Fogo Island (''Fogo'',

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

for "Fire") is the largest of the offshore

islands of Newfoundland and Labrador The Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador is composed of mainland Labrador and the large island of Newfoundland. The coast of both the island and the Labrador Peninsula are lined with islands of various magnitudes. List See ...

, Canada. The Town of Fogo Island encompasses Fogo,

Joe Batt's Arm-Barr'd Islands-Shoal Bay Joe or JOE may refer to: Arts Film and television * ''Joe'' (1970 film), starring Peter Boyle * ''Joe'' (2013 film), starring Nicolas Cage * ''Joe'' (TV series), a British TV series airing from 1966 to 1971 * ''Joe'', a 2002 Canadian animated ...

Seldom-Little Seldom Seldom-Little Seldom is a community in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was previously incorporated as a town prior to becoming part of the Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador (town) ...

and Tilting, with the unincorporated areas of Fogo Island. It lies off the northeast coast of

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

, northwest of

Musgrave Harbour Musgrave Harbour is a town and designated place in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. History Musgrave Harbour is a fishing community that was originally named Muddy Hole. The name was changed in 1886 in honor of Governor An ...

across

Hamilton Sound Sir Charles Hamilton Sound, which has been shortened to and is more commonly known as Hamilton Sound, is a body of water on the northeast coast of the island of Newfoundland, between Fogo Island and the mainland to the south, and including (fro ...

, just east of the

Change Islands Change Islands is an outport community in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The community spans two small islands of the same name which lie off the northeast coast of the island of Newfoundland between Notre Dame Bay and the La ...

. The island is about long and wide. The total area is . The island had a population of 2,706 people in the

2006 census 6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number. In mathematics Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second small ...

, 2,395 in the 2011 census, and 2,244 in the 2016 census. Though migratory French fishermen visited Fogo Island from the early 16th century until 1718, the first permanent

settlement Settlement may refer to: *Human settlement, a community where people live *Settlement (structural), the distortion or disruption of parts of a building * Closing (real estate), the final step in executing a real estate transaction *Settlement (fin ...

of the island took place in the 18th century. Fogo Harbour and Tilting Harbour were the first settlements on the island. The English and Irish descendants of the first inhabitants retained traces of their Elizabethan English and Old Irish dialects, which can be heard on the island today. The island has many ancient folk customs brought from

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, but they are disappearing.

History

Fogo Island is one of the oldest named features on the coast of Newfoundland. The Bertius map from 1606 shows Fogo Island as one of only about a dozen important features around the coast of Newfoundland. On French maps of the 16th to 18th centuries, the island is referred to as ''Ile des Fougues''. The island was likely named by

explorers and early fishing crews in the 16th century (''Fogo'' means ''Fire'' in

). Until 1783 Fogo Island was on an area of the coast called the French Shore. Though English and Irish were not supposed to settle here, under the terms of the

Treaty of Utrecht The Peace of Utrecht was a series of peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715. The war involved three contenders for the vacant throne o ...

, they did settle, and by 1750 Fogo was a thriving part of the British mercantile system of fisheries, based out of

West Country The West Country (occasionally Westcountry) is a loosely defined area of South West England, usually taken to include all, some, or parts of the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Bristol, and, less commonly, Wiltshire, Gloucesters ...

English towns such as

Poole Poole () is a large coastal town and seaport in Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester and adjoins Bournemouth to the east. Since 1 April 2019, the local authority is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Counc ...

, in

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

. Tilting Harbour on Fogo Island is a National Cultural Landscape District of Canada and is Newfoundland and Labrador's first Provincial Heritage District. Tilting is unique for its Irish culture and, some people say, its Irish dialect. The Irish Cemetery in Tilting may be the oldest in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. Local oral history indicates that Tilting was originally a French harbour before becoming a venue of Irish settlement. This is highly likely, given the traditional commercial and cultural links between southern Irish and northern French fishing ports. The first Irish settled in Tilting in the 1750s, and uniquely for Newfoundland, Tilting evolved into an exclusively Irish and Catholic town by the 1780s.

Beothuk The Beothuk ( or ; also spelled Beothuck) were a group of indigenous people who lived on the island of Newfoundland. Beginning around AD 1500, the Beothuk culture formed. This appeared to be the most recent cultural manifestation of peoples w ...

traversed Fogo Island for many hundreds of years before Irish and English settlers arrived. The Beothuk pursued the

seal Seal may refer to any of the following: Common uses * Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly: ** Earless seal, or "true seal" ** Fur seal * Seal (emblem), a device to impr ...

and

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...

fisheries in the area. They also travelled out to the Funk Islands to collect feathers and eggs from the birds there. In the early years of European settlement at Fogo, there were incidents of violence between the Beothuk and the Europeans. This contact ended around the year 1800. The Beothuk became extinct as a people in the late 1820s. Fogo Island first attracted Europeans because of the extensive opportunities for commodity harvesting, including seal skins and oil, lumber, fur-bearing animals, salmon and of course cod. Over time, settlers on the island concentrated on processing dried cod, mainly because that was the product that most interested the merchants who dealt in the region of Fogo. From about 1850 until the widespread depletion of fish stocks in the 1990s, cod was king. In recent years the economy of the island has seen diversification away from solely fishing to tourism and cultural industries. Fishing has always been a hard life. Before Confederation with Canada, the mercantile classes of St John's, Newfoundland became rich by holding a near-

