Sullivan, describing a small garden near Slaughters Pond, remarked: "Thirty or forty years ago, everybody took in a little piece like that for himself, y' know." Land to be used for a particular purpose is "taken in," removing it from the vast category of unowned space that surrounds the community. Taking in land is not an acquisitive act, but a transformative process, for it must involve some visible alteration and ultimate use of the space. Land is not taken, but taken in to the community's recognized system of productive purposes. Which land is actually to be taken in for a garden or meadow is a tricky decision; various strategies are used to somehow read the existing landscape so that of all the numerous spaces that could be converted to growing area, the most promising will be chosen. Calvert residents claim that crops grow best in what is believed to be "deep soil." Some feel that the success of existing plants is a clear indication of whether the soil is good enough to produce vegetables. Ronald Condon mentioned that if you see a stretch of 109

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forest where "nice trees" grew, then you figure it would be a good growing piece. Other methods of finding such a place are not as deliberate. Vince Ledwell described how he decided to clear a piece of land near Slaughters Pond. After having too many drinks of moonshine one day, he went down to a section of woodland. I crawled up under the trees, ashamed t' meet people. And I started rootin' down in the clay like that about that distance down in the ground [one foot]. I don't know what I was doin' it for. Later on I got sense enough to look at it, see, the soil. "By gar," I says, "this'll be the place for potatoes," I said t' myself. I come home that evening and got a pick and an old ax and a bar and ground the ax and put a handle on the pick and the first chance I got, I was down the next day. . . . I cleared, I cleared enough that, I cleared enough that fall for more than I could use for potatoes. I set potatoes, boy, they grow wonderful there. I'm settin' 'em there ever since. Chance rather than judicious surveying of available lands proved the deciding factor in this particular case. Land clearing usually begins after the fishery ends, around the first of November. Aidan Sullivan summed up the work: "Years ago, all hands—there was nothing else to do—all hands, when they'd knock off fishing, they'd go clearing land, see." Men clear the land by removing trees—paring—and then burning them. Trees are cut down with an ax, and the stumps pried from the ground with crowbars. The stumps and tree lengths not to be used for firewood or lumber are piled up and burnt, the fire often lasting several days as the clearing progresses. The ashes are sometimes spread over the cleared field for fertilizer; potatoes grow best on the site of a fire. Smaller rocks are removed by hand, sometimes scattered along the edges of the field. When clearing one section of land, Mike Sullivan simply stacked the rocks in piles. Once the frost had hardened the ground, he made a "dray" from two large sticks and hauled the rocks down to the edge of Foul Cove, where he dumped them over the cliff. Land is first taken in, the most dramatic and visible sign that it will be used, and therefore the private responsibility of a particular family. However, the most intense work on land involves the care of gardens, for these require breaking and fertilizing the soil, setting seeds, weeding, and harvesting. This work cycle demands frequent attention to the land, and therefore a frequent public I 10

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Figure 42. Making potato beds.

presence. Land that is taken in and cleared is converted to a workintense category (ground), and work means being "at the ground." As I talked to Tom Clancy one day, he looked across the road where Ronald Condon was cutting hay and remarked, "Ronald is at his ground." Rather than specifying a particular task, local terminology indicates that simple presence is enough (being "at" the ground, a locational phrase)—demonstrating that some type of upkeep is being performed. When ground is to be converted to a garden, it has to be dug into a series of beds or drills. Setting vegetables in beds—especially potatoes—is the preferred method of preparing garden ground. These beds are similar to "lazy beds" used in Ireland, and one man remembered several old people using that term. Another resident, not familiar with this word, however, remarked: "There's nothing lazy about them!" When a portion of land is first made into beds, a mattock—or grubber as it is sometimes called—cuts three sides of a square piece of sod, which is then flipped over onto the adjoining section (figure 42). The rows where the sod has been removed are III PROPERTY AND WORK

shoveled out and the dirt placed on top of the beds. After the beds are constructed, three lines of seed potatoes are laid on top of each one and then covered with a layer of dirt and stable manure. Mike Sullivan summarized the process: "Skin 'em with a mattock, and turn over your sods bottom up, and lay down your manure and then potatoes, do it just with the ordinary pick and mattock. Hand power." Once these beds are made they are generally used for several years before skinning the top surface again. Some people prefer to have their ground "broken up" first, and a Ferryland man charges fourteen dollars a half-hour to plow up the land using his tractor; it usually takes that to do a normal-size garden. After the soil has been broken, the same type of beds can be made, using a shovel to dig trenches and pile the dirt on top of the rows. Whichever way these beds are constructed, they are usually dug parallel to the slope of the hill, permitting better drainage. In the past, some men preferred to plant their potatoes in drills after the ground had been broken, and a small number still rely on this method. Several residents claimed that setting potatoes in beds is most effective during a summer marked by wet weather, in drills during a dry summer. Land is cleared and becomes ground: men spend hours at their ground, breaking it into soil. There is always hope that the soil will be productive, and its productivity is often judged by whether it is considered "deep," permitting the crop roots to grow easily. Good soil is also considered "loose," again enabling root crops to properly develop. One resident, however, claimed that there was no real way of judging soil quality. As he remarked, "You know if you set potatoes this year and if you didn't grow very good, you'd blame it on the soil." But men can attempt to improve their ground. In fact, gardens have to be maintained year by year through the elaborate process of fertilization. Meadows receive attention as well, but the garden receives the greatest amount of work. Fertilizing is the most common public sign of proper care. Spring comes late to Newfoundland, and during the month of May some type of fertilizer is spread over gardens as the first step in preparing them for summer crops. Different fertilizers have been used over the years for gardens; probably the most popular and widely used is stable manure. From a pile outside the stable, manure is carried by pickup truck or box cart to the fields (figure 43), dumped into piles, and spread out in a thin layer. "Fish manure," as it is sometimes called, was often made in the past to be used on gardens, and it has a long history throughout the island. I 12

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Figure 43. Returning with the box cart for more stable manure for the potato beds.

This fertilizer was a kind of fish-meal compost made in piles; as Aidan Sullivan explained, during the fishing season on a "slack day you'd haul your cods' heads and put 'em in a pile, and then haul the turf, pile up the turf. You'd have a pile as, we had a pile as big as Larry's stable sometimes" (a two-story structure). Caplin or any fish offal might be substituted for the cods' heads. Vince Ledwell mentioned another method, which involved burying alternating layers of fish offal and locally dug turf in a pit in the ground. This was left to rot, often for a year, and then spread over the garden the next. Using either method, yellow clay could be substituted for turf. Kelp is still used as a fertilizer in Calvert. Because of the community's rocky shores, however, it cannot be obtained in great quantities. At best, as Aidan Sullivan recalled, "We often cut it 113

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Figure 44. Tom Sullivan setting seeds in the kitchen garden, with help from his sons Ross, Rodney, and Blair. I 14

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around the stage in the summer time, put it on the garden alright." Usually, however, it is gathered in Ferryland or Cape Broyle— both have shorelines where large quantities are washed up—and carried back to Calvert by box cart. With pickup trucks, residents now travel up the Southern Shore to communities like Renews or Cappahayden with long beaches where kelp in large quantity can be found. Rob Sullivan brought two pickup loads home from Cappahayden in the spring of 1978. Kelp is placed wet on the garden, and according to Maude Sullivan it is rich in "iron," which nurtures vegetables. Today, stable manure is sometimes supplemented with commercial fertilizers, but many residents are ambivalent about them. Some claim that such substances are not as effective as the manures used in the past, and that they impart an artificial taste to vegetables. One man felt that the use of commercial fertilizers had led to a decrease in birds in the area, which in turn contributed to an increase in insects in both the air and the soil. These pests must now be treated with commercial pesticides. Gardens in Calvert involve obvious agricultural chores: breaking up the land in the spring; planting seeds; periodic weeding and fertilization; harvesting. The standard vegetables grown are potatoes (usually white and, to a lesser extent, blue varieties), with smaller amounts of turnips, carrots, parsnips, and beets: root crops that grow well in Newfoundland's cool, damp climate. These also are the major staples—besides fish—of the traditional diet of the English and Irish immigrant. Whether the kitchen garden near the house, or the larger gardens scattered farther away, the same work is required for proper care—activities running from spring through fall. When it comes to agricultural uses, the most intensely cared for space is the specialized garden near the house: the kitchen garden. This space (see also chapter 3) usually sits directly behind or in front of a house, and receives constant care throughout the summer months (figure 44). Besides this kitchen garden, most nuclear families use several scattered sections of ground for growing vegetables. Root crops—potatoes and, to a lesser extent, carrots and turnips—are grown in larger quantities in these areas to keep a family sufficiently supplied over a winter (figure 45). Echoing the old medieval pattern of an infield-outfield system—although not necessarily a direct historical continuation—greater quantities of staple crops are grown in the larger, and sometimes less fertile, areas away from the home. 115

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Figure 45. Robert LedweWs potatoes, located on his land near Slaughters Pond. This spot was cleared by his father, Vince Ledivell.

Each family often uses two or more actual growing sites, one for a summer or two, which is then left fallow for a couple of years so that the soil can recover. Aidan Sullivan explained: "After two or three years of setting in the one ground, you have a job to handle the weeds." The vegetables grown in these larger fields are root crops that require little maintenance during the growing season, especially compared to those grown in the kitchen garden. Fathers and sons have to work the land only at specific times during the year: spring preparation; planting; weeding and manuring; harvesting. After planting in late May, the only major work involved in potato growing takes place in mid-June. At this time, a small fish, the caplin, swims into the harbors, washing ashore for a few short minutes to spawn (figure 46). These caplin are scooped up by the bucketful on the two sandy beaches in Calvert—Lance Cove and Broad Cove—some are eaten fresh, others salted and dried for later consumption. Caplin are also used as fertilizer on potato beds. I 16

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Figure 4.6. Caplin washing ashore on the beach at Broad Cove.

The soil at the edges of the bed is dug up a bit, caplin are placed near the growing plants, and the fish are covered with dirt from the trenches. This process is referred to as "trenching the potatoes." After trenching, gardens receive little attention for the rest of the summer, as root crops require minimal labor after they reach a certain size. Only periodic weeding might be necessary. In the early fall, the various root crops are harvested and stored in outdoor cellars for use over the winter. Much like crops, hay is cut and harvested in a variety of locations. Some hay is cut immediately adjacent to the house. These yards, if not ornamental, would be left to grow and not cut until July or August. Just as frequently, however, meadows—like gardens—are scattered some distance from the home. Some families have only one meadow that they annually cut, often one cleared in a previous generation by an ancestor who took in a portion of land. Other families have two possible sites for cutting, both mowed

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Figure 47- Tom Sullivan's family making hay into cocks at the end of a day of drying.

every year if they produce enough hay. Tom Sullivan cuts not far from his house on the Marsh, a meadow originally cleared by a Sullivan ancestor. Chris Sullivan cuts on land at Stone Island, the site of an old Sullivan homestead. Meadows throughout Calvert are privately owned fields that produce hay used for feeding livestock. In the past, most people kept livestock, and thus almost everyone had meadows. Lands were cleared, grasses—often brought from the Old World—were planted, and the hay harvested annually. Not everyone keeps livestock today, but their meadows continue to produce. Turning living grasses into the cultural category "hay" requires less effort than growing vegetables. Many families spread manure on meadows in the spring of the year to help the fields grow, but manure or no manure, most meadows produce some hay. Thus, strictly speaking, no work is required to grow such a product; the only work required is that of "making hay." 118 PRODUCING SPACES

Hay is cut primarily from mid-July to mid-August. "Some meadows grow good," according to Aidan Sullivan, "grow earlier," and therefore are cut earlier. When the grass on the meadow has grown to such an extent that it "starts to fall down," it is ready to be cut, since the "hay'd be gettin' ripe then." After all the hay from one field has been cut, the family milk cow might be put on the meadow to "let her eat it down." The actual cutting, or "mowing," of the meadow is done by the males in a family, either the husband or the sons. Cutting often takes place early in the morning, for as several residents pointed out, it is easier to cut hay when it is damp with morning dew. The hay is cut with a scythe that is swung back and forth in a three-tofour-foot arc. The cutting is done in rows to create parallel lines of cut meadow and hay; these hay rows are called swarths. The scythe is filed every ten minutes or so during cutting to keep it sharp. After the meadow has been completely cut, the rows of grass are spread out over the entire field with prongs, two-tined forks also used for pitching fish out of a boat.26 If the day is sunny, the hay is turned over later toward evening, usually by the women and children in the family. In cloudy weather, hay is sometimes made into piles, usually called cocks, as in Ireland, or, less frequently, tods, where it can "work," thus hastening the drying process (figure 47). At the end of the first day of cutting, the partially dried hay is heaped into large piles, protecting it from the night dew or rain. Such a method is quite effective; after a rainstorm one night, Ronald Condon's hay, which had been stacked into cocks, was fairly dry (figure 48). The day after cutting, hay is usually spread and turned once or twice and, if properly dry, placed in the stable that evening. Boys in the family often help their father with the cutting; indeed, they might do the cutting themselves. Use of a scythe, a technologically simple instrument, permits workers of various ages to spell one another. Since little technical expertise is required, even younger sons can learn at an early age how to cut with little danger of injury. The number of workers available for the cutting task ensures that an hour or two of work can be accomplished at any climatically appropriate time. This is even more the case with turning the hay, for although it is often considered primarily "woman's work," males sometimes spend an hour or so at this task when the weather is fine and females are busy at other jobs. The hay-making process continues in part because many family members can perform relatively unspecialized labor during short 119

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Figure 48. Ronald Condon making hay.

periods of time over several days. In the 19305, the Newfoundland government attempted to modernize the agricultural process by introducing horse-drawn mowing machines. That this scheme met with little success is not surprising, since it required both specialized knowledge (held by only one or two family members) of how to work the equipment and lengthier periods of work time. The few remaining mowing machines are now either gaily painted lawn ornaments in someone's front yard or rusted heaps behind a stable. Cutting by scythe permits a number of people to "take a spurt" at cutting, if an extra hour or two is found during the day. After being made, the hay is usually hauled to the stable. In the past, this was done by horse and long cart; today pickup trucks often do the same 120

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work. If the field being cut is close to the stable, hay can be piled on top of a "hay sheet," a piece of cloth five or six feet square, and dragged along the ground to the nearby building. Gardens are private and meadows usually are as well, in part because of the intense amount of work required to make them productive. Calvert residents are always ready to help one another with tasks that demand more than individual skills. But with meadows and gardens, a lengthy series of work rituals means that families are ultimately responsible for the continual maintenance of these spaces and are seen in frequent work performances "on their ground"—in a community where scattered sites are the norm. This ensures that everyone knows that the requisite work is being carried out. Indeed, conversely, everyone knows who does not set ground or keep cattle, for the associated spaces do not show the signs of care. The final signs of work that link spaces to particular persons are artifacts that are constantly on view, reminders of functional activities that are taking place. Built forms on the land signify that the work repertoires of private spaces are periodically being performed, even when not immediately obvious. All over Calvert, the built forms of fences and root cellars stand as reminders of this intense work repertoire. Most fences in Calvert are not signs of ownership, but signs of work. Good neighbors are made by good fences that demarcate not the boundaries of ownership, but the boundaries of work. Fences have to enclose the gardens and meadows that are cultivated. Since livestock wander freely throughout the community, fences keep animals out, not in. Certain kinds of fences are needed around a garden or meadow to ensure that sheep or cattle will not disturb what is growing. The most common fence type for this purpose is a longer fence (figure 49)—similar to the stake and rail fence of other regions. Small-diameter trees with their bark removed are used for posts, pounded into the ground using a stake maul. The actual longers (rails) for the fence are cut into approximately tenfoot lengths; they are partially squared on two opposite sides to facilitate easy nailing. These fences are not painted, and because the bark is removed they do not rot quickly. Although some fences contain three longers, a five-longer fence is the normal type built around a meadow or garden. The close spacing between the longers ensures that sheep—as well as cattle and horses—will not get through the fence. 121

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Figure 40. Longer fences around meadows at Stone Island.

Figure 50. A section of a shortlar fence still standing along a meadow behind Tom Clancy}.

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Until around fifty years ago, a more work-intense fence was used in Calvert, especially around gardens, and some of these can still be seen. Shortlar fences (figure 50) are a type of woven fence that obviously has connections with wattle forms in medieval Britain. Many older men reported that although this fence required more time to build, it would last "an awful spell"—as France Boland explained—often for several generations. Tom Clancy, referring to such a fence on his land, remarked: "[They] last an awful [long time], all my lifetime they had a fence over there. It was there— the same fence—when I went to school, and it be there fifty years, same fence." A shortlar fence is initially constructed like a threelonger fence. After the longers have been nailed into place, however, small sticks, or shortlars—spruce branches about as big around as your thumb and three feet in length, according to France—are woven, or "riddled," vertically in alternating directions around the three longers. Each shortlar is placed tight against the next one to form a solid barrier. Cellars stand throughout the community as the other sign that an individual's land is being extensively worked. As in England and Ireland, where root crops were stored outdoors in pits or small buildings, the potatoes, beets, turnips, and carrots that Calvert families grow are stored in family cellars. Cellars are built close to the dwelling, some simply dug into the ground, others on the side of a hill (figure 51). Essie Rossiter explained that you often make a trip to the cellar every morning to get fresh vegetables for the day. Trips to a cellar throughout the year are reminders that family land is being maintained for productive purposes. Sharpening a scythe, gathering caplin at Lance Cove for trenching potatoes, repairing a longer fence—all are part of the public work repertoire that is continually on view, indicating that certain spaces in Calvert are intensively cared for, used, and owned. Lands would not be private except for this use; years of inactivity surrounding an area of land cause people to wonder about ownership status. Continued and periodic maintenance and care of ground that has been taken in are signs to the community that land is being properly exploited. The work repertoire associated with garden and meadow space reaffirms as a public ritual the ownership status of the land. Some lands in the community are worked less intensely, however, and are considered common spaces with common resources.

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Figure 57. Rob and Alice Sullivan's cellar.

The Commons

The landscape Calvert settlers left behind in the Old World took many forms, with several systems of land division. From towns or farms in Waterford, Wexford, Devon, and Dorset, migrants arrived on a new landscape with few signs of permanent habitation. Some came from places where individual farmsteads were the norm, others from communities exhibiting the vestiges of the medieval open-field system; indeed, the homelands of the Newfoundland immigrant contained both patterns.27 Whether early residents directly transferred one system of land holding or the other to Calvert 124

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is not significant in this discussion; direct continuity with an openfield or individual farmstead system is not, finally, a crucial issue. Shoreline space was most eagerly sought after, the first to be privatized and owned by the wealthiest Calvert settlers. These Calvert merchants from the West Country—primarily the Morrys—were much like their medieval ancestors who were lords of the openfield community. But in spite of this monopolization of choice shore space, certain Calvert lands were—and remain—in common use. Like the common spaces of the medieval village, portions of Calvert's landscape could be used by everyone in the community. These spaces were available to anyone because they were considered completely public resources. Unlike the New England openfield village of the seventeenth century, where lengthy debates quickly ensued on how the land was to be communally used,28 Calvert residents arrived over time at a shared utilization of certain resources through equal access and use rights that continue today. Unlike private grounds, common resources need no preparation or maintenance; public presence is evident when the only work that is needed takes place—harvesting. The lanes, roads, fields, and woods of Calvert provide a common pasture for various forms of livestock. Like medieval commons, all areas that are not fenced in can be used by wandering cattle, horses, or sheep (figure 52). In other parts of Newfoundland, such public grazing areas are reportedly even referred to as "the commons." This communal grazing takes place in the summer months, when animals can fend for themselves. Whereas cows return to the stable mornings and evenings to be milked—or must be searched for— horses and sheep often wander freely. Horses are kept almost exclusively for winter woodcutting, and thus in the summer individual horses and herds wander throughout Calvert and such nearby communities as Ferryland and Cape Broyle. Sheep are raised for wool and mutton and are looked for in the spring of the year for shearing,29 or in the fall, when they are slaughtered. In the summer, they wander over the hills and lanes around the community. Numbers of grazing sheep, horses, and cattle are frequently seen by the sides of the road during the summer months, herds often made up of animals from several communities. In previous decades, livestock wandered into the woods, the intensive woodcutting of the time apparently having produced more foliage for foraging. In the winter, cows and horses are housed in stables. 125

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Figure 52. Cows wandering along the road to Stone Island.

Cows are milked both morning and evening and are kept outside during the day in a small enclosed pasture outside the stable called a bawn.30 As residents walk along the road on a Sunday afternoon to visit relatives, Leo Walsh's sheep and Tom Sullivan's cow Beauty graze on the tall grass that borders the nearby woods. These animals are signs that vast portions of the community's landscape are common spaces that can be used by anyone. Residents know that such commons surround the islands of private land in the community, and the right to use this common space is as accepted as the right to own land. Indeed, it is the landowner's responsibility to keep animals out of any agricultural spaces he or she is working. The owner of a garden or meadow must do the additional work of fencing to acknowledge common grazing rights. Common grazing essentially means that vast sections of the landscape in relative proximity to dwelling areas are used by everyone: a large space with a resource limited only by a cow's or a 126

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sheep's ability to find more foliage. Some common resources are limited in quantity, however. They take skill or sheer effort to harvest, but require no continual maintenance. The landscape provides berries and game, both found in specific spaces, both available to anyone who knows the techniques of gathering and where they can be found. Actual work time is short, and physical effort minimal. These resources, then, are public primarily because they require no yearly attention. Amounts acquired from year to year depend as much on climate and innate skill as they do on a lengthy work process. Berries are picked all through the late summer and early autumn months and are used for all types of jams, pies, and until recently, wines. Berry picking is done primarily by women, children, and men who have retired from fishing. Although Doris Sullivan often picked berries with her sisters, she commented: "When flies were plenty, it wasn't my favorite activity. I hates flies, Jerry." A fisherman may spend an hour or two picking berries after he comes in from hauling his nets any given morning. There are times, as well— often Sunday afternoons—when an entire family will go berry picking for several hours. Calvert residents recognize that specific ecological conditions foster each type of berry. Berry pickers therefore know where to look for particular berries (figure 53). Bakeapples (Rubus chamaemorus) are perhaps the most popular berry and the first to ripen. Resembling an orange raspberry, these grow in wet, marshy areas, the plant reaching approximately six inches in height. Around Calvert, bakeapples are found growing on the various marshes, which means they are restricted primarily to the north side. Bakeapples ripen any time from the beginning of July through mid-month, depending on the weather. Most are picked on Yellow Marsh, probably because it is the largest marsh in the immediate community. In fact, one resident speculated that the marsh's name derived from its yellowish color when scattered with ripe bakeapples (figure 54). Bakeapples are also found on the islands near the mouth of Calvert harbor, especially on Goose Island. Sunday afternoon picnics in July sometimes involve going by boat to one of these islands to pick berries, while boiling a kettle for tea and a snack. The most plentiful area for bakeapples is not Calvert, but the section of the Southern Shore near Aquaforte, Cappahayden, and Chance Cove. Calvert residents sometimes drive up the Shore to these areas, as berries can be more easily picked there. The contrast between Calvert and this area was evident during the 127

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Figure 53. Berry-picking areas.

summer of 1978 when bakeapples ripened. Rob Sullivan went picking on the marshes around Calvert and got half a gallon, whereas one of Mike Sullivan's friends from a nearby community went up the Shore around Aquaforte and picked twenty gallons. After several weeks of hot sun, bakeapples soon overripen and become watery; they still can be picked, but are generally used only for jams when in this state. Next to bakeapples, blueberries are the most popular berry, although they are not as plentiful around Calvert. Several residents pointed out that the woods have grown up again with the decline in woodcutting, and thus many types of berries are harder to find since they cannot grow in the denser foliage. Blueberries used to be found in many areas, but not anymore. As Mike Sullivan explained, the terrain "wants to be burnt for blueberries," so residents must travel by car or walk several miles to once-burnt portions of land where blueberries now grow. A few blueberries are picked at the head of Slaughters Pond, as well as Lloyd's Grove on the north side, but no large burnt-over sections are found in the immediate vicinity of the community. The barrens behind the fire station on 128

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Figure 54. Leo Walsh picking bakeapples on Yellow Marsh.

the road to Cape Broyle are one of the main areas where blueberries are picked today. Since blueberry areas are not located within easy walking distance of the community, this probably has contributed to the decline in their popularity. In the past, besides being used for various jams and pies, blueberries were frequently used to make wine. Mike Sullivan remembers a particularly good batch he once made using a molasses barrel. This gave a distinctive molasses flavor to the wine; the taste also improved with the addition of a bottle of rum. Blueberries usually ripen around midSeptember. Along the old railroad tracks where Bill Stratton lives, near Old Womans Pond, squashberry trees grow. These were found in many more areas in the past and made the "grandest kind of jam," according to Aidan Sullivan. The small trees, generally six to eight feet tall, produce berries in small clusters. To pick these berries, the high branches of the tree are merely "hauled down." Partridgeberries (Vaccinium vitis—Idaca L.) are small red berries, similar to cranberries, that ripen at the end of September. Leo Walsh pointed out that they should not be picked before the 129

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twentieth of this month, since a small white maggot found inside does not leave until then. Some partridgeberries grow on the "dry knobs" and hills behind Yellow Marsh, but most are picked on "barren grounds," as Mike Sullivan described them, such as the high hill that overlooks Ferryland, the Gaze. They are also found up the Shore, especially around Aquaforte. The tart partridgeberries are used for jams and as a sauce for boiled puddings. Other types of berries are common, although not picked in any quantity today. "Bazeberries" grow on the marshes, the smaller berries being red, the larger ones gray. Marshberries (Vacdnium oxycoccoc L.) grow around the edges of the marshes; they are small red berries that ripen in October. Teaberries (Gaultheria hispidula [L.] Bigel) grow in profusion along Ryan's Path, which leads to Yellow Marsh. According to Leo Walsh, they are eaten "just like chewing gum," have a strong winterberry flavor, and were used in the past to make jam. Since berries are not domesticated, failure of a particular crop cannot be blamed on human neglect. Calvert residents must look for other signs to explain success or failure. Some people believe, for example, that spring weather greatly influences the bakeapple crop. If there is no heavy rain or lightning in the spring when blossoms are appearing, the bakeapples should be plentiful. Rain and lightning are also blamed for poor crops, however, since they cause the blossoms to drop off. People in Calvert know where to pick certain types of berries and when they are properly ripe. The particular woods path to follow is found, the direction of travel determined, the resource located. Everyone has free access to berry grounds, no matter if he or she lives in the neighborhood adjacent to them or not. This wide use of a particular space by all residents for one resource also characterizes the hunting of birds and snaring of rabbits. Shooting of various kinds of birds has declined, but still takes place primarily along cliffs above the harbor. Only certain rocky faces are frequented by birds, and anyone in Calvert has access and can hunt there. As Mike Sullivan related, "piles of ducks" were shot, especially in January and February, when these birds would come into the beaches and coves to feed on mussels. Specific coves, such as the one below Slaughters Point, are especially good nesting places, and men hide near the edges of the cliffs to shoot. Aidan Sullivan remarked: "Slaughters Point is good. They'd [the birds] mostly come, come to the top of the point. They were very cute, 130

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they wouldn't go in the gulches. They wanted, they had to go [to] the land to get mussels, they'd come into the top of the point." A dory would be kept nearby to retrieve the birds. Aidan also mentioned that one of the better places for shooting was Big Island, since the birds "use to hang up more t' the Big Island than anywhere"; men traveled out to the island by dory. A large number of birds also were shot near Cape Broyle Head. Several men would travel by boat, one or two would be dropped off in different gulches such as Hangman Head, and the boat would be hidden at Cold Harbour. When shots were heard, the men left with the dory to retrieve the birds. Aidan pointed out that twelve-gauge shotguns are the common type used to shoot birds today, but that the ten gauge was the most popular in his own time. Men often preferred to load their own cartridges in the past, rather than use "bought cartridges," for they felt the modern shells were not as powerful. In addition to shooting birds, men also trap rabbits with snares. The rabbit season lasts from October 15 to March 15, and during this time wire loops fastened to sticks are set across rabbit trails that crisscross the woods paths. Although snares are generally set off these familiar paths, they can be placed anywhere in the woods where rabbits are suspected to be. The snares are usually checked every day, except when the previous night has been stormy. When running along a trail, a rabbit will become caught with its head in the loop, dying in two to three minutes. Cutting wood in the country essentially involves the common use of the public resource of building timber. Anyone can cut anywhere in the area; any suitable tree can be felled, but those of larger size diameter, referred to as "logs" or "saw logs," are cut into timber (figure 55). The country surrounds the woods and is traveled to only by horse and slide, usually for an entire day's cutting; you cannot walk into the country for a few short hours of work. The boundaries of the country, therefore, are the length of a slide trip of several hours, for several men out cutting must return before dark. France Boland mentioned how early a day in the country would start: "I often left here in the morning. The old horse would be as white—if he was black—the old horse would be as white with gray frost on it and daylight is coming." Rob Sullivan explained: "[You'd] leave home three or four o'clock in the morning in the month of March, and you'd go about fifteen or twenty miles in the, see, in the country. And you'd cut your load of stuff, and, ah [GLP: You'd haul it all out with you?] Oh yes, just a load a day is 131

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Figure 55. Tom Clancy's slide loaded with logs.

all you'd get then, see." The work process is simple, geared to a specific product: the cutting of logs. More important, no care— that is, no work—is required to grow or process those trees during the year, work that would convey ownership. In some cases, even private lands are transformed into a public resource. Making hay is a work-intensive process, but one requiring a relatively short time period. Only two or three days of work are required to turn a meadow into hay; the rest of the year no visible work activity takes place in this space. With family-owned meadows this does not matter, for everyone in the community as132

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Figure $6. Leo Walsh.

sumes that those particular spaces will be worked, if need be, by certain individuals when the time comes. But in other cases the specific nature of the work enables people to transform the spatial category of meadow: a privately owned space can be commonly used if there is a need. When cutting time comes in July and August, a person who owns meadows that are not going to be used— perhaps because the family no longer keeps livestock—can let it be known that these fields may be cut by anyone willing to do the work who needs additional hay. No work has been expended by the owner to make the meadow grow, work that would signify that the space is personal. When asked about a meadow next to her house, Marcella Canning remarked that it was owned by Aidan Kavanagh; she added: "They don't cut any of their hay or anything. They lets anybody [cut it] that wants it." Marcella was assuring me that the meadow was now public, and that the grass could be used by anyone in Calvert. During the summer of 1978 Leo Walsh (figure 56) looked around the community for fields that were not going to be used; he cut three different meadows: one near his house, one near the church, and another on the Point. The latter two fields were owned by people who no longer kept livestock. Private lands are opened to public use; the kind of intensive public work that is needed to grow a garden—work that acts as a sign of private domain—is not seen in unused meadows. Different individuals make hay in the same meadow from year to year depending on needs, and thus although that meadow is privately owned by another person, it has become a space associated with public usage. Anyone in the community might use it next year. Calvert has common spaces with resources that are available to everyone in the community. Livestock wander, late July afternoons are spent gathering bakeapples on Yellow Marsh, a load of logs arrives after a long day in the country. And on a cold snowy February afternoon, with the kitchen stove crackling with spruce junks, a slice of bread fresh from the oven is spread first with scalded cream, and then with partridgeberry jam: wood, cream, berries, all from shared spaces. The signs of the commons are everywhere, seen as they are worked, seen as treats on a table, long after the sweat of summer has passed. That so much of Calvert space and its resources is held in common by the community is not unique to this place and, indeed, is prevalent throughout most of Newfoundland. A recent editorial in a St. John's newspaper entitled "Enclosing the 133

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Commons" made direct reference to the similarities in resource use between the Newfoundland outport and the English medieval village: One of the pleasures of living in Newfoundland is our proximity to wilderness. Not very far in back of most communities can be found the barrens, ponds, marshes, and woodlands which all Newfoundlanders have traditionally used as a source of food and fuel; and of course in front of most of our homes there is the ocean, to which there has been unimpeded access from the passing of King William's Act in 1699 until the advent of the restricted Canadian fishery of recent years. Together, the open land and sea around us form our commons, our community resource, the equivalent of the village pastures of old England. Every resident of Newfoundland has a right to make use of that commons.31 The editorial went on to complain about government regulations on both a provincial and a federal level that infringed on this common resource image. Each person in Calvert—as in so many Newfoundland communities—has a right to common resources. In contrast, however, a series of Calvert spaces is also transformed annually from public domain into private use. This ensures equal division of the most crucial community resources for those who belong to this place. The Open Fields of Woods and Water

Land that is public and land that is private in terms of ownership are not very practical categories for people in Calvert to abide by. Some families certainly own particular lands, and some spaces no one owns—they are assumed to be crown land, land owned by the government. Yet fundamentally, much of the land in Calvert is useful only to the extent that it can produce subsistence goods for people. If lands that belong to one family are worked by them, then they are associated with that land. But private land frequently is worked by others, so as not to be "wasted." More crucially, public spaces of woods and water become the temporary domains of certain individuals who use them to secure very specific resources. The fundamental products of forest and ocean are essentially shared equally by all community members; no one owns these resources. Systems of resource allocation mean that community members re134

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Figure 57. The stage head area, where most sticks were used in the past.

spect the annual harvest of the woods and water no matter where it takes place. The immediate wooded areas surrounding Calvert are not owned; they are public land and provide firewood for residents. Anyone in Calvert can avail themselves of this resource. The spaces closest to the living areas of the community—the woods—are in easy walking distance: they begin behind the gardens and meadows of most houses and stretch back anywhere from half an hour to an hour's walk. The trip by horse slide in winter is much shorter. Such relative proximity means that forays into the woods last only a morning or an afternoon, depending on the work involved. Firewood for the kitchen stove is generally cut in these areas. Smaller timbers—often simply the trunk poles of smaller trees—are also cut; this wood has various names according to its intended use: longers (fence rails); shores (supports for buildings, including fishing stages); and strouders (poles used for ladders on the stage head) (figure 57). All of these poles are generally two to four inches in 135

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diameter, varying in length up to fifteen feet, and often are used unsquared with the bark left on. Indeed, in the past, stage heads had to be constantly repaired because of damage from storms or ice; as Clarence O'Toole related, "I can remember my father'd be down [in the stage] with a crowd, big sticks, lantern, down in the stage, shoving away the ice from the stage head." Although none of the woods is owned, areas of de facto ownership for cutting exist. Residents who live in one portion of the community generally cut in sections of the woods immediately adjacent to them (figure 58). Families on the south side of the harbor—the Point, the Cross, and the High Road—all cut "along the tracks," following the abandoned railroad bed, and taking various slide paths off it. Men do not cut wood near Deep Cove Pond, since there is little usable wood in this area. Residents around the Gut often cut behind Gorman's Hill, and out toward the Cape Broyle side of the peninsula. From Gatherall's Hill up the north side around to Jack Swain's, cutting takes place off Ryan's Path, a slide path that ends at the paved road near Austin Ryan's house. Men who cut along Ryan's Path often find the best wood near Cape Broyle Lance Cove. From the area around Jack Swain's up to the end of the north side, men travel across Slaughters Pond and cut wood off the various paths that run from it. If certain sections of the community cut year after year in specific areas of the woods, then certain families return annually to roughly the same areas within these regions. There is no sanction against someone else cutting in the same spot that a neighbor had the previous year, but this rarely happens. Neighbors know that individuals generally cut in a certain area and this is respected; everyone knows, for example, that Leo Walsh usually cuts around "the Glen" near Gull Pond. During walks through the woods at other times of the year, men look for wood to cut in new areas, places that have not been cut for a number of years and thus where trees have had a chance to grow. Sometimes a family even cuts a new path to reach a particular area where a large stand of trees suitable for firewood has been located. The allocation of wood resources is not strictly related to proximity to living areas, but also reflects the desire to grant equal access to forest resources to all sections of the community. Calvert residents know that a system of allocative equity governs the harvesting of firewood.32 This is not a deliberate decision, but a system that has developed over generations, one that maintains that the 136

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Figure 58. Woodcutting area.

products of the land belong to all families in the community. Those sections of Calvert that do not have good timber-cutting areas immediately adjacent to them are assured access to places where wood can be obtained. The residents around Deep Cove, an area which is poor in timber, usually cut farther north along the tracks. Those on the far north side around Sullivan's Hill do not cut in the area immediately adjacent to them, but up near Cape Broyle Head. The woodcutting areas have been shifted, in a sense, along the dwelling spaces to accommodate the scarcity of wood at one end of the community. Although wood is cut in certain agreedupon public spaces for each section in the community, there is a fair degree of choice as to where the actual cutting can take place. Unlike in the country, however, where wood is simply hauled out the same day it is felled, making firewood takes time. Trees are altered in gradual ways over a six-to-eight-month period until they finally become short sticks—or junks, as they are known—for the stove, the entire endeavor referred to as "making spring var." Although the woods as space is considered public, it switches to a 137

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Figure 59. Tom and Harold Sullivan cutting wood to make spring var.

private and individual status once the woodcutting process begins in any particular season. Through this work, public land becomes temporarily private. The first step in making spring var (fir is referred to locally as var) involves cutting var trees in the spring of the year (hence the name). Mike Sullivan speculated that "some of the old Irish fellows put that name on it, too, I suppose, long before our time." One or two men walk into the woods in April or May—before the sap begins to flow and the black flies begin to swarm—and cut down a 138

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section of green fir or spruce trees in a single area, often working for four or five days in a row if the weather is fine. These trees are simply left where they fall, and nothing else is done at the time (figure 59). This space is immediately recognized by others as being worked by a specific person, and the wood not to be touched. The land is not technically private, since access is permitted through the area, but the space is considered the domain of the family who is making spring var there that year. The cut wood dries all summer; leaving the limbs on the trees keeps them off the ground and speeds the drying process. In the fall, men go back and "limb" this wood, removing all the branches and boughs, often stacking the trimmed sticks into piles on the ground. Once enough snow arrives in January or February, men return with a horse and slide to haul out the wood (figures 60 and 61). The snow must be the proper consistency when wood is hauled out; if it is too soft, the horse will quickly become bogged down and unable to travel. Men who ride across ice-covered bodies of water such as Slaughters Pond to get to their woodcutting area must carefully watch the condition of the ice before setting out. Sometimes a layer of slush on top of the ice later becomes covered with snow, and horse travel becomes impossible (figure 62). Once the lengths of wood are brought home, they are stacked near the house in various ways to keep them dry; often they are placed upright in a tepee-like pile (figure 63) or stacked vertically, with the tops lodged against a horizontal stick fastened between two trees, or merely resting on a fence rail. Periodically these longer sticks are cut into stove-length pieces—junks—and stored in an outbuilding or a back porch. The spring var process, then, makes public lands private. A walk through the woods in the summer might reveal areas where "Lloyd is making spring var"; in the late fall, piles of trimmed logs wait next to slide paths to be hauled out. In either case, everyone respects everyone else's spaces, and everyone knows that until the spring var process is completed, this space and its products basically belong to one person. Wood is a common resource; the space in which it is cut becomes associated from year to year with a particular family, so that what is public becomes temporarily private. The same can be said of the mainstay of Calvert's life: the fishery. Water space is essentially a community resource that is divided up spatially from year to year in such a way as to ensure eventual equal allocation. The I 39

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Figure 60. Horse slide.

