Tracing roots

Savage, Wild and Deadman's - hard and true names for Northern Peninsula communities which began their growth clinging to life on the Strait of Belle Isle.

But the hardest of them all, Poverty, is buried and, thankfully, largely forgotten.

Anthony White, Sandy Cove's oldest fisherman, remembers his community's previous incarnation as Poverty Cove.

Poverty, to him, was neighbours coming to his 21-foot trap boat in need of a feed of cod or salmon.

"And they were welcome to them - if you wanted one or 20 salmon you could go on with them - some people were starvin'," said the 88-year-old senior. "But not my family - we never had to ask a loan of food for a feed in our lives."

Poverty is a word rarely spoken by the peninsula's old timers, as opposed to Statistics Canada's poverty line, an abstract measure of income and expenses, or modern musical icons boasting of their youthful poverty as badges of honour. To the peninsula's old timers the word poverty carries the weight of shame.

Poverty Cove disappeared in the 1931 census, buried by the sand that fills a small corner by the community's wharf. Mr. White is one of the few old enough to carry the memory in a community of modern and well-kept homes.

"They had nothing - the 1872 Lovell's Directory said there was nothing here of value but wild grain," said Sandy Cove resident Ralph Coles. "But later it came to be seen as a derogatory term."

There's another anecdotal tale, cautioned Mr. Coles, of a man called Mr. Poverty who lived in the community during the early 1800s. He was a loner, who Mr. Coles suspects was an escaped British sailor.

Mr. Coles' research into his family's genealogy has snowballed into searches of St. John's second-hand bookstores and long research into his two great-great-grandfathers.

Thomas White and George Coles, two poor teenagers hired by the French in Devonshire, England, were dropped off in Poverty Cove during the early 1800s. They were tasked with protecting French possessions on the shore throughout the long winters because a French treaty with England forbid the former from settling on the Northern Peninsula.

They must have been tough - they survived that first winter of ice-bound isolation, living to marry the daughters of Alexander Duncan, and to found the dynasties of Whites and Coles who later filled the cove and have since spread far and wide.

Mr. Coles explained that until the cod trap was introduced in 1880, the Whites and Coles focused on seals, trap lines and salmon.

By the time Anthony White was big enough to haul a line, cod was king.

Beginning in late May, he'd leave his stage each morning to haul his cod trap. He'd repeat this daily ritual of catching and salting fish for a month before heading across the Strait of Belle Isle. The banging of his five horsepower Atlantic engine would signal his arrival in Fox Harbour as his boat came slowly into view.

He'd fish there for another three weeks before chasing the cod up the Labrador to West St. Modeste. Then he'd slowly putter back to Sandy Cove where a relieved mother would see him tie his boat, low in the water with cod, to the family's stage.

"I loved it - I caught some swarm of fish in my day," said Mr. White, who retired at 72.

Then he'd go in the woods behind seven dogs to cut and haul wood for Bowaters. Come spring Mr. White would walk out across the ice to the gutter, where the current sends ice banging and grinding down the centre of the Strait of Belle Isle, after seals.

As passionate that his children would never need to borrow a meal as he was proud that fortune had filled the nets of their father, Mr. White is now a wealthy man. Not in gold, but in blood - his children have multiplied into eight grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

While sitting with his brother, George White, over a cup of tea, Mr. White was able to look out the window at the homes of three of his sons.

Past those well-kept homes is all that remains of that hard word, poverty - Pubico Pond, abbreviated by the years from Poverty Cove Pond, is just a short trip into the country.

(Do you have an idea how your community was named? The Pen wants to hear about the origin of placenames on the Northern Peninsula and in Southern Labrador. Write and tell us about it. E-mail info@northernpen.ca or fax your submission to 709-454-3718).