{"id":2281,"date":"2008-06-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=2281"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:51:51","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:51:51","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew510","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew510\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in Red Bay, Labrador"},"content":{"rendered":"
What it’s like to live in Red Bay: The Dashews find out when a friendly local gives them a tour.<\/div>\n

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We asked at the Whaler’s Restaurant if there might be someone who could give us a tour of the countryside, and perhaps fill us in on the details of living in this part of the world. Tanya Butt suggested that her husband, Freeman, might have some time, and so the next day we embarked on what turned out to be a fascinating three hours.<\/p>\n

Freeman’s family came to Red Bay in the 1950s from another village in Labrador to fish. They picked a piece of land to the northwest of the village, and his father and uncles built homes, boats, and a dock from which to ply their trade.<\/p>\n

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All of the building was done with locally cut timber, which they dressed on this saw mill they had brought with them.<\/p>\n

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It is a fascinating bit of hardware, cobbled together from an engine, automobile power train, with wooden rollers. This mill also did work for many other structures in the area.<\/p>\n

At the time there was no power or running water. In fact, up until 20 years ago Freeman said every two days they would take barrels to a nearby stream, fill them with a bucket, and bring them back to the house for bathing and cooking – even in the winter when you had to cut a hole in the ice.<\/p>\n

Most of his family still lives in the area.<\/p>\n

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Freeman’s dad built this skiff for him when he was five years old. Freeman’s kids now use it.<\/p>\n

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In order to live in this environment you have to be resourceful and hard working. A big part of the work has to do with cutting, dressing, and drying wood for heat and cooking. The stack of wood behind Freeman’s home (which he built himself) is enough for maybe two months in the winter.<\/p>\n

Real estate has a different set of values here. If you see a piece of land you like – most of which belongs to the state – you hire a surveyor, pay a fee to government (totaling about $2000 for surveyor and government) and start to build.<\/p>\n

If you want to sell, it is a buyer’s market. A fairly new 1500 square foot home will fetch maybe $10,000. <\/p>\n

Most of the vinyl clad homes we have been seeing are older homes with the vinyl being recently added.<\/p>\n

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Two piles of wood drying for future use. The wood to the right is about a year old. To the left is two years old. Ideally, the wood is dried for three years. Then there are wood species to consider, harder being better than softer, but more difficult to find and haul out because of where it grows.<\/p>\n

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This is the view a half a kilometer from Freeman’s home and those of his parents and uncles. Desolate, but also beautiful.<\/p>\n

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There are lots of older buildings like this around the village. Most are in use for storing wood, snowmobiles, or other gear.<\/p>\n

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A paved road leads south along this river (which is filled with trout and salmon). During the winter the road can be covered with as much as 30 feet (9m) of snow. Winds can exceed 100 mph (150 km) on some of the exposed portions. The road has only come to Red Bay since 2000. Prior to that, you traveled by boat (inconvenient and slow) or snowmobile over a groomed snowmobile "highway". Most of the wood gathering is done by snowmobile in the winter.<\/p>\n

Prior to the road coming in, you ordered stores in large quantities, enough for an entire summer. Barrels of flour, molasses, etc. There was a trader in town, who carried inventory, but even that was limited. Folks kept cows for milk. Even now, there is no medical help close by. If you are going to have a baby, for example, you fly to St. Anthony on Newfoundland’s north coast five weeks before the due date.<\/p>\n

About half of the Red Bay residents are retired. A small income would go a long way here, provided you enjoyed the challenges of living in this environment.<\/p>\n

At the other end of the scale, income producing jobs are scarce. Many work in the oil fields or mines near Alberta in Central Canada or northern Labrador. They spend four weeks working seven days a week, then come home for two weeks. Employers pay transport costs.<\/p>\n

Freeman said that workers from Labrador and Newfoundland were in demand because they understood hard work and were not afraid of the elements.<\/p>\n

At present there are a total of 30 kids in school from K through 12. If the older children want to play team sports, they have to include the younger kids to make up a team. Teenagers do have a recreation center where they can hang out, play pool, and consider ways to get themselves into trouble (about which their parents no doubt find out very quickly).<\/p>\n

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There is just one family still fishing commercially in Red Bay. The rest have sold their quotas to other fishermen or back to the government.<\/p>\n

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This mountain cabin is on the side of one of the roads leading into the mountains to woodcutting areas. Freeman thought it was probably 50 years old, but might be older. Everyone has a winter cabin they get to by snowmobile. Freeman and Tanya’s is by a stream where they can ice fish.<\/p>\n

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We stopped on a bridge to take this photograph and noticed the orange speck on the right.<\/p>\n

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Nothing could better symbolize this country. This fisherman had to work his way over a difficult rock face to get to this spot. One moment of inattention fishing and he is in the river, and that is the end. There is nobody around to help out.<\/p>\n

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Back at the Whaler’s Restaurant in Red Bay we topped off the morning with a caribou steak lunch. We were thinking of tasting the cod liver oil, but then the label said it was "tasteless".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What it’s like to live in Red Bay: The Dashews find out when a friendly local gives them a tour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}