Figure 61. Larry Sullivan loading spring var onto his slide.

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Figure 62. Tom and Harold Sullivan walk across Slaughters Pond for a morning of woodcutting. When the pond is covered with slush, travel by horse and slide is not possible.

fishing areas at the mouth of the harbor are strictly for Calvert residents, and people make certain that everyone has equal access to them. Historically, cod—the mainstay of the fishery throughout Newfoundland—were fished using small seine nets, trawl lines (a series of baited hooks on a long line), or jigged by hand. Boats rowed out to the mouth of the harbor, fishing near one another in spaces fish were known to frequent. Later in the season, fish moved a bit offshore, and men had to travel farther out to catch them. Cod is still the most common fish caught in Calvert. Local buyers process it primarily into fifty-pound frozen blocks that are quickly trucked to the United States. Until the 19605, most of Calvert's fish was split, salted, and dried. The fishing season in Calvert does not begin until mid-June, when the caplin spawn close to shore. Cod follow these tiny fish, and for the next two months they are plentiful at the mouths of bays and harbors all over the island. By June, men in the community begin to set cod traps in various locations (berths) along the coast, and the trap is the exclusive method of catching cod in this Ml

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Figure 63. Stacked wood behind Tom Sullivan's bouse.

early part of the season, lasting about six weeks. According to one account, the first cod trap was introduced in Calvert by Lar Sullivan in 1874." The cod trap is basically a square box-shaped net set into the water; fish swim into the trap guided by a leader (bar) net usually attached to some shore feature. Twice a day the trap is "hauled," turned inside out, as the cod are brought to the surface of the water (figure 64). Once near the boat, fish are loaded into it 142

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Figure 64. Early-twentiethcentury photograph of Pat Sullivan hauling a cod trap. (Courtesy of Len and Manella Canning.)

using a dip net. Traps are hauled once in the morning, the crew going out about four-thirty, and once in the evening, around five o'clock. Traps are not hauled on Sundays. As in all fishing locations, the yields from each particular codtrap berth vary not only from season to season, but also from day to day. Since there are two strikes of cod along the coast several weeks apart, the later strike occurring slightly farther offshore, this, too, adds to the variation among berths. Some are designated as "early" (first strike) and others as "late" (second strike) berths. More important, some berths are identified as more productive than others summer after summer (for example, those around Big Island), presumably because they are better located in terms of the migrating fish. Calvert residents recognize that the amount of fish caught on any one day in the harbor is limited by the finite number of spaces where cod traps can productively be set. Yet, over time, Calvert fishermen have decided that all community members should have equal access to this resource, with no one individual or family receiving preferential treatment. The introduction of the cod trap, then, was a potential divisive innovation. Indeed, not long 143

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after its introduction in Newfoundland, the cod trap was advertised in a St. John's newspaper as "the coming Net for profit."34 Unlike such simpler technologies as hand jigging and seining, the trap enabled a large quantity of fish to be caught day in and day out over a season, especially if a person managed to set his trap in one of the best berths. This technology could have led to competition for cod, and in the first years after the trap's introduction in Calvert, some men did attempt to maximize their individual success. If a man had his trap set in a productive spot, he tried to keep the same berth summer after summer, ensuring that he would catch more fish than others. Keeping a berth often meant keeping a trap out all winter to guarantee that no one would take the spot. However, this de facto ownership of berths soon led to friction among community residents, and battles over particular berths. Clarence O'Toole recalled how one berth used by a Calvert fisherman was craftily taken by a Ferryland resident: Martin Kavanagh, he always had that berth [at Goose Island]. He used to keep his trap out all the winter. So this evening, when the ice was going in, he had to take in the trap. So he took in the trap. And they [the Kavanaghs] went down and had a look. They knew that Devereaux in Ferryland were going to try to take the berth. And they went down to Ferryland, and Ferryland was full of ice. And [the Kavanaghs said]: "no sweat, we won't go out until the morning." That night, Mrs. Maggie's [Keough] father, Jimmy Devereaux, he got the crew, they put the trap aboard, and got more men. They hauled the skiff out through the ice. There was no ice outside [but] Ferryland was full. When Kavanaghs went out in the morning the [Devereaux] trap was there. That was a Ferryland berth, then, ever after that. A report describes how one Calvert man surreptitiously set his trap out at night to secure a good berth: The story is told [in] which Andy Keough [1890] put all his anchors in barrels and brought them to the stage head which was one mile from his home. That evening he dressed up in his best clothes and took his horse and sleigh to go up to Cape Broyle on business. He did not go to Cape Broyle. Instead he promptly changed 144

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into old clothes, had his men [crew members] waiting for him and put the barrels in the boat. The people from the community could not figure out what the barrels [vats] contained as the crew rowed out the harbour. Next day it was realized that Andy had set his moorings and secured the best cod trap berth in the harbour. No hard feelings resulted. However, others resolved that he would not be so successful next year.35 Calvert fishermen soon became outraged at these assertions of individual resource control, and they determined that no one person would be so successful in the future. Trap-berth space had to be public space since fish were considered a public resource. Clarence O'Toole remembers that an annual public draw was introduced in 1919 to ensure that this space would be allocated equally in the future: [The draw] came in 1919, and one of the principle reasons it came in was Sullivans down here. Mr. Lar Sullivan, he had the Big Island out there, and that was the principle berth, I suppose, on the Shore, well, one of them anyway. And he got fish all summer long. But then, before the draw, he had to keep a trap out all the winter, and the ordinary fisherman couldn't afford that. But the only way they could get at that, the Big Island, was, ah, to have a draw. And in nineteen and nineteen, they went around with a petition. The majority of fishermen signed to have the draw. And they drew down here in the fish store down to the Beach. When asked how Sullivan originally got this berth, Clarence replied, "He had more money. But when he got the Big Island he got more money. And he was an eager fisherman." According to Mike Boland, Lar Sullivan even tried to obtain a land grant for Big Island so that he would legally own this berth, but he was turned down by the local magistrate. As Clarence pointed out, after the draw "the fellow that wasn't very well off and couldn't afford it, he had a chance of getting the good berth, which he never had before, because he couldn't afford to put out a trap."36 Residents felt that the draw was introduced "to keep people civilized," as Kitty Vincent Sullivan put it. Sam Bob Winsor of the Department of Fisheries for many years supervised the draw, which was held in Harold Power's house. The draw soon became the subject of a Calvert 145

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song, complete with comments about who drew what berth; Kitty Vincent remembered fragments of this composition: P. Johnson, Cold Harbour, he smiles, don't you see, Rich Delahunty's first year, he drew number three. Pat Sullivan, Jim Crow, and Joe in the Spa, When they gets a big haul, they sings out, ha ha. Seven in the evening they all did proceed, To Arthur Power's house and Sam Bob in the lead. When the good berths were going, Jim Power, he turned white, His color come back when they called out the Bight. Poor Ernest Condon, he drew number four, Jim Took drew for Alan, the same as before.

Unlike some open-field villages, then, where individuals owned sections of a field, not even sections of Calvert's water space— where trap berths are located—are owned or inherited.37 They are property of the community as a whole, and they are distributed differently each year. At a meeting in the church hall every spring, all the fishing crews draw for the berths that they will use in the coming season. Each crew fishing in Calvert harbor initially draws one berth, then another, and so on, until all the berths are taken. Some crews will decide to take only two berths (especially if they are notoriously productive spots), others will want or need to work three. Thus, from year to year, each crew has an equal chance of drawing a good or a poor berth, and over a number of years, it is hoped that each crew will obtain an equal share of the fishery resource. In the February 1987 draw, for example, all the best berths around Big Island went to one family; as Denis Sullivan reported, "Strattons cleaned up on 'er." During summers when particular trap berths do especially well, however, I have seen a crew give part of its daily catch to crews with poorer berths. Through this draw system, the public fish resource, which can be harvested in only a limited amount of space, is open to all fishermen in the community and equally distributed. Each summer, certain spaces are the responsibility of particular crews, some more productive than others. But the next year may bring a better berth, or a mediocre spot may be drawn after several successful years. The concern with such a distribution is so fundamental for Calvert daily life that it quickly 146

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established a mechanism to temper the potentially divisive individualism of the technological innovation of the cod trap. Like the use of woods spaces, a public resource is allocated to a particular person year by year, to be exploited for a finite period before reverting back to the common domain. The older patterns of using simpler technologies on communal fishing grounds continue once the trap season is over. By midAugust, the cod have moved farther offshore, and the traps are brought in for another year. Fishing crews then trawl or jig by hand until the last of November. Jigging involves the use of a metal jigger, six inches long, at the end of a heavy line. The jigger is dropped overboard and raised and lowered by hand until a fish is caught; the line is wound around a reel. Trawl lines consist of a series of hooks spaced evenly along a long line; the hooks are baited, usually with squid, unraveled over the side, and left overnight, to be hauled the next day. Jigging and trawling take place "outside the land" over certain designated fishing grounds. These are common grounds, unlike the ground that a person has taken in on land. Many are off Cape Broyle Head, grounds such as Horse Rocks and Stair Rocks. A system of landmarks is used to find these grounds—much like the triangulation method used to locate trap berths—and boats anchor there to fish. These are shoal grounds—relatively shallow water—for, as one man pointed out, "you can't hand line in a hundred fathom of water." Men leave for jigging at five or so in the morning and shift from ground to ground until they find fish. They often stay out all day; unlike the trap fishery, fishing is a "full-time job in the fall of the year." Such fishing grounds are like berry grounds in the community; they are used by everyone, and each person has equal access. These work spaces, these subsistence spaces in Calvert are perceived largely through the labor activities that produce needed substances from the land and the water. Not only are resources produced through these work activities, but also, more important, human relationships within the community are played out. Work could take place anywhere, in any number of spatial arrangements. That it takes the form it does means that people communicate through the kinds of work considered appropriate in various spaces. Work on the Calvert landscape also permits human beings to signify attitudes toward categories of landownership. Few types of land produce resources considered to belong to only one family. 147

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Private property exists, certainly, but land-use categories are much more fluid. Various kinds of work can turn private land into a public resource, or public land into a private resource. Producing such essentials of daily life as vegetables and wood thus requires knowledge of and access to most portions of the Calvert landscape, as well as the social responsibilities entailed by the kind of work relating to the land. And the resources of the harbor are considered to belong equally to everyone. From the very beginning of Calvert's history, once access to water space was established, other lands were not accumulated. Settlers did not acquire what they did not need; wilderness was transformed into ground only when a particular resource was needed. In fact, a general term of criticism used in Calvert is to call someone "groundy," the implication being that they are too concerned with acquisition of property. Ironically, under what some have labeled a repressive capitalist mercantile system that controlled the fishery, local residents did not believe that land space should become a capitalist economic commodity. Instead, this allocative subsistence pattern was governed by an overriding concern with sharing resources. Where continual and extensive work is required—as with gardens and meadows—land can rightly be considered private, for the work involves taking in ground, with its maintenance a long-term commitment. Other resources remain common, however, or are placed under private responsibility on a seasonal basis. Sharing of resources stems in part from so many Calvert residents being related—directly or distantly; yet in its emphasis on reasonable distribution over time the subsistence pattern obviously recognizes that accumulation beyond immediate needs is unacceptable. Even private space is attentive to public needs. Land is taken in only when necessary: when it is distributed among family members, it is "shared up"—as Aidan Sullivan described it—not subdivided. When the mercantile system declined, a community system guaranteed that water resources were shared. What persists in Calvert are not a number of archaic work techniques that might intrigue outsiders, but rather a set of social relationships. Calvert space continues to let people socialize, intermingle, depend on one another in their work. You must travel through a neighbor's yard, your livestock wanders with his, you cut wood that is not bothered by anyone else, berths change hands from one season to the next. Life is such that land does not have to become private or public in terms of ownership, an either-or 148

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proposition. In other Newfoundland communities where land has become almost exclusively private, its status cannot be transformed through work, and the land-use pattern more closely approximates the norms of greater North America. Land is accumulated; land is to be used to gain cash and status. Like other aspects of life, land is private, a commodity. If Calvert residents are willing to accept the multiple notions of land status, then socially they are likely to continue to accept the multiple roles that each person must play in the community. When cod-trap technology threatened the commonality of Calvert's most important resource, a system was devised to meet head on the danger of individual gain and domination. In spite of the forces that emphasize turning property and ocean into money—forces from both outside and inside Newfoundland— Calvert residents realize that their utilization of land and water space must be primarily attentive to community good, the same concerns that govern social relationships. So it is with the location of the community's buildings.

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PART T H R E E

Consuming Spaces

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CHAPTER FIVE

Settlement Clusters to Visit

T

. hree days had passed since Christmas, three days, now, into the twelve days of the holiday season. Tom Sullivan and I had finished supper, and I settled back on the daybed in the kitchen for a nap. Ida, Tom's wife, had gone down to visit their son Jimmy; it was his birthday. Soon Mary Murphy arrived; like every Christmas season, it was another day of visit after visit in Calvert. When Ida returned, it would be Tom's and my turn to drop in from house to house, deciding on the spur of the moment where we would go next. We left, and after a minute's walk Tom and I were at Jimmy's; the kitchen was crowded with family and neighbors, the table cluttered with liquor and pop bottles, candy and Christmas cake (figure 65). I sat down near the stove to have a drink and chat. We talked about the summer's fish, we talked about Jimmy's work on the house. Soon we would "make a move," as Tom would always say, and go down the road to visit Robert Led well. With another minute's walk, we were in another crowded kitchen. Relatives of Robert's were home from Corner Brook, and from the Far East; visitors from Calvert were also there, standing along one side of the kitchen. We had, once more, pieces of Christmas cake, several drinks, and talked about recent news. An hour later, Tom and I walked back up the hill—again, only taking a minute or so—and were home again, this time for a late cup of tea and slice of bread. The evening was typical of any other for this time of year, much as my afternoon had been. From kitchen to kitchen, from relative to friend, one visit after another, a constant flow from house to house, from road to lane. At other times of the year, the intensity might not be the same, but the ritual of visiting continues. Calvert's landscape fosters these acts, encourages them, leaving few excuses— lack of time or transportation—for not mingling. The spatial 153

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Figure 6$. A Christmas visit at Jimmy and Michelle Sullivan 5r, 1986.

dynamics of what is often referred to as settlement pattern mean continued contact among residents, enabling a series of frequent exchanges in daily life. Sharing such space does not simply mean informal visits among people who merely inhabit the same domestic spaces (as in urban or suburban landscapes), but gatherings of families who use the same resources and work spaces as well. The importance of exchanges in Calvert push buildings into close clusters, mirroring the clusters of friends who visit in one another's kitchens to talk: buildings huddled around a cove, friends huddled around a table. Where a building is located and how it is sited— being located in culturally appropriate space—become as important as architectural form and style. The importance of proximity of neighbor first manifests itself in the choice of where someone builds a house; it is reaffirmed hundreds of times in the details of the daily visit. Numerous visits play out on an everyday basis the same values that initially guide the placement of buildings. People gather on the land to share re154

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sources, they gather in houses to share news and hospitality. Each visit is an occasion with its own particular form and rules, so there is a common understanding of what is required and expected. Visits act not only as an exchange of information, but more important, they also permit people to publicly exchange the goods of the world at large. The foods of the visit—often those considered special— are products as much of distant as of local culture. In a subtle way, then, the settlement pattern pushes people close together in the context of visiting, yet the same occasion uses food as a sign of the community's outward links with the greater world. The small group over and over again shares the symbols of the world. And individuals become clusters in space, be they buildings or human beings. The Calvert landscape is essentially a centripetal one: buildings group near one another along public spaces, concentrating people's daily lives in one small cluster. When new buildings are constructed, they are located close to existing structures. Unlike most regions of North America, Newfoundland is characterized by what would be considered an agglomerated landscape. Whereas many early settlements in the New World began as groups of buildings surrounded by work spaces, most settlement patterns were quickly transformed into more private landscape arrangements.1 Small isolated farmsteads consisting of consolidated land holdings became the norm in other parts of North America. Calvert space, however (like most Newfoundland communities), remains largely agglomerated, with dwellings and outbuildings clustered along the road and around one another. The point that Susan Tax Freeman makes about the village she studied in Spain can be made about Calvert: it is futile to wonder why the settlement pattern did not develop in some other way. Rather, "it is a cultural fact that life in the village binds its members in certain ways and patterns their relationships to one another and to their personal and joint properties. Alternatives to some of these patterns are generally recognized, but the patterns themselves are nonetheless perpetuated and manipulated only within limits."2 People in Calvert continue to both live and work next to one another—kept close by values that have been important for a number of generations: values that emphasize proximity over privacy, hospitality over seclusion. Buildings found in any landscape—including Calvert's—are part of an overall spatial ritual: their placement is determined by norms governing movement in the community. A whole host of socializing rituals—calendric feasts, rites of passage, visiting and gossiping— 155

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have particular modes and channels of travel in the community. These rituals of movement are basically composed of agreed-upon patterned modes of contact involving relatives and friends. Building placement is a fundamental aspect of such behaviors, because socializing patterns are facilitated through building location. Calvert's agglomerated settlement pattern did not instantly appear one day on the landscape, to subsequently foster certain kinds of social contacts. Rather, these movement rituals that have been important for several generations continue to shape the landscape along certain lines, determining both the placement of buildings and the social contact among those who live in them. Concern with resources, connections with family—both shaped Calvert's landscape over the years, and both must be examined in order to fully understand building location. Ecology and Inheritance

From the sixteenth century onward, English and Irish fishermen settled Calvert for one reason: the catching, drying, and export of cod. The curing process—referred to as "making fish"—involved gutting and splitting cod, soaking it in brine, and finally dry curing it for several days in the sun. This drying process took place either on large sandy stretches of beach (which are rare in most cliff-faced Newfoundland communities) or on wooden platforms built above the ground near the coast. These platforms—flakes—were covered with spruce boughs on which the brine-soaked fish were spread (figure 66); women generally turned the fish over several times during the two- or three-day drying process, and the fish were stacked or taken in at night (figure 67). Flakes were built near stretches of a harbor that permitted the easiest unloading of fish: cliffs that were not too high. The buildings where fish were gutted, split, and then soaked in tubs of brine were known as stages; they were built at the edge of the land, often slightly overhanging the water. A broad ladder on the rock face permitted men to bring fish in tubs up to the stage, or alternatively, a bucket on a pulley was lowered into the boat to unload the waiting fish. Ecologically, then, settlement in a community like Calvert was initially a balance between proximity to desirable stretches of coast where such work areas could be built and the availability of living space on land. As Constantinos Doixiadis points out, when locating settlements, people attempt to maximize potential contacts with local resources 156

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Figure 66. Early-twentiethcentury photograph of cod drying on flakes on the north side of Calvert. A banking schooner is seen in the background. (Courtesy ofLen and Marcella Canning.)

Figure 67. Early-twentiethcentury photograph of Tom and Pat Clancy taking in drying fish from the flake at the end of the day. Pat Clancy had moved to the United States and was home for a summer visit. (Courtesy ofLen and Marcella Canning.) I 57

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Figure 68. Map of stages at the head of the harbor, ca. 1925. (Courtesy of Crown Lands Division, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's.)

Figure 69. Lance Cove, with seagulls waiting on the beach for caplin to wash ashore.

that are the most important to their existence.3 The number of Calvert coastline areas that are suitable for the curing of fish (with beach or low cliffs and sufficient space for stages and flakes) is limited, and settlement seems to have started in sections near the shoreline that offered such spaces. The shore around the Gut and the immediate adjacent stretch between it and the Point probably were the earliest settled areas; the absence of cliffs meant that fish stages could be built out into the harbor. James Yonge's 1662 map of Ferryland included Calvert (Caplin Bay) and depicts what appears to be a dwelling house near this beach (figure 14). Subsequent maps and records indicate the continued use of the area for fishing, probably most intense by the beginning of the twentieth century: around 1925, fifteen stages were in use along the southwest portion of the harbor (figure 68), each, no doubt, with its own series of flakes.4 Most of the other sections of Calvert's coastline are quite rugged, with cliffs rising a hundred feet or so above the ocean. Broad Cove and Lance Cove (figure 69) have sand beaches, but the enormous

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cliffs make hauling fish up to level ground impractical. Several small coves in the harbor provide good shelter for anchorage, however, and their cliffs are not too high to prohibit using stages with ladders reaching down to the sea. On the north side, for example, a river empties into the harbor near Vince Ledwell's; Edmond Hylton noted that this area contained fish flakes and stages on his 1752 map. Another spot on the same map, depicted as Cuckolds Cove but known as Morry's Cove today, also was used for fishing. Aaron Thomas discussed the use of Brewing Cove (the present-day Deep Cove) by Irish when he visited the harbor in 1794.5 Fishermen most likely started to use Morry's Cove and Deep Cove after the beach at the Gut had been filled with stages. Early landowners like the Morrys and Sweetlands claimed the best stretches of coast for themselves; later settlers would rent a section of usable coast from these owners rather than attempt to use the stretches marked by steep cliffs. The landscape where each man moored his boat, unloaded his catch, and split and dried it was known as his Figure 70. The Sullivan and Ledwell fishing rooms, first owned by the Evoys.

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Figure //. Sections of harbor coast that are usable for fish processing.

"room." Later immigrants built their houses on uninhabited land away from these desirable coastal stretches, but they usually had to rent rooms from wealthy landowners so as to have a usable stretch of water space. Lizzie Morry, for example, a member of one of the early English merchant families, rented a room to Leonard Canning until he finally inherited the land as a kind of adopted son. An Evoy family rented space to members of the Sullivan family; when the Evoys moved out of Calvert, the room was sold to the Sullivans (figure 70). The ecological seeds were thus set. West Country Englishmen and Wexford Irish began building houses near the stretches of harbor coastline where fish could be easily landed, and where space was available for the construction of fish stages and flakes (figure 71). Indeed, these desirable shore spaces formed a kind of building nucleus, with other community structures gradually spreading outward from these clusters. Although the best fishing grounds were at the mouth of Calvert's harbor, settlers chose to inhabit places nearer to where fish could be easily landed and washed (figure 72). Indeed, Stone Island—essentially a nineteenth-century settlement that gradually declined—was most likely settled in the first place because no desirable fishing rooms were left at the head of the bay. The inhabitants of Stone Island were closer to the fishing grounds used by the entire community, which were located just off the land, than those who lived at the head of the bay and had to 161

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Figure 72. A view of the Point, ca. 1900, with numerous flakes. Piles of dried fish are stacked on several of the flakes. (Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's.) \62

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row the length of the harbor. Stone Island residents built long ladders down the high cliffs to get to their boats and unload fish. The field still known as Flake Meadow—marked by name as well as by the vague outlines of the rows of flakes and buildings—attests to these settlers' attempt to live close to fishing grounds, while having to cope with a coastline downright hostile to their livelihood. People claim that residents began to leave Stone Island because of the constant problem of having to unload fish up this high cliff. Mike Sullivan, when asked why people abandoned the area, answered simply: "I suppose it was a poor place for fishing." Johnny Sullivan figured that fishing was just "too hard work at Stone Island." Vince Ledwell's great-grandfather Robert Swain was the first to leave Stone Island; according to Mr. Vince, "he lost his stage, fish and the whole works with a breeze of wind." Bob Swain then decided, according to Vince, that Stone Island " 'twas an out of the way place. . . . [It] was alright for the woods in the wintertime. And it was rough down there for boats, and 'twas a bit smoother up here" up the bay. In fact, a kind of seasonal migratory pattern developed by the end of the Stone Island settlement in the early twentieth century. Some Stone Island fishermen built makeshift dwellings near Morry's Cove where they would live for several days or weeks during the height of the fishing season. Other Stone Island residents lived at home, but walked to the north side of Calvert every day to fish. Larry Sullivan's father, Mart Sullivan, fished most of the summer from a room rented from Liz Miskell; he walked daily from his home at Stone Island to this room (several miles) to avoid hauling fish up the cliffs. Sometimes in June and July, Mart, along with Peter Swain, used to swim the length of Slaughters Pond on the way back to Stone Island to make the trip faster. Stone Island men increasingly looked for other spaces to make their fish. Settling near the water per se was not the prime consideration influencing early Calvert settlement. Early nineteenth-century Stone Island settlers built their homes closest to the fishing grounds, but several generations later decided to rent water space farther up the bay rather than constantly braving the cliffs and rough water off Stone Island to process fish. Even though Stone Island was located virtually on top of the fishing grounds, this saving of daily travel time was obviously not balanced out by a saving of the labor required both to haul fish and to maintain fisheries premises. The second problem most likely caused residents to look for other work 163

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spaces, because high cliffs exposed to the ocean meant frequent loss of entire structures, such as stages and flakes. The "breeze of wind" that carried away Bob Swain's premises was probably a common occurrence, and frequent replacement meant cutting more wood in the winter and annual rebuilding in the spring. Although a good "westerly wind," as Johnny Sullivan described it, made Stone Island a desirable spot for drying fish, this and proximity to the fishing grounds were not enough. By the end of the nineteenth century, most Stone Island residents realized that they would rather spend their time rowing the length of the harbor than hauling fish up from a tossing boat or rebuilding stages year after year. Stone Island residents, family by family, decided not to maintain their separation from the nearby Calvert settlement, but to voluntarily relocate among a working community. And consolidating and remaking their living spaces among these neighbors was a spatial act that was already taking place through marriage. People in Calvert from the start, then, wanted to be close to desirable coastal work space. This did not necessarily mean, however, that everyone's fishing room was contiguous to where one lived. Indeed, in most cases, a family's room was located apart from their dwelling, but only a short walk away (see figure 68). Clarence O'Toole summarized this: "If Tom's [Sullivan] father [who lived on the north side], he wouldn't have a stage up here [on the Point] because it would be too far to walk in the morning. He'd have it as near as he could to his own house." People wanted to be close to a certain part of the coast, where they would construct their room of flakes, stages, and stores. Since many did not live contiguous to this space, they had latitude as to where their residence was built. Coastal use influenced the general area where one might live, but not the specific site. Any land that was a walk of several minutes from one's fishing room would be a suitable site for a house. If proximity to good shore space was one of the major forces in shaping the initial settlement in Calvert, kinship ties influenced the direction in which the pattern would go. From the various nuclei of settled spaces near fishing rooms (figure 71), clusters began to grow along familial lines, gradually leading to neighborhoods peopled by extended kin groups. It is a saying in Calvert that "everyone is related to everyone else," which is, indeed, true. Various sections of the community are certainly composed in part of the extended families that grew up from the initial areas of settlement near desirable coastal space. 164

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Figure 73. Locations of Sullivan houses over three generations.

What anthropologists have called viri-patrilocal residence characterizes settlement in Calvert and most Newfoundland communities; the numerous studies of this phenomenon make more than a summary of its major characteristics unnecessary.6 When a son reaches marriageable age a family partitions off some of its land; that son can build a new house and settle near his family after marriage. Again and again this has happened in Calvert, and what was originally the first settler's home becomes surrounded in successive generations by the homes of descendants (figure 73). This successive subdivision over the years has led to an intensification of the settlement pattern, with the community itself becoming more agglomerated, building concentration more dense. Because of this pattern, sons are assured of receiving some portion of the family's land. What the actual section of land might be, however, is never laid down by custom, and often one particular family owns several parcels of land—either through grant, inheritance, or squatters' rights. When it is time to give a son land, the family decides which part would be most suitable. The youngest son in a family often receives the greatest slice of the inheritance pie, getting his father's house as well as the adjacent land. Most significant in this subdivision process, however, is that a son generally prefers to obtain land near his parents' dwelling. Even if land is available in less congested areas—indeed, miles of crown land lie at 165

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Figure 74. Outbuildings and houses near Tom and Ida Sullivan's house.

the edges of the community—a son usually wants to be as close to his family as possible, choosing kinship over open space and more land. Building near one's relatives is considered critical, even though existing outbuildings might be situated in front of the new house (figure 74). Social proximity is more important than clear demarcation of front regions as house space and rear regions as outbuilding space. Thus, historically, proximity to water space together with inheritance patterns acted to shape Calvert's landscape; Clarence O'Toole summed up these twin forces, using the Sullivan family as an example: "Well, I suppose, Sullivans own land down there [on the north side]. Most of the, a lot of the young men, they stay there in Calvert, so they built their houses on their father's land . . . and they didn't go too far from the water. Come in the morning, and if you had to walk half a mile, 'twas a disadvantage." Before pursuing the proxemic reasons why building clusters continue the way that they do, I want to examine the structures relating to the fishery. By doing so, I can reinforce my later argument about the value placed on these close building proximities. 166

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Figure 75. The Sullivan stage area.

Many of the current writings on material culture describe a trend of constant segmentation, of continual division of space, so that buildings—like people—are believed to have become more individualistic, more separated over time.7 In terms of Calvert's fisheries buildings, this has not been the case; indeed, the opposite is true. Since the mid-19705, most Newfoundland communities, including Calvert, have witnessed a rapid decline in the use of the fisheries outbuilding clusters of stages, stores, and flakes (figure 75) that made up a fishing room, and with it the disappearance of many of these building types. When the market for salt fish virtually collapsed in the i96os,8 flakes were no longer needed and were the first artifacts to crumble. Fish were sold fresh ("green"), quick frozen and shipped by tractor trailer to the United States. In the

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Figure 7'6. Tom Sullivan's fish stage.

Figure 77. Unloading cod at the community wharf.

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Figure 78. The head of the harbor, with the community stage and the fish plant where much of the catch is processed.

19705, however, many of the stages in the community were still kept up, largely as mooring spots for boats (figure 76). As each crew returned to the harbor with fish morning or evening during the season, they sailed directly to the wharf at the head of the bay to empty their catch to awaiting processors (figures 77 and 78). After unloading, the crew sailed back to the family fishing room, moored the boat, and walked home. Things have changed even more drastically, however, in recent years. During the past decade—and after several major storms, with "southeast winds," according to Mike Sullivan—stages have not been repaired, but instead have been left to deteriorate. All fishing crews in Calvert now keep their boats moored in Gut Pond at the head of the bay, and the several-minute walk to the fishing stage has been replaced by the several-minute drive in a pickup 169

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truck to the pond. This space has become the focus of community work, thereby consolidating an activity that formerly took place on a number of scattered sites. Whereas formerly each family not only had to find scarce coastal space, but also in some cases had to rent it, now everyone is assured of a place for his boat. Perhaps the seeds of spatial consolidation had been set even before the decline of the individual room. In one case, charging for the rental of these spaces ceased when possession of this shore space passed from the hands of English merchants to an Irish fisherman; Clarence O'Toole explained: "Miss Morry, they used to pay rent to her, [she] lived down to Cannings. And a trapman paid ten dollars a year and a trawlman paid five dollars. So this fellow came up every year, LeMessieur, and he went around to all the fishermen, and you had to have your rent. If not, he wouldn't let you fish there next year." But Clarence's father, Jim O'Toole, bought this land from the Morrys, and when Clarence took it over, as he described it, he "never collected one cent of rent." A large amount of land for drying fish on flakes obviously is no longer needed; boats now come in after fishing, sell their catch at the wharf, and sail a few short seconds to the nearby pond. Even spatial metaphors point to how important this change is. In the past, each fishing crew needed its own "room" to prosecute the fishery and a suitable adjacent "water premises" to moor boats (figure 79). Today, all of these individualistic rooms and premises have crumbled, to be consolidated in one community room, one community premises, located at the community stage and pond. The last spatial connection with what for generations was the primary method of fish production in Newfoundland—salt curing—has been broken. A central community work space means that people are no longer constrained to live near suitable shore space when choosing land on which to locate a house. Len Canning, noting that all the boats are now kept in one place in the pond, explained: "But it is handier up there . . . come home in their car, go up in their car. And they have no bother about bad weather." With automobiles, the time expended today driving to the pond remains essentially the same as walking to the family stage did years ago. The ecological link with a spatial need for good fishing rooms has been severed, and one community work space now serves Calvert, where individual spaces were before. History may have set the stage for building location in Calvert, but hospitality certainly 170

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Figure 79. Stages at Keough 5r fishing premises at the head of the harbor.

has remained the shaping force behind it. Family and community ties, as manifested through the visit, continue to pull the centripetal community together. The Visit and Hospitality

There are important reasons why houses continue to be built near other houses in Calvert today. The unemotional term kinship is an easy explanation, but it can simplistically gloss over what we are talking about primarily: proximity of house to house, neighbor to neighbor. Kinship becomes more than just sons inheriting land from their fathers, deeper and more pervasive than simple genealogical charts. The same force operates today as in the past: the anthropological notion of kinship ties translates into day-to-day behaviors shaped by the importance of the extended family. Calvert 171

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is home, and parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles all live within a few short steps of one another. Some relations have gone off to search for work, never to return: to Boston in the early years of the century, to Toronto after Newfoundland became a part of Canada in 1949, and most recently to construction projects in the rich oil fields of northern Alberta. But many residents—males especially—end up living in the community where they were born. Proximity to nuclear family, proximity to extended family, proximity to neighbor—this desire to be near important others determines the shape of Calvert's space. The important difference between Calvert's landscape and those of many other areas of North America is that where one builds one's house—where one settles—is not hindered by a scarcity of land. Without zoning regulations, without even a town council to regulate growth, people can choose whether they want to live near one of their kin; a new lane can be made to a house behind the existing family home, or a meadow can be converted into a building lot. Unlike urban or suburban residents in other regions, people in Calvert ultimately can choose who they live near and implicitly who they will frequently interact with. A buffer of crown land extends for miles in all directions around the community, and if people value privacy and the acquisition of land over proximity to neighbors, then the option of buying parcels of land away from everyone else is always open. In other contexts—like urban landscapes—people may be forced to live next to one another and choose not to interact; in Calvert people choose to interact and thus build houses close together. The locational pattern of buildings tells only part of the story, for artifacts do not determine the way people behave. Rather, people choose behaviors, and locate buildings accordingly. Calvert residents can choose locational clusterings, and they choose to be near. Daily Calvert life often concerns keeping up with the latest news, acquiring new information, sharing and discussing these new things with others. Lorraine and Doris Sullivan related an incident about a Calvert woman as an example of how people in the community are always "looking around for news": "Every house that she'd come into, she'd want to go to the bathroom. And one day she was up to our house and she had to go up to the bathroom. Then she went down to Kitty Larry's and she had to go to the bathroom. And she came downstairs and she said to Kitty Larry, 172

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'My God,' she said, 'I was just up to Ida's, and she have all her beds made.' Kitty said she didn't have her beds made at all." All aspects of daily life are potential subjects for discussion. So much of Calvert life is public, on display, that residents are watchful for the daily happenings they can talk about. In terms of architectural location, houses must be situated so that they focus on the major sources of news in the community, facilitating the easy and rapid exchange of such information. Concern with news and its exchange, then, leads directly to two other issues: the location of a house and the importance of visiting. The proximity of dwellings in Calvert's landscape is a response, first, to view. People want their houses to be attentive to certain spaces, where they can constantly obtain the information that these areas produce. Who is doing what in the community, who is visiting whom, who is catching fish and who is not—houses are sited to address these concerns. Kitty Vincent Sullivan claimed, "We're nosey enough," and Doris Sullivan explained, "We're a nosey crowd, Jerry." The comings and goings of the outside world pull the dwelling to face certain ways, and the rectangular or square shape of the Western house carries an implicit desire for orientation. Since the kitchen is the most frequently used room in the Calvert house, the community space where everyone sits and chats, its position with regard to siting is key to understanding locational strategies, what people want to see, what they want in view. Whereas in North America the kitchen has gradually retreated to the more private spaces in the back of the dwelling, it usually is still found in the front of the Calvert home.9 People want to see the spaces that carry information deemed crucial for daily interaction. Houses are thus concerned with two major focuses of day-today spatial activity: the water and the road. The life of the house centers on the kitchen, and most looking out of the house to the exterior world is from this room. The kitchen, rather than the house, faces in certain directions. It is in this room that often halfway through a conversation someone will jump up and look out the window. Mike Sullivan, referring to those who are curious, said, "You see them running for the window, if they thinks there's a fancy van coming down the road, a truck, now, above the ordinary." As Doris Sullivan commented, if you "sees anybody strange, yes, you looks out the window and sees what's going on," and then offered examples: "Who owns that car 173

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over at Aunt Catherine's? Who are them crowd down at Kitty Larry's? Where are they from?" Her sister Lorraine added: "Who are that crowd walking down the road?" In other cultures, knocking is required to enter a house, and the residents may refuse entry if the visitor is not wanted. In most Newfoundland communities like Calvert, however, knocking is not required and entry is guaranteed. A good long look out the kitchen window is the only time an impending visitor can be assessed—an access ritual that takes place not so that someone can be refused entry, but simply to decide how he or she should be met socially.10 Strangers traveling in most Newfoundland communities often see faces peering out kitchen window after kitchen window, residents staring at the known outsider, wondering about his or her business—in short, houses have what one anthropologist described as "squinting windows." u People watch activities on the road because it is through this line of movement that residents pass who are the central concern of daily life. People watch outside because they are curious, not frightened; being in full view as you approach reassures the person at the window that you, indeed, have nothing to hide and must have a socially accepted reason for wanting to visit. The world passes by, day by day, on the road. Neighbors travel, friends visit, strangers arrive and depart, and all of these are noted as one looks out the kitchen window. The road often serves as a gathering space where neighbors socialize during daily rambles; walking along the road puts a person in public view, and can invite socializing from someone inside a house who decides to come out and chat. Likewise, someone on the road might observe a neighbor staring out a kitchen window and decide to go in and talk. The kitchen window and the road are symbiotic channels of visual communication that permit the option of socializing by drawing people either inside or outside the house. The house and the road are therefore mediated partly by the kitchen.12 The road loses this visual exterior-interior link after dark; then it becomes a more private domain for courtship. Young girls and boys often walk along the road at night in groups or couples, giving them an opportunity to socialize more privately than in the house.13 If people want to live close to one another for cultural reasons, they also want to be near this crucial social domain of the road, face onto it, and thus see the daily goings-on of the world. The settlement pattern in Calvert may be agglomerated, but it also stretches along the main road that circles the harbor (figure 80). 174

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Whereas some lanes jut off the main road and thus add settlement depth to the community, most of Calvert looks onto this main thoroughfare. Such orientation is considered the norm. When a house was recently built facing ninety degrees perpendicular to the road, one resident wondered why anyone would construct a dwelling so obviously inattentive to the major activity path of daily life. If the road holds one of the major visual sources of information in Calvert, so does the water. The kitchen is the space that looks out onto the world, and if this room faces the road, it should ideally face the harbor as well. Mothers and wives watching as boats return after the morning or evening haul of nets know that when the family's boat sails into the harbor, a meal needs to be prepared. Most people are able to read the success of boats coming into the harbor after having hauled their nets. As he sharpened his scythe one day, Len Canning looked out in the bay at the sound of a returning boat. He remarked to me, "There's a fella coming with fish." When I asked how he knew, he replied, "See him shoving the water?" How low a particular boat sits in the water tells how much fish is on board, and even before men return with the exact weights of their catch, those at home have a good idea how many pounds of fish were landed. Depending on their location, some houses are sited with regard to the road, others the water; ideally, dwellings can be attentive to both domains. If a choice between the two must be made, most opt for the road, for a knowledge of daily social intercourse is more important than the success of the day's catch. That information will quickly spread anyway after each crew returns from their voyage. Who caught what amount of fish is safe information, news that everyone has access to and is entitled to. The subtleties of the comings and goings on the road are another matter, often grist for the gossip mill, information that each person must assess and interpret by individual standards and past knowledge. Houses, then, are expected to face the road; without this space in full view, an important channel for observing community life is diminished. People who build their own houses often disregard such architectural niceties as the proper facade for the particular form and, instead, pay closer attention to orienting their kitchen to the informational spaces of the community. Showing the passerby what is architecturally the front of a building is less important than facing the social window onto the road. Aidan and Maude Sullivan oriented their house (with regard to facade) ninety degrees from the 175

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Figure So. Distribution of buildings in Calvert (1978).

main road so th2Lt the kitchen faces both the road and the harbor (figure 81). Len and Marcella Canning had the best of both worlds. Their house facade, too, is oriented ninety degrees to the road; one kitchen window faces the harbor and the road can be seen through another window across the kitchen. One way or another, both important domains are in view. Larry and Kitty Sullivan's house, however, although architecturally proper—its facade looks onto the road—has the kitchen focused primarily on water space. Life in Kitty's kitchen looks out onto the bay, and only the sound of a car or of voices prompts someone to leave the kitchen, walk down the hall, and look out the front door to see who might be passing by or arriving for a visit. All three houses are the same basic architectural type; all three resolve their orientational concerns in different ways. Clearly, however, houses are considered essentially distinct types, since interior room arrangements must coincide with what people expect from the outside. If the entire house can be reoriented—as with Aidan and Maude Sullivan's— then the kitchen can look out on both important spatial domains. 176

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Figure 81. Different orientations of one house type with regard to the harbor and the road. 1. Aidan and Maude Sullivan's; 2. Larry and Kitty Sullivan's; 3. Len and Marcella Canning's.

