The Coast

Just after starting the second Lower North Shore web site a year or so ago, I received an e-mail from Bob Belvin. It was actually interesting that he had tracked me down via the web, since we originally met at a tourism conference in Saint Pauls River around 1997/98, and I was actually there to present information on how the web could be used for tourism. I remembered Bob from the conference, since most of it was pretty much a waste of time, except for the discussions that I had with Bob and Dwight Bilodeau, regarding the hstory of the Lower North Shore. They both knew some very interesting facts about the history of the area, including many things that you will never find documented anywhere.

In one of our e-mail exchanges last year, Bob informed me that he had just completed a new book on the Lower North Shore. I immediately tried to order it from Amazon.com, only to find out that it had not been published yet. This was a little disappointing, since I was living in California at the time, was feeling a little homesick for Canada and the Coast, and the timing of the book could not have been better. I was at least happy that people from the coast were able to track me down via the web site, which was the main reason that I had started it up again.

A year later, I was back in Canada, and Bob sent me another e-mail telling me that his book had just been published, and was titled “The Forgotten Labrador”. I again tried to order the book, this time from amazon.ca, only to find out that the expected delivery time was 6 weeks. Luckily, the book ended up showing up a few days later, which was just in time to become a Christmas gift for my parents, who were visting for the holidays.

It turned out to be a great choice for a gift, since the book was a great discussion topic right from the time when they unwrapped it, and immediately went through the photos pointing out the people that they knew. As we started reading the book, it became clear that Bob had done a great job of collecting historical information on the coast for this book. It was great combination of historical facts combined with a true perspective of the coast. it was also obvious that only someone from the Lower North Shore could have written this book, and Bob’s position as archivist, and historical researcher had also obviously served him well for this book. I immediately order 5 more copies to give out to other people from the Coast, that I knew would appreciate the book.

The first thing that I learned from “The Forgotten Labrador” was how lucrative the fishing and sealing rights were to the original settlers along the coast. The first surprising quote was from Admiral Bayfield, related to my great great grand father, stating that “Robertson a lord of these parts lived in a neat and comfortable mansion and that for lunch they were served bread, cheese and a good port of wine. He received the the newspaper and had a personal library”. This was definitely not the way that I had expected the original European settlers of this remote region to be living in 1834.

Another fact highlighted by Bob’s book was that the Basque and Breton fisherman had outposts in the Lower North Shore before Jacques Cartier had discovered the Saint Lawrence. Thinking about it now, it makes sense, since it was clsoer to Europe, but it is still interesting none the list.

I could go on, but if you have read up until this point, I would just suggest going out to get a copy of the book.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 9:53 pm and is filed under Lower North Shore. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.