Thursday - August 23, 2007

Today we woke up to sunshine and it shone all day – hooray!! The temperature didn’t get above 15 that I noticed but the sun was nice.

This morning we headed back down the peninsula and our first stop was at Port Union - the only union-built town in North America. In 1916 William F. Coaker started the town and The Fisherman’s Protective Union Trading Company premises were completed and the union corporate headquarters moved from St. John’s. A salt fish processing store, a department store (with electric elevators), a seal oil plant and a medicines shop were among some of the amenities available in Port Union in the early 1900’s. The Factory, which was home of the Fisherman’s Advocate Newspaper has been restored with a large display of artifacts on the first floor as well as a number of old printing presses. Juanita was our guide for the first part of the tour, then Tom did the tour of the printing presses, then Juanita came back and took us upstairs where there is a carpenter shop and machine shop. At one time most of the carpentry work in the village was done in this shop including making caskets, etc. and a number of lathes, saws etc. have been restored. It was interesting to note that most of the machines on the second floor were made in Galt. There were also a number of other old items on display upstairs.

Across the street from the Factory is row housing that was rented out to people who worked for the company and had the top positions, and these houses had both electricity and running water in the early 1900’s, the rent was $12/month. One of these houses has been restored and we had a tour of it, we were amazed at how large it was inside. Up the hill were more row houses that were rented by the lesser employees for $8/month but these houses didn’t have running water. We then walked to Memorial Cemetery where William Coaker is buried with a wonderful view of the town from the monument. The last stop was the Anglican Church which has some beautiful stained glass windows in memory of soldiers who died during the first and second world wars. All in all it was a very interesting tour and we spent a fair bit of time talking to a few of the guides.

From there we drove to Trinity with a tour through Trinity East on the way. Trinity is a very beautiful, historic town with very narrow twisty streets. We got out and walked around the town then had a late lunch at the marina. From Trinity we drove through Goose Cove, Dunfield, Trouty, Old Bonaventure and New Bonaventure before returning home. Another nice day.

Once again driving around today I wondered how on earth they manage here in the winter with the very steep, twisty, turny roads – I can’t imagine wanting to tackle them in the snow and ice!! Maybe that is why we see so many snowmobiles.