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With Larry and Kitty Sullivan's dwelling, however, a choice had to be made between facing one space or the other; altering the interior room arrangements was not an option, for that would necessitate an unfamiliar floor plan. Proximity to others encourages—indeed, promotes—observation of daily behavior as well as formal and informal social activities among various age groups. Whereas other rural settlement patterns are marked by relatively large distances between dwellings, distances that must be overcome before even informal visits can take place, most houses in Calvert are seconds or even steps away from a neighbor. Lorraine Sullivan explained that houses were built close together "for company" and gave an example of one of the many short visits among relatives that such siting permits: "You take, sure, our house, and Kitty's and Aunt Maude's, right? . . . I'd eat my dinner and probably go into Kitty's then . . . before we did the dishes, while the rest of the crowd were finishing." At the expense of privacy, the house becomes the scene of numerous daily interchanges between relatives and friends. These interchanges take place in a variety of formal and informal contexts, all under the guise of the visit, of different durations and for different purposes. Although it may be easy to accept that work activities have shaped the configuration of Calvert's landscape, some may be reluctant to agree that such an act as visiting may also have had an effect. Part of this difficulty stems, however, from a tendency to consider work inherently useful and therefore influential, and an activity like visiting essentially superfluous. But as one writer has pointed out, "the maintenance of neighborhood and community requires effort on the part of the inhabitants," and visiting necessitates as much effort and time as "real" work activities.14 The end result of work on the land is directly visible and thus easily acceptable; the end result of visiting is the equally visible location of buildings on Calvert's landscape. Visiting is extensive in Calvert partly because so many people are related to one another. Even with out-migration, the number of immediate relatives that any one person has within the community is large, all no more than a minute's walk or drive away. Doris Sullivan, for example, between her aunts, uncles, siblings, and first cousins, could visit fifteen houses in the community: those of Harold and Catherine Sullivan, Alice Sullivan, Clarence and Annie O'Toole, Bertie and Bridie Condon (her aunts and uncles), Jimmy and Michelle Sullivan, Colin and Louise Sullivan, Len and Diane 178

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Sullivan, Edward and Rhoda Keough (her siblings), Lloyd and Linda Sullivan, Sheila and Chris Boland, Gerard and Sheila Sullivan, Cyril and Jean Sullivan, Adrian and Dot Sullivan, Kevin and Stella Sullivan, Clarence and Denise Sullivan (her first cousins). If friendship groups are included, the number is obviously larger. Each family has similar connections, and Calvert is therefore covered with webs of visiting networks that overlap, extending into every kitchen. The siting of buildings in Calvert means that no structure is farther than a two-minute drive or walk from another. Visiting does not demand extensive planning or allocation of time, but rather is often spontaneous and may last only several minutes, as when Lorraine Sullivan visited next door, before washing dishes, while waiting for her brothers to finish eating. There are two types of visits: social visits, which are essentially casual and require a minimum of prearrangement; and ritual visits, which are more formal and mark specific times or occasions.15 Even with the advent of telephones, which allow news to be easily exchanged verbally, the simple social visit is the commonest forum for the daily exchange of news. Within a cluster of houses owned by members of one extended family, for example, a married daughter might visit her mother once or twice a day for advice on a new baby; a young man might call on his elderly uncle to learn how to properly mend a torn net. Social visiting usually takes set patterns. Children scatter from house to house during the day, looking for playmates. If it is summer, they can move outside; if cold, into a stable, a fish store, or perhaps a kitchen. They become bored and quickly move on in groups to another house, another yard, spreading information about the previous space with them. Women visit one another daily, taking time out between meals or daily chores to visit an aunt or an in-law to chat about the latest news. Women do not wander far during the day, for a visit can only be short when meals have to be cooked and children looked after. Males go visiting, too, but primarily in the evening after the day's work is complete, sometimes congregating in certain houses, other times gathering for a few moments of chat in a shop. More extended periods of time are spent visiting during these evening interchanges, and they sometimes develop into formalized performance events: singing, joke telling, reminiscing. Wives sometimes accompany their husbands on such evening visits. Especially before the advent of television, evening visiting was quite common. As 179

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Kitty Vincent Sullivan explained, "One time, all you did in the night was take your knitting and go next door, or your matting, or whatever you were at." At certain times, however, social visiting is more likely to take place, times when residents can be expected to travel to a neighbor or relative's house. Sunday is the "real visiting day," according to Essie Rossiter, Sunday afternoons after mass and formal dinner. A husband and wife or two or three older brothers and sisters will spend several hours visiting nearby relatives and friends. Those who stay at home on Sunday afternoons can expect to have unannounced visitors drop in. Three or four houses might be visited on a Sunday afternoon; over a span of several months, most relatives will be visited at least once. When people from outside Calvert travel through the community, residents often will expect a visit. When I asked Denis Sullivan about this, he explained: "If there's people passing along by the door and you found out they were in the harbor, and they never dropped in to see ye, you often hear mother saying: 'Now, I wonder how come they never dropped in.'" The informal visit remains important for daily socializing. But sometimes visiting takes on a more structured nature, and relatives and friends are expected to stop by to talk and exchange information. These ritual visits occur at certain times of the year and on certain family occasions, and again, proximity means that time spent traveling is minimal. These visits are almost as easy as going from one room of a house to another. During ritual visits, large numbers of visitors are anticipated, usually to celebrate some type of family event—rite of passage—or calendar celebration. Typical of these visits are those connected with death and Christmas. Death is a community concern in Calvert, and few of the mechanisms of mass society's institutionalization of this event have intruded on local rituals. Indeed, the process of death and dying in Calvert includes a series of visits that involve continual interaction by community residents with the family. When someone is dying, he or she is often confined to the bedroom, and a visiting vigil begins. Neighbors and friends stop by in a steady stream to visit the sick person, offering a few words of support as well as their simple presence. When Larry Sullivan was dying from cancer, nearby neighbors made sure that someone was there to sit up with him, even if it was long into the night. At no other time would a community resident have access to or need to visit the private space of the bedroom, a room rarely seen by anyone except those who use it. But sickness transforms this space into a place to visit, 180

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and in this special ritualized visit, access is permitted. Doris Sullivan described how her father, Tom, is always concerned about visiting anyone who is sick; "it's one of them corporal works of mercy, you know," referring to a tenet of Roman Catholic belief. She continued: "If [father] conies to town, and if he have to go to the hospital at all, he'll likely go and ask who's in from the Shore. . . . I remember first when we [Doris and Lorraine] came to town, anybody that was in the hospital, he used to tell us to go. And I remember in particular this one, Mrs. Liz Harvey. And we didn't even know the woman. And I said, 'I don't even know her, sure.' 'Go see her anyway.'" In Calvert, the private space of the bedroom becomes in death the community's public space, and thus the visit breaks down the often artificial dichotomy of public and private domains. Perhaps the most telling example of this connection between death and the spatial domain of the bedroom was years ago, according to Johnny Sullivan, when Mary Margaret Swain wanted the roof of her onestory house raised to add an upstairs bedroom—what she considered the appropriate space in which to die. The visit brings the neighbor or relative into the personal space of the bedroom, with the religious images that have for a lifetime reminded the inhabitant of the inevitability of this final event.16 After death, a second series of visits is set in motion. A group of friends visits the cemetery to dig the grave by hand. A local undertaker prepares the body, placing it in a commercial casket, and brings it to the front room of the deceased's house for the wake. During the wake, close family and friends sit in this room, while more distant relatives and community members chat in the kitchen after paying their respects, usually being offered drink and soup by relatives. "All the people in the harbor" come to the wake, according to Kitty Vincent Sullivan, and another resident reported: "Foods for a wake consisted of bread, buns, cakes, always fresh butter and perhaps some sort of jam. Often neighbors saw to providing such items and the men provided the alcohol."17 Kitty Vincent mentioned that beans are usually served as well. When wakes are held in the home, a group of people usually stay up all night, often spending the time relating humorous anecdotes. The enjoyment of staying up was summarized by Kitty Vincent: "But it would be the real nickel staying up with someone then." In the past, the blinds in every house were drawn during the wake period. TD pipes—small pipes made of white clay—were smoked at all wakes; as Kitty Vincent explained, "You nearly had 181

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Figure 82. Decorated graves in the Calvert-Ferryland cemetery; the bench in the family plot is used by visitors.

to smoke a pipe when you go into a wake years ago. Well, a lot of people died with different diseases, and we had nothing, only this old Jaynes fluid or something. There was no big flowers and pots of flowers or anything. You nearly wanted a pipe, now, in your mouth to keep down the odor. I'm not joking." Given the proximity of houses and their location in kin-group clusters, the homes of close relatives are often opened as well to receive friends and offer hospitality. During Aidan Sullivan's wake, Tom Sullivan, his brother, stood outside his door chatting with visitors—many from outside Calvert—as they came out of Aidan's house. Time after time Tom invited friends to come into his own house for a few minutes to share a drink as well as catch up on past news. Tom lives only a few short steps from Aidan's, so it was easy to spend several minutes visiting with Tom as well as paying final respects to his brother. Tom and other Calvert residents make it a point to attend all wakes on the Shore. Any time that Jimmy Sullivan, Tom's son, sees his father wearing a particular set of trousers and sweater, he asks, "Who died? Father have his wake clothes on." Once everyone has individually visited the deceased at his or her house during the wake, the entire community collectively assembles one last time to attend the funeral mass in the church. After

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Figure 83. Memorial cards, one commemorating Larry Sullivan's death, displayed in a picture of the Sacred Heart in Kitty Larry's kitchen.

the mass, as Kitty Vincent Sullivan explained, "nearly all hands" go to the nearby cemetery for the burial. Many pause on the way out to visit the graves of other loved ones, saying a short prayer. These ritual visits of death and dying do not stop with burial, however. During the summer months, graves are often cleaned, decorated with flowers, and—especially in the past—visited on Sunday afternoons (figure 82). The church itself has begun to formalize these visiting patterns by holding a special service in the cemetery during the summer to remember the dead. Those who have died are often linked in very specific ways to the living left behind. Important landscape spaces continue to connect the living with the dead. Marcella Canning was commenting to me one day about growing sweet William in the flower garden in front of her house. She remarked: "Later on, now, I'm going to make another place up there now, and I'm just gonna set the seed around in it. And I'm, in September, I'm going down to the graveyard to do the same thing down on Mike's [Marcella's brother] grave." The place of the dead is considered an ever-present part of community life; many people bless themselves with the sign of the cross when they pass two community spaces: the church and the cemetery. These community dead are remembered not just in the annual ritualized visit of the cemetery service; they are remembered on the anniversaries of their deaths as well and are frequently visited then. And they are remembered not just in the cemetery, but also in the home. Memorial cards with the name of the deceased and date of death are often prominently displayed; Kitty Larry Sullivan keeps her husband's card tucked in the corner of a picture frame of a religious image in her kitchen (figure 83). And in 183

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a prayer book in Ida Sullivan's kitchen, a number of memorial cards from over the years form a small collection of the names of friends and relatives from Calvert and nearby communities who are remembered; the date of death is listed on the card as well. These collections keep memories alive and confirm when visits to graves might be necessary. The Sunday afternoon visit, the wake, the more formalized visiting occasions are not just simple exchanges of news or friendship. Rather, in most cases, gifts are offered to the visitor, gifts that seem simple, but have profound connections with daily community life. These are the gifts of food and drink. Visits—except the extremely informal social visits of short duration—usually involve the offering of some kind of food or drink to the visitor. Generally, the structure of many visits involves an exchange of news for a certain period of time, followed by this offering. When the conversation seems to have exhausted itself, or the host obviously needs to turn to other tasks, food and drink are usually offered as a kind of formulaic closing to the visit. The most common offering is a "cup of tea." When an interview with Essie Rossiter seemed to be coming to an end during a visit in June 1990, she indicated that she was finished by asking, "Can I get you a cup of tea, cup of coffee?" During the more formal visits of neighbors or relatives, some type of food almost always was offered; as Essie explained, "you couldn't leave the house, my dear. You're going. You had to give them something [before] going." In fact, Essie commented, the "old people" had a saying: "Stay home, you'll get nothing. Go out, you'll get something," meaning that visiting ensured the offer of some kind of food or drink. Offering a cup of tea generally translates into a cup or more of tea accompanied by a slice of bread, jam, cookies, biscuits, slices of cheese, or other light snacks (figure 84). A second cup of tea may be offered, and any of the foods that need to be replenished are. Males may be offered a "drink" before the cup of tea—generally a glass of dark rum; in recent years, females might be offered the same, but as likely, a glass of wine or sherry. Such fare has, for generations, been the traditional offering during a visit. One early Newfoundland commentator noted the same ingredients of bread or white biscuit, fresh butter, and three or four cups of tea offered to friend and stranger alike.18 The sharing of alcohol is as much a social activity in Calvert as it is a source of individual pleasure. People rarely drink alone, and 184

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Figure 84. A cup of tea at Essie Rossiter's.

look to the social occasions of the visit to engage in this activity. Tom Sullivan once explained that he had a bottle of Old Sam rum behind one of the chairs in the front room. This would sit there for weeks, he remarked, untouched, until someone arrived whom he could share a drink with. The visit is the fundamental reason for such sharing, rather than the other way around. A lounge (The Jigger) opened in the community around 1976, and people wonder how it remains open, given that public drinking almost always takes place during the kitchen visit. One recent incident involving Tom Sullivan indicates both the importance of the personal visit and its connection with offering the visitor food and drink. Tom described how he was talking to the mayor of Trepassey: "I said, 'How's your mother?' 'Best kind.' I said, 'Tell her I was asking about her.' She said, Til do nothing of the kind,' she said, 'if you don't go down and see her, sure, I'll never mention your name.' 'Well,' I said, Til go down to see her.'" Tom went down to visit, 185

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and when he arrived, the woman remarked: " 'Oh, my,' she said, 'if I only had to have the big dinner on, and ne'er a drink either,' she said, 'ne'er a drink.'" The actions surrounding alcohol point up that each individual, when offered drink by a host, is to consume quantities considered appropriate to the social context. Glasses are placed on the table or one is handed to each guest. Each person is then expected to pour and mix his or her own drink and can take as much as desired. Language surrounding drink often refers to it in minimum quantities, emphasizing the social over the intoxicating role. One evening when Mr. John Ryan was singing at his daughter's house, typical phrases heard through the night were: "Gonna have another little drink, sir?"; "Probably another little drink might clear up that old throat"; "I'll take a drop of rum now"; "Small drop." A visit with Mike Sullivan elicited the same language. Kitty Vincent Sullivan asked, "Will you have a bottle of beer or drink of whiskey?" Mike Sullivan replied, "Yes, give us a drop." Later on during the same visit, Mike said to me, "Take another drop out of that, now, Jerry. It's just as well for us to have, for me and you to have another drop." Drinks are referred to as little or small or a drop: diminutive units that stress alcohol's role as a facilitator of social relations, rather than as an end in itself. Tom Sullivan commented on this proper use of drink: "This liquor, if that's abused, it's the wrongest thing in the world. But if it's handled right, it's the best thing in the world. . . . What's wrong, sure, that's what He had it for. He changed the water to wine. He didn't change it for a fight, He changed it for to make them happy. What?" The sharing of drink is part of the ritual celebration of most important events throughout the year (figure 85). Performing songs or recitations is, for most people, connected directly with drink. I asked Jack Swain when he would normally perform his recitations, and his response was, "Christmas time when you have a drink." Socializing, performing, drinking—all are interconnected. When consuming a drink, as well, most men will even propose a short toast to all those present: "Good luck to you, now" or "All the best." Obviously, such toasts can be more extensive, as one used by Mr. John Ryan: Here's to the land of the shamrocks so green, Here's to each boy and his darling colleen, Here's to the one we love dearest and most, May godspeed old Ireland, that's an Irishman's toast.19 186

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Figure 8$. Celebrating Father's Day in Tom Sullivan's front room, June 1990.

A simple consuming of drink is not appropriate; instead, the toast acknowledges everyone present and engages them in a brief interaction of exchange, as the entire visit itself is. Meals are almost exclusively family events, and eating of meals is considered an ordinary activity that serves only familial social functions. Although the closest of relatives live near one another, people rarely eat with other families. The paucity of restaurants on the entire Southern Shore, including Calvert, points to this common attitude, that meals do not receive special status by being prepared by someone else outside the home. Meals have not been commoditized; no one could be sure whether a restaurant would prepare the exact foods in the exact way as at home. People return home when it is time to consume meals; they visit at times other than this, and the food and drink served during such visits become that which is special and out of the ordinary. The sociability of visits is enhanced by the offering of such hospitality. In Calvert, people who share drinks, rather than meals, are socially closest of all.

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What is offered during the visit is an important sign that, even though the visitor is known, the exchanges of this event are considered special. The enhanced status of the occasion is signified by offering what are considered special foods of the household. The basic elements—tea, rum, bread, cakes, or cookies—although eaten periodically, some on a daily basis, are nevertheless somewhat special. All are imported, all must be bought, and therefore all require the sacrifice of work and cash outlay. No one would consider serving water, or fish, or potatoes during a visit; these are all commonplace, local, ordinary. That which is not indigenous is considered more appropriate, more special. From the earliest days of Calvert, all such foods had to be imported. Lord Baltimore's colonists succeeded in growing wheat one summer at nearby Ferryland in 1622, but almost immediately residents realized that wheat and flour would have to be imported.20 By the end of the eighteenth century, other foods that were considered important for the local diet became the mainstays imported for an ordinary fisherman. Tea and rum, together with flour and bread, were key elements. Tea had become a common drink among the English lower classes in the eighteenth century, and its growing importance in the Newfoundland diet was evident at the same time.21 By the early nineteenth century, one writer in Newfoundland noted that tea "is the favourite and universal beverage."22 Rum was imported cheaply as part of the trade that sent salt fish to the Caribbean. By the eighteenth century, bread was being imported from Ireland, as well as from British North America and the United States.23 Bread and flour, for example, made up the vast majority of foodstuffs imported into Ferryland in 1764, followed by sugar and rum.24 In a court case in Ferryland in 1784, all of the goods imported to supply one fisherman, William Dowlin, were listed; the foods for an eight-month period were rum (nine quarts), bread (one bag), tea (two pounds), wine (one and one-half gallons), and brandy (one quart).25 We can assume that such local foods as fish and potatoes made up the bulk of the diet, but certain imported goods were considered too important not to purchase. That income would be expended for such supplies indicates, in part, the symbolic dimension of these foods, for obviously people did not consider their diet complete without them, or that they could substitute other items. Flour and bread, and later, tea and rum, came to be expected as part of local diet, not necessarily daily or at each meal, but to be offered during the times of hospitality. Historically, in fact, the link between tea and hospitality was evident in that a 188

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visit was described as "taking tea" or "drinking tea."26 These gifts of the visit, then—tea, rum, bread, cake—from earliest times were the goods of an imported world used as fundamental signs of sharing, offered to neighbors and strangers alike. The ordinary foods of Calvert are those that are made week after week, often prepared the same way and served on the same day with little variation. Sunday dinner, for example, is roast chicken or fresh beef, some salt meat, potatoes, carrot, and turnip, with a bit of bread dressing. This is considered the special meal of the week. Ronald Condon's song "The Old Sunday Dinner a Long Time Ago" was quoted by residents like Essie Rossiter to describe this meal: We had plenty for twenty, and we made the most of it, The old Sunday dinner, a long time ago. These are the meals not of the visit but of subsistence, and they need not vary. The foods that are different and special are those served to the visitor, usually in the form of baked goods; Essie Rossiter's favorites, for example, are gingerbread, apple dumplings, and apple stew. Most of the foods of hospitality, then, must usually be learned from recipes rather than from observation. They must be recorded in some form since they are only occasionally made. The few recipe books that people own, for example, the two Ida Sullivan had during the summer of 1978, although they contain all types of foods, consist mainly of recipes for baked goods—the special foods served during the visit.27 The handwritten recipes that are kept in a book in Ida's kitchen are exclusively of this category: cherry cake; blueberry cake; gingersnaps; shortbread; chocolate snowballs; date squares; strawberry spice cake; caramel squares; light fruitcake; dark fruitcake; lemon squares; raspberry squares; pineapple squares; jumbo raisin cookies; Mary Margaret cookies. Indeed, the link between these special kinds of foods and visiting is evident from the last recipe. Members of Tom and Ida Sullivan's family frequently visited Mary Margaret O'Brien in Cape Broyle, a woman known for her warmth and hospitality as well as her baking skills. On such a visit, these cookies were sampled, the recipe shared, and the links of food extended to Calvert visits by serving "Mary Margaret cookies": edible evidence of the visiting network. If visiting is the most common social occasion that crisscrosses the Calvert landscape, and the sharing of food and drink its most 189

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visible sign of daily performance, during the Christmas season these occasions intensify, placing even more into the forefront that which occurs throughout the year. The twelve days of Christmas become a continuous time of visiting, when much of what occurs is an almost constant flow of visitors arriving to share talk, food, and drink. When I asked Denis Sullivan about visiting, he replied, "You think of visiting, you think of Christmas right away." During the twelve days of Christmas, from Boxing Day (December 26) to Old Christmas Day (January 6), no real work takes place in Calvert, and people spend most of their time eating, drinking, and visiting friends and relatives.28 In the evening, gatherings are frequent, often the scene of singing, storytelling, and other displays of verbal art. During the times of the year when ordinary social visits are made, the host of the house usually offers adult male visitors a drink. At Christmas time, however, this social norm is reversed in the extreme, as visitors themselves bring their own bottles of liquor along. The host has his or her own bottle on the kitchen table as well, and when any group of visitors arrives they place their bottle along with all the others. A kitchen filled with several groups of visitors, then, has three or four bottles set out. Visitor and host alike urge each other to take a drink from one another's bottles (figure 86). Indeed, people often make a point to "drink back and forth on each other," as Doris Sullivan explained it. These signs of exchange are important, and men will often drink a type of liquor of which they are not particularly fond, ensuring, however, that they share with all. Tom Sullivan drank some of Aidan Kavanagh's Bacardi amber rum and Robert LedwelPs rye whiskey during our evening visit in 1986, even though his preferred drink of dark rum was on the table in both houses. Everyone shares the hospitality of others, each person acknowledging the gifts being offered, personal preferences aside. Just before visitors are about to leave, they will ask whether anyone wants one last drink, and then they take the bottle with them to the next house. At other times of the year, if visitors had arrived with a bottle, they would be expected to leave it for the host. But Christmas is a time for everyone to be able to offer anyone else a sign of hospitality. If visiting is raised to a special status during Christmas, then through the ritual of mummering it reaches its epitome. In Calvert, as in many Newfoundland communities, this custom involves a house visit by a number of disguised adults whose identities resi190

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Figure 86. A Christmas visit at Alice Sullivan's.

dents attempt to guess. The mummers—or "fools" as they are usually referred to in Calvert—often arrive dancing or playing music; several times that I went we were accompanied by an accordion player (figure 87). Residents try to guess identities by posture or clothes used as a disguise; once identified correctly, the mummers are required to remove the cloths that cover their faces. If, after too long a time, an identity is not guessed, the face coverings are removed anyway and conversation begins. Mummers are always offered liquor and often some form of sweet—Christmas cake most often—while conversation continues. Five different Christmases I have gone mummering with friends who live in Calvert, letting them choose the houses to visit. Mummering is a visible sign of the spatial links that a particular group of mummers has with friends in the community. Not every house is visited; many are passed by, even though they are a few short steps from the last one visited. Instead, the homes of both relatives and friends are chosen as a way of affirming a certain set of social bonds 191

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Figure 87. A mummers'1 visit, Christmas 1086.

that exist throughout the community; mummers outline the spatial lines of their social network. Having a visit by the fools is as enjoyable for the resident as for the visitor, and is usually eagerly welcomed unless there is sickness in the home. When we left some houses, residents would ask us to be sure to visit the house of a particular friend or relative where we had not yet been. Walking through Calvert with a group of mummers is literally tracing the lines of social relationships that exist between the friends in the group, and those that are important to them in the community. The nature of this formal reaffirmation of social bonds was especially evident one Christmas season, when we did not visit all of the houses that we wanted to; the following year we concentrated on friends who lived on the other side of the community, who were disappointed at not having been visited previously (figure 88). In 1986, we mummered in sixteen houses, again going from Sullivan's Hill to the Point: Harold and Catherine Sullivan's; Lloyd and Linda Sullivan's; Adrian and Dot Sullivan's; Chris and Sheila 192

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Figure 88. Houses visited by a group of mummers on two consecutive Christmases.

Boland's; Connie and Eileen Sullivan's; Kevin and Stella Sullivan's; Stevie and Regina Sullivan's; Kitty Larry Sullivan's; Tom and Ida Sullivan's; Vincent and Kitty Sullivan's; Jimmy and Michelle Sullivan's; Bertie and Bridie Condon's; Kevin and Harriet Condon's; Gerard and Sheila Sullivan's; Clarence and Annie O'Toole's; Kevie and Diane Walsh's. During the course of mummering this night, another group entered a house we were already in. This new group was offered drinks as we had been, but they did not remove their masks, preferring to drink through straws they had brought. Their identity could not be guessed, and they spent several moments dancing with our group and interacting with the hostess. They finally left, their identity still a mystery. Several times during the evening after this, Doris Sullivan commented in other houses that such behavior is not acceptable; masks should be removed, even if identity is not guessed. Doris was adamant about this since, as she put it, "mummering is a visit" first and foremost. The reaffirmation of social acquaintances and networks is not possible if visitors remain anonymous. Doris felt that such anonymity negates the whole purpose of mummering—to visit. Mummering, visiting, gossip—the daily life of Calvert is concerned with these and other behaviors that entail close contact with community members, spatial as well as social. The agglomerated settlement pattern of a community like Calvert, the close 193

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proximity of the buildings, has no doubt encouraged the continuation of certain kinds of behavior. It takes a greater amount of effort—and more important, time—to engage in visiting rituals in dispersed communities, where travel between neighbors cannot proceed easily on foot and might take twenty or thirty minutes. Social gatherings in Calvert, however, involving the visits of friends and the performance of such special expressive genres as singing or recitations can quickly begin, and audiences can soon arrive from nearby houses. If neighbors are not notified by phone, children are sent to their houses to request them to join in the gathering. When a decision is made where to build a house, factors such as availability of land certainly are important. Proximity to good shore space no longer is a factor, since everyone now uses the community stage. Yet, fundamentally, people build close to one another, implicitly realizing the social proximity that Calvert life requires. Whereas other landscapes in Western cultures have become more private, Calvert remains, like many Newfoundland communities, concerned with seeing the rhythms of daily life, watching one's neighbors, being close to friends, seeing things out one's kitchen window that you can then discuss with the constant stream of visitors who come through the house. Indeed, Calvert life still revolves largely around talk, and landscape proximity promotes this. Finally, there is really no separation to be made between physical forms like building placement and social behaviors like visiting, for they are all manifestations of the deeper-felt need for close social and physical contact among residents. When asked why people build close to one another, Denis Sullivan replied: "So there is a kind of feeling that you should be nearer people. But I guess, like I say, where you're depending on other people, where you've depended on other people all your life to help you out, you know, when people are hauling up boats and everything else, you know, it's just that you need to be near people. It's good to have neighbors, 'cause, to run for, here and there." Some things like privacy are indeed submerged, as one's daily activities are always on view. But the sacrifice of privacy, it is felt, is a small price to pay for having a constant source of new topics to mull over with a wide number of visitors. In a small community like Calvert, such social and spatial proximity provides assurances that life will not be too quiet, too personal, or, ultimately, too boring. 194

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In Calvert's history, two major spatial mergings have occurred, one that saw Stone Island residents abandon their settlement and become incorporated in Calvert proper with relatives and friends. With the demise of the need for individual fishing rooms, community space was consolidated, producing one common work space to be used by all. Visiting and public socializing are the forces that have pulled people and their houses continually inward toward the community. Even with the building of a lounge, and the presence of two shops, sociability goes on largely within the home. People in Calvert are expected to socialize through the visit. Visiting occurs during the ordinary times as well as the extraordinary, during the year or during one's life. Visiting permits the exchange of information gathered from daily attention to the constant workings of the community. When hospitality is offered, however, the visit also says something important about the community's ties with the world at large. Whereas the siting of houses and constant visiting focus on the community, serving special foods indicates that life extends to the corners of the earth (figure 89). The special food that is offered is the imported. The landscape and socializing point inward, but food points outward. The landscape that fosters hospitality is not one bred of isolation; the food of hospitality speaks to this. Imported foods that are exchanged during this community ritual are subtle signs of all the trips to the outside world:

Figure 89. Typical earlytwentieth-century tea box, from a house in nearby Ferryland. I 95

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Figure 90. John and Theresa Ryan on a visit to Coney Island in 1924. They were living in Jersey City at the time.

to the Caribbean, to Britain, to Canada, to the United States (figure 90). The food and drink offered at the visit speak of outside ideas offered in a context of community sharing. The foods consumed are consumer goods. Calvert life was never isolated, subsistent, homogeneous. The context of the visit in this huddled landscape offers a commentary on daily life: inward looking conventions remain important in the context of using the special things of the world at large. The spaces of exchange have pushed the buildings close to one another, facing daily community activities and encouraging frequent visits as well as the exchange of verbal and material gifts. This is the case with Calvert's actual buildings as well.

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CHAPTER SIX

Houses

M

. ike Sullivan and I were in his lane, leaning over the fence, looking at his house standing before us. We had been discussing the earlier buildings in Calvert, and why they were built the way they were. Across the lane, Tom and Ida Sullivan's turn-of-thecentury house stood, with its plain shallow roof (figure 10). Mike's house had been built at roughly the same time, but with a more elaborate bell-curved mansard roof. I asked Mike why his house had been built this way. He replied, "Oh, I don't know. That was the style. Style, I suppose, like the way they build them now." With that succinct answer, Mike forced me to begin reevaluating many of my assumptions about the houses of Calvert. Mike linked the buildings of the past with those of today: both were built attentive to latest styles. Whereas I initially was interested in the community's earlier houses—those typically studied by vernacular architecture researchers—I now had to stop and think about the later forms, later ideas that were adopted. If I was to understand the Calvert of today, then I had to approach recent housing in much the same way that I had previously looked at older buildings. Mike Sullivan's comments pushed me, then, to consider the total architectural system in Calvert, without initial assumptions that certain forms are either indigenous or external, either local or international. Many studies of vernacular architecture champion the earlier over the more recent, what is perceived to be the uncorrupted over those ideas tainted by mass culture. The earlier forms—those perceived as more vernacular or folk—embody the essence of a people, their cultural values and needs, and any forms or styles that have the imprint of planner or architect are deemed less culturally revealing, more the products of what are considered conscious 197

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thinkers than those of unconscious folk.1 Major introductory works on indigenous forms, such as Amos Rapoport's House Form and Culture, champion folk architecture as a "direct and unselfconscious translation into physical form of a culture, its needs and values—as well as the desires, dreams, and passions of a people."2 As soon as external ideas—be they from pattern books or drafting tables—alter architectural traditions, the transition is made from vernacular to mass housing, and never the twain conceptually do meet. This bias against later local architectural forms comes in large part from unworkable or vague notions as to what, indeed, is meant by folk or vernacular architecture. Certainly it is the local, the regional; certainly it has some substantial input from the particular community. But any researcher investigating regional architectural traditions in North America would be hard pressed to find forms untouched by international "styles," recent technological developments, or a pattern book or two. Leaving aside the entire question of where new ideas for house innovations originate, there is no doubt that many houses have notions both old and new within them. Cultural purists are notorious for lamenting the decline of any tradition with the onslaught of typically perceived villains—literacy, industrialization, mass media—and vernacular architecture researchers have often followed the same paths. Perhaps with the professionalization of builders,3 perhaps with standardization of building materials, it is assumed that somewhere in the past housing traditions began to constrain culture, rather than being reflective of it. However, researchers are often simply interested in the oldest objects per se—the more archaic the better. Fieldworkers longingly search for that example of Old World joinery or medieval floor plan; Shane O'Dea succinctly sums up the researcher's quest for the ancient: "Why chase a king post when you can get a good cruck?"4 Decline sets in the farther away one moves from whatever form or technology is currently idealized as pure. The concern with historical origins and antecedents has also meant a major concentration on house form and style, to the neglect of such equally important issues as spatial norms and functions. Indeed, these latter components are often difficult to analyze when you have only an extant building to record, with little artifactual evidence as to the complexities of original functions and uses. Alterations, renovations, demolitions—all alter the character of the dwelling, so it is often easier to talk about structural rather than 198

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functional biographies of buildings, given the surviving evidence. My concern with the spatial order of Calvert meant that when looking at buildings my focus would have to be on contemporary function rather than historical origin. People live in old houses not in old ways, but rather by adapting the architectural spaces to the changing concerns of their culture. The basic spatial configuration of all houses in a community forms a series of relationships at any point in time—regardless of the actual date that any individual building was erected. With this in mind, I set about recording all 12 2 houses in Calvert, grouping them into a typology that distinguishes major forms. Spaces in Calvert's houses follow definite rules, rules that have extensively shaped the architectural tradition. Houses—both new and old—that are found in the community today have only a limited number of spaces that are considered necessary, indeed, appropriate. The easiest way to discuss these forms is to outline the historical range of house types in the community, from oldest to newest. Historical Trends

Although Calvert was initially settled by English and Irish, none of its extant early structures can be identified as distinctly belonging to either of these ethnic groups. Part of this is due to the intense cultural exchange between the southeast of Ireland and the southwest of England—the homelands of the immigrants, where cultural traits, including architecture, share many similarities. Published research on architecture in these homelands has been similarly biased and one-sided. Irish vernacular architectural studies tend to emphasize classic Irish forms—such as the central chimney two-roomed cottage. And only recently has fieldwork in the West Country moved beyond the iconic longhouse form to more recent typical styles—such as the central chimney lobbyentrance form found in the eastern parts of Dorset.5 Indeed, early Newfoundland settlers on the Southern Shore were familiar with a wide variety of architectural forms in their homelands, and this diversity was initially transferred to all communities on the Shore, including Calvert.6 The number of first-generation houses that survive in Calvert is small. Calvert architecture likely followed the prevalent pattern of development on the Southern Shore. Scattered documentary evidence and a handful of surviving structures indicate that the earliest houses on the Shore generally exhibited a wide variety of 199

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forms and technologies, a diversity that was common during the initial periods of settlement in other parts of North America. Mercantile dwellings of stone and tiny two-room houses of squared vertical log—these were the extremes of an architectural tradition with many forms in between. From the late eighteenth century onward, the entire Southern Shore saw the importation of large amounts of building materials of all kinds. In most communities—including Calvert—the frames of at least one or two houses probably were imported from the Maritimes. What were essentially prefabricated houses were imported into the region, together with a wide range of building materials such as lumber, shingles, nails, and clapboard. Indeed, given the extensive deforestation required to support the fishery in some areas, this importation was necessary.7 For at least two hundred years, then, as many local houses were built using imported supplies as those that relied on local materials. Schooners coming into Calvert or Ferryland harbor brought the building essentials of the world directly to the local resident, much as trucks carry the building supplies of today. The earliest houses extant in Calvert date from the first quarter of the nineteenth century. This might be initially surprising, given the presence of settlers in the community since at least the late i6oos. However, when the Newfoundland economy changed from a migratory fishery to a more stable colony by the turn of the nineteenth century, architecture also witnessed a change. As in the southern United States,8 early architecture in a community like Calvert was most likely largely impermanent in its construction techniques—a wooden frame built directly on the ground—not surprising in an economy that was largely seasonal, where many residents were engaged in the fishery only during the summer months. When capital connected with the fishery became based primarily on the island—and not in England or Ireland—people obviously felt a greater commitment to living in Newfoundland over a period of generations. More permanent wooden frame structures were built on some kind of foundation, raised above the often damp and soggy ground. When looking at Calvert's surviving architecture from the early nineteenth century, the smallest forms are of a hall and parlor variety, with a central stairway or chimney. Basically a two-room plan with two major spatial domains on the first floor—a kitchen and a parlor or front room—this design was being built by at least the 200

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sixteenth century in the British Isles; it was built, as well, by British settlers in other parts of North America. The oldest examples of this form in Calvert had a large walk-in central hearth, with a quarter-turn stair in front of the central stack. Although none exist today with original chimney, Hanorah Rossiter's house on the north side was typical (figures 91 and 92). Like so many others, the hearth was removed—in this case around 1903—and replaced by a central stair and a small brick chimney for a kitchen wood range. In Hanorah's house, instead of removing the original walls surrounding the chimney, the new space was converted into an awkward L-shaped pantry. Besides being characterized by two main spatial domains in the front portion of the house, this form often had some kind of rear shed—sometimes referred to as a linhay—partially or completely across the back. These back rooms were used as a rear kitchen and pantry.9 They might have been constructed at the same time as the front portion of the house, or added later. A second story was often built on top of this back kitchen when a house was renovated, producing a dwelling with two full stories on both front and back; Rob and Alice Sullivan's house was altered in just this way. The normal two-roomed house with only a back linhay usually had two small bedrooms upstairs, with a hallway surrounding the central stair. This same basic house form was also being built during the initial generation of permanent settlement using a different roof form. This two-room plus back-kitchen floor plan could use a rear sloping roof that extended over these back rooms—a form often referred to as a saltbox roof. Mary Boland's house exhibits this roof style, but such terminologies as saltbox tend to obscure formal similarities (figures 93 and 94). In this case, the Boland and Rossiter houses are identical in floor plan and interior space; only their roofs differ. The early years of Calvert's architecture were characterized by other forms, but this two-room plus back-kitchen plan is the only one that survives. Some types disappeared, others exist only in oral tradition or in a tattered photograph or two; a few are extant but have been drastically altered. Piecing together such random bits of evidence indicates the diversity of Calvert's early architectural plans and, interestingly enough, eventually will point to why so many of these earlier different forms no longer exist. Leonard Canning was raised in Lizzie Morry's house—a dwell201

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Figure oi. Hanorah Rossiter's house, no longer extant.

