Saving stages
Final applications being accepted for fisheries heritage program
Final applications being accepted for fisheries heritage program.
Look to the landwash off Harbour Road in Cape Broyle to see Doug Mulcahy’s stage — a privately owned building established in the early 1900s for one family’s work in the fishery.
It was once encircled by flakes, a space for making traps, mending nets, even housing schooners under construction, all while also providing storage for the fishing gear of the Mulcahy family.
Damaged in a storm in 2011, the stage was repaired with the help of a small grant from the Fisheries Heritage Preservation Program of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, ongoing since 2002.
The maximum for individual projects in the early days was $2,000.
In the case of Doug Mulcahy’s stage, the owners were issued a little grant money after an accepted proposal to rebuild the roof. And the community was able to maintain a stage, rather than a ruin.
It is just one of 230 projects (an estimated 250 buildings) to be helped over the last 14 years of the heritage program.
“(The program) was a side project to our main mandate and it did have a certain life,” said Andrea O’Brien, municipal outreach officer with the nonprofit Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, explaining why the program is wrapping up.
With one last round of grants, the heritage foundation is looking for applications for projects, but from communities — tackling multiple stages, sheds and fish stores, in co-operation with owners, with grants of up to $10,000.
“We’re looking for communities that have never availed of this funding in the past, and there still are some around the province,” O’Brien said.
Some locations, such as Joe Batt’s Arm and Tilting — now famous for its preserved infrastructure from the old inshore fishery, much of it coloured in red ochre — have tapped the program for multiple projects to date.
“Trout River is another example. There’re oodles of buildings in there that were done,” O’Brien recalled. “Gillams had a community project.”
Projects are detailed and mapped at the heritage foundation’s website (http://heritagefoundation.ca/property-search. aspx).
Some of the buildings are reminders of resettlement, such as the Charlie Randell stage in Bide Arm — floated from the abandoned Hooping Harbour to its current location.
There are other stories. Hewitt’s store in Barr’d Islands was once a private home, built about 1900, but moved to the waterfront in the 1960s for use as a fishing premise. Allan Hewitt applied to the heritage program for help in that property’s restoration in 2007.
“Said Hewitt, ‘People are impressed with how an ‘old’ store stands out along the shore and especially how it stands out when approaching the community,’” the heritage society noted on its website.
For the last projects, the plan is to combine the refresh and restoration work with an intangible cultural heritage project.
“The community will still do the physical restoration of the buildings, in co-operation with the owners. But we will go in … with the community, identify something that they would like to document about their fishing heritage in the community. So once the project is over, not only will they have these buildings restored in the community, but they’ll have a piece of their intangible heritage to go along with that restoration,” O’Brien said, offering examples of a booklet about fishing heritage in their community or possibly information for a walking tour on fisheries infrastructure.
The deadline for grant applications for the final round of the program is Dec. 1.
Communities interested are asked to have a representative contact the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador for an application.