Down to Sally's Cove: Newfoundland Stories by Ella Manuel

Growing up in Lewisporte in northeastern Newfoundland, Ella Manuel acquired a love of fishing that stayed with her for the rest of her life. In this story she tells of days on the rivers of western Newfoundland and of her encounters with men who could not accept the idea of a woman fishing expertly. On the Lomond River she glories in the thrill of fly fishing, and first hears about the remarkable Emma Tapper, who was completely at home on any river.   

In the 1940s, as Ella Manuel was thinking of how to earn a living in Western Newfoundland, she met some disgruntled fly-fishermen from the southern United States. This may have led to the sports-fishing venture she later developed at Killdevil Lodge.

 Ella Manuel returned in the mid-1940s to Newfoundland, a divorced mother of two small boys. Chatting with American sportsman Lee Wulff about the need for fly-fishing camps in north-western Newfoundland, she suddenly decided to start a sports-fishing venture. In Lomond, the once busy logging town in Bonne Bay, she set up a summer-time operation at Killdevil Lodge. Though it did not prosper, Ella gloried in the beauty of her surroundings.  

A few years after her Lomond venture, having sold Killdevil Lodge to the Anglican Church, Ella Manuel returned to Bonne Bay. She rented a house for the summer in Woody Point, made many new friends, and began to think of settling down. 

Having discovered the beauty of Woody Point and its friendly people, Ella Manuel decided to build a house for herself. Little did she know the challenges and frustrations that awaited her as she befuddled the builders with her plans.

Here Ella Manuel faces frustration as she challenges power company regulations, but finally succeeds in connecting her new house on the hill in Woody Point to electric power.  

In the next 4 episodes, Ella Manuel describes the goings on of a typical year in mid-twentieth century Bonne Bay, now the heart of Gros Morne National Park of western Newfoundland. The events she relates might well have taken place in many another outport, for they illustrate something of the traditions and culture of rural Newfoundland and Labrador. This episode begins as Ella returns to Woody Point after a winter on the Mainland, rants about the protests over the seal fishery, meets old friends again, hears new stories, and samples funnel buns 

In this second episode of a typical year in mid-century Bonne Bay,  Ella Manuel tells of watching a house being moved, launching her new rodney, entertaining the Rockefellers, and joining a grand party in the old Orange Lodge.

Ella Manuel visits the Woody Point clinic, where she hears about jannying, the old yuletide tradition of visiting homes in disguise. She recounts the story of John Charles Roberts' seed potatoes and their connection with the Scots of Cape Breton. As winter approaches, the weather turns rough. 

With wind and snow every day, Ella Manuel crosses Bonne Bay on the ice, prepares for Christmas, and hosts a New Year's Eve party.      By the way, all across Canada the community with the highest average annual snowfall is none other than Woody Point, where over six meters or nearly 21 feet can drop over a three-month period. 

ORIGINAL BROADCASTIn this rare recording, originally broadcast on the CBC on September 24, 1964, Ella Manuel tells her listeners of the changes, both good and not so, that the newly built road down (up) the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland have brought to the people who live along it. 

Appearing in many of Ella Manuel's stories, Em Tapper was one of her closest friends in Bonne Bay.  At home in the woods, on the river or in a boat, she guided for Ella during the Killdevil days. Here is the story of how they first met, and something of Em's upbringing. 

Here  Ella Manuel visits an old lady from a long-established family down in the bottom of the South Arm of Bonne Bay, who tells about her life in days of old. A girl's duties -  curing the fish, rug hooking, making sealskin boots, spinning and knitting, preparing Christmas dinners, and enjoying life in general.

Ella Manuel learns about a well-known Norris Point family and their connections with the late 19th century history of Bonne Bay, including the British naval fleet and that "muscular Christian",  the Rev. Joseph Curling.. 

Here Ella Manuel talks about one of the splendid older men she came to know in Bonne Bay. This was “Uncle”  George, well-known in Woody Point many years ago, an argumentative old man who made life difficult for his son by insisting on doing what he wanted to and not what he should. 

Among the first to settle in the outer part of Bonne Bay in Rocky Harbour was the Shears family, well-known for their amazing ingenuity, as Ella Manuel describes in this story. 

Brief vignettes of some of the colourful older men around Bonne Bay,  whom Ella Manuel called her uncles. 

In Woody Point, Ella acquired her first cats. She was drawn into the feline world through her friends, the Campbells of Black Duck. Here is the tale of her first two cats, and their remarkable ancestor.

As the road north from Rocky Harbour was being built in 1953, Ella Manuel walked the old coastal trail from Baker's Brook.  In Sally's Cove she met three old Roberts brothers, all born in Bonne Bay in the 19th century. Here is the scene as she picked her way north.

With Uncle Eli and Em Tapper, Ella Manuel heads north on Orangeman's Day, fishes Western Brook, visits Sally's Cove and Portland Creek, and watches Hib repair an airplane.

Here Ella Manuel discovers life in a typical woods camp in winter. She revels in the wintry landscape and sees how the contractor and his wife live while his men are cutting trees for the paper mill in Corner Brook.

In the mid-1940s, Ella Manuel travelled by train to the Codroy Valley of southwestern Newfoundland. Here she met people whose forefathers had years before settled there, some from Nova Scotia. Their traditional music so fascinated her that she helped to organize a ceilidh for them in Corner Brook. Some of the older residents told her why the Scots came to the Codroy and about the fierce fights that sometimes occurred. Though much has since been written – and recorded – about the history and the music of the Codroy, her first-hand impressions provide a fresh view for those unfamiliar with the history of this part of Newfoundland. 

As the Second World War ended, and life began to return to normal, Ella Manuel was keen to learn more about the commercial fishery. Here she tells of her experience on a purse seiner cruising Port-au-Port Bay for herring. 