Figure 02. Floor plan ofHanorah Rossiter's house. 202

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Figure 03. Mary Boland's house.

Figure 94. Floor plan of Mary Boland's house.

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ing torn down some sixty years ago. Located behind Len and Marcella's house, the Morry dwelling was an example of a classic I house, but with a one-story partial or full kitchen across the back. From a postcard that Len had (figure 95), it is obvious that the house had end chimneys—the only one in the harbor that did, according to Vince Ledwell. Most likely—as indicated by the fenestration in the photograph—this building had a kitchen and a parlor on the first floor, with a central stairway between the two. This house form was obviously similar in many ways to the Rossiter and Boland houses, but it was certainly larger in size and had a more Georgianized fenestration, as well as small eyebrow windows on the second floor. End chimneys may have meant upper-story hearths—as in similar houses found in the Conception Bay area of Newfoundland—and thus larger rooms that needed to be heated independently and not simply by warmth rising up through removable floorboards over the kitchen stove. Besides this smaller symmetrical Georgian-influenced plan, what could be considered a full-Georgian structure appears to have been built during the same time period (figure 96). Having been extensively renovated in the late nineteenth century—an important point for my later discussion—this house was originally the home of an English merchant by the name of Sweetland, perhaps Henry, who had a business in Calvert by at least 1815.10 Johnny Keough, who bought the house from the Sweetland family, believed that the frame was originally shipped over from England, an explanation that is repeated today. Clarence O'Toole remarked to me: "All the stuff from that house came from England." More likely, the frame was made in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia and either shipped directly to Calvert or bought on the docks in St. John's during the early nineteenth century.11 The house originally had a double-pile plan with a classic central hallway and was similar to large Georgian structures being built in other areas of North America—such as Nova Scotia and New England—at the time. Alice Hayden remembers being told that there were originally sixteen rooms in the house. In form it was probably much like the dwellings of West Country merchant families like the Sweetlands in England.12 This early diversity of house types gave way during the nineteenth century to an increasing uniformity. As in other areas of northeastern North America, the midcentury house that became prevalent in Calvert combined a concern with balance and symmetry from the Georgian tradition with a standard two-room plus rear-shed plan that has a long history in Western vernacular tradi204

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Figure95. Lizzie Merry's house, ca. 1020, on the north side, no longer extant. (Courtesy ofLen and Marcella Canning.)

Figure 96. Siveetland house, early twentieth century, after its first renovation. (Courtesy of Kitty Vincent Sullivan.) 205

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tions. The same formal development characterized New England and basically led to a symmetrization of the gable ends of the earlier form. This particular type developed in Calvert around 1860; Tom Clancy's house (figures 97 and 98), for example, was built by his father around 1866. The spatial difference between this form and the earlier asymmetrical types was the additional bedroom space upstairs—four rather than two bedrooms. This expanded sleeping space probably indicates an increase in family sizes, as well as a growing desire for privacy among family members, with fewer children in each bed. As the century wore on, this type—which formally resembled the Cape Cod and the Maritime vernacular house forms—became dominant, with few hints of external stylistic trends. Ambrose Walsh's house sported a Gothic Revival peak, the only surviving architectural evidence of interest in Calvert before the 18908 in the external styles that were popular in other regions. Perhaps this Maritime vernacular house or Cape Cod form developed independently in Newfoundland from earlier two-room structures, and was influenced as well by the larger buildings imported by merchants from the Maritimes. That this form developed at the same time in the Maritimes may indicate, however, that Newfoundland was simply part of a larger regional trend that produced similar types. If indeed this plan developed throughout Atlantic Canada during the mid-nineteenth century, then it could well have been the final form of a New England architectural inheritance. In the Maritimes, the two-room and service-room plan with central stairway was influenced by the classic Cape Cod house brought to the region by the Loyalists in the lyyos. 13 Although there are examples of a New England presence on the Shore, similar Cape Cod dwellings from this earlier period seem to be rare in Newfoundland.14 Cultural borrowing from the Maritimes as well as the overall development of this form throughout Atlantic Canada may well be the appropriate explanation for the presence of houses like Tom Clancy's. Several trends are clear up to this point in the development of architecture in communities like Calvert on the Southern Shore. During the earliest years of settlement, and until around 1860, a great diversity of house forms was evident. Large merchant dwellings as well as the more common two-room plan structures were built according to ideas borrowed from both the Old World and the nearby Maritimes. It seems, however, that the New World influence eventually dominated. Architectural diversity diminished 206

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Figure 97. Tom Clancy Js bouse.

Figure 98. Floor plan of Tom Clancy's house.

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by the mid-nineteenth century in favor of a form that may have originated in New England, and later was altered by Maritime builders. By the i86os, then, what was considered the appropriate spatial norm for Calvert had been established. By the end of the nineteenth century, this saddle-roofed Maritime vernacular house variant was being built with a much shallower pitched roof (figures 99 and 100). The "biscuit box" house— so called because of its resemblance to biscuit boxes common at the time—had the same basic floor plan as the earlier form: kitchen, central hallway, parlor, and a series of back rooms—all on the first floor. The second story, too, had essentially the same amount of floor space. The shallow roof, however, added head room to the outside longitudinal walls, thus providing a greater flexibility in the arrangement of upstairs bedroom furniture—beds and chests of drawers. The advent of this shallow roof has several possible explanations. Such a pitch could not be possible when roofs were covered only with wooden split shingles, since these would soon rot from inadequate drainage of the shallow slope. Not until the widespread introduction of roofing felt at the end of the century could such a pitch be technologically feasible. The actual roof form may owe its popularity, as well, to the widespread incorporation of certain Second Empire style features in Newfoundland at the time, namely, the use of the shallow-pitch mansard roof. The impact of this style on local builders (figure 101) may have been due in part to its massive use in the rebuilding of St. John's after the fire of 1892, which almost leveled the capital city. Having realized the advantages of added upstairs head room, it was a simple step to build a shallow roof, producing a boxy vernacular version of the voguish Second Empire influenced mansard.15 The early-twentieth-century popularity of the Italianate style—with a simple shallow-pitched roof— also influenced vernacular builders. This biscuit box house type continued to be built up through the 19505. Spatially, some structures were altered during renovations over the past twenty or thirty years, most frequently by removing partitions between the front room and a rear storeroom to make a larger parlor. In several houses—such as Bill and Alice Hayden's— a dining room is located at the front of the house with a large kitchen behind it, giving one side of the dwelling an almost balanced double-pile configuration. Numerically, the biscuit box house is the most common in Calvert; in part, this indicates how widely accepted the form was as a 208

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Figure pp. Jose Sullivan's house, owned by his daughter Rita.

spatially appropriate unit for the living needs of an average family. Such two-story houses were more efficient for heating purposes compared to the later one-story varieties. Holes cut in the floors above the kitchen wood stove allowed heat to rise, so upstairs bedrooms were not as cold as they might be. Indeed, residents who enclosed their kitchen ceilings with plasterboard often comment that upstairs bedrooms are now colder and that electric space heaters have had to be installed. By 1930, a new architectural form that had been common in other areas of the Southern Shore began to appear in Calvert. This

Figure 100. Floor plan of Johnny and Maggie Sullivan's house.

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Figure 101. Mansard-roofed house, popular at the turn of the century.

house type—often referred to as a two-thirds Georgian or a sidehall, hall, and parlor plan—had appeared in other Southern Shore communities in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Some oral evidence indicates that it was likely introduced on the Southern Shore by Newfoundlanders returning from several years of work in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia—usually at the Sydney steel plant. Len and Marcella Canning built their house in 1929; Aidan and Maude Sullivan's house was finished in 1945 (figures 102 and 103). Maude liked Mary Johnson's house in nearby Ferryland, so they copied the form. Aidan measured Johnson's house and built his following basically the same dimensions. Spatially, this type is similar to the older hall and parlor house: both have two major rooms and a back kitchen or pantry. However, the stairway in the newer form is located in what would be the back kitchen of the older form. There are cases, in fact, such as Maggie Keough's house, where the older symmetrical form with a central stairway was converted to this side-hall plan by moving the stairway to the back linhay. While providing the major first-floor spatial needs of the inhabitants, this side-hall plan offered a greater number of possible site orientations; the lack of one clearly symmetrical side provided more options for what could be considered the facade. 210

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Figure 102. Len and Marcella Canning's house.

Figure zoj. Floor plan ofAidan and Maude Sullivan's house.

211

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Figure 104. Vince and Madeleine Reddigan's house.

Figure 105. Floor plan of Vince and Madeleine Reddigan \ house.

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Doom and gloom sayers would date the real decline of the vernacular in Calvert to the 19405, and the arrival of what can be considered a vernacular bungalow form. Externally, it appeared to be a drastic shift in tradition: the house was now only one story in height, and all living space was on one floor (figures 104 and 105). The vernacular version of the pervasive bungalow was basically a double-bay, double-pile house with two major rooms—kitchen and parlor—usually in front. The smaller examples simply had two or three bedrooms at the back of the house. Kevin Walsh's house, however, had several bedrooms added to the rear of this basic unit (figure 106), whereas another house expanded by adding the extra bedrooms at the side (figure 105). This latter practice, especially during the 19605, may have been an attempt to imitate the longer modern rectangular bungalow that was becoming increasingly popular (figures 107 and 108). Another more pervasive villain of the vernacular was introduced

Figure 106. Floor plan of Kevin Walsh 5r house.

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in the late 19605 and early 19705: what in Newfoundland today is referred to as the standard three-bedroom bungalow—in other areas often labeled a ranch house. This form has been heavily influenced by government building standards and financial schemes. A federal government agency—Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation—in recent years has provided construction guidelines for the building trade; these standards materialize in the actual forms of local houses, since loan granting agencies require that

Figure 107. Alfred and Betty Swain's house.

Figure 108. Floor plan of Alfred and Betty Swain's house. 214

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Figure 109. Jerry and Gloria O'Leary's new CMHC house.

CMHC specifications be adopted.16 Similar guidelines for plans and materials are followed in the home-building packages available from local building supply companies. The standard CMHC type is a three-bedroom form, with the bedrooms located at one end and the kitchen and a dining and living room at the other (figures 109 and 110); the lower story is an

Figure no. Floor plan of Lloyd and Linda Sullivan's house.

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Figure in. Mikey Murphy, Thomas Swain, and Peter Swain building a new house.

above-ground basement. Although local building suppliers offer package deals that include the material for the entire house, the individual owner-builder often prefers to supply many of his own structural materials, especially for the frame of the dwelling. Local wood is cut by the house builder during the winter, ever watchful for an appropriate joist or stud among the winter firewood. The sawlogs are brought to Kavanagh's sawmill in Calvert and fash-

216

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ioned into two by fours or other sizes of lumber for floors and walls. The smaller members of the structural frame can be locally cut; larger lumber usually must be bought. The entire house itself is built largely by the owner, with local help (figure in). The pouring of a cement basement, for example, is usually a community affair. Male relatives and friends of the owner gather early on a Saturday morning, mix cement by hand, and carry it in buckets to the walls, while taking turns at different jobs. The task is generally finished by the end of the day, with the owner providing a meal and beer for all involved—much like barn raisings in other regions. Often the first sign that a young man is seriously thinking about marriage is his beginning to build a new home by pouring the basement. When the basement is complete, others are convinced that a wedding announcement is not far off. People in Calvert today think of this three-bedroom bungalow as the standard house form, the ideas often borrowed from plans obtained from local building supply companies (figure 112). Almost all bungalows have simple fenestration patterns, using two vinyl slider windows and a picture window on the front. They are generally finished in white siding—vinyl or aluminum—with a central doorway. Rarely are homes other than this bungalow design built, although other forms obviously are known. The CMHC book of plans, which is readily accessible to builders and building supply companies putting together home packages, has any number of forms that feature what would be considered architecturally stylish house types, sporting asymmetrical roofs, jutting lines, skewed entrance ways. Indeed, even local building suppliers offer plans for more elaborate houses (figure 113). But these types rarely get built. Indeed, only three dwelling houses constructed in Calvert in recent years follow these more stylish and more spacious forms. These houses were built by community members whose incomes are above the average; in one case, the house was so large that it had to be built at the outskirts of the community, where adequate land space was available. House designs more esoteric than the standard three-room bungalow are acceptable in Calvert, but only if they fit into special "abnormal" house categories; the most common type is the summer house. What would be considered aberrant forms—such as an A-frame—or strange building materials—such as cedar shingles and natural wood vertical siding—become permissible if they are

217

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Figure 112. Typical building plans offered by local building suppliers. (Courtesy of Chester Daive Ltd.)

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Figure 113. Designs of a plan available from the same building supply company; Calvert builders reject such styles. (Courtesy of Chester Dawe Ltd.)

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Figure 114. Sheila Power Hall's summer house near Gut Pond.

not being used for a real house (figure 114). In communities closer to St. John's, some outsiders who commute to town have built these modern forms, and they are generally viewed quite negatively by residents. A house in Calvert itself built by an Irish doctor who later left the community was very difficult to sell, because of what was considered its esoteric external appearance, as well as such unusual interior features as multilevel rooms and slate floors. When Kitty Vincent Sullivan's son bought the house, he obviously had to essentially gut the interior to make it follow the accepted Calvert norms. Kitty Vincent recalled: "My God, Jerry, honest to heavens. He had to change it, b'y. I didn't like that. What, the rock floor and all of that? Heavenly God! The first day that Gerald bought it, I nearly cried. . . . He changed every bit of it." If modern Calvert building is now marked by the almost uniform acceptance of this three-bedroom bungalow plan, the question becomes why? Of all the styles of modern houses that could be built, why this form? And is it indeed a mass-housing form that has no connection with earlier vernacular types? In terms of external appearances there seems to be a clear break between earlier two-story forms and later bungalow types—square or rectangu220

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lar—in the past four decades. However, apart from the introduction of these forms, very little has changed with regard to actual spatial dimensions and use.

Using the House

Use patterns in the Calvert house of the past emphasized the kitchen as the focus of daily activity, including eating, visiting, playing, and even sleeping on a daybed. The front room was the more formal space, reserved for outsiders, the place where a clergyman or merchant might be received. Indeed, for most of the year, this room was not used, and in some houses was actually kept locked—nailed shut. Bedrooms were simply for sleeping; parents never considered it necessary for children to have individual bedrooms, for as one Calvert resident mentioned, "you only sleep there." Indeed, in some cases, as with Tom Sullivan's family, four bedrooms sufficed for him, his wife, and their seventeen children, several to a bed, several beds to a room. This spatial-usage pattern persists to a large extent today in the three-bedroom bungalow. The kitchen still is the focus of most daily activity; as in older houses, the front entrance way of the bungalow is rarely, if ever, used, and people enter through the back door directly into the kitchen. Because of this, most bungalow builders choose a plan with the steps at the rear door, since this permits quick access to the kitchen. The living room is used more frequently than this space was in older house types, but traditional spatial norms largely prevail. During an anniversary party in Bennie and Aggie Murphy's modern bungalow, for example, most of the young people sat drinking and joking in the kitchen, while a more formal singing session involving older residents took place in the parlor. Visitors from outside the community are taken to the parlor, whereas the local resident is generally more reluctant to use this space. The parlor is usually carpeted, requiring the removal of shoes, and day-to-day hospitality should accept a person as he or she is, dirt or no dirt. Shoe removal is for more socially pretentious occasions. What about the new spaces in the modern bungalow? The more recent type generally contains a dining room built off the living room and kitchen, but this room is rarely used for its intended purposes. As one young woman put it, "Who would need a dining room in Calvert?" Instead of being used for formal dining—which 221

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is rare—this space is often an adjunct to the kitchen or the living room, containing an extra couch or even a baby's playpen. Denis Sullivan commented that kitchens are now enlarged by altering standard plans: "I think that even some of the newer ones, they're starting to leave more space. Like this dining room wall that was in them ten or fifteen years ago, they're kinda leaving that out now, and leaving a larger space where they walk through." The basement of the bungalow potentially can double the actual space of the dwelling, and in St. John's—as in other regions—it is often finished into a recreation room, or perhaps additional bedrooms. In Calvert, however, basements are often left unfinished, sometimes without even a cement floor, and are used—if at all— for such activities as building boats, mending nets, or storing firewood, which in the past were done in outbuildings. In basic spatial terms, what today might be considered a major break with tradition—this three-bedroom bungalow—contains roughly the same amount of utilized space as the earlier two-story typically vernacular form. If you compare, for example, Lloyd and Linda Sullivan's house—a recent CMHC bungalow—with the floor plan of Tom Clancy's mid-nineteenth-century Maritime vernacular house (figure 115), the living and sleeping areas are almost identical in size. Mike Sullivan commented that Lloyd's was "almost the same as the old time plain houses." From the earliest structures built in Calvert, quite a consistent spatial norm has been articulated in house types. Historically, over the years, any houses that were decidedly larger than this norm were either demolished or altered to conform. Such houses, usually built by merchants, are no longer extant, not because they were poorly built, but mainly because they were considered spatially inappropriate for anyone but the original owner. Fred Costello's house at the head of Calvert Bay, for example, was constructed by an English merchant, Peter Morry, and was the only one in the harbor that had a full two-story addition across the back. This nine-bedroom structure was turned into a boardinghouse by subsequent owners—a clear sign that it was considered too large for a normal house; indeed, it was demolished around 1959. Oral tradition and early photographs document the presence of other large houses of Calvert's early mercantile class—such as the Morrys'— but those houses have disappeared. Again, this is not because of low survival rates, but because such large dwellings were considered spatially inappropriate. 222

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Figure i /5. Spatial similarities of Lloyd and Linda Sullivan's and Tom Clancy's floor plans.

The most obvious example of this spatial homeostasis in Calvert is the Sweetland house, an early-nineteenth-century two-and-onehalf-story Georgian structure (figure 96). The building was sold in the mid-nineteenth century to Johnny Keough, a local fisherman, and it soon underwent a series of devolutions. Johnny took the top half-story off, and the second story was removed in 1935. As Harold Power, the present owner, explained it, his grandfather felt that there was no real sense in building a house so large. It was too difficult to heat and had too many rooms to be sensibly used by the family; it was "too big to keep up," according to Johnny Sullivan. 223

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Figure 116. The Sweetland house, with conjectural original floor plan and present-day plan. The shaded areas are the original walls.

Figure i //. The Sweetland house today, owned by Harold Power.

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Thus, one and a half stories and several back rooms were removed, the remaining front rooms were subdivided (figure 116), and what remains today might at first glance pass as a local interpretation of the modern bungalow (figure 117). Old and New

To the outsider, then, Calvert housing may seem to have changed from early vernacular forms to mass housing. But these terms cloud what I see as persisting. The new houses are constructed with materials from O'Leary's or Dawe's Building Supplies in St. John's; but what are considered the typically vernacular Calvert houses of the early nineteenth century made extensive use of finish planking, joists, and other materials imported from New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. The prefab houses of the early nineteenth century have much in common with the modern building packages of today. The actual building process used in the construction of modern houses is also in many ways similar to how earlier buildings were fabricated. Houses are almost always built by the owner, often with the help of other community residents. Major portions of the building process—such as the pouring of the cement basement—often take place as a community event, with "all hands" joining in. Thus even in terms of materials and the process of construction, modern houses in Calvert are strikingly similar to buildings usually considered vernacular. In terms of community building types, a number of diverse forms with a wide range of spaces gave way by the mid-nineteenth century to an expected norm. Early settlers transferred forms from home and borrowed others, but arrived at one spatial configuration that was typical for all of Atlantic Canada. That spatial norm quickly became established as appropriate, and other forms were rejected—much like the evolution of the modern forms of today. Indeed, it is the use of space that persists: the constant visiting, the open access of any house to anyone, community spatial rituals like Christmas mummering and house wakes that fill the dwelling from year to year. People in Calvert ultimately have found ways to avoid the constraints of the housing forms with which they come in contact: they still do not use front doors, they change the standard locations of walls, and they make careful choices from the myriad of plans available to them. Community norms encourage a small number of multifunctional spaces where numerous individuals can 225

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interact, rather than a large number of single-function spaces. Whereas much writing on vernacular architecture in North America paints a picture of increasing specialization of space, houses in Calvert are not part of this trend.17 The CMHC three-bedroom bungalow is spatially and functionally a modern manifestation of long-standing architectural norms; its use of local and imported materials continues a long community tradition. This bungalow continues local practices with regard to both construction and use. Visits and talk still go on in the kitchen in the evenings, more rarely in the parlor. In spite of deceptive external appearance, the bungalow may be just one more external form—in a long succession of forms—adapted to the important community spatial needs that persist. Spaces in the Calvert house, then, follow a pattern regardless of whether the house is old or new. Houses that do not maintain certain spaces gradually disappear or are altered; new types find acceptance in the community if they approximate these perceived formal needs—regardless of the nature of how the house was designed. As one writer noted, space becomes more fundamental than shape.18 Houses have always been consumer items brought in from the outside, but indigenous spaces have ensured adaptations of these forms. Function outweighs origin, and so it is with Calvert's interiors.

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CHAPTER

SEVEN

Interiors and Exteriors

w

e socially construct our spatial world with simple categories: the domestic interior is the scene for the private acts of the individual, exterior domains are essentially public. Exterior space is landscape, interior space the house. The division between the outside and the inside world at first glance is clearly drawn, and the passage from one space to another requires following certain rules of social access. Looking strictly at the configuration of Calvert's landscape, there initially appears to be a clear demarcation between inside and outside, public and private, house as object and landscape as space.1 Yet these dichotomies are too simple, for boundaries are not that clear. The interior rooms of kitchen and parlor are integrally linked, it seems, to the exterior "room" of the yard. The outside yard space—which any visitor, whether stranger or friend, first encounters before entering a house—helps explain the meaning of the interior spaces that are soon to be experienced. The front yard is a "text," whose reading elucidates the interior divisions of the house. Whereas social categories expressed by interior arrangements are kept quite distinct, the arrangement of the yard bridges these classifications. To understand this mediation, the typical spaces of the Calvert house's interior first must be understood. We all need to live in some kind of shelter, some kind of practical shell that protects us from the extremes of climate, as well as from the scrutinizing eyes of the outside world. The house provides us with both this physical comfort and a degree of privacy. Yet beyond these fundamental needs, we compartmentalize our dwellings, carving out spaces that promote the social relationships that have been deemed important in our culture. Looking at the individual house, we can consider it as a focus of one of the most 227

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important aspects of cultural life: domestic activity. We can regard the dwelling as a cluster of ordered interior spaces: rooms with specific functions filled with socially appropriate objects and decorations. The entire visual environment becomes a code that is concerned with particular types of behavior. As Kevin Lynch has noted, "Like law and custom, environment tells us how to act without requiring of us a conscious choice. In a church we are reverent and on a beach relaxed. Much of the time, we are reenacting patterns of behavior associated with particular recognizable settings."2 Settings are culturally understood through the objects they contain, their colors, finishes, and decorations. Rooms

Whether a house in Calvert is new or old, large or small, the number of types of spaces—rooms—that appropriately make up the dwelling is limited. In the house are the major loci of activities: front room or parlor, kitchen, bedroom; all foster the activities that have been important in the home's interior for generations. Three spatial units are juxtaposed in a certain configuration that creates the necessary order of the appropriate house. In terms of actual spatial volume, however, these rooms are roughly of the same dimensions and shape. With regard to their size, little distinguishes one area from another, and if we did not label these rooms on our floor plans, we might be hard pressed to identify which space is a kitchen and which a parlor. Each room, then, has a series of components that must be structured in a certain way so the final result can be the specific culturally recognized space. Each room contains certain kinds of artifacts—styles of furniture, finishes— that necessarily transform what would otherwise be, for example, three identical spaces into a parlor space, a bedroom space, and a kitchen space (table 7). Objects tell people that certain behaviors are expected and appropriate. The kitchen is without doubt the center of community life in the Calvert house. This room is the first that would normally be entered, usually through the back door—the only entrance generally used, the common Newfoundland pattern.3 This door is rarely locked and knocking is not required; neighbors and relatives walk directly into the house without any announcement or warning and simply sit down to begin conversation (figure 118). Most of the 228

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TABLE SEVEN Major Furniture Items in Three Calvert Houses Kitchen

Bock Kitchen

Tom and Ida Sullivan (July 1976)

table, 3 straight chairs, rocking chair, high chair, wood and oil range, daybed, television on stand, AM-FM radio on shelf

sink, refrigerator, washing machine, clothes dryer, long table, bench, metal stool, 2 chairs

Vince and Monica Ledwell (July 1978)

table, 3 chairs, daybed/settle, television on table, wood and oil range, shelf with eight-day clock, radio on shelf

Kitty Larry Sullivan (July 1976)

wood and oil range, hot-water heater, 5 pressed-back chairs along wall, daybed with plain pillows, stuffed chair (Kitty's), round kitchen table, sink

Householder

small table, 2 straight chairs, small electric stove

Front Room

Bedroom

stuffed chair, sofa, coffee table, 2 end tables, lamps, table with stereo; in room extension: 2 stuffed chairs, hideaway bed, sideboard, table with trophies

double bed, dresser

small oil stove, stuffed sofa, mantel over stove, mirror over mantel, pressed-back chair, painted pillow, doilies over back of sofa, floor lamp, china cupboard, stuffed chair, small table with photographs

washstand with pitcher and bowl set, dresser with mirror, metal double bed

washstand, sofa with crocheted cover, records and player, carpet, pillows with crocheted covers, coffee table, china cupboard, stuffed chair, trophies and photographs on top of piano

family's daily living takes place in the kitchen: eating, talking, playing, even periodic napping. The intense use of the kitchen increases in the evening, when children are home and visiting might occur. Essie Rossiter described the typical evening: "After supper, clean off the table, they'd [children] do their lessons, homework, in the kitchen. Then, that was over, they'd play cards." The Calvert kitchen remains today a modern manifestation of a multifunctional room that is analogous to the medieval hall.4 Whereas interior spaces in other regions have become increasingly segmented, the 229

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Figure 118. Mr. Vince Ledivell on the settle in his kitchen.

Calvert house remains surprisingly multifunctional with the use of this single room for most activities. The house—via the kitchen— remains one of the most public of spaces in the Newfoundland community. The kind of artifacts that are found in the kitchen go hand in hand with the social relationships that take place there. Talk among neighbors, among equals is the prime kitchen activity, which means that this room essentially conveys values of familiarity and equality through objects and surfaces. The Calvert kitchen, therefore, emphasizes what are artifact manifestations of the plain, ordinary, common. Kitchens display a remarkable similarity from house to house in the community. The kitchen contains a minimal amount of plain furniture that can support the wide range of activities that take place in this space (figure 119). The major type of furniture found in the kitchen is, of course, the table and chair set. These, as in the past, are mass230

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produced objects generally bought from the local shop or in St. John's. They are usually the most inexpensive styles of factory goods available; today, this might be a chrome set; earlier in this century cheap pressed-back chairs were common. Chairs were likely imported for most houses even in the first half of the nineteenth century, rather than being locally made, a pattern in most of Newfoundland.5 The kitchen table is almost always covered with a cloth, and in the past often had an unfinished top. Only the legs of the table are visible, functionality of this furniture type being more important than actual display, and this would certainly be the case if the top surface was left in view. The table is usually placed against a wall under the window—often a front window—that looks out onto the day-to-day world. Sitting at the table artifactually links the community life of the house interior with com-

Figure 119. Tom and Ida Sullivan's kitchen. 231

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Figure 120. Tom and Ida Sullivan's combination wood and oil kitchen range.

munity activities taking place on the road or the water. Even during meals, then, conversation can rapidly shift from specific family issues to the goings-on of the community outside. The window, rather than a person, remains the visual focus during meals. Within the kitchen, the wood stove (range) often dominates the room (figure 120). Usually the only source of heat in older Calvert houses, the stove is not only where meals are cooked but also provides tea for a neighbor, and its sounds and smells are a soothing backdrop for any conversation. During the winter, it has to be constantly tended, so talk is frequently interrupted to load a junk or two of wood into the stove; it becomes almost a silent partner to 232

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any interaction. Although different models of stoves—Hillcrest, Maid of Avalon, Nafco Special—have been available over the years, again, the cheapest kitchen ranges with warming ovens are the norm. Many families have two kitchen stoves, an electric range in the back kitchen for cooking, and a wood range in the front kitchen for heat and constant pots of tea. The daybed, or settle, remains one of the mainstays of the Calvert kitchen (figures 121 and 122); as Tom Sullivan commented: "You wants a bench in the kitchen . . . you can lie down, right?" Of all the furniture found in the house, this type is often locally made, not surprising given that most St. John's furniture factories did not manufacture such items. This artifact usually was tailored to fit along a specific wall of the kitchen; Rob and Alice Sullivan's, for example, was made to fit an alcove near the stove. As their son Denis explained: "Sure, father built that [bench] for himself, right, because, in case there was nothing else that was there, he wanted to make sure he had a place to lie down after dinner." Settles and daybeds are generally covered with numerous layers of cushions, blankets, or pillows to make sitting and sleeping more comfortable. Like the kitchen table, then, the artifact itself remains largely covered, so the potential for display is greatly reduced. The daybed is usually placed in a particular space within this room; it is frequently located along a wall near the stove, reflecting back to when the seating orientation was necessarily toward the hearth, not the kitchen table. One early visitor to Newfoundland noted: "We found every body round their fires, which indeed are necessary here at almost all periods of the year."6 If visually the furniture in the kitchen was subdued, then the same can be said for the surfaces of the room itself. Functionality and plainness dominate what normally characterizes this interior space. The ceilings in the kitchens of older houses are often simply the open beams of the second-story floor joists, painted a plain white. The edges of these beams might have received a simple chamfer, but elaborate finish is rare. Heat can easily rise from the kitchen stove to the upper bedrooms; a removable hatch in the second floor often facilitates the circulation of warm air. In later years, these beams were frequently covered over with wallboard and, again, painted white. However, this change often meant that the second story of the house would be colder. In the past, the first-story floor was usually painted a red ocher color; the coverings that were placed over this floor varied from 233

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Figure 121. Doris Sullivan, holding Shannon Sullivan, with Doris's grandparents Len and Marcella Canning on the daybed in the Cannings' kitchen.

Figure 122. Greg Power and his settle. 234

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room to room. In all rooms of the house, different kinds of hooked rugs were laid down in checkerboard fashion. In the kitchen, however, those considered the plainest of designs were used: geometric patterns widely found in the community.7 In the nineteenth century, kitchen floors were sometimes covered with sand. Clarence O'Toole's mother recalled that the kitchen floor at a Reddigan's house was sprinkled with new sand every Saturday evening. The women would then make scroll designs in this sand with a broom. Clarence added: "And then the children would get bread and molasses and drop that, and they'd generally drop molasses down, and you'd hear them eating the bread, grinding the sand up." Today, kitchen floors are usually covered with linoleum, often referred to as "canvas" (harkening back to when floor coverings were actually made of sailcloth or canvas). A small piece of carpet or a hooked mat is placed near the door; some houses use small rectangular pieces of different-colored linoleum, similar to using hooked rugs. These smaller sections are positioned on top of the overall linoleum in placements reminiscent of earlier use patterns. Actual wall finish in the kitchen also maintains a subdued design pattern. The walls of the kitchen today are often painted; they sometimes have wainscoting to chair level, which is finished a different color from the wall above it. Walls in some older kitchens are covered with an embossed wallpaper; these were massproduced and readily available in St. John's. When painted, these patterns become barely visible, and their elaborate decorative design has been obscured and therefore subdued by layers of paint over the years. The wainscoting in the kitchen is most frequently painted turquoise or green, whereas the upper portion of the walls is finished in an innocuous shade of cream or tan. Many kitchens are simply papered in plain designs. The gloss of the kitchen walls, the presence of canvas or linoleum on the floors—all of this permits the constant cleaning of this space, which sometimes occurs daily, if not more often. Unlike the front room, which can always be tidy since it is rarely used, the kitchen is continually kept clean as it is frequently inspected by visitors. Floors may be swept several times a day, the stove polished after each use. When I asked Vince Ledwell why his kitchen had been painted instead of wallpapered, he replied: "I think the kitchen was, mostly for washing it down. It'd get smoky, y' see." If the objects arranged in the kitchen address the social interactions that occur among community members, largely emphasizing 235

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Figure 123. Doris Sullivan and the Sacred Heart corner in her home.

Function over display, so it is with the visual decorations that are hung on the walls.8 Everyone in Calvert is Roman Catholic; everyone shares a community and a faith. Not surprisingly, the visual images displayed in the kitchen emphasize this community bond. Certainly the most common image displayed in the kitchen is that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This image is usually hung in a conspicuous place in one of the corners (figure 12 3), and smaller emblems appear over doorways (figure 124). Perhaps one of the reasons for its widespread popularity in many regions is Christ's promise to Saint Margaret Mary to bless those who not only pray to the Sacred Heart but also display the image in public. Also, since 236

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around 1915 Roman Catholics have been encouraged to "enthrone" the Sacred Heart in their homes, dedicating their houses and families to Him and displaying His image in a prominent place. As Raymond Firth points out, "What it means is a dedication to a way of life in which love is fostered by the sharing of family interests with Christ and Mary by frequent renewal of the consecration to the Sacred Heart in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and by a fuller liturgical life at home and in church."9 Underneath a typical image of the Sacred Heart often is a section that contains the dedication prayer, and a place where the members of the family can write their names. A dedication from Tom Sullivan's house, dated June 24, 1938, and signed by eleven family members, contains one of the standard forms, the Consecration of the Family to the Sacred Heart. We consecrate to thee, O Jesus of love, the trials and joys and all the happiness of our family life, and we beseech thee to pour out thy blessings on all its members, absent and present, living and dead—and when one after the other, we shall have fallen asleep in Thy blessed bosom, O Jesus, may all of us in Paradise find again our family united in Thy Sacred Heart. Amen.

