Wreckhouse is a geographic location in the

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

province of

Newfoundland and Labrador Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the populatio ...

that is well known for extremely high winds. Situated at the southern end of the

Long Range Mountains The Long Range Mountains are a series of mountains along the west coast of the Canadian island of Newfoundland. The Long Range Mountains are a subrange which forms the northernmost section of the Appalachian mountain chain on the eastern seab ...

at the western mouth of the

Codroy Valley The Codroy Valley is a valley in the southwestern part of the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Codroy Valley is a glacial valley formed in the Anguille Mountains, a sub-range of the Long Range ...

, the name originated because high winds - often well in excess of hurricane force - would occasionally blow railway cars on the

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

trains operated by the

Newfoundland Railway The Newfoundland Railway was a narrow-gauge railway that operated on the island of Newfoundland (island), Newfoundland from 1898 to 1988. With a total track length of , it was the longest narrow-gauge system in North America. History Early con ...

completely off the track. The word "Wreckhouse" was added to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary in 2004. Although the railway was closed in 1988, the winds are still a hazard to vehicles on Highway 1 and transport trucks occasionally get blown off the road. Winds have been measured over 200 km/h. Lockie MacDougall, a farmer and trapper, was born in 1896 and lived at Wreckhouse. He had a natural sixth sense to the changes in the weather and this ability allowed him to be employed by

Robert Gillespie Reid Sir Robert Gillespie Reid (12 October 1842 – 3 June 1908) was a Scottish railway contractor most famous for building large railway bridges in Canada and the United States. Founder of Reid Newfoundland Company, from 1889 until his death ...

, whose company built the

. MacDougall was paid 20 dollars a month and would inform the railway if it was safe for trains to pass, performing this task for thirty years until his death in 1965. His wife, Emily, continued on with the task until she moved away from the area in 1972. You could see Lockie's face painted in a mural on the side of local pizza establishment, Louis Gees in

Corner Brook Corner Brook ( 2021 population: 19,316 CA 29,762) is a city located on the west coast of the island of Newfoundland in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Corner Brook is the fifth largest settlement in Newfoundland and Labrado ...

, Newfoundland and Labrador, however the mural was covered up in the late 2010s due to it being significantly damaged. An

anemometer In meteorology, an anemometer () is a device that measures wind speed and direction. It is a common instrument used in weather stations. The earliest known description of an anemometer was by Italian architect and author Leon Battista Alberti ...

operated by the

Meteorological Service of Canada The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC; ) is a branch of Environment and Climate Change Canada, which primarily provides public meteorological information and weather forecasts and warnings of severe weather and other environmental hazards. ...

currently provides remote wind data for the Newfoundland and Labrador weather office in Gander which distributes warnings to travellers should the speed be sufficient. The term Wreckhouse Winds is used by the MSC to specifically refer to dangerous wind conditions in this geographic area.

References

Geography of Newfoundland and Labrador {{Newfoundland-geo-stub