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

stranglehold on both the supply of goods to the

Newfoundland outport An outport is the term given for a small coastal community in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador other than the chief port of St. John's. Originally, the term was used for coastal communities on the island of Newfoundland, ...

s and on the sale of fish from them. In the early 20th century, the

Fisherman's Protective Union The Fishermen's Protective Union (sometimes called the Fisherman's Protective Union, the FPU, The Union or the Union Party) was a workers' organisation and political party in the Dominion of Newfoundland. The development of the FPU mirrored tha ...

was formed in an attempt to break this stranglehold. It was a form of

co-operative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...

with general stores owned by fishermen for fishermen. One of the Fishermen's Union stores still stands at Seldom-Come-By on Fogo Island, now open as a museum complete with general store, port installations, fishing implements and equipment for the manufacture of

cod-liver oil Cod liver oil is a dietary supplement derived from liver of cod fish (Gadidae). As with most fish oils, it contains the omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and also vitamin A and vitamin D. Histori ...

. Today the Fogo Island Cooperative continues to successfully stake footholds in new fish markets. Communities began recognising the appeal of their land and heritage as cultural tourism opportunities.

Crab Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" (abdomen) ( el, βραχύς , translit=brachys = short, / = tail), usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the ...

and

lobster Lobsters are a family (biology), family (Nephropidae, Synonym (taxonomy), synonym Homaridae) of marine crustaceans. They have long bodies with muscular tails and live in crevices or burrows on the sea floor. Three of their five pairs of legs ...

fisheries have largely replaced the cod fishery; a fish-packing

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

remains in operation in the town of Fogo. A Marconi radio transmitting station was once operational atop a hill near the town of Fogo; operating with a

spark-gap transmitter A spark-gap transmitter is an obsolete type of radio transmitter which generates radio waves by means of an electric spark."Radio Transmitters, Early" in Spark-gap transmitters were the first type of radio transmitter, and were the main type use ...

to establish maritime communications, the station was forced to close around the time that radio became common for household use as the spark-gap design generated unacceptable levels of

radio interference Electromagnetic interference (EMI), also called radio-frequency interference (RFI) when in the radio frequency spectrum, is a disturbance generated by an external source that affects an electrical circuit by electromagnetic induction, electrosta ...

. Efforts to rebuild this station as a

historic site A historic site or heritage site is an official location where pieces of political, military, cultural, or social history have been preserved due to their cultural heritage value. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been rec ...

commenced in 2002. In 1967, the island played a key role in the development of what came to be known as the "Fogo Process," a model for community media as a tool for addressing community concerns, when an Extension field worker from Memorial University, Fred Earle, and Colin Low shot 27 films with Fogo Islanders as part of the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...

Challenge for Change Challenge for Change (French: ''Societé Nouvelle'') was a participatory film and video project created by the National Film Board of Canada in 1967, the Canadian Centennial. Active until 1980, Challenge for Change used film and video production t ...

program. Residents defeated the Smallwood Government's plans to resettle elsewhere Fogo Islanders in the 1950s but by 1967 a downturn in the inshore fishery had forced many to turn to welfare support. The northern cod fishery closed in 1992. While the island did recover from the downturn—in part owing to the Fogo Process—the depleted state of the fishery adversely affected islanders for years to come. Carlb-fogo-newfoundland-fishery-2002

Communities

In the

2006 Census 6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number. In mathematics Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second small ...

there were eleven communities on Fogo Island: * The Town of Fogo Island : ** Fogo 748 ** Joe Batt's Arm (together with Barr'd Islands and Shoal Bay) 778 ** Seldom (Seldom-Come-By) (together with Little Seldom) 444 ** Little Seldom ** Tilting 248 ** Stag Harbour 223 (2001 population) ** Island Harbour 185 (2001 population) ** Deep Bay 141 (2001 population) ** Fogo Island Central 15 (2001 population) *

Shoal Bay In oceanography, geomorphology, and geoscience, a shoal is a natural submerged ridge, bank, or bar that consists of, or is covered by, sand or other unconsolidated material and rises from the bed of a body of water to near the surface. I ...

* Barr'd Islands On March 1, 2011, the towns of Fogo,

and Tilting and the Fogo Island Region ( Stag Harbour, Island Harbour, Deep Bay, and Fogo Island Central) amalgamated to form the Town of Fogo Island. From 1792 there was always a physician on the island. The last physician was due to leave the island in June 2022; medical care then only being available via a six-hour round trip by ferry, weather permitting. This follows economic problems and population decrease in Newfoundland and Labrador following the 1990s collapse in the cod fishery.

Climate

Fogo Island has a marine-based

subarctic climate The subarctic climate (also called subpolar climate, or boreal climate) is a climate with long, cold (often very cold) winters, and short, warm to cool summers. It is found on large landmasses, often away from the moderating effects of an ocean, ge ...