Figure 124. Sacred Heart metal image placed over doorways in the home. 237

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Part of the devotion to the Sacred Heart consists of night prayers and adoration. In the past most houses burned a red votive candle beneath this image throughout the night in response to this aspect of worship. Red low-wattage light bulbs quickly replaced votive lights. Vince Ledwell remembered his wife asking that one be installed in front of their Sacred Heart image: "And we got the lights here, that was in '28. 'Now Vince,' she said—she got the house consecrated to the Sacred Heart—'now you put a light there in front of that.'" These lights are still kept lit all night. During a drive through Calvert after dark, the faint glow of a red light from kitchen windows attests to the general community-wide adherence to this devotion. Everything that the kitchen is in terms of the plain and ordinary, the front room or parlor is not. In general, the front room contains those artifacts which Richard Hoggart argues follow a baroque tradition: extremely fanciful in color and design.10 Most residents refer to this space as "the room"—a usage found in other regions as well.11 Rather than referring to it with a functional name (such as bedroom), simply calling it the room attests to its ritual importance. This space was for all intents and purposes almost never used in the past, except for the most special of occasions. A resident of the Bonavista Peninsula remarked that in that region people "never hardly went in 'um. That's the funny people. Build a house and have a room and never go in 'n."12 Spatially, this room occupies perhaps half the area on the ground floor of the house, but it is set aside in a realm of potential rather than everyday use. The parlor is devoted largely to the stranger, to the outsider, to the visitor. Calvert residents might never have been in the front room of neighbors' houses; as Doris Sullivan remarked, "There was rooms, probably, front rooms in [Calvert] houses that I probably never was in." The front room certainly in the past was used for "special occasions," as Kitty Vincent Sullivan explained; people "mostly had it done up for waking." Tom Sullivan commented that it was used in the summertime to entertain officers from the Grand Banks schooners who were buying bait in Calvert harbor: "They used to be in the room, the bankers, the captains." At other special times of the year it would be used as well, at Christmas, or for a family gathering, such as a wedding. If a visitor from the Mainland arrived, or the local priest stopped by, they might be brought into this space. Even today, the room is not often used; as Denis Sul238

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Figure 125. Bill and Alice Hay den's front room.

livan mentioned, "You move out there out of necessity. . . . You don't think of going in there." The front room is used as a kind of indigenous folk museum where everything that is special, unique, or fancy is kept on permanent exhibition, and every so often opened for viewing to a select public. In this space, a family displays its uniqueness, special artifacts that are largely decorative, often mass-produced rather than locally made (figure 125). As in Ireland, seldom used parlors may be kept tidy to prove to visitors the skills of the housewife;13 Kitty Vincent Sullivan mentioned that her front room was always kept locked. When I asked why, she replied: "That's the only room any bit decent in the house, I suppose. . . . It was the best room in your 239

INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS

Figure 126. Floor plan of Tom and Ida Sullivan's front room, with furniture locations.

house." But other front rooms in Calvert houses are sometimes cluttered and unkept, especially if rarely used. In some cases, the front room resembles a storeroom, and although visitors might be taken into this room to see impressive artifacts or finishes, the room is often more chaotic than the kitchen. Impressive objects are more important than their actual order. In terms of the total furniture owned by the family, those objects considered "best" are placed in the room (figure 126). As Clarence O'Toole explained when asked about putting the best objects here: "But if anyone special came, then, you wanted the front room to be as nice as it could." This best furniture in Calvert is equated with items that are mass-produced and purchased, rather than anything locally made. For most houses in the community, the oldest surviving furniture that is found in the front room are factory pieces of various Victorian styles, such as an Eastlake-inspired parlor suite (figure 127) or the ubiquitous fake-grained sideboard. The 240

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Figure 127. Tom Clancy's front room, ivith a factory-made parlor suite.

lack of early furniture styles indicates, in part, a general replacement of furniture in the late nineteenth century, when an analogous period of local architectural change was marked by extensive house renovations.14 The scarcity of earlier furniture also reflects a lack of concern, even today, with preserving the goods of previous times, especially those used in the house interior. Whereas in the past, mass-produced furniture usually would have been purchased from the many St. John's furniture factories that flourished before Confederation, today it is often bought at such national chain stores as K mart or Woolco. Mike Boland recalled that much furniture was purchased at Armstrong's on King's Road, and shipped by boat or rail to Calvert. Modern furniture often exhibits the same degree of elaborate design as earlier forms; instead of Victorian scrolls and turnings, the Spanish Colonial or some other current form sports a plethora of moldings, inlays, and elaborate imitation graining. The front room contains objects that emphasize their expressive

241

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rather than instrumental component. Surfaces that gleam or swirl, that are somehow elaborate—the more furniture can express fanciful expression, the more desirable it is. If the front room becomes the domain for artifactual display, then particular furniture items are placed there which—in their very form—are intended primarily as display objects. The most obvious type is the sideboard. Originally manufactured throughout North America in factories large and small, the sideboard was one of the first furniture types developed during the nineteenth century that was intended primarily for display. Meant to be used in the dining rooms of an emerging middle class, it was appropriated for different spaces in the Calvert house. Although the bourgeois ritual of "dining" did not take hold in the local culture, the desire for acquiring display objects did. The sideboard was therefore adapted to the Newfoundland home to be logically placed in the space devoted to display: the front room. This object not only was an ostentatious form in itself, with its various applied moldings and turnings; it was intended as well for the display of smaller objects, and the numerous levels of shelves on its upper half hold all kinds of knickknacks: salt and pepper shaker sets, vases, family photographs, pressedglass pitchers and goblets (figure 128). The sideboard often displays the best glassware and china that the family owns. Ironically, these last items are often used in the kitchen; that they are primarily display objects places them on the sideboard in the front room, even though this is not as proxemically convenient to where they are used. Those houses that do not have sideboards—such as Vince and Monica LedwelPs—often have some kind of simple display case in the front room, where such fancy objects can also be stored and seen. In other areas of the island, kitchen dressers serve the same function and are on view to the daily local visitor.15 In Calvert, however, functional eating utensils retreated to covered storage areas in the back kitchen, and display objects migrated to the sideboard in the front room. Other types of display furniture, though not widespread in the community, are found in the front rooms of various houses. Several residents, such as Kitty Larry Sullivan and Harold and Catherine Sullivan, have pianos in their front rooms, and Harold Power has a pump organ. Although these instruments are rarely played, they symbolize the epitome of a mass-produced artifact that requires extensive skill not only to make, but to adequately use as well. Skill and some kind of training are needed to play these ob242

CONSUMING SPACES

Figure 128. The upper portion of a sideboard, with its many display shelves.

jects, skill and formality, which is relegated to this infrequently used space. Such performances also demand an attentive and wellbehaved audience, not the kind found in the often raucous kitchen. Record players—both the old crank version (figure 129) and the modern stereo—are, not surprisingly, placed in this parlor space as well. The playing of records, like the playing of the piano, requires greater attention from an audience and takes place at what are often more formal gatherings or special times of the year, especially "if visitors came," as Essie Rossiter explained. The other major type of furniture that is found in the front room provides formal seating. In the past thirty or forty years, this would normally include a stuffed sofa and one or two chairs (figure 130), again purchased in St. John's and often of an inexpensive variety. Before these "living room" sets became popular, Victorian parlor suites were the norm: a settee and two or three matching chairs. 243

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Figure 129. Record player in Bill and Alice Hay den's front room.

If the furniture in the front room is considered elaborate, then so is the finish of the room. In the past, the ceiling was not open beamed, but frequently covered with some kind of wood. In earlier houses, this might have been ordinary planking; by the end of the nineteenth century, tongue and groove boards with decorative routering in the middle of each were used; these were usually "B.C. fir," "hard pine," or "pitch pine." As Maude Sullivan explained, "The best room in the house got the best wood." The desire to have a fancy ceiling finish in the front room persists to244

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day, with the prevalence of stucco swirl ceilings in some modern houses, often finished with a coating of gold specks blown onto the wet plaster using a vacuum cleaner. The walls of the front room are often covered in some type of wallpaper. These are "more flowered," according to Kitty Vincent Sullivan, and thus considered appropriate "room papers." Some front rooms have been renovated with inexpensive paneling, and this often reflects the persistent desire for finishes that imitate rather than reveal actual wood surfaces. Modern paneling—and door and woodwork finish before it—often resembles wood, but with a highly glossed surface that ends up worlds away from "natural" materials. Whether the finish is new or old, high gloss is the most desirable look; one woman in a nearby community, in fact, varnishes her stairway once a year to maintain a high sheen. Paint is used in some cases for a purely decorative finish. Aidan and Maude Sullivan's mantle is a riot of brown and green swirls; when

Figure 130. Stuffed furniture in the front room. 245

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asked if it was meant to be imitative of anything, Aidan replied no. The workman completing the job apparently got slightly drunk and ended up randomly splashing color on the surface. If any room has been carpeted in recent years, it is the front room. In some homes, clear plastic runners are placed over this new carpet, to protect it from even the sporadic use that it receives. In earlier houses, the floors of the room would have been painted, and the fanciest hooked rugs that the family owned placed there. These rugs with their varied pictorial designs would have been arranged so the visitor could easily view their images, rather than

Figure 131. Tom Clancy (right) and his father, ca. 1910. 246

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Figure 132. Tom Clancy, 1978.

walking on them. This arrangement resembled a series of paintings on an art gallery wall—adding to the museum aura of the space. The parlor is the main room in the house that contains artifacts associated with a time dimension, objects that link the room with persons and events of the past (figures 131 and 132).16 The most pervasive theme of the front room is family history and genealogy, and any visitor quickly gains a sense of the family's collective past from the displays in this space.17 Ancestral photographs of grandparents, of a distant uncle killed in World War I, even of a wake 247

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Figure 133. Ross, Rodney, and Blair Sullivan in their kindergarten graduation and Christmas photographs.

may be found on the walls. One person from Trinity Bay described the front room, commenting specifically on such images: "The room had been used for very special occasions only, and I can recall very well the gloom it presented when one entered between such occasions. The drapes were constantly drawn, and the portraits peered hypnotically through the semi-darkness from their perches on the walls."18 Wedding photographs and kindergarten graduation photographs (figure 133) might be displayed on a sideboard or table; other signs of family achievements are also here: the hockey and dart trophies all cluttered together on a table in the corner. When religious images are found in this space, they generally depict church leaders (bishops, popes) or buildings (churches, schools)—probably the most innocuous forms of sacred themes. In this room where strangers of perhaps an unknown religious denomination are brought, no overt religious statements are made by the family. Instead, it is the place where the outsider receives a quick lesson on family history. If many of the artifacts found in the front room speak of contacts with the outside world, so do the actual visual images placed on the walls for display. The front room, through its mass-produced goods, its finish, and its wall decorations, links the specific Calvert house with the world outside, to faraway places and events, as did the typical Victorian parlor.19 Mass-produced prints showing a 248

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Figure 134. Fancy images on the wall of Bill and Alice Hay den's front room.

wide variety of stereotypical pastoral landscapes—obviously not Newfoundland—were often displayed in the past. Today, the Swiss Alps or the Canadian Rockies painted on black velvet as well as string-art images have taken their place (figure 134). Views of Victorian children, Victorian couples, prints with tides like "When the Heart Is Young" and "They Lived Happily Ever After"—these once hung in Kitty Vincent Sullivan's home—were widespread. Prints of heads of state—the British royal family, for example, are also found in this formal front room setting. One of the reasons the front room was used so infrequently in the past was that it was largely unheated. The main source of heat in every house was the kitchen stove until the introduction of electric baseboard heat in the 19705. Clarence O'Toole commented that the kitchen was the "only place you'd have heat. You couldn't afford to have another stove. You couldn't get wood enough, or

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you'd have to get an awful lot more wood. The heat was in the kitchen all the time. That's where everybody was. Then you went to bed in the night, and the stove was put out, not a bit of fire in until you got up in the morning." Two buckets of water were kept in the back kitchen, and in the morning "you had to get a junk [of wood] or a hammer or something, generally, to break the ice on the bucket." Clarence then related an incident in Ferryland to illustrate how cold houses in the past generally were: "They use to say about an old gentleman down in Ferryland, Johnny Sullivan. His woman was over two hundred pounds. And they had no toilets then; they had a chamber pot. And they were talking about how hard it froze last night. And he said, 'It did freeze awful hard. When I got up the pot was frozen, and herself wasn't one hour after getting off of it.'" The front room was almost never used in the winter, although most had a small parlor stove that could be lit if necessary. According to Denis Sullivan, "that was the place your mother set the jelly on Saturday night" because it would easily harden there; Lorraine Sullivan, recalling the use of the room in the winter, commented: "Remember the picture we had home [that] we had taken in the front room? We had our coats on!" If the kitchen is the real "living room" of the Calvert house, and the front room reserved for infrequent use by the occasional visitor, the bedroom is the only private space in the home. Bedrooms are used, even today, primarily for sleeping, and neither adults nor children spend much time there except at night. Part of this use pattern may be because, until recently, these spaces were unheated, and for major parts of the year would be uncomfortable for any activities taking place without the benefit of bedcovers. Several family members might share a room; three or four children would frequently share a bed. When I asked Lorraine Sullivan if their bedrooms were ever crowded, she replied, "No, we didn't spend enough time in them to be crowded. You went up and you went to bed and you got up. That was it." Even members of the same community would rarely see the bedrooms in other houses, these spaces being considered closed; instead, most visits centered around the kitchen. When I asked Vince Ledwell about the floor plan of a house no longer extant, he responded that he really could not comment on the number of rooms since he had only been "in the kitchen part" of that house. Furniture in the bedroom is primarily functional: a chest of drawers to hold clothes, a bed to sleep on. Many bedrooms in the 250

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Figure ;jj. Factory-made Eastlake chest of drawers in Aidan and Maude Sullivan's bedroom.

past were furnished with Victorian factory bedroom sets, consisting of a chest of drawers with a mirror on top (figure 135), a small washstand that would hold a pitcher and bowl, and sometimes a matching headboard for the bed. In most cases, however, only the chest of drawers and washstand were part of a suite, and a more inexpensive cast-iron bed frame was substituted for the matched headboard. Today, these iron bed frames are coated with many layers of white enamel paint. Newer bedroom sets have substituted a nightstand or corner table for the washstand, but the 251

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primary item is still the chest of drawers. Although the chest of drawers exhibits the same basic form from house to house, it is used for storage of personal possessions, and the top is cluttered with artifacts relating to personal needs and concerns: grooming objects, stuffed toys, photographs of loved ones. The ceilings and floors of the bedroom are plainly finished, a few hooked rugs scattered on the floor. The walls may be covered with wallpaper left over from the rooms downstairs. The walls of the bedroom, however, provide one of the few private domains in the house where visual images related to personal concerns can be found. Personal souvenirs hang on the walls, mementos of past trips. In a child's bedroom images of heroes might be found: a rock star or movie celebrity. Personal space is decorated with personal themes.20 The two major rooms in the Calvert house—the parlor and the kitchen—are approximately the same size, but take on totally different architectonic qualities. These qualities are indicated both by the artifacts found within the rooms and by the activities that are deemed appropriate for each of the spaces. Furniture in the two rooms follows two totally different norms, paralleling the types of interaction that occur in each space. Seating furniture is basically fixed within the front room, and semifixed within the kitchen. The seating objects in the parlor are generally immobile; interaction is limited to a certain amount of sites according to the placement of the sofa and stuffed chairs (apart from sitting on the floor or moving chairs in from other rooms). The seating furniture in the kitchen, on the other hand, is quite mobile, and chairs can be arranged to fit any type of verbal interaction that arises. Chairs are usually placed along the walls when not in use, but can be moved close to one another, giving anyone the flexibility to become proxemically near any other speaker. Certainly there are times when chairs are not moved around the kitchen, just as there are times when additional seats are added to the front room. But in general the kitchen will be the domain of informal conversation, and the furniture is conducive to this. The furniture arrangement in the Calvert kitchen permits what Albert Scheflen calls simultaneous site-events, the flexibility to use one spatial domain for a myriad of activities: a number of children at play, neighbors eating, two friends catching up on news.21 When social interaction occurs within the Calvert house, cultural expectations require people who are friends to be physically 252

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Figure 136. Celebrating Shirley Sullivan's wedding in her parents'1 kitchen.

close to one another. Proxemic norms dictate minimal distances between speakers and audiences, which in other cultures might be taken as crowdedness. Indeed, crowdedness is a cultural concept, and Calvert interiors are often used in ways that foster what, to an outsider, would be a crowded interaction. As the primary focus of community interaction, the kitchen never becomes too crowded. After the wedding of Tom and Ida Sullivan's daughter Shirley, for example, at least fourteen of us sat in their kitchen to share a drink, although the front room was empty and only several feet away (figure 136). Even the past generation, with some families having as many as seventeen children, gave little thought to "adding on" to the house—a process that carries with it an implicit assumption about crowdedness. In fact, even outside along the road, passersby

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usually wait until they are extremely close to one another before beginning a conversation. The Calvert home consists of a series of specific interior spaces. Yet home space cannot be understood simply by looking inside an artifactual boundary. Although the three major room spaces of kitchen, parlor, and bedroom may reproduce the social categories of community, outsider, and individual,22 understanding these spaces cannot be limited to the artifact of house. Many of the concerns that are addressed in the interior spaces of the house spill over to those spaces immediately surrounding the building, and ultimately are a part of one larger unit. The space designated as yard is a domain that mediates between the concerns of the kitchen and those of front room, containing artifacts that address both social groups that these interior spaces speak to. Yard space thus becomes primarily a mediational area for the interior-exterior division. Yards

The yard is first and foremost a domesticated space; therefore, it is not surprising that both the concept of yard and that of garden have common origins and thus common governing norms.23 All yards are essentially exterior spaces that are considered cultural— they have somehow been altered by humans so that what is natural is now regulated. The yard becomes the focus for the most domesticated (cultural) forms of flora—shrubs and flowers—and thus requires periodic attention and care. These special plants, usually surrounded by some regularized enclosure such as a wall or fence, together with their proximity to the dwelling, ensure a clear distinction between what is the yard and what is a field or woods, no matter how unkept the yard might be. The minimal yard requires only some form of domestication, often simply the planting and periodic cultivation of a lawn. The concept of lawn carries with it the accepted chores of constant mowing and trimming. Without care, a lawn would be considered unkept, out of control—merely a yard. Mown lawns are intended to look continually the same; they deny change with regard to growth, and only during autumn, when the lawn dies, do they speak of variation. In the Newfoundland clime, the lawn disappears under a blanket of snow rather than appearing to be dead. During warmer weather, lawns must be kept uniform. That lawns are considered displays in front of homes is evident in the recent trend in 254

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Figure 137. Newly sodded lawn in front of early-twentieth-century bungalow.

Newfoundland of having sod trucked into regions where it would not naturally grow (figure 137). Modern bungalows plunked on wide expanses of gravel are now often edged in front by fledgling rectangles of green, demonstrating that this space now mirrors other North American scenes. Such lengths signal not just cultural control, an attitude common in many regions,24 but also a willingness to bear the monetary burden of imported sod and to spend summer afternoons mowing and clipping. Many of the newer bungalows and ranch houses in Calvert are fronted by these neatly manicured lawns. Just as frequently, however, yards contain within their boundaries artifacts that are less culturally regulated. For some, the yard—especially the side and back regions—becomes a space where categories of natural and cultural overlap, where objects taken from nature await use and where man-made objects are haphazardly stored—in short, objects that are not quite natural and not quite cultural. The products of nature that are waiting to be used and that have been somehow 255

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Figure 138. Chris Sullivan, Chopper Walsh, and Ambrose Walsh sawing wood into junks for the kitchen stove.

initially altered are piled: wood (figure 138), hay, vegetables. Conversely, the cultural items no longer of value are scattered about: wrecked cars, rusting bits of machinery, discarded building materials (figure 139). Smaller outbuildings found in these spaces away from the house are generally finished (painted), but often with a color different from and cheaper than that of the dwelling—usually red ocher. These outbuildings sometimes house animals (the natural that is domesticated), vegetables, and firewood, as well as any outcasts of culture (figure 140): an old hot-water boiler, a discarded toilet—things removed from the house and probably never to be used again.25 Objects soiled by dirt—tools and vegetables are good examples—are kept in buildings in this ambiguous area, for people do not want to mix these categories within the home. Beyond these two kinds of yards—the simple lawn and the ambiguous natural-cultural space—this area becomes increasingly a conscious and elaborate domain of display. Many Calvert yards fall 256

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Figure 139. John O'Brien's wrecked car, near Tom Sullivan's woodpiles and outbuildings.

Figure 140. The upper floor of Tom andAidan Sullivan's root cellar.

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Figure 141. Plastic bleach bottle mounted above a wooden boat that spins in the wind.

into this category. Clarence O'Toole summed up the display activity simply, saying that people put things in their yard "just for the ornament part of it"; the term ornament was also used by Tom Sullivan and Mike Sullivan to characterize this activity. The attempt to present pleasing arrangements of space to the outside world must be understood in relation to two points. Creating a display for outsiders is simply an elaboration of similar attitudes regarding interior spaces. The parlor of many a house is the domain where display occurs, where the fancy, the unique, the decorative forms are found. The yard becomes an extension of this parlor space where certain objects—unique and special—are placed on public view. In fact, the parlor and the enclosed yard are at the front of many houses—the public facade of domestic space.26 The decorated facade with elaborate trim thus serves as a backdrop for the yard. What types of objects do people assemble in an arrangement of a yard? The manufactured icons—pink flamingos, black-faced jockeys, and plaster Madonnas—although found in Newfoundland in small numbers, are not as common as elsewhere in North America. No shops devoted exclusively to this type of lawn decor—often considered as kitsch—are found in the province, and items displayed generally either are made by the owner or are older objects that have been altered in some way to fit appropriately into their new space. One category of artifacts used in Calvert yards is for entertainment value. Objects driven by the wind are the most common (figure 141): a bleach bottle cut out with fins and placed on a stick; a bicycle wheel, with four model schooners on each of its cardinal points, mounted on top of a pole; the popular wooden figures—in other areas called whirligigs—that feature a man sawing wood or a bird turning its wings. Miniaturization is also a pervasive trend in such yard displays. The maker meets a challenge not simply to reproduce or copy—the way ordinary objects are made—but also to reduce in scale. Birdhouses—miniature dwellings—are typical (figure 142). The more exact this miniaturization, the more it demonstrates the maker's skill. This process can be in part humorous, like a perfect miniature replica of an ocean liner or an airplane sitting incongruously in a domestic yard. The yard can become a vehicle for personal history or personal topical commentary. Objects are sometimes created that have a close connection with incidents in an individual's life—perhaps a 258

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Figure 142. Fred Currant yard.

boat on which the yard owner worked, or a model of the childhood house. Actual objects that have been of significance to the individual may be located there—a spinning wheel used by a greatgrandmother. Phonse Walsh has his father's box cart displayed in the front yard (figure 143); as Mike Sullivan noted, "His father was on the High Road with that for years and years, horse and slide, Jimmy Walsh." A person's life history, then, can often become artifactual. Finally, objects displayed in the yard are often connected to the general past. Some yards become almost local outdoor museums where numerous "old things" are displayed. Objects that characterize archaic technologies—pit saws, wooden net floats—or are associated with aspects of the domestic past—iron stoves, wooden settles, barrels—often find their final resting place in the yard. Usually they have received new coats of paint, generally not of the original color, but brighter shades of red or yellow, often with bands of color, circles, or other decorative effects. Kitty Vincent Sullivan placed an old mowing machine that had been "con-

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demned" in her front yard; it received several coats of yellow an red paint for added decorative value. Such artifacts are essentiall archaic machines in the garden, technologies quite happy to find place in the display domain of Calvert space. This type of yar display indicates that residents value new styles of household ticles over older pieces and do not categorize certain objects und the pervasive North American rubric of "antiques." However, suc older objects may not be considered appropriate for interior di play—they are essentially considered ordinary objects that are no "fancy"—but they are not discarded. Denis Sullivan commente that people were being practical when they put such objects o display: "Even with lawn ornaments, rather than throw it awa Figure 143. Neil Walsh next to his they put it to use, to make it look good." Some residents regar these objects as having, rather than any intrinsic monetary or hi grandfather's box can, now on toric value, a general link with the past that makes them curiositie display in the front yard, complete worthy of display in this exterior spatial domain. It does not matte with flags and wind ornaments.

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if these artifacts are painted with new red or yellow paint. Whereas an antique dealer might cringe at such a finish, the yard creator knows that the new color does not sever the formal bonds with the past. Similarly, the objects need not be whole or complete; they can be broken, they can be missing pieces, or they can even be fragments—like a stair post from an old store or the spire from an old church. As long as the artifact is a direct sign about the past being preserved, then its color or completeness is not at issue. Whereas in other cultures the artifactual past, in the guise of properly restored antiques, is found in the interior of a house, in Newfoundland yard art maintains the same link with the past. One particular yard in Calvert is an example of a space that displays a collection of artifacts within a garden—a combination of altered nature and special objects (figure 144). Len and Marcella Canning's yard is one of the more elaborate displays in the community; the boundaries around it are marked by a special fence that has been painted both red and white. The tops of each fence post are crowned with wooden symmetrical objects that are painted silver. Within this yard itself are symmetrical garden beds—indicating nature under control—with various kinds of flowers arranged parallel to the property lines or the edges of the house. Plants become artifacts as much as the brightly colored contraptions that spin in the wind. Crisscrossing the yard is a series of pathways, not the simple dirt tracks of the woods, but symmetrical walkways that are sharply delineated. Several walkways are made of wood and are usually painted—in the past, a brown edging with a white center. Other paths are covered with gravel and edged with boards. Scattered throughout the yard are objects—man-made and natural—that are now clearly on display. This includes the red painted seat of the old hay mower, which now acts as a lawn chair, and several large rocks that have been painted white, indicating their non-natural status as primarily display objects. During one of my visits, Len pointed to one of the rocks and, tongue in cheek, commented: "That rock turned white, look!" He could not remove it because of its size, so he painted it white, creating an artifact that would conform to the yard context. Various objects built to spin in the wind are found at the perimeter of the yard along the fences. Bleach bottles stand mounted on small steel rods rising above small wooden boats. Len got the idea from Mart Reddigan, who has similar bottles. Besides these bottles, 261

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Figure 144. Len and Marcella Canning's yard. 262

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which remain on the fence all summer, Len also has built large spinners out of bicycle wheels, which also turn in the wind (figure 145). When asked where the idea came from, he replied: "Just wondering, I suppose." On the four cardinal points of the wheel rims he has placed small wooden schooner models with sails. The boats on their wheels are placed on top of wooden poles approximately ten feet high, which are tied to the fence posts. These wheels spin around so fast that on occasion the models have been torn off.

Figure 14.5. Len Canning with his bicycle wheel schooners on poles. 263

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Colors on the exterior of Calvert structures are determined by the meanings of their respective spatial domains. Most of the houses in the community today are painted white, a tradition that goes back at least several generations. Years ago only lime was used to "whiten" the houses, and some older residents still rely on this. Johnny Sullivan recalled that the first time his father used paint on his house instead of lime was in 1927. That year the steamer Torhamvan went aground in Ferryland, and "we got thirty gallons [of paint] out of her. And so, we painted the house after that." Johnny also explained that houses have always been painted white because the clapboard is less likely to split from the sun when it is this color. Several people, however, have painted their houses such colors as gray, maroon, and green—popular in Victorian color schemes—and these owners express no complaint that the sun damages the clapboard. The borders of the houses, especially those painted white, are frequently outlined with a darker color such as green or red. Perhaps the cultural preference for painting the house white stems from many of the stables over the years having been finished in red. The particular color was produced in the past from a mixture of red ocher and cod oil. Ten or fifteen pounds of red ocher, bought in St. John's for ten cents a pound, were mixed with cod oil in a large drum and boiled for half an hour. When cooled, it was used to paint the stable. Such a finish would last thirty or forty years, unlike the lime finish on a house, which required an almost annual retouching. When I asked Johnny Sullivan why this red ocher coating was not used for houses, given the minimal amount of maintenance it required after application, he replied, "Maybe it's the color red." In spite of the widespread use of red ocher for stables, some people prefer to whitewash these structures as well as their houses. Other outbuildings are usually not painted. Cellars, woodsheds, stores, and fishing stages are rarely finished, and if they are, usually red ocher is used. In short, only those buildings closest to the dwelling receive an external decoration of cultural color. The colors that artifacts receive speak to the interior cultural issues that spill over into the exterior yard space. This is obvious, as well, with the fences that take on the characteristics of interior artifacts. Closest to the house several fence types use wood that undergoes a series of transformations, indicating a radical transition from a natural to a cultural state. Generally, this entails cutting locally obtained logs into lumber at the sawmill, ensuring that the dimensions are as square and symmetrical as possible. These 264

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Figure 146. Palm fence in front of Aidan and Maude Sullivan's.

are then often painted white or limed to alter them more completely into an artifact. Cutting and painting both act to deny the natural origins. The type commonly built nearest the house is the palen fence (figure 146); this is constructed by first placing squared four by fours ("stakes") into the ground at six-foot intervals. Sawed rails are nailed at the tops and bottoms of these posts horizontally along the length of the fence. Finally, the sawed palens are nailed vertically along the span, spaced approximately four inches apart. Painting, especially white, makes any object more cultural, and these fences are always finished, paint having replaced the whitewash of the past. This particular fence type, then, was the epitome of a highly fashioned cultural artifact; Doris Sullivan essentially acknowledged this when I asked why the palen fence was used in front of houses: "It was grander, I suppose, the palen ones." Objects around the immediate vicinity of the house obviously are constructed with an exterior audience in mind. This was especially evident when Tom Clancy, during the summer of 1978, whitewashed only the sides of his palen fence that face the lane up to his house. He had a limited amount of whitewash, and the other side of the fence would be seen only by the people sitting in the house and the cattle grazing in the nearby meadow. The choice, clearly, was to be attentive to the audience on the road. During the past ten years, another fence type has been used 265

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Figure 147. Boarded fence (right), and longer fences in the background.

around the immediate vicinity of the house, what is referred to as a "boarded fence" (figure 147). Again, stakes are placed in the ground at roughly six-foot intervals. Three boards are then placed horizontally along the length of the fence, spaced about a foot apart. This fence type, too, is almost always painted or whitewashed. Aidan Sullivan pointed out that the boarded fence has become popular since the number of hens that wander the road has declined. Another fence type rarely used today but popular in the past around living areas is the picket fence (figure 148). This is almost identical to the palen fence, except that small poles are used instead of sawed boards for the uprights. These pickets are simply small trees that were "rinded" and then nailed to the horizontal crosspieces. With fences, with gardens, and with the remnants of past technologies, the yard is a space that speaks to the ways the cultural shadow of the dwelling shapes the objects within it. In most studies, the yard is considered part of the exterior world, different in

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Figure 14.8. Picket fences along Clancy 5r Lane, ca. 1950. (Courtesy ofLen and Marcella Canning.)

most aspects, it is assumed, from the cultural concerns of spaces within the house. Within the Calvert interior, the differences between objects found in the kitchen and those in the parlor are clear, and the behavioral codes that these spaces suggest to users are quite in contrast. The yard, however, breaks down these boundaries and recombines the cultural polarities addressed in the kitchen and the parlor. Dissolving Boundaries

The kitchen and the front room are spaces that emphasize a series of different behavioral norms through the artifacts they contain. Furniture, decoration, finishes, all are aimed at one ideal social group or the other. The yard, however, combines the concerns of both spaces; objects and the "finish" of this yard space—the landscaping—address both behavioral codes. The objects in the yard are both plain and fancy; the old spinning wheel, the methodical palen fence, the kitchen garden—all are common from house to house, and all are community objects that do not convey any extraordinary sense of the unusual. Yet the fancy is there as well: the wind ornaments, the elaborate flourishes on the top of the fence posts, the particular flowers grown only by a certain household— all convey fancy ideals. Some objects such as the house facade are 267

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finished in plain white, others, such as the old mowing machine in Vincent Sullivan's yard, are painted in bright reds or yellows. Some objects are made by the owner—the spinning schooners mounted on the bicycle wheel—whereas others are placed in this space because they epitomize the mass-produced object: farm machines, boat engines. Some of the objects are primarily instrumental (the kitchen garden), others more expressive (the whirligigs and bright arrangements of flowers). The yard essentially is geared to both neighbors and strangers through these different types of objects that are juxtaposed in the same space. In many cases, as a vehicle for display—whether through humorous small figures, objects connected with a person's life, or artifacts relating to the community's general past—the yard provides an open invitation for sociability to both neighbors and strangers alike. Prompted by objects on display, neighbors' talk often turns to keeping up the yard and its contents, the latest artifact added, or possible changes that might be made. Technological relics lead to reminiscences about earlier work patterns—a topic that never ceases to be important in conversations. Lifehistory markers trigger comments about similar personal incidents. And whimsical displays are there for entertainment. For strangers, yard art becomes an obvious invitation for interaction with the owner. Passersby will be intrigued by the placement of artifacts in a space used not as a simple buffer between house and stranger, but as an extension of the house. Whereas in other regions locating the house away from the road and separating it from strangers through insertion of a yard is commonplace, in Calvert the presence of a display domain denies this social spatial buffer by welcoming visitors, whether stranger or not. It is expected that outsiders will stop, ask questions, perhaps walk through the yard to photograph the objects. Such an expectation of visitation carries with it the desire to provide hospitality as well as talk. Often stopping to visit a yard leads to an invitation to come into the home and share food or drink. The owner of a yard containing elaborate displays is frequently a gregarious individual who through his yard is saying that he is not suspicious of strangers and in fact openly welcomes them. The spatial barrier of the yard, per se, is overcome by its artifacts, and thus invites the stranger. The kitchen, the front room, the yard—all contain objects that address certain forms of sociability. Although it may be easier to delimit the bounds of a house interior than to be attentive to what 268

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may be a more gradual transition between interactive norms, the study of spaces around the house must address both interior and exterior trends. Certainly if Calvert is any indication, the exterior space provides a mediational realm of social interaction that is integrally related to the inside areas normally studied. In the house interior, the Calvert resident clearly demarcates artifacts along recognizable lines, but the first space that the visitor comes in contact with—the yard—blurs the boundaries that artifactually he or she will soon see inside. Indeed, it is as if the resident is saying that these boundaries are there and have to be followed when interacting within interior spaces, but ultimately are transcended in other realms. And they are transcended first, before the visitor arrives inside.27 The entire practice of elaborately decorating the yard does not seem to have a very long history in a community like Calvert, although the arrangement of the yard with domesticated flora does. As Doris Sullivan explained, "Never use to have stuff out years ago." And Mike Sullivan noted: "See, Jerry, more people are more interested in old kind of stuff than they were then." Perhaps the proliferation of decorated yards in recent years has to do in part with the changes in local communities. As places like Calvert have become more and more linked to other parts of the island, with paved roads and an influx of tourists, the number of potential casual visitors in any community has increased. The displays in yards often invite this growing number of strangers to stop and inspect the yard. Doris Sullivan noted: "That's probably why they got, the later few years, people started doing that, you know. Because more people to see it. Years ago, there was nobody around, just people from Calvert." The resident can then learn the details about this stranger and his or her presence, whereas in the past such knowledge would be commonplace through hearsay and gossip. The Newfoundland climate makes yard art displays as unlikely as the growing of the stereotypical North American lawn. Yet without a long tradition of the cultivation of the latter, the use of yard space for display is as logical as any other. It is not a case of one use displacing another, but rather of both functions developing as alternatives in recent times. In other regions of North America, displays may be more private; they may take place within the home and be featured in the newer spaces of mass housing: the recreation room or the family room. In communities like Calvert, however, such rooms have not achieved widespread popularity, and display 269

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instead is placed outside in the yard. For some cultures, the old tools and the old barrels contribute to the rustic recreation room; in Calvert, they are grouped in the exterior domain of the yard. Research on interiors often is concerned solely with what is found inside: finishes, furniture, functions of houses long ago built and used. This may be the only possible approach with historical artifacts, but the Calvert dwelling indicates its potential inadequacy. Without attempting to understand the adjacent outside spaces separated by arbitrary boundaries like thresholds and doors, the true nature of those interior rooms would be lost. Certainly the extremes of plain and fancy, function and display, locally made and bought, all operate to a certain extent within the house. Yet the

Figure 149. Hockey and dan trophies. 270

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yard attempts to mediate this long dichotomy; in part, this may signal changes in a community like Calvert, where life has become both more private and more accessible to the outside world. Yards contain such instrumental artifacts as gardens and fences, but they often have an expressive component as well. The space, in terms of its artifactual behavioral code, is saying that residents are concerned with both neighbor and stranger, with the norm and the exception, with the ordinary and the extraordinary. In the past, the Calvert resident would have been privy primarily to the public spaces of the house, would have been only "in the kitchen part" of a person's dwelling. Now, the yard enables the resident to visually display a concern with both insiders and outsiders. The Calvert resident expresses a curiosity about strangers, not a fear, and finally the yard draws them to the house.28 Of course neighbors will visit anyway, and the yard per se might be a sufficient focus for such a visit. A stranger might be drawn in as well, and perhaps brought into the front room to be impressed with the artifacts marking family gains and achievements (figure 149). But even so, I would argue that because the visit by the stranger is hoped for—even merely to impress—sociability is more important than privacy. People cannot be impressed if they are not treated with hospitality as well. The parlor cannot be entered before walking first past the yard and then through the kitchen. The artifactual codes of all three spaces—the yard, the kitchen, and the front room—indicate certain behavioral norms for those who enter them. There is a definite spatial progression: the yard is seen first, the kitchen entered next, the parlor encountered last—if at all. One domain cannot be understood without the others; front room and kitchen seem to keep social categories very separate; the yard, however, dissolves much of this boundary. Without considering all three spaces, we would not realize, finally, how arbitrary our divisions of the world into artifacts and space may be.

