Vacationing Texan falls for fisherman
Tourism’s impact on Trinity Bay North more than monetary
It’s hard to imagine a love story that starts with caplin, but there’s nothing fishy about it.
Rolling to Newfoundland’s rocky shores — hurling themselves onto beaches — millions of them mate along the coast every year.
When a busload of American tourists pulled up to a beach near Bill Donovan’s stage in Melrose, Trinity Bay North, they piled out to see the silvery spectacle. Donovan, an inshore fisherman, was working on his boat.
He recalls a group of mostly seniors with canes and walkers — “and all of a sudden this blond lady gets off the bus.”
It was Patricia Mccarty, a Texas math teacher. Donovan’s first thought? “Piece a gear,” he says, laughing.
That was 13 years ago. Today, Donovan is full of jests and vitality — he’s smitten — but in the year leading up to that moment when the Road Scholar tour bus pulled up to his stage, he was “miserable.”
His wife, the woman he loved and lived with for 36 years, died of cancer a year before he met Mccarty.
“I was just stumbling around,” he recalls.
Meanwhile, Mccarty had been divorced since 1987.
Donovan showed the tourists around his stage and shed.
“I had some Newfie music playing. It might have been Dick Nolan. This blonde woman, well, she started steppin’ to the music.”
The next day, the Coaker Foundation in Port Union hosted a community dinner and dance for the tourists — a 20year tradition, at least.
Donovan and Mccarty danced the whole evening.
They were hooked.
“I thought, this is fun, I like this,” says Mccarty.
Now, Mccarty visits Donovan every summer, and Donovan spends about four months during the winter at her place in Texas.
Whenever they’re both in the Port Union area, they still attend the community dinners.
Amazingly, the connection they made during the dinner 13 years ago isn’t all that unique.
Edith Samson is the executive co-ordinator with the Coaker Foundation in Port Union.
One way the foundation raises funds to restore old Fishermen’s Protective Union-built homes in the community is by hosting dinners for tourists with Road Scholar, an American non-profit travel organization.
Samson said several women in the community attend nearly every dinner, and over the years they’ve made lasting friendships with the visiting Americans, exchanging Christmas gifts and birthday cards every year.
Samson said one tourist became so interested in the restoration efforts of the union-built town that during one of the community dinners she decided to write a cheque for the foundation for US$70,000 to restore one of the homes.
“That came just by meeting the locals, and everyone talking and just being normal — you know, just being friendly — and I think she really got interested in the town, and what we were doing.”
TRAVELLERS RETURN ANNUALLY
Road Scholar’s senior director of public relations, Stacie Fasola, said they had one participant this year who fell in love with the area and purchased a home.
“I know that there are participants who go back year after year after year to this one particular region, so what I think we can surmise from that is that there’s something quite magical about this particular area that draws our participants back year after year.”
The travel organization’s senior manager of programs, Laurel Todesca, said they have about 500 travellers to the province every year.
“It’s one of our highest-rated destinations in Canada, for sure.”
Mccarty said it was a bucket list item for her to see the beautiful scenery, but once she arrived, she realized the province offered more than that.
“I have more friends on Facebook in Newfoundland than I do in Texas.
“It seems like you don’t want to interfere with people so much down here in Texas. If you don’t really know them, you don’t want to ask them to be a friend unless you are related to them, or you know them.
“Whereas up in Newfoundland, I feel like if they’re in Port Union or Melrose, Catalina or Little Catalina, it’s OK, you know, if I met them once or twice to go, ‘OK, do you want to be a friend?’”