Fogo Island embraces tourism
Inn matches visitors with locals to improve the island’s fortunes
To celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, we’ll be exploring all 10 provinces and three territories. Today’s issue is devoted to Newfoundland and Labrador. Watch for our Nova Scotia coverage on April 1.
FOGO ISLAND, N.L. — There’s something brilliant about what 69-year-old retired fisherman Ed Foley said about his island home off the northeast coast of Newfoundland.
We were whipping around on three snowmobiles with two of his five brothers and an Irish-American couple, visiting family and friends in various cabins, singing folk songs, ice fishing for trout with scruncheons as bait, hand-feeding Canada’s proposed national bird the gray jay and waiting for the sun to set and moon to rise.
“You all right?” Foley asked in between the first and second cabin visits. “Oh yeah,” I replied, dazzled by the hospitality. Foley nodded knowingly and shot back: “If you’re not all right here, there’s something wrong with ya.” Those 11 words say it all. Maybe you’ve never heard of Fogo. I hadn’t until 2013, when social entrepreneur Zita Cobb plowed some of her fibre-optics fortune into building the Fogo Island Inn in Joe Batt’s Arm, on the bewitching but floundering island where she grew up poor.
Yes, it’s an architectural stunner and yes, it’s crazy expensive to stay in one of the 29 rooms. Yet what most people don’t realize is the Cobb family’s charitable Shorefast Foundation runs the inn as a “community asset” to help Fogo Islanders save themselves with tourism.
Fogo is more than just one inn. It’s home to 2,400 people in 11 communities. There’s a school, arena and health centre, fish co-op, crab and shrimp processing plants, museums, craft shops, galleries, studios, hiking trails, festivals, places to stay and eat, caribou herd and seasonal icebergs and whales.
The Museum of the Flat Earth is here, too, since the island’s rocky outcrop known as Brimstone Head is touted as one of the four corners of Earth.
Trouble is, the population is aging and people leave for work, but some young islanders are returning and everyone I met seemed eager to be part of this great social experiment. After unpacking with a pot of tea and warm bread with molasses, I met community host Blanche Bennett. The inn sends every guest out for a drive with a host for a freewheeling introduction to island life.
“I’m glad to be taking you around — I call this out and about,” the 67-year-old retired town clerk said. “I just love to show people where I live, or as Zita says, where I belong.”
We talked about the harsh lives of fishermen, poverty, hunger, isolation and hardship. We discussed the widow’s two sons, one “fur baby” and positive outlook on life.
We stopped by Herring Cove Art Gallery & Studio in Shoal Bay to meet artist Winston Osmond. Seeing things through the eyes of global tourists, they said, gives locals “a whole new appreciation for Fogo Island.”
We dropped in on Tom Earl, who ran the Westerly restaurant in Toronto before buying a B&B in Tilting. “There’s nothing to not love here,” Earl said, “though it’s a little lonely in the winter for sure.”
The Fogo Island Inn has defined seven seasons: winter, pack ice, spring, trap berth, summer, berry and late fall. My February visit — in winter — revolved around a slower pace, cabin visits and outdoor adventures.
I spent a couple of hours hiking near the inn with P.J. Decker, a maintenance man turned outdoor events co-ordinator, and two American couples. Decker loves raising his two young kids here. We saw his sister’s seasonal restaurant, Nicole’s Café, from a snowy hill.
Fogo Islanders are understandably interwoven. On that rollicking, five-hour snowmobile jaunt with the Foley brothers, Fergus (another community host and a retired “fish cop”) took us to his brother Phillip’s cabin and warned “this is a gathering place so there could be 80 people here in an hour’s time.” This is where we communed with friendly gray jays and tried Maureen Foley’s stew with doughboys (dumplings), but I shouldn’t say any more since the folksy sign on the wall warned: “What happens in the cabin stays at the cabin.”
My only regret is we lingered too long by the rustic, homemade cabin’s wood stove to make it to Phil’s shed back in Tilting for one of his famous shed parties.
I consoled myself with wise words from Bennett.
“Fogo Island is on the map,” she declared with a lot of pleasure. “We were there before, but now we’re really on the map. People know about us now and they want to come here.”
Come once, I’ll add, and you’ll be desperate to come back. Jennifer Bain was hosted by Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism and the Fogo Island Inn. They didn’t review or approve this story.