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CONCLUSION

The Spaces Between Tradition and Modernity

T

he crisscrossing of paths, the finishes of rooms, the appropriate locations to harvest resources—these and more are part of the socially constructed network of interrelations that constitute Calvert space. Social norms determine the successful ordering of acceptable spaces, maintaining the desired community roles these spaces require. The norms of individuality cannot be pushed to extreme limits; the social responsibilities of space dictate that each building will be located close to others, that most resources remain common, that only one main interior room provides focus for daily interchange. Calvert space is constructed so that socializing takes precedence over most everything else, work often requires the sharing of natural resources, and time not working is devoted to the family visit, the community Sunday mass, or the school concert, and rarely to individualistic leisure. The woods, the fields, the yards, the houses—all of Calvert's spaces are used in different ways by different groups. Some regions are gender specific, some connected to a certain neighborhood, others related to particular family groups. Yet in spite of these connections, community space as a whole is generally a shared experience. Different groups continually assemble and reassemble at definite spaces in Calvert: men at the community stage when fishing, women in one another's kitchens during afternoon visits, the entire community for the funeral of one of its members. This constant and continual use of known spaces means that such socializing is not a special event that reaffirms community bonds, but merely the ordinary continuation of social links. It is not surprising that residents do not feel the need to verbally mark their arrivals 272

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and departures, the beginnings and ends of their contacts. Helios and goodbyes are not usually exchanged, for each contact is part of the daily flow of life. People know that they will socialize and converse again in the not too distant future, perhaps in another space, and verbal beginnings and endings to interactions are therefore unnecessary. Everyone knows that they will be seeing the same relatives and friends day in and day out, in spaces known in most details. For other areas of the Western world, people often use these periodic gatherings to construct instant communities: quickly formed, quickly dissolving, with little to maintain social bonds from interaction to interaction. In Calvert, constant contact makes such attempts at artificial community unnecessary. Sunday morning mass, for example, is marked by what many would consider a lack of socializing uncharacteristic of more dynamic urban church contexts. Men chat about the price of fish on the church steps, women quickly go inside to say a prayer. However, this gathering, like many others, is simply one more coming together of groups who daily interact, and the verbal niceties of social bonds need not be exchanged. The community gathers, rather than the gathering providing community. It is not just the woods, as Mike Sullivan expressed it, that are known perfectly after living in a community like Calvert all one's life. The meadows, the buildings, the water—all become known, ordinary, taken for granted. Residents move through the community like residents in other cultures move through their homes, with few spatial mysteries, each place having a purpose. This knowledge and use of community space is most likely typical of many Newfoundland communities, but different from North American patterns. People do not just live close together; they know most of one another's spaces intimately. The objects that fill these spaces, the shapes of houses, the fences, the furniture, are all subservient to the spaces themselves considered appropriate. A fallen tree in the process of becoming spring var, a cup of tea, a new layer of wallpaper—all are artifact signs through which people express deeper spatial values. The fundamental ordering of space becomes the crucial issue in understanding life today in Calvert— and much of Newfoundland—an issue often overlooked because of how scholars have attempted to understand indigenous culture and the forces of change. In recent years, Newfoundlanders have become concerned with how their culture is different and with threats from outside corrupting forces. Residents feel torn between preserving a past that 273

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often smacks of cultural voyeurism for the sake of tourists, and embracing the benefits of modern North American mass society, with all its inherent limitations. One popular writer recently commented that Newfoundlanders "will certainly want to remain rooted in the foundations of their own local past and their own natural and cultural heritage; but they will want to feed on these roots to grow. They will certainly not be satisfied to contemplate a future role as enchanted cultural islands, preserved forever untouched by the storms of modernity, solely for the benefit of others."1 My study of Calvert, in the end, addresses this dilemma, and speaks to the problem of past against future, the tension between continuity and change, between what are often labeled tradition and modernization. The Calvert landscape has been socially constructed—both now and in the past—to stress certain spatial relationships, whereas the actual vehicles used to communicate and maintain these relationships—artifacts—frequently change. Both now and in the past, new objects have been readily incorporated into existing value systems. Change at first glance seems to be the norm for Calvert, but this is due largely to our focus on objects. Calvert's spaces indicate the discrepancy between what competing groups consider distinctive cultural traits and what people themselves deem important. Competing ideologies of traditionalism—what should be designated as unique and worthy of encouragement—currently dominate the Newfoundland intellectual scene.2 At the outset of my study, I mentioned that one group focused on easily identifiable cultural productions—usually such expressions of entertainment as song, narrative, and drama, as well as objects—as indigenous and valuable. Yet certain aspects of outport culture are overlooked by this group that do not easily conform to their own middle-class values: the influences of local churches and religion itself on daily life (figure 150), the lack of individual freedoms in a small community, and a crippling illiteracy (and attendant poverty); this illiteracy has sometimes been glorified by putting it into the relativistic category of oral culture.3 In contrast, a competing group has pointed to a series of values that marked the ideal traditionalism of the past, emphasizing the virtues of the nuclear family, hard work, and conformity to acceptable behavioral norms.4 Although sometimes critical of an overemphasis on such indigenous expressive forms as song and furniture as representative of the essence of past values, this group tends to overlook the seedier aspects of past life-styles, which early 274

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Figure 750. First Holy Communion class. (Courtesy ofLen and Marcella Canning.)

missionaries often attempted to reform: drinking, sexual license, and ignoring accepted standards of decorum. Both groups, then, paint pictures of Newfoundland culture that fit their particular middle-class image. Whatever the brand of ideological traditionalism put forward, both groups have little tolerance for certain contemporary cultural forms. One can find numerous diatribes on the corrupting influences of the popular creations of the day, be they artifacts or media forms. Soap operas tend to be singled out as one of the most heinous villains,5 although they seem to continue the basic themes found in older cultural forms.6 Indeed, rarely is anything essentially recent and modern seen in a positive light. Notions about what should be objectified as traditional often are promoted by middleaged and older intellectuals who may be traditionalizing the images of their own childhood as an ideal model, so that nothing new is appealing. This geroncentric bias in cultural criticism often ensures that the many products of the present will automatically be labeled as mindless and vulgar. How many cultural critics are as concerned with being familiar with and appreciative of the new popular creations of today as with the widely popular creations of a 275

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past that have been relabeled as "folk" and therefore gained respectability? Calvert residents are more realistic about their past. Kitty Vincent Sullivan, when asked about this, explained: "I'll tell you now about the good [sarcastically said] old times. They were good and they were bad." She continued: "You mean to think the old times were really [better], the people were really [better] off? I wouldn't know what the word would be to put on. . . . They certainly had no time for people in trouble or anything. They were real hypocrites. . . . That's the truth, now, Jerry, I'm telling you." And Kitty concluded: "Young people are more charitable than [the] old people [were]." The market for the products of ideological traditionalism in Newfoundland is a growing intellectual middle class in urban centers that has been influenced largely by central Canadian or American versions of the genuine. Outsiders to Newfoundland culture focus on the immediately perceptible differences in local practices (food, furniture, speech, song) and see these as the truly distinct. Native Newfoundlanders involved in this cultural glorification often are of this same middle class, highly educated, and sometimes have lived on the Mainland.7 My friends in Calvert are frequently puzzled and amused by all of this cultural objectification, this rush to promote certain items as distinctive, for such objectifications often have little connection with Calvert itself, and therefore little meaning. New CMHC bungalows continue to be built in the community and older houses virtually gutted in their renovations, for daily living has to be comfortable and house building or alteration inexpensive. A house must provide basic necessities, and not become a vehicle for social class, like some of the modern houses in St. John's today, or like the equally expensive St. John's renovated "heritage" houses. Such houses become ends in themselves, and thus objects that could lead to nonincorporation in a community.8 Newfoundland culture does not exist in an abstract category that has somehow been captured and is being packaged to "give back to the folk." Calvert residents are puzzled when urban middle-class audiences become the official arbiters of genuine Newfoundland culture. A preoccupation in the contemporary cultural scene with fiddle music (which was almost nonexistent in the area) and songs about resettlement (which was never an issue on the Shore), combined with a scorn of stage Irish and country and Western (which today remain the most popular music) led one Calvert resident to com276

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plain of the "clique"—as she put it—that seems to unofficially sanction "genuine" Newfoundland culture. She was referring to a group of musicians, artists, and intellectuals—many from one region in the province—that is often in the forefront of this cultural objectification. This same group is largely made up of those placeless individuals who grew up in resettled communities. My Calvert friend added: "They are all from Placentia Bay. And if they aren't, they wish they were," meaning that the culture of one Newfoundland place is now the measure for the entire province. Scattered items taken away by cultural strip miners with a narrow aesthetic engaged in what one anthropologist labeled "hit and run fieldwork" cannot be given back to Calvert for some instant cultural revitalization. Indeed, the appropriate items for Calvert residents are those that are still living, still part of the community's own value system. Cultural forms matter less than personal connections between creator and user: Jimmy Sullivan renovated his grandfather's house with slider windows and vinyl siding so it would be comfortable for the constant stream of visitors; "Alabama Sweetheart"—a popular American Victorian parlor tune—still is considered one of Aunt Alice's best songs and is frequently requested when people get together to sing. Cultural critics tend to view recent cultural change as ubiquitous throughout Newfoundland and extremely disruptive of all aspects of life. What are seen as the inroads of modern civilization are often assumed to be recent, and some intellectuals encourage such notions. Disciplines like anthropology and folklore, for example, have always been fueled by the desire to record and describe cultures "before they were gone."9 Part of this relates to a general assumption that anything local is valuable, and that any outside influence is potentially harmful. Threats to Newfoundland culture—and any negative changes that might occur—have often been blamed on the influence of outsiders.10 Many critics argue that only with recent changes in communication and transportation has a massive influx of new things from the outside world flooded Newfoundland. Whereas such improvements may have been a cause of major changes in other regions of Newfoundland, Calvert—like all communities on the Shore—has not been technologically backward for some time. Electricity came to the community in 1928, television in 1954: not very different from most rural North American communities. Moreover, Calvert was never isolated to the extent that some Mainland communities 277

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Figure 757. Knickknacks and family photographs displayed on the mantel.

may have been in the past. Calvert men traveled—and sometimes worked—in places up and down the eastern seaboard of northern North America. Travel by boat linked each community with the world. The notion that until recently Newfoundland was essentially more isolated than other areas is a myth, fostered by critics who want to explain cultural change simply by recent innovations in communication and transportation, or by political events such as Confederation.11 All of North America has witnessed changes in economic conditions and increased mobility during the past century. Discussing another Newfoundland community, one writer noted that "in that pre-automobile age the men of Small Harbour were among the most mobile in the world."12 And one song collector, first coming to Newfoundland in 1929, assumed that the island

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Figure 152. Elaborate motifs considered ''''fancy": (a) hooked mat design; (b) scrollwork on sideboard; (c) bracket on house facade.

would yield older ballads because of its supposed isolation. She was disappointed, however, and later noted: "I had hoped that Newfoundland might yield a wealth of songs comparable with the riches that Cecil Sharp and I had discovered in the Southern Appalachian Mountains a decade earlier. The original settlement of Newfoundland is as old as, if not older than that of the Appalachian Mountains, but the island has not had the same immunity from modern civilization, for the sea does not isolate to the same extent as does a mountain range."13 Maritime cultures could develop wide contacts with many areas of the outside world, a more extensive network than inland agricultural communities in the rest of North America. Friends in Calvert are always puzzled by the middle-class St. John's assumption that their life somehow still lags behind that of "more advanced" urban centers. Indeed, many views of recent Newfoundland culture may be based on romantic reminiscences, colorful performance materials, and a handful of community studies that have searched for the rural, isolated, "uncorrupted" outport. None of the standard community studies sponsored by the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Memorial University deal with places on the Avalon Peninsula—the area containing much of Newfoundland's population. Anthropologists—mostly nonnative Newfoundlanders—may well have been looking for communities in the remotest areas of the province that appeared obviously different from their own urban and suburban backgrounds. Thus much of the writing on Newfoundland culture deals with the impact of roads, electricity, and the like: all amenities that Calvert has had for years. Calvert residents had much that other areas of North America did. And in this respect it was probably like many other communities on the Avalon, and therefore, in terms of numbers, like Newfoundland generally. For Calvert, proximity to St. John's and travel from the harbor itself meant that new ideas were always coming into the community. There are many examples of the Calvert resident's concern with having new objects. The front room has often been the place where contemporary styles are displayed within the house (figure 151); the room takes on whatever stylistic features are current when the space is actually finished—at the time of construction or latest renovation. Complexity of pattern is the aesthetic that dictates the appearance of this space (figure 152). In the past, for many houses, this meant buying the latest factory-produced Victorian goods 279

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from leading furniture factories in St. John's, the "modern of that time," as Tom Sullivan put it; today's goods are often from Woolco or K mart. Other rooms in the house are less likely to display artifacts burdened by the latest styles. The external finish of the house, though, reflects the concern with contemporary trends. House renovation has been the norm rather than the exception; usually this has involved changing the dwelling's roof line. Many older steep-pitched roofs, such as on Maggie Keough's and Rob and Alice Sullivan's houses, have been raised to imitate the shallowpitched roofs of the biscuit box style. The latest style after the 1892 fire—the Second Empire style—immediately found its way into Calvert (figure 153), much like new styles do today. Jack Swain's house recently was cut down to resemble a modern bungalow. Frequent renovation permits house owners to affirm contemporary values over past forms. Much like the contents of the front room, when a new house is built in Calvert, the type constructed is often whatever is considered the most modern at the time. The frequent reaffirmation of the values of the present sometimes means building a newer house even though an older dwelling might be available. This explains why many houses are converted to stables or torn down, and the materials used to build a newer home. Many of the older houses fail to survive in Calvert today not because of any inherent fragility in their construction, but because newer styles are valued over the old. Economics also plays a part, for as Lorraine Sullivan explained, it was sometimes "cheaper to build a new house." Unlike elite cultures, which so value material reminders of the past and almost venerate objects, the residents of Calvert do not consider artifacts necessary to continue this link.14 For the Calvert resident, the past continues not through objects but through memory and oral tradition.15 This concern with the modern is acted out everyday with particular foods. The special foods of the visit, the special foods of the season, all were imported into Calvert harbor from the earliest days of settlement. Kitty Larry Sullivan serves pie to her guests, made with rhubarb from her garden and topped with Dream Whip, accompanied by a cup of strong tea. Aaron Thomas's visit to the Powers' likely included imported foods as well, simple bread and tea. The goods of the modern world are in the very heart of the house—the kitchen—but are subservient to the hospitality of the visit. 280

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Figure /jj. Mike, Vincent, and Kitty Sullivan's house, built in the late nineteenth century with a mansard roof.

The community's material culture, then, seems to have a look of modernity, to be in a rush to imitate the rest of the Western world. Yet such looks are deceiving, and are linked to an overreliance on the artifact as indicator of social values. We implicitly suspect that these objects have, indeed, substantially altered earlier life-styles (figure 154). But a shift of focus to the actual spaces in the community, whether resource space or house interior, reveals that the maintenance of community interactive norms is perceived to be crucial. If we examine objects per se as dependent on particular spatial domains, then we realize how much Calvert still depends on community consensus and norms. House types have changed since the earliest days of settlement, but spatially they have remained remarkably constant in terms of major behavioral domains. Within the house, when furniture is replaced or rooms redecorated, the same stylistic norms govern the newly acquired objects: the front room remains fancy, the kitchen practical, the bedroom private. Wooded areas are still utilized by the entire community, access to 281

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igure 154- Harold and Catherine Sullivan's front room.

resource spaces like gardens permits continued scattered-site wor patterns and thus the potential for frequent social discourse. Un like other areas of North America where the forests were feare and therefore needed to be dominated (and decimated) by man, i Calvert they are there simply for common use, known as well a any domestic space. And the placement of structures on the lan maintains the persistent belief that spatial proximity to others i more desirable than privacy and quiet The structure of Calvert's spaces brings up several major ques tions about how we consider the role of objects in promotin cultural change, and how modern items impinge on indigenou cultures. We must stop and think, first of all, about the very natur of our intellectual investigations of recent years. The exception aside, material culture research uses the analytical unit of object a its primary focus of investigation. Ironically, much of our work which attempts to focus on things, can trace its rationale to a fun damental value in Western society—the increasing importance o capitalism. The approaches taken in many academic disciplines— certainly in the item-oriented research involving material cul 282

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ture—view the world as a series of rational commodities, concrete categories of things. Scholarship often is equated with the accumulation of as many of the items under scrutiny as possible. Hundreds of arrowheads, stacks of court records, hours of taped ballads—the more that is scrutinized, perhaps the more insightful will be the knowledge gained. As modern life increasingly became judged by the individual world of goods that each person might own, the academic world judged success by developing methodologies that could cater to the intellectual consumption of discrete things. But if we believe ideologically that in our personal lives we should not judge individuals simply by how successful they are within our own consumer culture, then we should not inadvertently pursue research methodologies that rely solely on goods as an index of other people and their cultural behavior. When considering the issue of modernity, many studies of culture change use objects as an index of transition from an old order to a newer one.16 When a supposedly isolated region suddenly sports new things that are found in the major industrial areas of the world, it is often assumed that a culture has made the irreversible transition between traditional and modern. Implicit in such arguments, however, is the fallacy that material objects fulfill the causative role in the entire modernization process;17 that once a culture obtains new things, changes in entire life-styles—including social relationships—are not far behind. Cultures considered on the periphery, like Newfoundland, often are assumed to be experiencing culture lag: new objects are available but cultural norms have not adjusted to the values these require.18 This attributes to artifacts the role of independent variable within the entire process of culture change; once object change is effected, then a whole series of dependent variables—such as interpersonal social norms— change as well.19 There is no evidence, however, that the presence of particular kinds of goods can be equated with modernity; instead, objects per se can be used in a myriad of different ways or not used at all, even if they are found in the culture. The appearance of a certain type of artifact cannot be correlated instantly with the trend toward modernity and individuality that many recent scholars are so fond of writing about. Artifacts change, but how people use them in terms of their daily social relationships may not. Or, as in Calvert's case, new goods are purchased, but spaces in the community remain remarkably the same. The notion of traditional versus modern society ultimately draws on such classic notions as Ferdinand Tonnies's distinction 283

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between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft and, more recently, on Robert Redfield's many writings on primitive, folk, and urban societies. The ideal traditional society is basically described as conservative and static, with little exposure to mass media. The modern society, by contrast, is dynamic, oriented to change, literate, and connected through the media.20 Yet communities like Calvert do not clearly fit one ideal type or the other. If our categories are to be useful, they should be of the "either/or" kind, not the "more or less" variety, as in this case.21 These categories, in fact, more easily fit the world of the urban academic researching the world of "the other": either a distant past or a distant people.22 S. N. Eisenstadt, indeed, wonders whether this dichotomy is not a product of the late 19505 and 19605, when concern increased with helping different cultures in faraway countries, or with preserving different cultures in our own homeland.23 The term modern, in fact, "meant the United States, or rather an ideal of a democratic, pluralistic, rational, and secular United States." And traditional societies "meant all those others that would have to adopt that ideal."24 As artifact researchers, we often want objects to be the ultimate communicator of social relationships in the culture we are researching. We want a particular type of object to be especially revealing. In Calvert, it may be the Sweetland house, the chest of drawers that Mr. Vince made, or the quaint and somewhat esoteric display in Len and Marcella Canning's yard. All are objects perceived to be products of a traditional culture. (Never mind that the house frame probably was imported from New Brunswick, that the chest of drawers borrowed its design from a factory-made item, and that the yard display contains traces of plastic and plywood: all characteristics that in other instances might have made researchers downplay the importance of such objects.) Yet none of these artifacts can provide a full sense of the interactive realms where intense social exchange goes on. Studies of historical objects often suffer from the same problems as the period room in the museum: they take a narrow slice of the artifactual past that may provide only partial understanding of the full range of dynamic connections with artifacts both old and new. Although I was not able to deal with the lengthy historical backgrounds of many of the objects researched, doing a study of one contemporary community at least permitted me to see the connections between the objects and other aspects of social life. And ironically, perhaps, the objects may not be as important as I initially thought. 284

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The more I thought about Calvert's objects, the more I became convinced that, compared with many other areas of North America, Calvert (and many Newfoundland communities) is basically a nonmaterial culture. Years ago, commenting on the lack of ornamentation in Irish folk artifacts, Henry Classic speculated that in Ireland aesthetic energies were directed more toward oral performances.25 Going one step further, I would claim that social energies in Newfoundland (perhaps even drawing on its Celtic background) are manifested more in verbal and customary behavior than in objects. This is not to argue that material culture is limited in its expressive range—as one scholar recently posited—but that it is secondary to other community concerns.26 Indeed, one Calvert resident, remarking on someone who held two jobs, said that it was possible to work too much. In other words, once you obtain the necessities of life, then enough time must be left for sociability— visiting, talking, remembering. There is no reason, after a certain level, to acquire more goods.27 So many of our criteria for judging a culture as successful have been in artifactual and thus economic terms. We measure what we have dubbed our "standard of living" by income and, therefore, by how many goods an individual has the ability to acquire. We look at house size, number of cars, leisure expenses, and other artifactual scales to judge the status of a person's life. In our assessment of living standards we are not concerned with the quality of social relationships, the worth of community role, or the amount of daily contacts with others—only with the amount of goods. Other researchers in Newfoundland have pointed to this difficulty in judging the quality of life by measuring material goods, arguing that social vitality is as important as economic vitality—but social worth cannot be easily measured or quantified.28 Some writers have suggested that it is primarily through this world of goods that modern people socially construct the world around them. They create a world of artifacts that indicate certain beliefs and goals to others in the culture; objects make clear the values of the specific group. One look at his or her house, car, furniture, or clothes immediately reveals much about the particular person and his or her worldview. Objects—it can be argued—have become the primary manifestation of modern worldview. Calvert does not contain the masses of goods that have marked the history of many places in North America. Houses were never large, furniture was never acquired in excessive quantities; in short, 285

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Figure 755. Edward, Rhoda, Andrew, and Erin Keough, in front of their woodpile, pickup truck, and satellite dish.

it seems, effort was never expended to create and display things as a sign of one's worth. Other peoples in other places and times created the most elaborate of artifact traditions to display and enhance social status. The Calvert resident, however, seems to have been always too busy with the practical and time-consuming tasks relating to the land and water, or with leisure pursuits like talk, to bother making elaborate statements with material things. This is not to say that modern objects are never acquired in Calvert. The community today—like most in Newfoundland—is filled with the latest household objects, cars, stereos, cable television, and VCRs, reaching out to the outside world (figure 155). But objects are still subservient to the continued use of spaces. New things may save time, or provide alternative sources of entertainment, but maintaining constant and continued social contact is paramount. Indeed, if we look historically at Calvert, obtaining the new was always the norm. The important foods of sociability—the

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foods of the visit—were imported from the earliest days, as were entire buildings and building materials. Even such mass-produced household items as chairs and sideboards made their way into the Calvert home from earliest times. Looking at Calvert's culture, outsiders, as well as Newfoundlanders themselves, often see a battle line drawn between a desirable traditional life-style and the ubiquitous corrupted mass culture invading from the rest of North America. Cultural crusaders preach the gospel that Newfoundland must remain pure.29 Like Raymond Williams's mythical uncorrupted English rural culture, Newfoundland's fleetingly retreats farther and farther into the recesses of time the more it is scrutinized.30 What is perceived as Newfoundland's traditional way of life is believed to have existed just a step or two back: perhaps in the 19605, before the road network on the island expanded; the 19505, before the government's resettlement program forced many residents to abandon the more inaccessible communities all over the island; the 19405, before Newfoundland joined Canada; the 19205, before electricity and radios; the turn of the century, before the opening of a railway link between the west and east coasts of the island; the 18705, before a major economic expansion program led to the development of a series of factories in St. John's; or the 18305, with an elected assembly and quasi independence from England. How far must one go back in time before the nebulous period of "traditional culture" is found? Each era, each major event, produced alarmists who lamented the final demise of the way things used to be. Academics and cultural nativists often want a clear demarcation between tradition and modernity, between those who are folk or native, and those who are civilized, corrupted, and different. These researchers frequently revert to the item-oriented mentality to which I have alluded. They want to point to certain discrete phenomena as indicative of tradition, and therefore worthy of preservation, as opposed to items that are symptomatic of modernity and ultimately corrupting. Ironically, many researchers have been enamored with the older items and practices and have viewed their continuance in Newfoundland as a quirk of isolation or ignorance. However, having up-to-date goods (figure 156) does not mean that people act in ways that characterize modernized cultures; modernity does not mean modernization.31 There is no one version of modernity, but many.32 Modern goods and a continuing emphasis on sociability can exist side by side, but many believe that the old 287

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Figure 156. A souvenir wall plaque with thermometer from Gander International Airport.

and the new are somehow contradictory. David Whisnant, writing about Appalachia, could be speaking about the romantic's perception of Newfoundland: "Thus to this day there are a thousand people who 'know' that mountaineers weave coverlets and sing ballads for every one who knows that . . . today, they shop at the K mart and Radio Shack, drive Camaros, and watch as much television as people anywhere." " Calvert residents still mummer, teenagers still write and perform local songs at kitchen "times," visiting and talk are still of central importance; at the same time, the material culture of the community resembles that of any rural community in Kentucky or Ontario or Maine (figure 157). Calvert cannot be neatly categorized as either traditional or modern. No matter how much we argue, our culture will continue to emphasize the artifactual over the spatial, goods over people, and try as we may, we will find it easier to research the readily delineated entity, rather than expanses of space or the bonds of a community. Although the distinction between artifact and space ultimately blurs—a house is both an object and a collection of spaces—constrained by the paradigms of our particular intellectual heritage, we will continue to focus on things. Yet Calvert deals with our heuristic categories of tradition and modernity through its spatial-artifact continuum in ways that ultimately do not lead to a choice of one over the other. The more we emphasize the dis288

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Figure 157. The modern CMHC bungalow.

crete goods—the ordinary artifacts—found in Calvert, the more obvious it is that residents want to acquire new objects as soon as they can afford to. This acquisition, however, is not a large-scale amassing of objects for accumulation's sake, but a purchase that is truly necessary—the old house is no longer habitable, the table finally falls apart. Newness comes when necessity dictates, not when consumer passions are fired by the latest fad. The Calvert house can initially be a bewildering mixture of objects old and new. The front room might have early Victorian factory furniture and an old parlor organ (figure 158) juxtaposed with the new stereo system and shag carpeting. The old wood range in the kitchen sits next to the new microwave (figures 159 and 160) and the massproduced late-nineteenth-century "holy picture" hangs over the new bedroom suite. New objects are acquired, but they might not be replaced for decades. And the new items of convenience and leisure are there: cable television, the VCR. Ultimately, for Calvert, buying new goods is an acquisition of scale; certain modern 289

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Figure 158. Harold Power's front room, with pump organ, Victorian factory-made parlor suite, modern carpet, and wallpaper.

conveniences are considered appropriate, but beyond satisfying basic material needs, acquisition becomes a grandiose show of wealth and status—too many objects can alienate a person from ordinary community life. Having too many things might lead local people to consider someone "too grand"—a local term for snobbishness. Certain goods should be acquired, but no more; anything beyond the norm is unnecessary. Aidan Sullivan mentioned a man on the Shore who had "piles of money." When I asked Aidan if the man was retired, he replied, "Well, he's all the same as retired. He's not old enough to retire but he have so much money, no good of 'im makin' money." Doris Sullivan added that this man had more than enough money, and "he never spent any of it either." Calvert's life-style is constantly changing, but it is not threatened. I hear youngsters in Calvert singing the latest Dire Straits songs as well as a local ballad composed by their grandfather—or composing one of their own; I see men driving their customized pickup trucks carrying their snowmobiles to the edge of the woods to fell trees in the same areas as their fathers worked; I see women

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Figure 159. Kitty Larry Sullivan 5r kitchen wood range. Figure 160. Kitty Larry Sullivan's microwave.

watching the soap operas while making bread in the kitchen wood range on a winter's afternoon, or handchurning butter for that bread (figure 161). These behaviors are not self-conscious; Calvert residents are not like middle-class urbanites who deliberately attempt to revive what they consider more "authentic" and "natural" lives through such activities. None of these Calvert behaviors contradicts the others. Scholarship often makes us believe otherwise. Much research in recent years in ethnographic disciplines has been the product of theoreticians working in large urbanized centers, looking at what are designated as traditional peoples found mainly in rural or ethnic enclaves—essentially anomalies in mass society. From such a basis, scholars champion these life-styles— sometimes from the stance of cultural interventionism—and often fight against any incursions of corrupting modernity. At the other theoretical extreme, some researchers complain about the romantic biases of past scholarship. They argue that only modern things are 291

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Figure 161. Doris Sullivan turning butter.

important enough to be studied—that popular culture is the only justifiable realm of research for academics interested in understanding the complexities of present everyday life.34 Both extremes strike me as approaches that grow necessarily from an urban American postindustrial bias. We need a new way of handling the problems that we research, based on the vast majority of cultures in the world that are neither postindustrial nor primitive. We must move away from what Raymond Williams called "abstract chauvinism," the belief that cultures like Calvert are different simply because they have not caught up to the postindustrial American norm, that they, too, will experience the changes that 292

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large areas of the United States have undergone.35 Certainly many groups of social scientists have been concerned with the development of theories and approaches tied too closely to one country or one group of scholars. Anthropologists, for example, have argued that the issues raised depend on what is considered the popular theme in the particular country's academic community. I am not claiming that cultural research should disregard the findings of scholars working in the United States. I do feel, however, that contemporary research in a small community like Calvert indicates that much of the world neither is threatened by the forces of centralization and urbanization nor is approaching a homogeneous state of mass culture—"cultural grey-out."36 Seeing new objects, new practices, and new ideas incorporated into a community like Calvert becomes easier to accept, and can be perceived as less of a threat to cultural pluralism, when we see that residents do not necessarily destroy what is there, but rather build on it, adding, enriching. Newfoundland has seen too many failed attempts at industrialization in its history, and it is not simply a matter of "catching up" with the rest of the world. Those in power—intellectual and economic as well as political—must realize that certain cultures will always remain outside the dark shadows of the Industrial Revolution, still distinctive, but with the amenities considered necessary for a minimal enjoyment of life. Other indigenous cultures have experienced cultural enhancement from the things of modernity, incorporating them into local life-styles without a subsequent loss of distinctive values.37 There is no reason that Newfoundland cannot be the same, neither traditional nor consumer, as Calvert demonstrates.38 One writer noted that for Newfoundland, there would be nothing "contradictory, odd, inferior, or ignoble about economies which were small, that relied for stability and well-being as much upon non-market as market production, wherein a man might in one part of the day earn income by operating the most complex of modern technology while in another uproot potatoes with a spade."39 A community like Calvert can only be understood through its landscape and artifacts by abandoning the notion that it is somehow in transition, caught between the forces of the old and the new. Indeed, objects and spaces in Calvert demonstrate that tradition and modernity are categories devised by thinkers operating out of urban industrial contexts. Calvert also cannot be explained as somehow existing on the periphery of a world capitalist system. This thinking again uses 293

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centers of capitalism—essentially large urbanized industrial societies—as the categorizing norm, and labels places like Calvert as peripheral because they do not approximate this norm. Some researchers might consider Newfoundland a "pristine replica" of the precapitalist, preindustrial past, found on the periphery of the world system, on the sink and margin of the capitalist industrial world. But such a categorization is based on the ethnocentric perception of an imperialistic social science that has created the notion of peripheries in order to criticize itself. As Eric Wolf pointed out, "If sociology operates with its mythology of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, anthropology all too frequently operates with its mythology of the pristine primitive. Both perpetuate fictions that deny the facts of ongoing relationships and involvements."40 Wolf rightly explains that "the concept of'periphery' remains as much of a cover term as 'traditional society.'"41 The polarities that link the various artifacts in Calvert mediate between modernity and tradition, enabling a widespread adoption of new things that are often used in socially old ways. Whereas to the outsider objects might signify an increasing individualization in the community, the unseen spaces speak differently. Researchers in other cultures have claimed that there is a widespread decline in community social bonds as a result of enriching individualistic goals. They attempt to prove that people's lives are marked by this definite dichotomy, that the individual (and modernity) has won out over the community (and tradition). But for Calvert, both exist simultaneously. Neither one nor the other is more important, and the dichotomy may ultimately be as artificial as so many of our academic constructs. Indeed, using the words of the structuralist, the actual items in our artifact system become less important than the specific relationships exhibited by these items. The relationships in this case are spatial ones, and in spite of artifactual change manifested at surface levels, the real concerns are evident in the persistence of spatial norms. Calvert culture does not have to distinguish between leaving the past behind or rejecting the new. Instead, both are possible, eliminating any cognitive necessity for creating categories like traditional and modern. People in Calvert can live in both worlds. Because, for them, it is simply one world. They see nothing contradictory about living in a CMHC bungalow and having mummers in; about never locking their doors and permitting instant access to all visitors—neighbors and strangers alike (figure 162); or about much of the land in the 294

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Figure 162. Johnny Sullivan visiting Kitty Larry Sullivan in her kitchen.

community being neither private nor crown land, but of uncertain ownership status. Calvert through its objects and spaces ultimately says that modernity can be possible with humanity, that the small community can exist in the late twentieth century complete with modern goods without sacrificing social values, that the massive individualization that may mark other areas of the Western world— and that has so recently obsessed many thinkers—is not a given trend that all communities must eventually follow. Calvert children played cowboys and Indians on Rocky Hill in the 19505 and 19605; they were members of the Rocky Hill Gang, one of whom portrayed Matt Dillon, known to them from television (figure 163). The latest songs from Boston were heard on the radio in the 19205, along with a wide range of news and other entertainment. Schooners brought the goods of the world—from England, the Maritimes, New England, the West Indies—directly to the doorsteps of every Calvert resident as early as the seventeenth century. 295

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Figure 163. The Rocky Hill Gang playing cowboys and Indians. (Courtesy ofAidan and Maude Sullivan.)

The demands of Newfoundland nationalists to screen out the corrupting influences of the modern world ring historically hollow, considering that the influences of the world were there from the start. Calvert has always adopted the modern; this is nothing new. The consumer society was a fact of life from the very beginning, yet the importance of social relationships continues. The penchant for the new does not automatically equal obsessive consumerism. Cultural relativists find it easy to argue in the abstract that some non-Western cultures may ultimately be happier than our own because they are not burdened by an accumulative obsession with things.42 But with places like Calvert that are more similar to us, made up of white European peoples, we assume that they should achieve the same standard of living (that is, monetary success) as that of the most prosperous areas of our land. When cultural nationalists argue that Newfoundlanders must not remain quaint curiosities but move into the modern world, they are often im296

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plicitly arguing for adopting the more pervasive attitudes toward goods that govern that outside world. Such an adoption would obviously bring more economic prosperity, but with it the danger of commoditizing the aspects of life relating to space and time. Spaces may more and more fall victim to the "cult of private ownership" and the "landowning mania" that has characterized other areas of the world for generations.43 If a landscape is there to be bought and sold, to make money with, to be owned by individuals rather than used by a community, then social relations become more privatized and stratified. Ironically, the mercantile system that put the most valuable land space in the hands of a powerful few now has crumbled, but a more widespread capitalist commoditization of landscape may develop in its place. Although Marxists might condemn what they see as the class evils of the previous system, it nonetheless promoted a conception of land that led to communal utilization of resources. Time may become more of a commodity as well, if residents attempt to maximize their social positions by exercising such economic options as working part-time in St. John's. Time gradually becomes tied to productivity, and people spend more time in their own individualistic pursuits of excellence, rather than in constant visiting and talk. Leisure becomes increasingly dependent on the enjoyment of goods and not people.44 We want to isolate and enshrine clearly identifiable and visible aspects of Newfoundland culture that can be designated as distinctive—often objects, often the things of entertainment. By associating all that is considered characteristic of Newfoundland culture with such objects, and then recording them and filing them away, we naively proclaim that culture has been identified, isolated, and then preserved. If culture is believed to exist in mere objects, then we can quickly discard the social meanings that gave such things their true worth. We turn groups of human beings into "museum communities" that become "professional peripheries"; ironically, such quaint enclaves become possible only when the forces of the new are consciously kept out—as some cultural purists would insist they should.45 Yet, historically, the individualistic forces that potentially could have weakened the ties of Calvert were themselves so diluted that today one still senses a community, and not a group of individuals, moving forward through time.46 Stone Island residents, over several generations, chose to move closer to other people, abandoning 297

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private space in exchange for proximity to relatives. The technological development of the cod trap and the introduction of the draw ensured that Calvert's most important resource remained a common one, with everyone having an equal chance at success from year to year. And individual fisheries work spaces gave way to the common work space of the community wharf, where most of the men assemble morning and afternoon throughout the greater part of the year. Calvert life continues to change, but younger residents have not fallen into life-styles that are often simplistically explained away by outsiders as being filled with depression and apathy.47 Some writers believe that because of recent changes in education, transportation, and mass media "Newfoundland is in the process of being homogenized into North America."48 Such statements—I would claim— come from a focus on objects that are erroneously considered to be significant. Calvert culture does not continue to survive through static objectified items, but through the social processes of shared spaces.49 In Alice Sullivan's kitchen one July evening, Denis Sullivan sang his composition "The Calvert Squid Jiggin' Ground" (figure 164). Later, his mother would perform "The Ring Your Mother Wore." As they sang, the Toronto Blue Jays were losing badly to the Baltimore Orioles on the kitchen television; thankfully, the volume was turned down so as not to disturb the performance, and we did not have to subject ourselves to the details of the Jays' defeat. Instead, we heard Denis Sullivan's lyrics to the sight of George Bell's strikeout. I sat near the kitchen settle made to fit in the alcove by the stove, while Aunt Alice adjusted the remote control for the color television. Old and new artifacts, old and new songs: the tensions of new and old are not tensions at all, for what is meaningful is appropriated. Indigenous forms have meaning only if the group deems it so; the actual items (be they objects or attitudes or verbal utterances) cannot be abstracted for middle-class fantasies about a past and a culture always more desirable and more golden than our present. For finally, what explains Calvert's—and much of Newfoundland's—life is the sharing of space. Not just families sharing the space in their house, or relatives the space of their neighborhood, but an entire community sharing the resources that surround it, the resources of land and water, all shared through systems that ensure knowledge of place and equity of product. Denis Sullivan succinctly summarized this: "Where you're working in the same 298

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Figure 164. Denis Sullivan singing "The Calvert Squid Jiggm' Ground" as Tom Sullivan listens.

space with people, you know, everything and that, it's just not practical to be falling out with everyone." Living in the community means rights to certain resources, with common expectations about individual need. This commonality of space, then, structures the objects that are clustered in Calvert's spaces, for sharing the resources of daily life means that only certain objects have become culturally appropriate. Calvert's CMHC bungalows and Woolco furniture are modern; the artifacts used to catch cod and turn butter are often several generations old. But Calvert life is not one or the other, not just a progression from old things to new. Much that looks new is, in fact, not new in a culture based on spatial commonalities in both work and leisure. Objects may be new or old, traditional or modern, but when found in their appropriate space such dichotomies soon dissolve, unimportant in the lives of people who live in the community. Each of these spaces is filled with appropriate things, but it is the spaces rather than the things that are more meaningfully shared. Each person in Calvert knows that in this sharing rests the essence of everyday life, the sharing that orders this place where they belong.