( Dfc) bordering on a cold

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freezing ...

(Dfb) with cooler summers than inland areas of Newfoundland as well as milder winters than areas on the same parallels in interior Canada. However, due to the very cool characteristics of summer months, Fogo Island in many ways resembles the subarctic range. The fourth warmest month of June just straddles in mean temperature. As typical of Newfoundland and its surroundings precipitation is high and consistent year-round, which results in more than of snowfall on average in winter. Due to the extreme

seasonal lag Seasonal lag is the phenomenon whereby the date of maximum average air temperature at a geographical location on a planet is delayed until some time after the date of maximum insolation (i.e. the summer solstice). This also applies to the minimum ...

autumn is much warmer than spring, and as such the coldest and warmest months are February and August, respectively.

Name

Fogo Island was once called Y del Fogo, meaning Isle of Fire. There are a number of theories for the name: *Many accidental or natural

forest fire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire ...

s destroyed the dense forests of the northern part of the island. *European mariners often saw the burning fires of the

natives, when they were visiting from across the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

. *The island may have been named Fogo after the Cape Verde Island's active volcano. Note that many Newfoundland geographical features were named by the Spanish, the Portuguese and the French before anglophones (the English, the Irish and the Scots) arrived. Cape Bonavista, Cape Spear, Cape Race, Trinity Bay, Placentia Bay, Notre Dame Bay, Cape St Francis, Baccalieu Island, Baie Verte, Taslow, Baie l'Argente and even St John's or Catalina are place names that were originally named by non-English-speakers.

Transportation

Fogo Island is connected to mainland Newfoundland by the ferry MV ''Veteran'', and served by the

Fogo Aerodrome Fogo Aerodrome is a local airport located south of Fogo, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada on Fogo Island. It is the island's only infrastructure for air transport. Scheduled service from Fogo is provided by Exploits Valley Air Services on a ...

airport. The primary roads on the island are Route 333 (Fogo Island Road) and Route 334 (Joe Batt’s Arm Road), as well as Deep Bay Road and Island Harbour Road.

Notable people

Zita Cobb Zita Cobb, , is a Canadian businesswoman and social entrepreneur. In 2006, she established Shorefast, a Canadian social enterprise, with her brothers Anthony and Alan Cobb on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Early life and education Cobb is an eight ...

– founder of Shorefast

Tourism and attractions

The island attracts a wide range of visitors interested in its history, local wildlife and other attractions. It has seven hiking trails, such as Lion's Den, Brimstone Head, Turpin's and Joe Batt's Point Trail. It also has ten Town-owned local museums and heritage properties, including the Marine Interpretation Centre, the Lane House Museum, and the Bleak House Museum. There are also museums run by local individuals, including Mona's Quilts & Jams and the Museum of the Flat Earth. Fogo Island Arts (launched in 2008) provides a platform for contemporary art on the island, via a series of residencies hosted at different studios around Fogo.

Brimstone Head Folk Festival

The community of Fogo in Fogo Island is home to the Brimstone Head Folk Festival, hosted by the Fogo Island Folk Alliance. This event attracts people from all over every year in early August. Performers consist of many bands which have included The Masterless Men, The Irish Descendants, Middle Tickle, The Fogo Island Accordion Group, Shores of Newfoundland, The Affections and many other local performers such as Aaron Brown, Sally Payne and Jason Hoven. Brimstone Head was touted as one of the four corners of the world by the tongue-in-cheek

Flat Earth Society of Canada Modern flat Earth beliefs are promoted by organizations and individuals which make claims that the Earth is flat while denying the Earth's sphericity, contrary to over two millennia of scientific consensus. Flat Earth beliefs are pseudoscie ...

(not related to the Flat Earth Society). Along with the Brimstone Head Folk Festival, other communities have festivals as well. Joe Batt's Arm hosts the Ethridge's Point Seaside Fest, which usually takes place during the first weekend in August, the weekend before the Brimstone Head festival.

Literature

Fogo Island appears in fictional form in the novel ''Blaze Island'' by

Catherine Bush Catherine Bush is a Canadian novelist. Biography Born in Toronto and educated at the University of Toronto Schools, she attended Yale University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature. Her debut novel, ''Minus Time'' ( ...

References

Community Profile: Fogo Town, Newfoundland and Labrador; Statistics CanadaCommunity Profile: Joe Batt's Arm-Barr'd Islands-Shoal Bay Town, Newfoundland and Labrador; Statistics CanadaCommunity Profile: Seldom-Little Seldom Town, Newfoundland and Labrador; Statistics CanadaCommunity Profile: Tilting Town, Newfoundland and Labrador; Statistics CanadaCommunity Profile: Fogo Island Region, Newfoundland and Labrador; Statistics CanadaFogo Island Region designated places; Statistics Canada

External links

Fogo Island - Change Islands - Farewell - Ferry Schedule

Fogo Island Central Academy

Town of Joe Batt's Arm

Folklore and Oral History collection for Little Fogo Island
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fogo Island, Newfoundland And Labrador Islands of Newfoundland and Labrador Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador