Today was the first day I took some time to wander around #PortauxBasques #Newfoundland after #HurricaneFiona and it really hurt. I’m not talking about my feet or my back. I mean my emotional and mental state.
Went to J.T. Cheeseman Provincial Park first. There was a couple honeymooning in their little red hatchback with a quiet, pure white husky tethered to a zip line. They were easily 200 - 300 feet inland from where the parking lot used to be.
There used to be a sand dune between the parking lot and the ocean. You’d climb from the lot, cross the ATV trail and get to the beach. Old railroad tiles - cause Newfoundland used to have trains - were visible to the right, just a foot or two poking out of the sand. Now?
Even the part with the sea grass I was standing on is almost gone. To the right and in the other direction…. 
Is Cape Ray in the distance. The stretch of beach between Cheeseman’s and that community is really a sandbar, but a crucial one.
The highly endangered piping plover had been returning to nest on this sandbar for the past 5 years or so. Fiona threw enough that the geography of that sandbar changed. Will the piping plover return? Dunno.
The sandbar also protected a lot of Cape Ray, the NL T’Railway, etc. It went far enough in to do significant damage to roofs and demolished culverts. The metal is twisted and lying beside the road in at least 2 spots. The road has no support to repair it, and you need an ATV…
Or else you can’t get to your cabin, etc. the cemetery survived and thank God for that. I actually got enough calls / messages asking I drove up there to check it out. The geographical landscape of the region changed and not just #PortauxBasques
Old growth trees snapped in Codroy Valley. You see Port aux Basques and Burnt Islands plenty, but there are 15 communities in the Valley alone. Highway 470 aka the Granite Coast Highway had a few too. There are local service districts not just municipalities.
“You shouldn’t build near the water”. These places were built where they are - in coves - because they were naturally sheltered from the worst of the Gulf storms. Same with sheds, wharfs, stages. They lasted 100 years. PAB dates back to the 1780s.
Most of the other towns have a similarly long history. Hell the Dorset used to fish in Cape Ray. There’s an excellent museum that displays info about it there every summer and plenty of artifacts.
These people are fishers, not loggers. They built near the sea cause if they didn’t they couldn’t harvest from it. They didn’t have modern seiners 100 years ago. They hauled everything by hand. It’s still damned hard work even with modern technology.
The storms have always been bad. We’ve always lost fishers. I just co-wrote a story with @JaymieWhiteWHP about a bad storm in 1974 that swept houses into the water in #PortauxBasques so it has happened before. BUT…
Not like this. This is a whole new level of storms and surge threats that are - IMO - directly attributed to climate change. Fun fact: the towns aren’t as reactive as folks seem to think.
I go to the council meetings and read the reports. For years… YEARS… they’ve been laying down armour stone to reinforce the cliffs. They’ve made changes to the building codes, and under much criticism by folks who have generational ties to a particular lot by the sea.
The sea their grandfather built is a lot closer now though, even with the armour stone. And if you’ve never tried to move a stubborn NLer out of their family home then where do you get off really. It’s practically impossible.
You’d have better luck moving the province closer to the mainland. Anyway all this rambling is just to say we are… from what I’ve experienced talking to people this week… grieving. It doesn’t matter if we’ve not lost so much as a pair of socks. We have lost a lot actually.
And I’m out of patience for people who think it’s so simple as not building near the water and want to blame these people, us, for cleaving to the place that made us. You can’t praise our spirit on national TV in one breath and in the next…
Shame us for it. And that’s what it is when you say don’t build near the water. I’m so tired of it. Why don’t you just pick up your house and move it 50 feet back? Or better yet STFU. Nobody wants to hear it. I haven’t found one person yet who thinks you’re fab for saying it.
Instead they just look like a whupped dog taking another blow. We fucking KNOW ok? Now go tell it to Florida. (DO NOT.)
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