Rose Blanche, Newfoundland

Rose Blanche

Please note that numbers in parenthesis ex: (1) indicate footnotes with full reference and credit at the end of this posting.

Please note also that this has nothing to do with the 80s sitcom “The Golden Girls”… Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia lived in Miami where the climate is slightly different from that of Rose Blanche, Newfoundland. No Sicilian proverbs here!

Cin, one of my dearest and never-this-nearest friends, is from Rose Blanche, Newfoundland. Through Cin, I met her sister Joy who has also joined the ‘inner circle’ ranks! I will tell you more about them another time. For right now, this posting is about their hometown.

Located on the southwest coast of Newfoundland (45 km from the ‘gateway-to-Newfoundland’ town of Port Aux Basques – the Marine Atlantic ferry terminal is there 12 months a year and it the only year-round ferry service to the island from North Sydney, Nova Scotia), Rose Blanche was settled as a fishing colony around the 1810 mark.

These maps were taken from: http://roseblanchelighthouse.ca/

I realize they are not the clearest, but the map on the left is a blow up of the bottom, left-hand corner of the map of Newfoundland (on the right). St. John's is at the end (on the right) of the red line (Transcanada Highway)

(Above): Rose Blanche Picture taken from: www.geocities.com/rblighthouse/roseblanchepics.html

(Above): Another view of Rose Blanche

This picture was taken from: www.geocities.com/rblighthouse/roseblanchepics.html

This community is located in a barren area on the east side of a small bay. In this bay there are two harbours that were mainly used to provide shelter for fishing vessels. (1).

(Above): Rose Blanche with calm waters

This picture was taken from: www.geocities.com/rblighthouse/roseblanchepics.html












(Above): More Rose Blanche water
This picture was taken from: www.geocities.com/rblighthouse/roseblanchepics.html

I am purposely omitting the French/English history of battles for territory because that would make this a completely different posting. The west coast, however, is primarily made up of French place names and holds the majority of French place names in Newfoundland.

I will interject here that when I refer to Newfoundland I am excluding Labrador as the two were only grouped with Newfoundland’s entrance to Canadian Confederation in 1949.

Rose Blanche, along with most communities in Newfoundland, is a coastal one as its existence is/was fishery dependant (any reference to ‘the fishery’ refers to the cod fishery – both inshore and later inshore/offshore). With an ocean and a fishery come lighthouses. I think anyone would agree that you can not discuss Rose Blanche, Newfoundland without making reference to the Rose Blanche Lighthouse (a Newfoundland Heritage Site).














(Above): Rose Blanche Lighthouse
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society/rhs/rs_listing/212.html

This charming and very beautiful community thrived (and I hate to use the past tense here) through the years and is made up of mostly Protestant people.

Newfoundland’s population has been mainly on the decrease since the collapse of the cod fishery in 1992 (hard to believe it has been almost 15 years). That’s a sad situation and it really leads me to wonder about the cultural future of home. Statistics Canada reports (Harbour le Cou is the neighbouring community and the are grouped together for statistical content):

Population and Dwelling Counts
Rose Blanche-Harbour le Cou, Town
2001: 668
1996: 814

1996 to 2001 population change (%)
-17.9

Total private dwellings
304

Population density per square kilometre
150.3

Land area (square km)
4.44

Source: Statistics Canada

On the Stats Can site this appears in a very neat little table (I haven't written html tables and cell padding in years), so I thought I'd just link directly to the table. It's pretty neat because you can compare the Rose Blanche stats to that of Newfoundland as a whole. Here it is! Just click here

I’m from the east coast. My mother is from the Goulds – now a part of St. John’s, since the 1992 amalgamation to the city (along with Wedgewood Park), and my father is from Bay Bulls (the next community ‘on the shore’, and a short 15 minute drive from the city). I also plan to talk about this another time, today, I’m setting a stage with this information.

