Going into winter quarters 1/3/04
By Maura Hanrahan, Special to The Telegram

The first French fishermen who over-wintered on Ode-rin in Placentia Bay found the island to be deficient in some respects. It had a sheltered harbour and was close to rich fishing grounds. But in winter, it was a desolate place; there was a limited supply of wood, which they needed for heat, and few animals to trap or hunt for food.

After what must have been a hard winter, they repaired to the Burin Peninsula in subsequent winters ever after. They went mainly to Baine Harbour, where they built winter cabins, hunted, and trapped till spring.

In this, they were not unique; this practice was followed all over Newfoundland by every ethnic group. It began early in the island''s European history.

In 1708, English historian John Oldmixon wrote of Newfoundland: ""The Climate is very hot in summer and Cold in winter; the snow is on the Ground 4 or 5 Months; and the English in the Northern Parts are forc''d to remove from the Harbours into the Woods, during that Season, for the convenience of Firing. There they build themselves Cabbins, and burn up all that Part of the Woods where they sit down. The next Winter they do the same by another, and so clear ''em as they go.""

Moving with the seasons to have better access to natural resources helped to provide a more varied diet and allowed settlers to escape the gales that often battered the outport headlands.

The practice is usually associated with aboriginal people, so it is likely the early settlers in Newfoundland learned it from the Mi''kmaq, with whom some of them intermarried, and possibly the Beothuk. It is certainly very different from the sedentary lives they lived in England, France, the Channel Islands and elsewhere in Europe. It seems, too, that the very early colonists at Cupids and Ferryland in the mid-1600s did not go to winter quarters.

In North America, the practice was almost unique among European settlers. Besides Newfoundland, where it was almost universal, it appeared only on Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island and Eastern Quebec.

The distances to the winter houses varied. Some families moved only two or three miles; this was the case at Cape Ray. At Old Perlican, families went inland about eight miles. From Burin, they journeyed between six and 14 miles. Distances were greater when people had to cross water to get to their winter houses; in these cases, they might have to travel as much as 100 miles or more.

Not surprisingly, tragedies occur-red; in the 1820s, the entire Hollett family drowned crossing Placentia Bay en route to their winter house in St. Mary''s Bay.

In some cases, the whole community went into the woods. This was the case at rocky Burin and windswept Lamaline, also on the Burin Peninsula. But only about half of the people at Port de Grave winterhoused. In fact, the practice was less common in Conception Bay in general than elsewhere on the island, perhaps because so many of the harbours there are so well sheltered and near forested areas.

No one left King''s Cove, Bonavista Bay, because

it was surrounded by woods. Most people stayed in Grand Bank and Fortune, too, probably because a winter fishery was possible. There is no record of winterhousing on the southern Avalon Peninsula, but anyone who has spent a winter''s night in Trepassey will attest to the amazingly high winds that blow on the barrens.

Dodging scrutiny

At times, the clergy despaired of winterhousing. In 1819, Methodist missionary John Lewis lamented that at their winter houses, hunting ""Patriges Duck or any other Game for their Sustenance"" his flock was ""without the Means of Grace and where they can indulge in any sin without fear of human Detection or reproffe.""

Occasionally, clergy visited the winter camps, even performing marriages and baptisms. The dead were brought back to the outports for burials, however. It seems that, although the odd teacher did, no clergy ever went winterhousing for the duration.

No wonder the clergy were frustrated. Some winter camps were made up of people from a single outport; others consisted of families from several outports. If there was an order to things or a pattern, it was not apparent to outsiders or visitors. There was one consistency: merchants and their servants remained behind in the outports for the winter. It must have been a lonely season for them.

Their lives contrasted greatly with their neighbours who were highly mobile. The fishing families of Bonavista, Trinity and Conception bays journeyed to ""the Labrador"" each summer to fish in a celebrated tradition. But then they came home only to move again not long afterwards.

As Bishop Feild wrote of them in the mid-1800s, ""…… in the months of September and October, they are engaged in procuring wood from the Bays for their fires; and before Christmas, many of them with their families remove into the woods for their winter residence. They are more commonly and generally at their proper homes in the early spring, before the seal fishery, or in the latter part of autumn, when preparing for their migration or removal to the winter tilts.""

By moving several times during the year, many families spent only two parts of the year ---- spring and fall ---- in the outports. The practice has been described as:

•• Going into winter quarters;

•• Going up in tilts;

•• Shifting;

•• Winterhousing.

The length of time families spent in the winter houses varied. It might be as long as almost seven months in some places, such as Burin. In Francois, on the island''s south coast, it was four months. The average has been estimated at between four and five months. Winterhousing may have become more important when the fishery failed, for it was one way to get protein-rich food.

Types of housing

If variety was the mark of winterhousing, there were many types of winter houses. Many were tilts and most were small.

In 1835, Archdeacon Wix visited 15 people in a winter dwelling measuring 12 feet by 10 feet at Isle Valen, Placentia Bay. Other records indicate that these dwellings were as small as eight feet by 10 feet and as large as 21 feet by 15 feet. In some cases, particularly early in European settlement, dried caribou hides lined the inside walls and open fires on stone hearths blew smoke through a hole in the ceiling, possibly aboriginal adaptations.

Frequently, Newfoundlanders built log cabins, or ""huts,"" chinked with moss which kept the heat in. One such winter dwelling near Flower''s Cove

on the Northern Peninsula had four rooms ---- two upstairs and two downstairs ---- and a small ""back house"" or porch. The home contained a huge stove in which a fire was always kept burning.

What all the Newfoundland winter houses had in common was that they were built near woods and a water source and on at least semi-flat terrain.

Some families planted root crops at their winter houses in the spring and harvested them in the fall when they returned.

Common property

Winterhousing was attractive in Newfoundland for several reasons. Chief among these was the fact that the land was common property and settlers could go where they liked and harvest whatever resources they liked; they could snare rabbits, fish trout and hunt partridge as they wished and as the supply allowed.

Most importantly, they could cut whatever wood they needed to keep them warm. There was no authority, legal or otherwise, in the winter communities whatsoever ---- and, in fact, few or none back in most outports. It was a very different life from that their ancestors had known back in Europe.

•• •• ••

The practice of winterhousing declined gradually, and not everywhere at the same time. Technology and transportation played a part in encouraging people to stay in the outports year-round: roads, motorboats, and better home heating and insulation. In addition, institutions such as mandatory schooling began to anchor people to the outports.

Winterhousing is a neglected aspect of Newfoundland history; although it represented freedom, it is, in fact, a little-known tradition that''s often forgotten about entirely.

The outport, celebrated in song and recitations, was always considered home, the main or ""real"" residence of the family, even by those for whom winterhousing was a way of life. Most winter homes were not mapped, so we do not even know the location of many of them. The majority of the names of these places are already lost forever.

The focus these days is on preserving our remaining outports in the wake of the death of the once-great cod fishery.