Where North West River told the story of Labrador from the perspective of the fur trade, todays visits to Battle Harbor (an island) from Mary's Harbor (mainland) showed it through the lens of fishing. From the early 1500s Europeans (English, Basque, French, Portuguese) came to the shores of Labrador to fish for Cod, Salmon, Seal and whale. Battle Harbor was one of the major venues where these catches were processed ready for sale to merchants and shipment back to Europe. At one time there were hundreds of small fishing villages along the coast of Labrador supported primarily by Cod (and other) fishing. But in the 1960s reductions in the fish stock caused the end of the Cod fishing industry and the demise of many of the fishing villages. Battle Harbor (we are told is a corruption of a Portuguese word battel or boat) has been taken over by The Battle Harbor Historical Trust partly as an exercise in saving heritage and partly as a way of injecting some tourist dollars into the local economy.

Initially I was reluctant to accompany Nina on the ferry ride to Battle Harbor as the original schedule we had, was depart at 11:00 am and return at 8:00pm. I could not imagine how one would spend 7 hours (the ferry ride was 1 hour each way) visiting a small collection of historical buildings.

However the schedule was a little more modest, depart at 11:00am and be back by 5:00 pm. So I relented and was glad that I did. The restored buildings and the tour was very interesting and easily captured my attention. But even more impressive was the wind swept island, the bare granite, the low shrubs and the colorful little buildings dotted amongst the grandeur. The day was sunny and cast the various scenes in a beautiful light. It was a great day for photography, as Nina discovered tonight when she realized she had 250 photos to sort, process and cull.

Some of the more interesting tid-bits of information I gleaned today.

The first was cod-liver oil. The job of gutting the cod was handled by a worked called the hitter it was his responsibility to collect the liver for additional processing. Specifically leaving it ferment for an extended period to extract the oil. And this is the stuff my mother used to feed me every day!

Secondly was the ingenious use of a tree trunk and an attached root to form an L-shaped support for roof beams in buildings. Because the trunk and root are a single growth the grain of the wood follows the L-shape and makes a very strong support without any fancy engineering.

And finally, how to make a long lashing or cord from seal skins. It seems the process was very much like pealing an orange while keeping the skin in one piece. The seal (dead) was hung by its head and an incision made around the carcass at the top to separate the head from the rest of the skin. Then a spiral descending incision was made round and round the carcass keeping the "peeled" skin just the right width for the intended cord or lashing. One of the common uses for this cord was the webbing in traditional snowshoes.