I met Cindy in Quebec City in January 1996 teaching English at Les Ateliers de Conversation Anglaise (http://www.lesateliers.info/). 10 years, girlie! I still remember meeting her as we sat around that table with Alan at the helm (I can only imagine Cin’s face as she reads this).

We became friends instantly and other teachers naturally asked us if we knew one another from ‘home’. Another popular question was, “Do you live far from one another in Newfoundland?” To which, my favourite response was, “Well, Cin just lives down to the end of the road from me”. Of course, ‘the end of the road from me’ is about 13 hours away (and can take DAYS depending on the weather).

Cin and I were roommates (In Montreal…how we got there… that will be in the “Cin” posting. This is also where Joy enters the scene for me) for some years and we decided to go home for Christmas and the millennium New Year’s. This trip home in December 1999 brought me to Rose Blanche for the very first time (the more I write, the more I realize I will have to do the “Cindy & Joy” posting right after this one).

I guess I can not talk about Rose Blanche without referring to my trips there though. Hmmm.

OK, I’ll try it this way (trying to keep this about Rose Blanche, not my trip there). The community has a school, church, a Kinsmen Centre, a restaurant, a bed & breakfast, corner shops, and a lounge. If I have forgotten anything here Cin and/or Joy will have to help me once this is posted.

Like most “outport” (Newfoundland term for coastal, fishing community) communities, there are certain family names associated with certain places. You can almost tell exactly where someone is from by his/her last name. This is not so common now, but it certainly was (and still is in the case of Rose Blanche… though a little less). I looked up the white pages online to learn that there are 18 listings for the name Parsons and 19 for the name Hatcher.

People like Cin’s and Joy’s and my grandparents will most definitely talk to you about certain names coming from certain areas and they can almost always say they know/knew someone from there. It’s really great to hear folks of their generation talk about ‘how it was’.

I am sitting here on the west coast of Canada looking at the lights of downtown Vancouver and Cin and Joy are planning their trip home for the Rose Blanche “Come Home Year”. I looked and looked online, to no avail, for information on the “Come Home Year Celebrations”. If anybody has any…by all means…send it along.

“Come Home Year”. This is a term commonly used in Newfoundland since 1997 when Newfoundland celebrated its 500th anniversary (John Cabot’s landing in Bonavista in 1497 marks the discovery of New Founde Land). Many communities had what we now call “Come Home Year” as there are more expatriate Newfoundlanders than those who still make their home there.

You see, the thing with “Come Home Year” is that you can be sure that you will never all be reassembled like that again. If you have the fortune to attend ANOTHER one… it will be many, many years later and #1 the same people will not be in attendance, and #2 people pass on.

I am guessing that there will be all kinds of events planned for this important occasion. There will be bbq’s, parties, dances, probably a highlight of an outdoor festival-type get-together, something out in the boats, maybe a church service, card games, and there will not be one person anywhere for miles around without a camera! Again, I could indeed be leaving things out here, so forgive and enlighten me!














(Above): Boats of Rose Blanche

This picture was taken from: www.geocities.com/rblighthouse/roseblanchepics.html

There will no doubt be all kinds of private (I use the term loosely because everybody is almost like family) family functions within local households. People will be staying at this one’s place and that one’s place, and spirits will surely soar. It will be fantastic!

There will be unofficial get-togethers with guitars and lots of food and drink. There will be some children of expats who will see Rose Blanche and this part of their heritage for the first time. There will be people meet their young cousins, nieces and nephews for the first time. I can guarantee you that this is a very big deal and that there are big plans in the works! I can’t wait to hear about it. I’m going to suggest Cin and/or blog while she’s there (hehehe).

There will be a big, big, big buzz in the air (I hope they get good weather) and it will turn sad as people leave with their memories safely tucked away. I’ve lived this several times myself.

So, I hope Cin, Joy and their family have the very best time!



(1)http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Blanche,
_Newfoundland_and_Labrador
(2) http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society/rhs/rs_listing/212.html