A significant (religious) first

Colony of Avalon NL

Watercolour

©2019 Charlene Brown

Our tour of the reconstructed Colony of Avalon south of St. John’s included a hike around the settled part of the peninsula to see the original home sites, remnants of the water system, newly planted and strongly fenced food gardens, a look at a string of islands across the mouth of the harbour which still accommodate small herds of sheep that spend their summers there - unaccompanied but safe from land predators.  We also explored various waterfront buildings dating from the 1620s, housing a working bakery and a (non-working) alchemist’s operation as well as furnishings bearing the carved insignia of Elizabeth I.

There is also a large new building with a museum and a well-equipped archaeological research laboratory where the many artifacts found at the site are studied. Of particular significance is an ornate baroque cross believed to have fallen from the steeple of the Catholic church here. The presence of this artifact in the colony symbolizes something of a breakthrough. Despite the severe religious conflicts of the period, when Lord Baltimore launched the colony he secured the right of Catholics to practice their religion unimpeded, embracing the novel principle of religious tolerance for the first time in North America. Only 3-D printed replicas of the cross were available for viewing – see photo on the right – owing to its fragility.

The bergy bits in the lower left of the painting are the remnants of stranded icebergs.  Hard to believe that this cove, at latitude 47 degrees N is more than a degree further south than Victoria (48.4 degrees N) - where we have palm trees.

The prettiest place in all of Newfoundland + Labrador – well, one of the prettiest places...

Trinity NL from Gun Hill

Watercolour and marker

©2019 Charlene Brown

This lovely town, which featured prominently in early European contact with North America, was named by Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real when he arrived here on Trinity Sunday in 1501.

Fishermen from England began using Trinity as a base in the 1570s and gradually began to settle the area and export fish to Britain.  Due to its importance in British-Newfoundland trade it was captured twice by the French during the Anglo-French Wars of 1696-1713 and once more during the Seven Years War of 1756-1763.

Trinity was also the site of the first court of justice in North America, the Court of the Admiralty, held in 1615.  In 1798, vaccination for small pox was introduced to the New World in Trinity by John Clinch, a medical colleague of Edward Jenner. 

Cove with Pirate Cave (Not)

Brigus NL

Watercolour and oil pastel

©2019 Charlene Brown

This picturesque fishing village, first settled in 1612, has many attractive features, including the Hawthorne Cottage - a National Historic Site of Canada, the Stone Barn Museum and the Harbour Pond shown here, neatly lined with stone walls, as are the small rivers flowing into it through a community park. But the main attraction, sometimes thought to be a pirate cave (it really does look like it could be one, opening out to deep water from a sheer cliff) is the Brigus Tunnel.  It was built by the famous Captain Abram Bartlett because he sometimes had trouble finding a place to park and unload his fishing schooner in the sheltered cliff-side harbour in the right foreground. He purchased property behind the church in the upper left of the painting, and had a 25-metre-long tunnel dug (and blasted using gunpowder) through the ridge at the edge of the property. 

So, no treasure chests full of ill-gotten gains hidden in the Brigus tunnel, but right up until about 1910 lots of fish went through.  And more recently lots of tourists.

Neighbourhood Icebergs

Quilts in the breeze at Gunners Cove

Watercolour and marker

©2019 Charlene Brown

Large icebergs which have ‘calved’ off glaciers in Greenland drift south along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador every spring. Some get hung up on shoals or trapped in coves and stay in town for weeks providing a steady supply of almost perfectly pure ice for anyone brave enough to go out in a boat and chop some off (those things roll, you know).  I’m sure there are many uses for this unique resource, but the only one we were told about was the brewing of iceberg beer.

 I took a lot of photos of these icebergs in various neighbourhoods, including an especially decorative one in Saint Lunaire-Griquet (shown on the right) two kilometres south of Gunners Cove.   I even considered including this particular iceberg in the painting of Gunners Cove, which provided a more paintable foreground, but decided to stick with the ones that were actually there.