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Notes Preface

i. The field material from my study has been deposited in the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA), accession number 79-135. Other accessions in the MUNFLA that deal with Calvert include: 67-24; 70-27; 71-64; 71-66; 72-76; 72-177; 72-205; 73-34; 74-227; 75-16; 75-21; 75-236; 76-1; 76-213; 76-469; 78-54; 78-126; 79-135; 80-496; 81-8; Q68-2I. Documentary materials consulted are in the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador (PANL), St. John's, the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland and the A. C. Hunter Library, Arts and Culture Centre, St. John's. Chapter One: Places to Belong

1. James Cook, A Chart of the South-East Part of Newfoundland, chart 4 (London: Laurie and Whittle, 1794). 2. The Dictionary of Newfoundland English notes that belong can mean "to be related by blood" and "to be a native of; to come from"; G. M. Story, W. J. Kirwin, and J. D. A. Widdowson, eds., Dictionary of Newfoundland English (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), pp. 38-39. 3. Kimberly Dovey, "Home and Homelessness," in Home Environments, ed. Irwin Altman and Carol M. Werner, Human Behavior and Environment, Advances in Theory and Research, vol. 8 (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), p. 37. 4. Mr. John Ryan's recitation was written originally by Rose Sullivan and apparently published in several newspapers; a version can be found in Florence Grant Barbour, Memories of Life on the Labrador and in Newfoundland (New York: Carlton Press, 1973), pp. 95-98. 5. Dovey, "Home and Homelessness," p. 34. 301

NOTES TO PAGES xiii-7

6. Roger M. Keesing, "Anthropology as Interpretive Quest," Current Anthropology 28 (1987): 165. Social scientists have been obsessed, for example, with mummering and singing in Newfoundland; see my comments in Gerald L. Pocius, "The Mummers Song in Newfoundland: Intellectuals, Revivalists and Cultural Nativism," Newfoundland Studies 4 (1988): 60-61. 7. Recent examples applying such ethnographic theories to Western historical cultures include Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1982); Dell Upton, Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); Bernard L. Herman, Architecture and Rural Life in Central Delaware, 1700-1000 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987); and Thomas Hubka, Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1984). 8. Bruce Trigger, "Ethnoarchaeology: Some Cautionary Considerations," in Ethnography by Archaeologists, ed. Elisabeth Tooker, 1978 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (Washington, D.C.: American Ethnological Society, 1982), p. 2. 9. William N. Fenton, "The Advancement of Material Culture Studies in Modern Anthropological Research," in The Human Mirror: Material and Spatial Images of Man, ed. Miles Richardson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974), p. 17. 10. For summary statements, see Carol Kramer, ed., Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnography for Archaeology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), pp. i-20; and Daniel Stiles, "Ethnoarchaeology: A Discussion of Methods and Applications," Man, n.s. 12 (1977): 87-103. 11. Robert Redfield, The Primitive World and Its Transformations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953), p. 25. 12. Roger Chartier, "Culture as Appropriation: Popular Culture Uses in Early Modern France," in Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Steven L. Kaplan, New Babylon Studies in the Social Sciences, no. 40 (New York: Mouton, 1984), p. 234; Roger Chartier, "Intellectual History or Sociocultural History? The French Trajectories," in Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives, ed. Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 30; for discussions of the cultural study of production and consumption, see Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 100, 230-31, 483; and Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. xii-xv, 30-31. 13. Alan Gowans, Images of American Living: Four Centuries of Architecture 302

NOTES TO PAGES 8-14

14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 303

and Furniture as Cultural Expression (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1964), pp. 116-19; James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1977), pp. 38-40; Henry Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975), pp. 180, 190; Yi-Fu Tuan, Segmented Worlds and Self: Group Life and Individual Consciousness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), p. 3; Mark P. Leone and Paul A. Shackel, "Forks, Clocks, and Power," in Mirror and Metaphor: Material and Social Constructions of Reality, ed. Daniel W. Ingersoll, Jr., and Gordon Bronitsky (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), pp. 45-61; Mark R. Wenger, "The Dining Room in Early Virginia," in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, III, ed. Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, for the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1989), pp. 149-50; Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, p. 305; for a critique of this issue, see Russell G. Handsman, "Historical Archaeology and Capitalism, Subscriptions and Separations: The Production of Individualism," North American Archaeologist 4 (1983): 63-69. Lauriston Sharp, "Steel Axes for Stone Age Australians," in Human Problems in Technological Change: A Casebook, ed. Edward H. Spicer (New York: Russell Sage, 1952), pp. 69-90. Alan Lomax, Folk Song Style and Culture, AAAS Publication no. 88 (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1968), p. 4; a contrary view on the effects of modernization on increasing cultural homogeneity is Julian H. Steward, "Perspectives on Modernization," in his Contemporary Change in Traditional Societies, vol. i, Introduction and African Tribes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 19-20. Patrick Brantlinger, Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 126; H. Russell Bernard and Pertti J. Pelto, "Technology and Change: Some Concluding Observations," in Technology and Social Change (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 323. G. J. Lewis, Rural Communities, Problems in Modern Geography (London: David and Charles, 1979), p. 89. Ralph T. Pastore, "Fishermen, Furriers, and Beothuks: The Economy of Extinction," Man in the Northeast 33 (1987): 47-62. Marc Bloch, Land and Work in Medieval Europe, trans. J. E. Anderson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 129. Leslie A. White, The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1949), p. 377. Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (London: Free Press, 1958), p. 52. See Thomas F. Nemec, "Trepassey, 1840-1900: An Ethnohistorical NOTES TO PAGES 1 4 - 1 6

23. 24.

25.

26.

Reconstruction of Anglo-Irish Outport Society," Newfoundland Quarterly 70, no. i (1973): 17. W. M. Williams, A West Country Village, Asbworthy: Family, Kinship and Land (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. xix. Raoul Andersen and R. Geoffrey Stiles, "Resource Management and Spatial Competition in Newfoundland Fishing: An Exploratory Essay," in Seafarer and Community: Towards a Social Understanding of Seafaring, ed. Peter H. Fricke (London: Croom Helm, 1973), p. 45. Bonnie J. McCay and James M. Acheson, "Human Ecology of the Commons," in The Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources, ed. McCay and Acheson (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987), p. 16. S. V. Ciriacy-Wantrup and Richard C. Bishop, '"Common Property' as a Concept in Natural Resources Policy," Natural Resources Journal

15 (i975): 7'727. For the connection between nostalgia and homesickness, see Jean Starobinski, "The Idea of Nostalgia," Diogenes 54 (1966): 84-86. 28. Rev. George H. Earle, "I Remember Life in the Outports," in The Book of Newfoundland, ed. Joseph R. Smallwood (St. John's: Newfoundland Book Publishers, 1967), vol. 4, p. 236; my emphasis. 29. Peter Neary, '"Boots and All': Newfoundland Today," Canadian Forum 53, no. 638 (March 1974): 14; Peter Neary, "'Traditional' and 'Modern' Elements in the Social and Economic History of Bell Island and Conception Bay," Canadian Historical Association Historical Papers '973 (i97'4): 105-36. 30. For the commission of government period of Newfoundland's history, see Peter Neary, Newfoundland in the North Atlantic World, 1020-1949 (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988), chaps. 3 and 4. 3 1 . 1 take the expression "mindless vulgarity" to characterize North American mass culture from Patrick O'Flaherty's short story "The Prophet," which appears in his collection Summer of the Greater Yellowlegs (St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1987), p. 54. 32. Quoted in Walter W. Peddle, The Traditional Furniture of Outport Newfoundland (St. John's: Cuff Publications, 1983), p. 21. 3 3. A. Brian Peckford, The Past in the Present: A Personal Perspective on Newfoundland's Future (St. John's: Cuff Publications, 1983), p. 50. 34. Sandra Gwyn, "The Newfoundland Renaissance," Saturday Night 91, no. 2 (April 1976): 40. 35. My discussion of resettlement is based on Michael Staveley, "Resettlement and Centralisation in Newfoundland," in Policies of Population Redistribution, ed. John W. Webb, Arvo Naukkarinen, and Leszek A. Kosinski (Oulu: Geographical Society of Northern Finland for the International Geographical Union Commission on Population Geography, 1981), pp. 159-67. 304

NOTES TO PAGES 17-20

36. Noel Iverson and D. Ralph Matthews, Communities in Decline: An Examination of Household Resettlement in Newfoundland, Social and Economic Studies, no. 6 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1968), p. 136. 37. Simani, "Outport People," Outport People, SD 075, 1984. 38. Leading Newfoundland artists who have experienced resettlement or have dealt with the theme include Al Pittman, with "St. Leonard's Revisited," in his Once When I Was Drowning (St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1978), p. 20; Gordon Pinsent, John and the Missus (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974); and Pat and Joe Byrne with Baxter Wareham, "The Government Game," Towards the Sunset, Pigeon Inlet Records PIP 7318. 39. This process of associating certain things with past stages of culture is discussed in Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin, "Tradition, Genuine or Spurious," Journal of American Folklore 97 (1984): 273—90; Jocelyn S. Linnekin, "Defining Tradition: Variations on the Hawaiian Identity," American Ethnologist 10 (1983): 241-52; Richard Handler, "In Search of the Folk Society: Nationalism and Folklore Studies in Quebec," Culture 3, no. i (1983): 103-14; and Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1-14. 40. F. Lin Jackson, "Local Communities and the Culture-Vultures," Newfoundland Quarterly 83, no. 3 (1986): 7-10. 41. Herbert Halpert and Neil V. Rosenberg, "Folklore Work at Memorial University," Canadian Forum 53, no. 638 (March 1974): 31. 42. See, for example, Frances Ennis et al., A Way of Life: Traditional Skills of Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John's: Jesperson Press, 1986); most contributors to this volume are either St. John's urbanites or nonNewfoundlanders. 43. Kenneth Peacock, Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, Bulletin 197, Anthropological Series, no. 65 (Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1965), vol. i, p.xix. 44. Patrick O'Flaherty's comments deal with the writings of Art Scammell, author of the popular folk-song "Squid-Jiggin' Ground"; see O'Flaherty's The Rock Observed: Studies in the Literature of Newfoundland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), p. 154. 45. Shannie Duff, "The Newfoundland Historic Trust," Canadian Antiques Collector 10, no. 2 (1975): 75; my emphasis. 46. Patrick O'Flaherty, "Looking Backwards: The Milieu of the Old Newfoundland Outports," in The Blasty Bough, ed. Clyde Rose (St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1976), p. 155; see also F. Lin Jackson, Surviving Confederation (St. John's: Cuff Publications, 1986), p. 33. 47. O'Flaherty, "Looking Backwards," p. 158. 305

NOTES TO PAGES 2 1 - 2 4

48. Clive Marin, Fogo Island (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1974), p. 37. 49. Priscilla Copeland Reining, Introduction to Village Viability in Contemporary Society, ed. Priscilla Copeland Reining and Barbara Lenkerd, American Association for the Advancement of Science Selected Symposium no. 34 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, for AAAS, 1980), p. 6. Chapter Two: Places in History

1. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 42. 2. Ibid., p. 240. 3. Unless otherwise noted, the documentary sources used in this chapter are Newfoundland Sessions Court Records, Ferryland, 1789-94, 1786-1812, 1829-38, 1839-56, 1866-69, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's; Sessions Court Records, Ferryland, 1774-86 and 1789-96, A. C. Hunter Library, Arts and Culture Centre, St. John's; Roman Catholic Parish Register, Renews, 1841-1920, 1857, 1919, PANL; and Church of England Parish Register, Petty Harbour, 1826-1911, PANL. 4. Peter Edward Pope, "Ceramics from Seventeenth Century Ferryland, Newfoundland (CgAf-2, Locus B)" (master's thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1986). 5. For Baltimore's colony, see Raymond J. Lahey, "Avalon: Lord Baltimore's Colony in Newfoundland," in Early European Settlement and Exploitation in Atlantic Canada: Selected Papers, ed. George M. Story (St. John's: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1982), pp. 11537; Thomas M. Coakley, "George Calvert and Newfoundland," Maryland Historical Magazine 71 (1976): 1-18; and Raymond J. Lahey, "The Role of Religion in Lord Baltimore's Colonial Enterprise," Maryland Historical Magazine 72 (1977): 492-511. 6. Calvert's name was changed in 1922. All place-names in this book follow the spellings found in Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, Gazetteer of Canada: Newfoundland, 2d ed. (Ottawa: Energy, Mines and Resources Canada, 1983), unless there is an otherwise obvious local usage. 7. Gillian T. Cell, ed., Newfoundland Discovered: English Attempts at Colonisation, 1610-1630, Hakluyt Society Publications, 2d ser., vol. 160 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1982), p. 301. 8. For Yonge's comments and drawing, see James Yonge, The Journal of James Yonge (164.7-1721), Plymouth Surgeon, ed. F. N. L. Poynter (London: Longmans, 1963), plate opposite p. 81. 9. W. Gordon Handcock, "An Historical Geography of the Origins of English Settlement in Newfoundland: A Study of the Migration Process" (Ph.D. diss., University of Birmingham, 1979), p. 47; W. Gordon Handcock, comp., Selected Newfoundland Extracts, 1677-1738, from 306

NOTES TO PAGES 24-32

10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

307

Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and the West Indies (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1860-1939), 1697; W. Gordon Handcock, So Longe as There Comes Noe Women: Origins of English Settlement in Newfoundland, Newfoundland History Series (St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1989), p. 43; Great Britain, Colonial Office Correspondence, 194/4, 1708, PANL, p. 253.1 would like to thank Gordon Handcock for helping me with this data. Edward Chappell, Voyage of His Majesty's Ship Rosamond to Newfoundland and the Southern Coast of Labrador (London: Mawman, 1818), pp. 217-18. Samuel Schrager, "What Is Social in Oral History?" International Journal of Oral History 4, no. 2 (1983): 78. Letter Book of the Colonial Secretary's Office, vol. 3, 1759-65, p. 352, vol. 5, 1771-74, p. 180, PANL; Newfoundland Sessions Court Records, Ferryland, 1789-94, case of Sept. 15, 1770, and case of Sept. 20, 1790, PANL; Cyril J. Byrne, ed., Gentlemen-Bishops and Faction Fighters: The Letters of Bishops O'Donel, Lambert, Scallan and Other Irish Missionaries (St. John's: Jesperson Press, 1984), pp. 62-64, 90-91; John J. Mannion, card files. "Death at Caplin Bay on December 2oth, Joseph Sullivan, a native of County Wexford, Ireland, aged 76 years, 59 of which he spent in this country," Evening Telegram, Dec. 26, 1888. The Pole Papers for August 1800 list a John and a Darby Sullivan, both working as fishermen (PANL). See John J. Mannion, Introduction to The Peopling of Newfoundland: Essays in Historical Geography, Social and Economic Papers, no. 8 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1977), 7, 10; George Casey, "Irish Culture in Newfoundland," in Talamh an Else: Canadian and Irish Essays, ed. Cyril J. Byrne and Margaret Harry (Halifax: Nimbus, 1986), 211-12. See Keith Matthews, "Historical Fence Building: A Critique of the Historiography of Newfoundland," Newfoundland Quarterly 74, no. i (1978): 21-30. See, for example, Moses Harvey, Text-Book of Newfoundland History for the Use of Schools and Academies, 2d ed. (London: Collins, 1890), 54, 67-68, 71; and E. M. Manuel, Our Country, Wheaton's Newfoundland Series, Grade 5 (Exeter, Devonshire: Wheaton, 1946), p. 11. Frances B. BrifFett, More Stories of Newfoundland (Toronto: Dent, 1939), pp. 42-45. C. Grant Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland: A Geographer's Perspective, Carleton Library, no. 99 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976), p. 10. Newfoundland, Department of the Colonial Secretary, Registry of

NOTES TO PAGES 32-50

Grants, vol. i, 1831-1930, p. 7, Crown Lands Division, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Howley Building, St. John's. 21. Shane O'Dea, "Newfoundland Architecture, Folk Culture, and Society," paper presented to the Folklore Society, Department of Folklore, Memorial University, Feb. 12, 1986, p. 6; see also Shane O'Dea, "The St. John's Heritage Conservation Area: The Politics of Preservation," paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians, Victoria, B.C., April 1981. 22. Christopher A. Sharpe, Heritage Conservation and Development Control in a Speculative Environment: The Case of St. John's, Research and Policy Papers, no. 4 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1986), p. 33; see also PP-33~37>47Chapter Three: Landscapes and Gender

1. Aaron Thomas, The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas: Able Seaman in H.M.S. Boston, ed. Jean M. Murray (Don Mills, Ont.: Longmans Canada, 1968), p. 155. 2. See Yi-Fu Tuan, "Images and Mental Maps," Annals of the American Association of Geographers 65 (1975): 210; Roger M. Downs and David Stea, Maps in Minds: Reflections on Cognitive Mapping (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 7, 30-60. 3. Edward Chappell, Voyage of His Majesty's Ship Rosamond to Newfoundland and the Southern Coast of Labrador (London: Mawman, 1818), pp. 222-23. 4. E. R. Seary, Place Names of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), pp. 283-84. 5. Lewis A. Anspach, A History of the Island of Newfoundland (London, 1819), p. xxiii. 6. Frank Galgay et al., A Pilgrimage of Faith: A History of the Southern Shore from Bay Bulls to St. Shott's (St. John's: Cuff Publications, 1983), p. 8. 7. For walking as a spatial practice, see Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 91-110. 8. Yi-Fu Tuan, "Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective," Progress in Geography 6 (1974): 220. 9. Newfoundland, Court of Sessions, Ferryland, 1839-56, Voters List for 1848, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's. 10. Seary, Place Names, p. 192. 11. Q68-21, pp. 2-4, Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive, St. John's. 308

NOTES TO PAGES 54-81

12. Mr. Vince claimed that the song about Shoal Bay first appeared in the Gerald S. Doyle Songbook; none of the editions include it. 13. Versions in the MUNFLA include 68-25, pp. 183-84. 14. Jacqueline Simpson, "Beyond Etiology: Interpreting Local Legends," Fabula 24 (1984): 223-32. 15. 68-16, pp. 59-60, MUNFLA. 16. Seary, Place Names; Newfoundland, Court of Sessions, Ferryland, Voters Lists, 1840-56, PANL; Thomas, Newfoundland Journal; Edmond Scott Hylton, "A Plan of Cape Broil, Capeling Bay, and Ferryland Harbour," Sept. 28, 1752, MS, PANL. 17. W. Lloyd Warner, The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans, Yankee City Series, no. 5 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 319. 18. Anthony P. Cohen, "Belonging: The Experience of Culture," in Belonging: Identity and Social Organisation in British Rural Cultures, Social and Economic Papers, no. 11 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1982), p. 7. 19. See, for example, Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, "Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview," in Woman, Culture, and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 17-42, especially p. 31; Pierre Bourdieu, "The Berber House," in Rules and Meanings, ed. Mary Douglas (Baltimore: Penguin, 1973), pp. 103-4; John Forrest, Lord Fm Coming Home: Everyday Aesthetics in Tidewater North Carolina (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 59. 20. Dona Lee Davis, Blood and Nerves: An Ethnographic Focus on Menopause, Social and Economic Studies, no. 28 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1983), pp. 72, 101-2. 21. Hilda Chaulk Murray, More than Fifty Percent: Woman's Life in a Newfoundland Outport, 1000—1950, Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Publications Monograph Series, no. 2 (St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1979), pp. 34, 110-11. 22. Greta Hussey, Our Life in Lear's Room, Labrador, ed. Susan Shiner (Port-de-Grave, Nfld.: author, 1981), p. 13. 23. Elizabeth C. Sellars, "Aspects of the Traditional Life of French Newfoundlanders of Black Duck Brook (L'Anse aux Canards, Port-auPort, Newfoundland) with Special Emphasis on the Role of Women" (master's thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1978), pp. 103-4. 24. See Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 68; and Bonnie Loyd, "Women, Home and Status," in Housing and Identity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. James S. Duncan (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), pp. 187-88. 309

NOTES TO PAGES 82-97

25. The typical Newfoundland garden is described by Ray Guy in You May Know Them as Sea Urchins, Ma'am, ed. Eric Norman (Portugal Cove, Nfld.: Breakwater Books, 1975), pp. 5-6; for a general introduction to flower gardening traditions in Newfoundland, see Penelope Houlden, "The Expression of Tradition: Perennial Gardening in St. John's, Newfoundland" (master's thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1985). 26. W. Gordon Handcock, comp., Selected Newfoundland Extracts, 16771738, from Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and the West Indies (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1860-1939), 1702, p. 724. 27. James C. Faris, Cat Harbour: A Newfoundland Fishing Settlement, Social and Economic Studies, no. 3 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1972), p. 72. 28. James Deetz discusses additive and subtractive acts as they apply to artifacts in Invitation to Archaeology (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1967), pp. 48-49. 29. For criticisms of connecting male with public and female with private space, see Renee Hirschon, "Essential Objects and the Sacred: Interior and Exterior Space in an Urban Greek Locality," in Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps, ed. Shirley Ardener (London: Groom Helm, 1981), pp. 90-91. 30. See Marilyn Porter, "'She Was Skipper of the Shore-Crew': Notes on the History of the Sexual Division of Labour in Newfoundland," Labour/Le travail 15 (1985): 119; for the Newfoundland kitchen as the most public of community spaces, see Gerald L. Pocius, "Privacy and Architecture: A Newfoundland Example," in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, III, ed. Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, for the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1989), p. 246. Chapter Four: Property and Work

1. Surrogate Court, Ferryland, 1784, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's. Head is listed as being a servant of Matthew Morry and Company in 1800; see Pole Papers, 1800, PANL. 2. Surrogate Court, Ferryland, Sept. 10, 1773, p. 26. 3. Morry Papers, PANL. 4. David B. Quinn and Neil M. Cheshire, The New Found Land of Stephen Parmenius: The Life and Writings of a Hungarian Poet Drowned on a Voyage from Newfoundland, 1583 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), p. 54. 5. Alan F. Williams, Father Eaudoin's War: D'Iberville's Campaigns in Acadia and Newfoundland, 1696, 1697 (St. John's: Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1987), p. 65. 310

NOTES TO PAGES 97-104

6. Morry Papers. 7. Capt. Griffith Williams, An Account of the Island of Newfoundland (London: Thomas Cole, 1765), p. 16. 8. Alexander Campbell McEwen, "Land Titles in Newfoundland," Canadian Surveyor 31 (1977): 154-55. 9. Quoted in D. W. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland from the English, Colonial and Foreign Records (1895; rpt. Belleville, Ont.: Mika, 1972), p. 427. ro. PennelPs survey may be the "Survey of Calve it/Caplin Bay," Registry of Grants, available at Crown Lands Division, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Howley Building, St. John's; there are several inaccuracies in this survey, perhaps explained by lack of cooperation from residents who resisted his attempt to regularize land boundaries. 11. See Robert McC. Netting, "Territory, Property, and Tenure," in Behavioral and Social Science Research: A National Resource, ed. Robert McC. Adams, Neil J. Smelser, and Donald J. Treiman (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1982), p. 491. 12. McEwen, "Land Titles," 156. 13. Carter Papers, P3/B/2I, PANL. 14. Quoted in Alexander Campbell McEwen, "Newfoundland Law of Real Property: The Origin and Development of Land Ownership" (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1978), p. 101.1 would like to thank Melvin Baker for bringing this work to my attention and lending me his copy. 15. Geographic Index to Crown Lands, vol. i, 1831-1930, pp. 7-8, Crown Lands Division, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Howley Building, St. John's. 16. Geographic Index to Crown Lands. 17. Census of1801 (St. John's: J. W. Withers, 1893), p. 383. 18. Journal of the House of Assembly (St. John's: Morning Chronicle, 1871), pp. 478-98. 19. The average holding in Rowley, Massachusetts, for example, was twenty to thirty acres, and in Hingham, Massachusetts, twenty-two and one-half acres; see David Grayson Allen, In English Ways: The Movement of Societies and the Transferal of English Local Law and Custom to Massachusetts Bay in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1981), pp. 35-36, 65; see also David Grayson Allen, "'Vacuum Domicilium': The Social and Cultural Landscape of Seventeenth-Century New England," in New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century, vol. i, Introduction, Migration and Settlement, ed. Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982), p. 6. 311

NOTES TO PAGES 104-107

20. Allen, In English Ways, pp. 109-10; Kenneth A, Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 82-87; Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. 49-71; Sumner Chilton Powell, Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1963), pp. 92-101; William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), pp. 21, 74, 169; Henry Classic, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975), p. 133; Robert B. St. George, "A Retreat from the Wilderness: Pattern in the Domestic Environments of Southeastern New England, 1630-1730" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1982), p. 13. 21. Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), p. 67. 22. Cronon, Changes in the Land, p. 73; Allen, "'Vacuum Domicilium,'" p. i. 23. Royal Gazette, May 10, 1831. 24. A. Irving Hallowell, "The Nature and Function of Property as a Social Institution," in Culture and Experience (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955), pp. 238-39. 25. See Ruth Behar, "The Web of Use-Rights: Forms and Conceptions of Communal Property Among Leonese Labradores," Anthropological Quarterly 57 (1984): 71. 26. In Devon a hayfork was known as a prang or a pick; see Charles H. Laycock, "The Old Devon Farm-House: Its Exterior Aspect and General Construction," Devonshire Association Transactions 52 (1920): 189. 27. For Ireland, see Kevin Danaher, The Pleasant Land of Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 1970), pp. 14-19, and E. Estyn Evans, Irish Folk Ways (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), pp. 20-34; f°r tne West Country, see Christopher Taylor, Dorset, Making of the English Landscape (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), chaps. 3, 4, and 6. 28. Powell, Puritan Village, chap. 2. 29. See Gerald L. Pocius, Textile Traditions of Eastern Newfoundland, Mercury Series Paper no. 29 (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies, 1979), pp. 4-11. 30. Bawn is derived from an Irish word for a barren enclosed area; see Virginia M. Dillon, "The Anglo-Irish Element in the Speech of the Southern Shore of Newfoundland" (master's thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1968), p. 131. 31. "Enclosing the Commons," Evening Telegram, Aug. 2, 1989, p. 4. 32. For a discussion of this notion of allocative equity, see Stephen Gudeman, "Mapping Means," in Social Anthropology of Work, ed. 3 I2

NOTES TO PAGES I 07- I 36

33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

Sandra Wallman, Association of Social Anthropologists Monograph no. 19 (London: Academic Press, 1979), p. 236. 70-27, p. 3, Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive, St. John's. Evening Telegram, Dec. 26, 1889, p. i. 70-37, MSC 37, MUNFLA. Such public draws for trap berths were formalized by government fisheries regulations in 1919; see Kent O. Martin, "Play by the Rules or Don't Play at All: Space Division and Resource Allocation in a Rural Newfoundland Fishing Community," in North Atlantic Maritime Cultures: Anthropological Essays on Changing Adaptations, ed. Raoul Andersen, World Anthropology Series (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), pp. 281-82. For a discussion of trap-berth space in Newfoundland both as inherited and as annually allocated, see Raoul Andersen, "Public and Private Access Management in Newfoundland Fishing," in Andersen, ed., North Atlantic Maritime Cultures, pp. 310-13; for background to this issue, see Daniel E. Moerman, "Common Property and the Common Good: Ecological Factors Among Peasant and Tribal Fishermen," in The Fishing Culture of the World: Studies in Ethnology, Cultural Ecology and Folklore, ed. Bela Gunda (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1984), pp. 49-59. Chapter Five: Settlement Clusters to Visit

1. John R. Stilgoe, Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 47. 2. Susan Tax Freeman, Neighbors: The Social Contract in a Castilian Hamlet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 86. 3. Constantinos A. Doixiadis, "Ekistics, the Science of Human Settlements," Science 170 (1970): 393-94. 4. Newfoundland, Department of Colonial Secretary, Registry of Grants, "Survey of Calvert/Caplin Bay," Crown Lands Division, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Howley Building, St. John's. 5. Aaron Thomas, The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas: Able Seaman in H.M.S. Boston, ed. Jean M. Murray (Don Mills, Ont.: Longmans Canada, 1968), p. 77. 6. For comments on this pattern, see John J. Mannion, Irish Settlements in Eastern Canada: A Study of Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, University of Toronto Department of Geography Research Publication no. 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), PP- 5 I - 5 2 ; Jonn J. Mannion, Point Lance in Transition: The Transformation of a Newfoundland Outport (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976), pp. 25-29; Melvin M. Firestone, Brothers and Rivals: Patrilocality in 313

NOTES TO PAGES 142-165

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 314

Savage Cove, Social and Economic Studies, no. 5 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1967), p. 60; James C. Paris, Cat Harbour: A Newfoundland Fishing Settlement, Social and Economic Studies, no. 3 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1972), p. 55. Thomas F. Nemec points out that in St. Shotts, a community near Trepassey, 80 percent of the households conformed to this pattern; see his "'I Fish With My Brother': The Structure and Behaviour of Agnatic-Based Fishing Crews in a Newfoundland Irish Outport," in North Atlantic Fishermen: Anthropological Essays on Modern Fishing, ed. Raoul Andersen and Cato Wadel, Social and Economic Papers, no. 5 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1972), p. 12. Yi-Fu Tuan, Segmented Worlds and Self: Group Life and Individual Consciousness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 198 2); James S. Duncan, "From Container of Women to Status Symbol: The Impact of Social Structure on the Meaning of the House," in Housing and Identity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Duncan (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), p. 56. See David G. Alexander, The Decay of Trade: An Economic History of the Newfoundland Saltfish Trade, 1935-196$, Social and Economic Studies, no. 19 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1977). Clifford E. Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), p. 42. For "access rituals," see Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New York: Harper, 1971), pp. 79-94; see also Robert B. St. George, "The Stanley-Lake Barn in Topsfield, Massachusetts: Some Comments on Agricultural Buildings in Early New England," in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, ed. Camille Wells (Annapolis, Md.: Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1982), p. 11. This notion was mentioned with regard to an Irish community; see Conrad M. Arensberg, The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (1937; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1959), p. i. See Renee Hirschon, "Essential Objects and the Sacred: Interior and Exterior Space in an Urban Greek Locality," in Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps, ed. Shirley Ardener (London: Groom Helm, 1981), p. 73. The road as a space for courtship is discussed in Aubrey M. Tizzard, On Sloping Ground: Reminiscences of Outport Life in Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland, ed. J. D. A. Widdowson, Canada's Atlantic Folklore-Folklife Series (1979; rpt. St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1984), pp. 108-15. Cato Wadel, "The Hidden Work of Everyday Life," in Social AnthroNOTES TO PAGES 1 6 7 - 1 7 8

15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24. 315

pology of Work, ed. Sandra Wallman, Association of Social Anthropologists Monograph no. 19 (London: Academic Press, 1979), p. 374. These categories of visits come from Daniela Weinberg, Peasant Wisdom: Cultural Adaptation in a Swiss Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 55. For the visual images of death found in Calvert bedrooms, see Gerald L. Pocius, "Holy Pictures in Newfoundland Houses: Visual Codes for Secular and Supernatural Relationships," in Media Sense: The Folklore-Popular Culture Continuum, ed. Peter Narvaez and Martin Laba (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1986), pp. 134, 142. 75-16, pp. 21-22, Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive, St. John's. Sir Richard Bonycastle, Newfoundland in 1842: A Sequel to "The Canadas in 1841" 2 vols. (London: H. Colburn, 1842), vol. 2, pp. 127-28. Like many aspects of what is considered Irish culture in Calvert, this toast most likely originated in the United States. The toast is the chorus of a song entitled "Irishman's Toast"; see Wehman's Irish Song Book No. i: Containing 138 of the Most Popular, Comic and Sentimental Irish Songs (New York: Wehman Brothers, 1887), p. 34. See Gillian T. Cell, ed., Newfoundland Discovered: English Attempts at Colonisation, 1610-1630, Hakluyt Society Publications, 2d ser., vol. 160 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1982), pp. 197, 201, 255, 290; and Gillian T. Cell, English Enterprise in Newfoundland, 1577-1600 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), p. 92. See J. C. Drummond and Anne Wilbraham, The Englishman's Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet (London: Cape, 1939), pp. 129, 141, 242-44; and William H. Ukers, The Romance of Tea: An Outline History of Tea and Tea-Drinking Through Sixteen Hundred Years (New York: Knopf, 1936), pp. 80-83. Lewis A. Anspach, A History of the Island of Newfoundland (London, 1819), p. 465. This was the pattern throughout North America; see Rodris Roth, Tea Drinking in i8th-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage, Museum of History and Technology Bulletin no. 225 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1961), p. 66. John J. Mannion, "The Waterford Merchants and the IrishNewfoundland Provisions Trade, 1770-1820," in Negoce et Industrie en France et en Irlande aux XVIIIe etXIXe siecles, ed. L. M. Cullen and P. Butel, Actes du Colloque Franco-Irlandais d'Histoire, Bordeaux, May 1978 (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1980), p. 31; C. Grant Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland: A Geographer's Perspective, Carleton Library, no. 99 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976), pp. 101-4, II7~2°) 209-12. Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland, p. 155. NOTES TO PAGES 1 7 9 - 1 8 8

25. Ferryland, Surrogate Court, 1784, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's. 26. Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660-1760 (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 157. 27. These books were The New Cream of the West Cook Book and Grace General Hospital Alumni: Our Favourite Recipes. Most cookbooks owned and used in Newfoundland have a major emphasis on baked goods; see Pamela J. Gray, "Traditional Newfoundland Foodways: Origin, Adaptation and Change" (master's thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1977), p. 33. 28. MacEdward Leach commented on "the almost continuous state of partial inebriation of his Newfoundland informants during the period between Christmas and Twelfth Night; at such times they performed songs and stories never heard at other times of the year." He was probably referring to his fieldwork on the Southern Shore. His remarks appear in Kenneth S. Goldstein, A Guide for Field Workers in Folklore (Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore Associates, 1964), p. 172. Christmas drinking in Newfoundland is also discussed in Louis J. Chiaramonte, "Mumming in 'Deep Harbour': Aspects of Social Organization in Mumming and Drinking," in Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland: Essays in Anthropology, Folklore, and History, ed. Herbert Halpert and George M. Story (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), pp. 84-88. Chapter Six: Houses

1. See Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 46-70. 2. Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture, Foundations of Cultural Geography Series (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 2; similar sentiments can be found in Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 355. A recent work points out that "in practice a great many scholars, when they speak of the vernacular, mean the old, the rural, and the domestic"; see Introduction to Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, ed. Dell Upton and John M. Vlach (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), p. xv. Architectural reformers such as A. J. Downing, and Frank Lloyd Wright after him, argued that to express the purity of local forms, architects—like vernacular builders—should use only local materials; see John William Ward, "The Politics of Design," in Who Designs America? The American Civilization Conference at Princeton, ed. Laurence B. Holland, Princeton Studies in American Civilization, no. 6 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1966), pp. 55-57. Obviously, the most recent work by North American scholars has begun to examine more popular mass316

NOTES TO PAGES 1 8 8 - 1 9 8

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 317

produced forms; see the essays by Wallis, Martin, Wolfe and Garfield, Goat, and Simpson in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, III, ed. Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, for the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1989). See Dell Upton, "Pattern Books and Professionalization: Aspects of the Transformation of Domestic Architecture in America, 18001860," Wintenhur Portfolio 19(1984): 107-50. Shane O'Dea, "The Tilt: Vertical-Log Construction in Newfoundland," paper presented at the annual meeting of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Sturbridge Village, Mass., April 1981, and published with additions and changes in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, ed. Camille Wells (Annapolis, Md.: Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1982), pp. 55-64. The classic types of Irish vernacular houses generally recorded by researchers are reviewed in John J. Mannion, Irish Settlements in Eastern Canada: A Study of Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, University of Toronto Department of Geography Research Publication no. 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), pp. 138-43. Recent fieldwork indicates a more diverse range of types; see, for example, Alan Gailey, "Some Developments and Adaptations of Traditional House Types," in Folk and Farm: Essays in Honour of A. T. Lucas, ed. Caoimhin O Danachair (Dublin: Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1976), pp. 54-71; Henry Classic, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community, Publications of the American Folklore Society, n.s. 4 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), pp. 379-424, 589-601. Classic statements on English vernacular architecture include M. W. Barley, The English Farmhouse and Cottage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961); Eric Mercer, English Vernacular Houses: A Study of Traditional Farmhouses and Cottages (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1975). The most recent important work on West Country architecture, which questions many of the earlier assumptions, is that of Robert Machin; see "The Great Rebuilding: A Reassessment," Past and Present no. 77 (1977): 33-56, and The Houses ofYetminster (Bristol: Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of Bristol, 1978). See Gerald L. Pocius, "Architecture on Newfoundland's Southern Shore: Diversity and the Emergence of New World Forms," in Perspectives, ed. Wells, pp. 217-32. For comments on early deforestation in the Ferryland area, see Gillian T. Cell, ed., Newfoundland Discovered: English Attempts at Colonisation, 1610-1630, Hakluyt Society Publications, 2d ser., vol. 160 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1982), p. 202. See Gary Carson et al., "Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies," Wintenhur Portfolio 16(1981): 135-96. The linhay was originally a West Country outbuilding; see N. W. NOTES TO PAGES 1 9 8 - 2 0 1

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

318

Alcock, "Devonshire Linhays: A Vernacular Tradition," Devonshire Association Transactions 95 (1963): 117-30; see also Barley, English Farmhouse and Cottage, p. 222. Great Britain, Colonial Office Correspondence, Newfoundland, Series 194, vol. 56, 1815, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's. Pocius, "Architecture on Newfoundland's Southern Shore," p. 220. For the relationship of this Sweetland house to West Country antecedents, see J. T. Smith, "The Eighteenth Century English Background to Newfoundland Houses," in Dimensions of Canadian Architecture, ed. Shane O'Dea and Gerald L. Pocius, Selected Papers, vol. 6 (Ottawa: Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, 1984), PP- 34-43Peter Ennals and Deryck Holdsworth, "Vernacular Architecture and the Cultural Landscape of the Maritime Provinces: A Reconnaissance," Acadiensis 10, no. 2 (1981): 91-94. For New England boats in Ferryland in 1707, see W. Gordon Handcock, comp., Selected Newfoundland Extracts, 1677-1738, from Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and the West Indies (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1860-1939), 1707^.609. A good introduction to the Second Empire style, with specific examples of the range of Newfoundland forms, is Christina Cameron and Janet Wright, Second Empire Style in Canadian Architecture, Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History, no. 24 (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1980), especially illustrations 37, 82, 83, 95, and 96. For St. John's as a center of this important style, see Shane O'Dea, The Domestic Architecture of Old St. John's, Newfoundland Historical Society Pamphlet no. 2 (St. John's: Newfoundland Historical Society, 1974), pp. 16-19. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, House Designs/Modeles de maisons (Ottawa: CMHC, 1972). The increasing trend toward spatial compartmentalization in house interiors in other regions is discussed in Yi-Fu Tuan, Segmented Worlds and Self: Group Life and Individual Consciousness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), chap. 4; and Charles E. Martin, Hollybush: Folk Building and Social Change in an Appalachian Community (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), p. 94. Amos Rapoport, "Vernacular Architecture and the Cultural Determinants of Form," in Buildings and Society: Essays on the Social Development of the Built Environment, ed. Anthony D. King (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 293.