In the summer of 1967, Ella spends a few days celebrating Canada's 100th birthday on one of her favourite rivers. And she looks ahead to the world her grandchildren will inherit.

In this episode Ella Manuel takes a bemused browse through an old copy of the guide to sailors in Newfoundland waters.

Here Ella Manuel explains how an old friend from Labrador took a long and completely unwanted voyage in the late 1950s - an unintended prisoner on a coastal steamer.

In the early 1960s, Ella journeyed around the Northern Peninsula by coastal steamer, then the only public means of moving people and goods from one isolated outport to another. In this account of one trip she made around western Notre Dame Bay, she tells of her conversations with the captain. 

As a young girl, Ella Manuel often went by boat to visit the lovely island of Exploits in Notre Dame Bay, where her father and his grew up. Many years later she returned, sharing a boat ride with Gail and Gerry Squires, who had made a seasonal home there. It was here that Gerry began to develop his artistic vision of Newfoundland landscape and spiritual heritage. In this story, Ella also tells of three old brothers who once lived on Exploits.

Here Ella Manuel describes a charming old guide book to Newfoundland, full of information that the tourist and sportsman of the day would need.

Throughout the long and complex history of relations with the United States, there came a time when an American invasion was thought to be imminent.  In this story, Ella Manuel tells how an officer sent from England to defend Newfoundland discovers the ups and downs of life in St. John's and recounts one of the last duels fought there.

Over the years, Newfoundland and Labrador benefitted from the efforts of dedicated men and women who were sent here to promote one Christian denomination or another. One who fascinated Ella Manuel was Julian Moreton, who pitched up on the shores of northern Bonavista Bay as a Church of England missionary. His 1863 memoir “Life and Work in Newfoundland: Reminiscences of Thirteen Years Spent There” tells of his travels and adventures in the scattered and thinly populated northeastern corner of Newfoundland. 

Twenty-five years after Anglican missionary Julian Moreton, the subject of the previous episode, left Newfoundland, along came to the northeastern coast another preacher, whose parishes overlapped Moreton's. James Lumsden's assignment was to minister to Wesleyans, later known as Methodists. Here, Ella Manuel tells of his nine years in eastern and northern Newfoundland.

About the same time that James Lumsden arrived in Newfoundland, young doctor Conrad Fitz-Gerald landed in Harbour Breton to attend to people who worked along the southeast coast for a company of fish and wine merchants. As Ella Manuel relates, there were few medical men as tough and indestructible, and as self-effacing.  

Another  missionary of sorts, this one with a medical wife, was the Rev. Hugh MacDermott who arrived in 1904 not far from where Dr. “Fitz” was working, though the one seems to have written little about the other. Ella Manuel's story of the man once described as “to Newfoundland what Grenfell has been to Labrador” is based on his 1938 memoir “MacDermott of Fortune Bay Told by Himself”

Among the early 19th century seamen who wrote of their voyages to Newfoundland and Labrador was British Lieutenant Edward Chappell. In 1818 he published an account of the cruise five years earlier of H.M.S. Rosamond to Newfoundland and Labrador “of which countries no account has been published by any British traveller since the reign of Queen Elizabeth.”  While visiting southern Labrador, he wrote that “We were much surprised, on visiting our good friend Mr. Pinson, to find a handsome female seated at the head of his table. The sight of a white woman was now a real gratification to us all; and our officers were anxiously desirous to discover by what means she had been thrown upon the savage territory of Labrador.” Chappell recorded the strange tale told by “Mrs. E” as he called her.  In the following, Ella Manuel, in the voice of the young woman herself, re-tells with some artistic license, the story of Mrs. E. 

Around 1900, John Pittman of Rocky Harbour disappeared under mysterious circumstances.  Here Ella Manuel tells a story of what might have happened to him. 

This story was first told by Neil Dewar himself, and has been repeated in several recent books. Dewar's experiences remind us of the terrible conditions that faced those who two centuries ago survived shipwreck on the empty coast of northern Newfoundland. It is a tale of horror, suffering and courage, of compassion and survival.

During the long history of Arctic exploration, of expeditions that disappeared and of the many attempts to find them, one in particular stands out for its connection with Captain Isaac Bartlett of Brigus. Here is Ella Manuel's re-telling of the rescue of shipwreck survivors from  southward-drifting Greenland ice floes.

Here Ella recalls an old salt named Will Barnes. Though she never met him in life, his memoir of wild exploits at sea delighted her. 

Here Ella Manuel recalls a visit to Newfoundland  170 years ago of an American ship loaded with dignitaries come to see what  should  have been the laying of the first  telegraph cable to Nova Scotia. 

In this first episode of the final season  (“Ghosts and Dirty Tricks") ,Ella Manuel recalls a memorable Guy Fawkes night when she was a young girl in Lewisporte in the 1920 s.  

Uncle John tells the young Ella Manuel a spooky story from the Bay of Exploits.

Many are the stories  told around Newfoundland and Labrador about goats and rams possessed of  special powers and inclined to mad antics.  Here is one that Aunt Jenny, who lived in Bloomfield many years ago, told Ella Manuel about a hymn-singing goat.

Ella Manuel tells a story about a young sleeveen from Baker's Brook who was forever causing trouble in the  woods camp where he worked.

In this episode Ella Manuel recalls ice-boating on Burnt Bay off Lewisporte in the 1920s, and how her friend Nancy met a "bear" while crossing the Bay on  the winter ice.

In this final episode of  the "Down to Sally's Cove" podcast, Ella Manuel comments on some of the odd phrases and strange words she came across in her travels around Newfoundland.  Most, but not all, are now clearly explained in the magisterial Dictionary of Newfoundland English.