NOTES TO PAGES 204-226

Chapter Seven: Interiors and Exteriors

1. For the typical assumptions about this interior-exterior dichotomy, see John Forrest, Lord Fm Coming Home: Everyday Aesthetics in Tidewater North Carolina (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 62; Perla Korosec-Serfaty, "Experience and Use of the Dwelling," in Home Environments, ed. Irwin Altman and Carol M. Werner, Human Behavior and Environment, Advances in Theory and Research, vol. 8 (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), pp. 72-73. 2. Kevin Lynch, What Time Is This Place? (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), p. 40; see also Amos Rapoport, "Environment and People," in Australia as Human Setting (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972), p. 15; Roland Bardies, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), p. no; and Amos Rapoport, "The Ecology of Housing," Ecologist 3 (1973): 12. 3. See Melvin M. Firestone, Brothers and Rivals: Patrilocality in Savage Cove, Social and Economic Studies, no. 5 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1967), p. 66. 4. John C. Belcher and Pablo B. Vazquez-Calcerrada, "A Cross-Cultural Approach to the Social Functions of Housing," Journal of Marriage and the Family 34 (1972): 751; Yi-Fu Tuan, "Moral Ambiguity in Architecture," Landscape 27, no. 3 (1983): 14-15. 5. For an example of nineteenth-century imported chairs in the area, see Goodridge Ledger, Ferryland, P7/A/I9, McBride and Kerr, Jan. 20, 1841, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's; for a general discussion of imported furniture in Newfoundland, including chairs, see Gerald L. Pocius, "Gossip, Rhetoric, and Objects: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Newfoundland Furniture," in Perspectives on American Furniture, ed. Gerald W. R. Ward (New York: Norton, for Winterthur Museum, 1988), pp. 311-14. 6. Robert Steele, A Tour Through Pan of the Atlantic (London: Stackdale, 1810), p. 141. 7. See Gerald L. Pocius, "Hooked Rugs in Newfoundland: The Representation of Social Structure in Design," Journal of American Folklore 92 (1979): 273-84. 8. For an expanded discussion of the use of pictures in the Newfoundland home, see Gerald L. Pocius, "Holy Pictures in Newfoundland Houses: Visual Codes for Secular and Supernatural Relationships," in Media Sense: The Folklore-Popular Culture Continuum, ed. Peter Narvaez and Martin Laba (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1986), pp. 124-48. 9. Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), p. 233. 319

NOTES TO PAGES 227-237

10. Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life with Special Reference to Publications and Entertainment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), pp. 118-19. 11. John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland, Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), p. 74; Roderick J. Lawrence, "Domestic Space and Society: A CrossCultural Study," Comparative Studies in Science and History 24 (1982): 122. 12. Quoted in Hilda Chaulk Murray, More than Fifty Percent: Woman's Life in a Newfoundland Outport, 1900-1950, Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Publications Monograph Series, no. 2 (St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1979), p. 108. 13. Henry Classic, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community, Publications of the American Folklore Society, n.s. 4 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), p. 394. 14. See Gerald L. Pocius, "Rebuildings on Newfoundland's Southern Shore: Cut-Down Roofs, Raised Hopes," Material Culture 19 (1987): 67-83. 15. John J. Mannion, Irish Settlements in Eastern Canada: A Study of Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, University of Toronto Department of Geography Research Publication no. 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), pp. 153-5516. John Szwed, Private Cultures and Public Imagery: Interpersonal Relations in a Newfoundland Peasant Society, Social and Economic Studies, no. 2 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1966), p. 19. 17. For comments on this use, see Clare Cooper, "The House as Symbol of the Self," in Designing for Human Behavior: Architecture and the Behavioral Sciences, ed. Jon Lang, Charles Burnette, and Walter Moleski (Stroudsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, 1974), P- J 355 an(^ Edward O. Laumann and James S. House, "Living Room Styles and Social Attributes: The Patterning of Material Artifacts in a Modern Urban Community," Sociology and Social Research 54 (1969-70): 323. 18. Garry Cranford with Raymond Hillier, Potheads and Drum Hoops: A Folk-History of New Harbour, Trinity Bay (St. John's: Cuff Publications, 1983), p. 37. 19. Harvey Green, The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America (New York: Pantheon, 1983), p. 93. 20. William B. Hansen and Irwin Altman, "Decorating Personal Places: A Descriptive Analysis," Environment and Behavior 8 (1976): 491—95. 21. Albert E. Scheflen with Norman Ashcraft, Human Territories: How We Behave in Space-Time (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 177. 22. Cf. Antonius C. G. M. Robben, "Habits of the Home: Spatial He320

NOTES TO PAGES 238-254

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

gemony and the Structuration of House and Society in Brazil," American Anthropologist 91 (1989): 572. Part of my discussion of yards appeared in a different form as "Newfoundland Yard Art," in Flights of Fancy: Newfoundland Yard An, comp. Patricia Grattan (St. John's: Memorial University Art Gallery, 1983), pp. 6-11. See also Fred E. H. Schroeder, Outlaw Aesthetics: Arts and the Public Mind (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1977), chap. 6. Geoffrey Grigson, "The Room Outdoors," Landscape 4, no. 2 (195455): 27-28;}. B.Jackson, "Ghosts at the Door," Landscape i, no. 2 (1951-52): 5. The garage often fulfills a similar function in other areas of North America; see James Crockett, "The Great American Garage," Landscape 18, no. 2 (1969): 35. Helena Wordier, "How Does a Garden Grow? Primary Succession in New Tract Developments," Landscape 19, no. 3 (1975): 24; Milton B. Newton, Jr., "The Peasant Farm of St. Helena Parish, Louisiana: A Cultural Geography," (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1967), p. 50. Some writers deny this connection between parlor and yard; see, for example, Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander, Community and Privacy: Toward a New Architecture of Humanism (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1965), pp. 126-27. This blurring of the exterior-interior dichotomy through use of yard space is also found in urban areas; see, for example, Alice Gray Read, "Making a House a Home in a Philadelphia Neighborhood," in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, II, ed. Camille Wells (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, for the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1986), p. 195. This function of the yard as a public space that promotes sociability is quite different from other cultures; compare, for example, Roger D. Abrahams, "Symbolic Landscapes and Expressive Events," in The Man-of-Words in the West Indies: Performance and the Emergence of Creole Culture, Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), p. 135.

Conclusion: The Spaces Between Tradition and Modernity

i. F. Lin Jackson, Surviving Confederation (St. John's: Cuff Publications, 1986), p. 6; see also pp. 1-2, 4, 14, 33, 53. For the recent impact of tourism on local culture, see James Overton, "Promoting 'The Real Newfoundland': Culture as Tourist Commodity," Studies in Political Economy, no. 4 (1980): 115-37; and James Overton, "Coming Home: Nostalgia and Tourism in Newfoundland," Acadiensis 14, no. i (1984321

NOTES TO PAGES 254-274

85): 84-97- A recent song complains about the increasing interest of tourists in "authentic" local culture: So Newfies, make merry and tourists'll come see you, Take pictures and watch and say "Isn't that cute?" And then -when they're gone and it's back to the winter With the wind in your face and snow under your boot. See Jim Payne, "The 400 Year Celebrations," Canadian Folk Music Bulletin 18, no. i (1984): 9. 2. For a discussion of the notion of an ideology of traditionalism, see Samuel Coleman, "Is There Reason in Tradition?" in Politics and Experience: Essays Presented to Professor Michael Oakeshott on the Occasion of His Retirement, ed. Preston King and B. C. Parekh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 252. 3. For a discussion of the effects of illiteracy in Newfoundland, see David G. Alexander, "Literacy and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland," in Atlantic Canada and Confederation: Essays in Canadian Political Economy, comp. Eric W. Sager, Lewis R. Fischer, and Stuart O. Pierson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), pp. 110-43. 4. For typical statements, see Rev. George H. Earle, "I Remember Life in the Outports," Arthur R. Scammell, "Outport Memories," and John A. White, "Life Yesterday in the Outports," all in The Book of Newfoundland, ed. Joseph R. Smallwood (St. John's: Newfoundland Book Publishers, 1967), vol.4, PP- 2 33~37> 2 4°~44> 2 45~5 2 5. M. O. Morgan, "Excerpt from the President's Report," Morning Watch 2, no. i (1974): 3; Patrick O'Flaherty, "The Prophet," in Summer of the Greater Yellowlegs (St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1987), pp. 54-55; Marilyn Porter, "'Women and Old Boats': The Sexual Division of Labour in a Newfoundland Outport," in The Public and the Private, ed. Eva Gamarnikow, David H. J. Morgan, June Purvis, and Daphne Taylorson (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 105 n. 12. The cover article in the parish bulletin for St. Teresa's Roman Catholic Church in St. John's for Mar. 29, 1987, was "Is It Moral to Watch Soap Operas?" Obviously not only cultural nationalists are worried about this expressive form. 6. Gerald Thomas, "Other Worlds: Folktale and Soap Opera in Newfoundland's French Tradition," in Folklore Studies in Honour of Herbert Halpert: A Festschrift, ed. Kenneth S. Goldstein and Neil V. Rosenberg, Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Bibliographical and Special Series, no. 7 (St. John's: Department of Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1980), pp. 343-51; Rex Hemeon, "Bingo and Another World," title song, RCA KXLI0320, 1979. 7. See James Overton, "Towards a Critical Analysis of Neo-Nationalism 322

NOTES TO PAGES 274-276

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 323

in Newfoundland," in Underdevelopment and Social Movements in Atlantic Canada, ed. Robert J. Brym and R. James Sacouman (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1979), pp. 234-42. James S. Duncan, "The House as Symbol of Social Structure: Notes on the Language of Objects Among Collectivistic Groups," in Home Environments, ed. Irwin Altman and Carol M. Werner, Human Behavior and Environment, Advances in Theory and Research, vol. 8 (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), pp. 145-47. Introduction to John J. Poggie, Jr., and Robert N. Lynch, eds., Rethinking Modernization: Anthropological Perspectives (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974), p. 8. See Overton, "Towards a Critical Analysis," pp. 239-40; Peter Neary, "Democracy in Newfoundland: A Comment," Journal of Canadian Studies 4, no. i (1969): 43; Keith Matthews, "The Class of'32: St. John's Reformers on the Eve of Representative Government," Acadiensis 6, no. 2 (1977): 93; James.Overton, "Living Patriotism: Songs, Politics and Resources in Newfoundland," Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 12 (1985): 250-52; Richard J. Gwyn, Smallwood: The Unlikely Revolutionary (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), p. 207; Cynthia Lamson, "Bloody Decks and a Bumper Crop": The Rhetoric of Sealing Counter-Protest, Social and Economic Studies, no. 24 (St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1979), pp. i, 88; and Michael Staveley, "Newfoundland: Economy and Society at the Margin," in Heartland and Hinterland: A Geography of Canada, ed. L. D. McCann (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1982), pp. 218-19. Folklorists have been in the forefront of fostering this myth; see, for example, J. D. A. Widdowson, Introduction to Aubrey M. Tizzard, On Sloping Ground: Reminiscences of Outport Life in Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland, ed. J. D. A. Widdowson, Canada's Atlantic FolkloreFolklife Series (1979; rpt. St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1984), pp. xi—xii. Ralph Matthews, "There's No Better Place Than Here": Social Change in Three Newfoundland Communities (Toronto: Peter Martin, 1976), p. 28. Maud Karpeles, Folk Songs from Newfoundland (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 17. Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 68-69. David Lowenthal, "Age and Artifact: Dilemmas of Appreciation," in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, ed. D. W. Meinig (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 106-8. See, for example, Henrietta L. Moore, Space, Text and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 137, 144. Reinhard Bendix, "Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered," ComNOTES TO PAGES 276-283

18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

324

parative Studies in Society and History 9 (1966-67): 307-8; Robert H. Lauer, Perspectives on Social Change (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1973), p. r o i . On the idea of a lag between technological and cultural change, see William F. Ogburn, On Culture and Social Change: Selected Papers, ed. Otis Dudley Duncan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 90. See Ian Robertson, Sociology (New York: Worth, 1977), pp. 401-3. For comments on perceived characteristics of traditional and modern societies, see S. N. Eisenstadt, "Intellectuals and Tradition," Daedalus 101, no. 2 (1972): 2-3; S. N. Eisenstadt, "Post-Traditional Societies and the Continuity and Reconstruction of Tradition," Daedalus 102, no. i (1973): 1-2; S. N. Eisenstadt, Tradition, Change, and Modernity (New York: Wiley, 1973), p. 4; Bernard S. Cohn, "History and Anthropology: The State of Play," Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980): 205-6; George M. Foster, Traditional Cultures and the Impact of Technological Change (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), especially p. 62; Robert Redfield, The Primitive World and Its Transformations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953), cnaP- 2; and John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland, Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), pp. 4-5. L. E. Shiner, "Tradition/Modernity: An Ideal Type Gone Astray," Comparative Studies in Society and History 17 (1975): 249. Cohn, "History and Anthropology," 198-99. Eisenstadt, "Post-Traditional Societies," 1-4; one writer has argued: "Far from being a universally applicable schema for the study of the historical development of human societies, the nature of modernization theory reflects a particular phase in the development of a single society, that of the United States"; see Dean C. Tipps, "Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A Critical Perspective," in Comparative Modernization: A Reader, ed. Cyril E. Black (New York: Free Press, 1976), p. 73. Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 13. Henry Classic, "Folk Art," in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 271. Grant McCracken, "Clothing as Language: An Object Lesson in the Study of the Expressive Properties of Material Culture," in Material Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to Material Culture, ed. Barrie Reynolds and Margaret A. Stott (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), p. 122. Cf. Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 355. ComNOTES TO PAGES 283-285

28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

3 3.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38. 39.

325

menting on this attitude in a community on the southwest coast, Dona Davis noted: "Those who want to be different, or those with more urbane, material values simply leave the community, which continues a stringent leveling of those who remain"; see Dona Davis, "The Family and Social Change in the Newfoundland Outport," Culture 3, no. i (1983): 29. Matthews, "There's No Better Place Than Here," pp. 49, 120-39; for a critique of judging status by material and nonmaterial criteria, see Elvin Hatch, "Theories of Social Honor," American Anthropologist 91 (1989): 341-53. This is one of the themes of Patrick O'Flaherty's short story "The Prophet," pp. 54-55. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). Bendix, "Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered," 329. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, "Beyond Modernity and Tradition: Theoretical and Ideological Aspects of Comparative Social Sciences," in Tradition and Politics in South Asia, ed. R. J. Moore (New Delhi: Vikas, 1979), pp. 18, 24. David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), p. 13. These responses to the assumed disappearance of the typical folk society are discussed in Richard Bauman, "Folklore and the Forces of Modernity," Folklore Forum 16 (1983): 154. Williams, The Country and the City, p. 300. See also Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 4-5. Alan Lomax, Folk Song Style and Culture, American Association for the Advancement of Science Publication no. 88 (Washington, D.C.: AAAS, 1968), pp. 4-6; see also Alan Lomax, "Appeal for Cultural Equity," Journal of Communication 27, no. 2 (1977): 125-38. See Colin Scott, "Between 'Original Affluence' and Consumer Affluence: Domestic Production and Guaranteed Income for James Bay Cree Hunters," in Affluence and Cultural Survival, ed. Richard F. Salisbury and Elisabeth Tooker, 1981 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (Washington, D.C.: American Ethnological Society, 1984), pp. 74-86. See Cabot Martin, "Newfoundland's Case on Offshore Minerals: A Brief Outline," Ottawa Law Review 7 (1975): 54. Quoted in David G. Alexander, "Development and Dependence in Newfoundland, 1880-1970," in Atlantic Canada and Confederation, comp. Sager, Fischer, and Pierson, pp. 20-21. NOTES TO PAGES 285-293

40. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, p. 18. 41. Ibid., p. 23; for the leading proponent of the core-periphery argument concerning cultures like Calvert, see Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974). Wallerstein assumes that cultural forms are basically monolithic rather than dynamic and are based on Western urban models; for criticisms of his theories that parallel the findings of my own study, see Ulf Hannerz, "Culture Between Center and Periphery: Toward a Macroanthropology," Ethnos 54 (1989): 200-216. 42. Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine, 1972), pp. i, M. 3343. Marc Bloch, French Rural History: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics, trans. Janet Sondheimer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 242; V. G. Kiernan, "Private Property in History," in Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800, ed. Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 361. 44. See Staffan Burenstam Linder, The Harried Leisure Class (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 26, 95. 45. For examples of isolated fishing communities increasingly becoming quaint cultural enclaves in the face of modernization, see Carolyn Ellis, Fisher Folk: Two Communities on Chesapeake Bay (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), chap. 7. 46. Davis, "Family and Social Change," 29. 47. See Ellen Antler, "Women's Work in Newfoundland Fishing Families," Atlantis 2, no. 2, pt. 2 (1977): 112. 48. S. J. R. Noel, Politics in Newfoundland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), p. 274. 49. On the problem of defining cultural continuity, see James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), chap. 12; and M. Estellie Smith, "The Process of Sociocultural Continuity," Current Anthropology 23 (1982): 127-42.

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Ward, John William. "The Politics of Design." In Who Designs America? The American Civilization Conference at Princeton, ed. Laurence B. Holland, pp. 51 -85. Princeton Studies in American Civilization, no. 6. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1966. Warner, W. Lloyd. The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans. Yankee City Series, no. 5. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959. Weatherill, Lorna. Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660-1760. London: Routledge, 1988. Wehman's Irish Song Book No. i: Containing 138 of the Most Popular, Comic and Sentimental Irish Songs. New York: Wehman Brothers, 1887. Weinberg, Daniela. Peasant Wisdom: Cultural Adaptation in a Swiss Village. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Wenger, Mark R. "The Dining Room in Virginia." In Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, III, ed. Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman, pp. 149-59. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, for the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1989. Whisnant, David E. All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. White, John A. "Life Yesterday in the Outports." In The Book of Newfoundland, ed. Joseph R. Smallwood, vol. 4, pp. 245-52. St. John's: Newfoundland Book Publishers, 1967. White, Leslie A. The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1949. Williams, Alan F. Father Baudoin's War: DTberville's Campaigns in Acadia and Newfoundland, 1606, 1607. St. John's: Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1987. Williams, Capt. Griffith. An Account of the Island of Newfoundland. London: Thomas Cole, 1765. Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Williams, W. M. A West Country Village, Ashworthy: Family, Kinship and Land. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. Wolf, Eric. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Worther, Helena. "How Does a Garden Grow? Primary Succession in New Tract Developments." Landscape 19, no. 3 (1975): 14-27. Yonge, James. The Journal of James Yonge (1647-1721), Plymouth Surgeon. Ed. F. N. L. Poynter. London: Longmans, 1963.

344

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PUBLISHED SOURCES

Index Alberta, 172 Alcohol, 129, 153, 154, 181-82, 184—87, 188, 190—91, 196, 2$j, 299, 316 (n. 28) Aquaforte, 38, 127, 128, 130 Archaeology, 9-10 Architecture: stages, 29, 135-36, 156-70 passim, 777, 264; churches, 53, 182, 273; flakes, 102-3, '56-70 passim; stables, 119, 120—21, 125, 166, 264; cellars, 123, 124, 166, 257, 264; siting, 154-56, 161, 164-67, 172-80, 194; stores, 167, 176-77, 264; building materials, 200, 217, 220; exterior finish, 264-65. See also Bedrooms; Decor; Dining Rooms; Houses; Kitchens; Parlors Barney Gill, 78, 91 Barney Gill Path, 78 Bay Bulls, 63 Beach, the, 29, 33, 48-49, 73, 105, '45 Bedrooms, 7, 12, 180-81, 209, 221-26, 228, 250-52. See also Decor; Houses Belonging. See Place Beothuks, 15

Berry picking, 7, 127-30 Big Island, 50, 131, 143, 145, 146 Blow-Me-Down, 60, 70 Boland, France, 43, 54, 81, 123, 131 Boland, John, 91 Boland, Mary, 201, 203 Boland, Mike, 43, 145, 241 Boland, Will, 92 Bonavista Peninsula, 96, 238 Boston, 44, 172, 295. See also United States Branch, 37, 39 Brimstone Hill, 86 Bristol Cove, 84 Britain, 123, 196. See also England; West Country Broad Cove, 116, 777, 159 Brown, Rev. Timothy, 108 Calvert, Sir George (Lord Baltimore), 28-29, '88; as place name, 80 Campbell, John, 102 Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), 214-16, 217, 222-23, 226, 276, 289, 299. See also Houses Canning, Len, 53, 59-60, 87, 97, 106, 161, 170, 175, 176, 777, 201, 204,

345

2 I O , 211, 234, 2 6 1 — 6 3 , 2^4

INDEX

Canning, Marcella, 53, 59-60, 97, 1 3 3 , 176,

7/7, 183, 201,

204,

210,

211, 234, 261-63, 2 ^4 Cape Broyle, 3, 59, 71, 81, 83, 84, 115, 125, 129, 136, 144, 189 Cape Broyle Head, 60, 85, 131,

'37, '47 Cape St. Mary's, 36 Cappahayden, 115, 127 Cargo Wit, 91 Carter (Ferryland merchant), 104-5 Carter, Robert, 103 Carts, 112, 77?, 115, 120, 259, 260. See also Travel Cemeteries, 77, 90, 182-83 Chance Cove, 127 Christmas, 94, 96, 153-54, '86, 189-93, 2 38> 3'6 (n. 28) Church Cove, 50-51, 60, 81-83, 92; song about, 83 Church Cove Path, 79 Clancy, Patrick, 104, 757 Clancy, Tom, / / , 54, 111, 722, 129, 1^2, 157, 206, 246,

247,

207,

2 2 2 , 22], 241,

265

Cleaning, 94 Cognitive mapping, 61-80, 90; and reading landscape, 65; getting lost, 59-61, 85

Cold Harbour, 131, 146 Commons, 124-25, 133-34 Community subdivisions, 71-75 Conception Bay, 63, 206 Condon (narrative about), 81 Condon, Ernest, 146 Condon, Ronald, 35, 109, i n , 119, 120, 189 Condon's Gulch, 80 Confederation, 19-21, 241 Conway, Jeremiah, 81 Cook, Capt. James, 3 Costello (at Pond), 60 Costello, Fred, 222 Cross, the, 72, 75, 136 Culture: traditional, xiii, xv, 11-12, 15-16, 18-19, 283-85, 287-88; erosion of, 19-20, 21-22, 23, 273, 277, 287, 290-91, 293, 296-97; concepts of authentic, 21-24, 2 73~77> 290-91; and spatial values, 272-73, 294-99; core and peripheral, 293-94 Curran, Fred, 259 Daniel (Ferryland settler), 86 Daniel's Marsh, 60, 87 Death, 180-84. See also Cemeteries; Wakes Decor, /o, 77, 93, 94-97, 100, 2 33-35, 236, 237, 243, 244-49, 252, 270, 278, 279, 282, 288, 290. See also Bedrooms; Dining Rooms; Houses; Kitchens; Parlors Deep Cove, 89, 137, 160 Deep Cove Pond, 136 Delahunty (Ferryland settler), 105 Delahunty, Rich, 146 Devereaux, Johnny, 144 Devil, 85-86 Devils Kitchen, 81, 86 Devil's Staircase, 86

Devon, 86, 104, 124, 312 (n. 26). See also England; West Country Dining rooms, 221-22. See also Decor; Houses Dirty Marsh Path, 79 Doixiadis, Constantinos, 156 Dorset, 124, 199. See also England; West Country Dowlin, William, 188 Ecology, 156-61 Economics, 24-25, 278, 280, 282- 83, 285, 288-90, 293-94 Eisenstadt, S. N., 284 England, 29, 36, 43, 44, 51, 86, 123, 199, 200, 204, 295. See also Devon; Dorset; West Country Ethnography, xii-xv, 7-11 Evoys, 160, 161 Fairies, 84-85 Famine, 44 Fences, 121-23, 126, 166, 264-67 Ferryland, 3, 28-29, 3 2 > 38, 53, 6 3> 71, 79, 80, 86, 90,97, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 112, 115, 125, 130, 144, 182, 188, 7^5, 200, 210, 250, 264 Firth, Raymond, 237 Fishing: technology, 7, 16, 33, 147; traps and berths, 8,9, 68-71, 141-47, 298; processing, 156, 757, 162-63, 167-70 Flake Meadow, 26, 27, 106, 163 Food, 23, 115, 128-30, 133, 155, 181, 184-96 passim, 280, 287, 292. See also Potatoes; Vegetables Foul Cove, 89, no Freeman, Susan Tax, 155 Furniture, 10, 12, 23, 53, 208, 2 3°-31,234,239, 240-43, 244, 245, 250-52, 279-80, 282, 289, 290, 291. See also Decor 346

INDEX

Gardens, 93, uo-u, 121, 183; flower, 97, 261, 262, 268; kitchen, 97-99, 1/4-75, 115, 262, 267, 268; vegetable, 110-17. See also Potatoes; Vegetables Gatherall's Hill, 72, 73, 136 Gaze, the, 130 Geertz, Clifford, 8 Gender: and space, 91-101; and surnames, 99 Ghosts, 81 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 104 Classic, Henry, 285 Glen, the, 136 Glynn (Ferryland settler), 86 Goose Island, 50, 71, 127, 144 Gorman's Hill, 81, 82, 136 Goulds, Old and New, 89-90 Gravestones, 16, 77, 90. See also Cemeteries Gull Pond, 136 Gut, the, 72-75, 136, 159, 160 Gut Pond, 74-75, 169, 220 Hall, Sheila Power, 220 Hangman Head, 131 Harvey, Liz, 181 Hay, 7, 117-21, 132-33 Hayden, Alice, 204, 208, 239, 244,

249

Hayden, Bill, 208, 239, 244, 240 Hayes, Suse, 60-61, 85, 92 Head, C. Grant, 47 Head, Thomas, 102 Heritage, 23, 53, 54, 276 Herman, Bernard L., 46 High Road, 4, 75, 77, 84, 136, 259 History: and space, 26-27, 46-53; and objects, 27-28, 52-55; and time categories, 34-43; Calvert concept of 39, 51-53; and school texts, 44-45. See also Settlement Hoggart, Richard, 238

Horse Rocks, 147 Houses, 70, y, 54, 93, 96, 16$, 1 76~77> 25, 255, 2fy; style, 23, 197, 204, 206, 208, 209-10, 213, 222-25, 25^' 28°' 281; antecedents, 199-200; form, 200-221; construction, 216-17, 225; building plans, 217, 218-19; room use, 221-26, 252-54; spatial needs, 221-25. See also Architecture; Bedrooms; Decor; Kitchens; Parlors Hunting, 130-31 Hylton, Edmond, 160 Hynes (Ferryland settler), 86

Keough, Maggie, 210, 280 Keough, Rhoda Sullivan, 94-95,

286 Keough premises, 777 Keough's Cove, 80 Kidd, Captain, 83 Kirke, Sir David, 29, 32 Kitchens, 7, 93, 94, 100, 153, 154, 173-78, l 8 l , 190, 191, IQ2, 2 2 1 — 26, 227,

209,

228 — 38, 252-53,

267, 268-69, 27I> 289' 29l-> 29SSee also Decor; Houses

Labrador, 96 Lance Cove, 88, 116, 123, 159 Lance Cove (Cape Broyle), 136 Land clearing, 109-110 Institute of Social and Economic Lar's Grove, 81 Research, 279 Leach, MacEdward, xiv, 316 (n. 28) Ireland, 26, 29, 37, 43, 44, 86, i n , 119, 123, 186, 188, 199, 200, 239; Ledwell, Monica, 242 Ledwell, Robert, 116, 153, 190 Callen, 39. See also Waterford; Ledwell, Vince, 72, 34, 37-40, 42, Wexford

Jerry's Gully, 81 Jimmy's Hill, 80 Johnson, Mary, 21 o Johnson, P., 146 Joyce (early surname), 87 Joyce's Skirt, 87 Juniper Knot, 92 Juniper Knot Path, 79 Kavanagh, Aidan, 91, 133, 190 Kavanagh, Martin, 144 Kearney, Larry, 90 Keats, Gov. Richard G., 106 Keough (Stone Island settler), 37-39 Keough, Andrew, 286 Keough, Andy, 144-45 Keough, Edward, 286 Keough, Erin, 286 Keough, Johnny, 204, 223

44> 45. 47? 5°-5 J > 8 2 ~ 8 3> 84> 86> 90,91, 93, 100, no, 113-14, 116, 160, 163, 204, 230, 235, 238, 242, 250, 284 Legends. See Devil; Fairies; Ghosts; Treasure LeMessieur, 170 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 8 Lighthouse Hill, 89 Literacy, 45-46 Livestock, 5, 121, 125-27, 140 Lloyd's Grove, 128 Lynch, Kevin, 228 MacKinnon, Richard, 54 Maher, Father Alfred, 80 Maritimes, 200, 204, 206, 210, 225, 284, 295 Marriage patterns, 99-100, 164-66, 171-72 Marsh, the, 118 347

INDEX

Mason, John, 29, 30 Massachusetts, 16. See also Boston; United States Material culture: research, xv, 7-16; and modernity, 11 -16, 281-83, 285-90. See also Culture Meany (Stone Island settler), 37-39 Meany, Tom, 106 Meany^ Island, 50, 80 Middle Ledge, 71 Miskell, Liz, 163 Modernity. See Material culture Morry (merchants), 33, 50, 105, 125, 160, 222 Morry, Ann, 77 Morry, Esther Graham, 77 Morry, Lizzie, 161, 170, 201, 205 Morry, Matthew, 77, 102-4 Morry, Peter, 81, 222 Merry's Cove, 33, 80, 89, 160, 163, 7^7 Mummering, 190-93, 225, 232, 294. See also Christmas Murphy, Aggie Bennie, 2 21 Murphy, Bennie, 2 21 Murphy, Mary, 15 3 Murphy, Mikey, 216 Nash (first settler), 35-37, 44, 47, 5i Nash, Thomas, 39, 46 Nash, Tobias, 39 New Brunswick. See Maritimes New England, 27, 107, 125, 204, 206, 208, 295. See also Boston; United States New Holland, 51, 108 News, 172-78, 194 Nova Scotia. See Maritimes

O'Brien, John, 257 O'Brien, Mary Margaret, 189

O'Dea, John, 60 O'Dea, Shane, 198 Old Womans Pond, 81, 82, 129 O'Leary, Gloria, 2/5 O'Leary, Jerry, 21$ Open-field system, 124-25, 146. See also Commons; Settlement O'Toole, Annie, 36, 46, 94, 97, 98 O'Toole, Clarence, 34, 35-36, 39, 44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 65, 69, 81, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 99, 104, 105-6, 136, 144, 145, 164, 166, 170, 204, 235, 240, 249-50, 258 O'Toole, James, 36, 105, 146, 170 Parlor (front room or room), 7, 10, ii, 181-82, 187, 221-26, 227, 228, 238-50, 252, 253, 258, 267, 268-69, 271, 278, 282, 289, 290. See also Decor; Houses Pennell, Dan, 105 Pete Morry's Mine, 81 Petty Harbour, 82 Piglidge, 71 Piss Pot Hill, 92 Place: belonging to, 3, 18-19, 2 5> 301 (n. 2); and identity, 18-19, 22-25 Place-names, 80-90, 306 (n. 6) Placentia Bay, 277 Point, the, 33, 39, 40-41, 72, 7?, 89, 133, 136, 159, 162-63, l6 4> 192 Pollard, Christopher, 32 Pollard, William, 32 Potatoes, 106-7, 111-12, 113, 116-17. $ee ak° Gardens; Vegetables Power (Aaron Thomas account), 59-61, 92 Power, Arthur, 146 Power, Greg, 234 Power, Harold, 35, 46, 51, 145, 223-25, 242, 290

Power, Jim, 146 Power, Father Patrick, 39 Power, Tom, 92 Priest's Farm, 108 Prince Edward Island. See Maritimes Property: acquisition of, 102-8; surveys, 105; and social obligations, 108-9; an^ resources, 147-49; inheritance, 164-66 Quebec, 20, 27, 53 Rapoport, Amos, 198 Raspberry Marsh, 92 Reddigan (of Calvert), 235 Reddigan, Jose, 84 Reddigan, Madeleine, 212 Reddigan, Mart, 261 Reddigan, Vince, 212 Reddy (Church Cove treasure), 82 Redfield, Robert, 4-5, 284 Red Hill Slide Path, 60 Region, 61-64 Religion, 16, 53, 79, 105, 181, 183-84, 236-38, 273, 274, 322 (n- 5) Renews, 63, 115 Resettlement, 19-21 Resources: common, 16-18; systems of allocation, 134-49 River Path, 7, 79 Rossiter, Essie, 84, #5, 88, 89, 94, 97,98-99, 123, 180, 184, 185, 189, 229, 243 Rossiter, Hanorah, 10, 54, 94, 96, 201, 202 Round Hat, 65 Ryan, Austin, 136 Ryan, John, 7, 186, 106 Ryan, Theresa, 106 Ryan's Hill, 80 Ryan's Path, 78, 80, 130, 136 348

INDEX

St. John's, 3, 63, 104, 105, 106, 204, 208,

220,

2 2 2 , 231, 233,

235,

243,

264,

276,

297

279,

287,

241,

St. Mary's Bay, 36 Sallavex, 91 Scheflen, Albert, 252 Scoggins Head, 36, 108 Scotland, 84 Settlement: chronology, 16, 19, 28-34; pattern, 155-80, 194 Shoal Bay, 82 Shortall (Ferryland settler), 86, 87 Shoulder Mutton Hill, 81 Slaughters Point, 89, 130 Slaughters Pond, 74, 79, 109, no, 116, 128, 136, 139, 141, 163 Slides (sleds), 78, 132, 135, 139, 140 Soil, 109-10, 112, 116; fertilizing of, 1 1 2 — 1 7 Songs, 22, 23, 41, 146, 186, 189, 276, 277, 278-79, 290, 298, 305 (n. 44), 321-22 (n. i) South Coast, 63 Southern Shore, 16, 32, 62, 63-64, 75, 86, 104, 115, 127, 187, 199—200, 206, 208, 209, 277 Squires, Gerald, 20 Stable, the, 81 Stair Rock, 71, 147 Staughton, John, 29 Stone Island, 26, 27, 36-41, 46, 47-48,50, 51, 71, 72, 75, 86, 107, 118, 122, 126, 161-64, J 95> 297-98; narrative about, 37-39 Stratton (Calvert family), 146 Stratton, Bill, 129 Sullivan (Stone Island settler), 37- 39 Sullivan, Aidan, 7, 26, 37, 41-42, 45, 63, 64, 66, 89, 92, 99, 109, no, 113, 116, 119, 129, 130, 148, 175, 176, 777, 182, 210, 211, 245-46, 25/, 257, 26$, 266,

290

Sullivan, Alice, 124, 101, 201, 233, 277, 280, 298

Sullivan, Blair, 774-75, 248 Sullivan, Catherine, 242, 282 Sullivan, Chris, 118, 256 Sullivan, Denis, 25, 53, 146, 180, 190, 194, 222, 233, 238-39, 250, 260, 298, 299 Sullivan, Doris, xiv, 34, 46, 84, 85,92-93, 127, 172, 173, 178, 181, 190, 193, 234,236, 265, 269, 290, 292 Sullivan, Harold, 138, 141, 242, 282 Sullivan, Ida, 13, 46, 93, 153, 166, 184, 189, 197, 231,232, 238, 240, 253 Sullivan, Jimmy, j?, 153, 154, 182, 277 Sullivan, Johnny, 35, 89, 163, 164, 181, 209, 223, 264, 29$ Sullivan, Johnny (of Ferryland), 250 Sullivan, Jose, 209 Sullivan, Joseph, 26, 37, 39-40, 307 (n. 13) Sullivan, Kevin, 9 Sullivan, Kitty Larry, 93, 99, 172, 176-78, 183, 242, 280, 291, 29$ Sullivan, Kitty Vincent, 94, ^5, 99, 145-46, 173, 178, 180, 181-82, 183, 186, 220, 238, 239-40, 245, 249, 259-60, 276, 281 Sullivan, Lar, 81, 106, 142, 145 Sullivan, Larry, 7, 140, 163, 176-78, 180, 183 Sullivan, Linda, 275, 222, 223 Sullivan, Lloyd, 2/5, 222, 223 Sullivan, Lorraine, 85, 95, 172, 174, 178, 179, 181, 250, 280 Sullivan, Maggie, 209 Sullivan, Mart, 163 Sullivan, Maude, 115, 175, 176, 7/7, 178, 210, 211, 244,

245-46,

257, 26s Sullivan, Michelle, 154 Sullivan, Mike, 51, 65, 66, 69, 78,

84, 91, 93,^5, no, 112, 128, 129, 130, 138, 163, 169, 173, 186, 197, 222, 258, 259, 269, 273, 28l

Sullivan, Pat, 143, 146 Sullivan, Rita, 2 09 Sullivan, Rob, 6, 44, 109, 115, 124, 128, 131 — 32, 2OI, 233, 280

Sullivan, Rodney, /14 - 75, 248 Sullivan, Ross, /14 - 75, 248 Sullivan, Shannon, 234 Sullivan, Shirley, 253 Sullivan, Tom, 6, 7, 13, 46, 94-95, 774-75, 118, 126, 138, 141, 142, 153, 164, 166, 168, 181, 182, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 101, 197, 221, 231, 232, 233, 237, 238, 240, 253, 257, 258, 280, 299 Sullivan, Vincent, 268, 281 Sullivan's Hill, 72, 80, 137, 192 Suse's Cross, 60, 91, 97 Swain (Stone Island settler), 37-39 Swain, Alfred, 214 Swain, Betty, 214 Swain, Jack, 136, 186, 280 Swain, Josie, 54 Swain, Mary Margaret, 54, 181 Swain, Peter, 163, 216 Swain, Robert, 163-64 Swain, Thomas, 216 Sweetland (Calvert merchants), 33, 50, 51, 160,205, 223-25, 284 Sweetland, Henry, 204 Sweetland, William, 104 Tea 6, 184, 18$, 188-89, 195~9^See also Food

Thomas, Aaron, 59, 160, 280 Tonnies, Ferdinand, 283-84 Toole's Point, 81 Toronto, 172 Travel, 63, 75-77, 277-79; woods paths, 75, 77-79, 78. See also High Road Treasure, 81-83 349

INDEX

Tree, Francis, 102, 104 Trepassey, 63, 185 Trinity Bay, 63, 248 Tuan, Yi-Fu, 68 Turner, Victor, 8 United States, 141, 167, 188, 196, 200, 283, 292-93, 315 (n. 19). See also Boston; New England; Virginia Vegetables, 97-99, 106-7, m-i?. 123. See also Gardens; Potatoes Vernacular architecture: concepts of, 197-99 Virginia, 16 Visiting, 153-55, 174, 178-96, 268, 287, 294, 205 Wade (Stone Island settler), 37-39 Wade, Kitty, 71 Wade's Chimney, 71 Wakes, 7, 181-83, 232 Walking, 65, 192-93 Waller, Jacob, 103 Wallpapering, 94-97, 235, 245. See also Decor Walsh, Ambrose, 25^ Walsh, Chopper, 25^ Walsh, James, 2 59 Walsh, Kevin, 213 Walsh, Leo, 79, 126, 129, 130, 133, 136 Walsh, Neil, 260 Walsh, Phonse, 259 Water: orientation toward, 79 Waterford, 33, 124. See also Ireland West Country, 16, 29, 32, 125, 161, 199, 204. See also Devon; Dorset; England Wexford, 124, 161. See also Ireland Whelan, Charlotte, 97 Whelan, Paddy, 89 Whisnant, David, 288

Williams, Raymond, 287, 292 Winsor, Sam Bob, 145-46 Wolf, Eric, 294 Woodcutting, 6, 7, 131-32, 135-39, 140, 141, 142, 256; forest categories, 67-68; woods paths,

77~79; allocation of space, 136-39 Wright, Robert, 86 Yard, Peter, 71 Yard art, 120, 256-63

350

INDEX

Yards, 227, 254-56, 25^, 267-71. See also Yard art Yellow Marsh, 78, 79, 127, 129, 130, 133 Yellow Marsh Path, 78 Yonge, James, 29, j/, 159