Winston was wondering how one gets written about. He didn’t ask me to write this, but he did answer my questions, and I, his.
I didn’t get to ask if there was ever any possibility in me writing about Fogo Island without sounding like an ethnographic townie. Perhaps it’s not a question. The answer is obvious.
. . .
Driving around the Island, I’ve stopped to chat here and there from Joe Batt’s Arm to south Joe Batt’s Arm to Tilting and back through Barr’d Islands and Shoal Bay over to the town of Fogo and Fogo Central, and of course, Deep Bay, too. I would like to visit Seldom, and Little Seldom, and Island Harbour, and maybe visit the islands off of the island. Here on Fogo, not a single person has asked me where I’m really from. There has been no other place I have ever visited that is quite like here. My awe isn’t just about the landscapes. Yes, the views are breathtaking. Every step in every direction is amazing. But what I really like is how the water tastes sweet. The air fresh and salty. I have never slept with my doors unlocked. That kind of safety should be felt at least once in a lifetime. After years of parachuting into one place after another, and consistently made aware that being and feeling and thinking differently could get me into trouble, Fogo is a welcomed change.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge the Beothuks, too, who were the original people on this land, and who were completely wiped out by European contact by the early 1800s. Fogo was a summer fishing spot for some Beothuks, but as more English and Irish settlers arrived, their diseases killed off the scores of families living around the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador and present-day Quebec. Everyone I’ve talked to so far seems to know some Indigenous history, and know that it’s a tragic thing that happened to the Beothuk people. I can’t say most people I’ve ever talked to in the rest of this country really know let alone acknowledge who was already here on the land they are currently inhabiting. No official narrative has led them to believe this land couldn’t be owned and occupied. I don’t think it’s conscious racial justice in Fogo so much as feeling connected to lineage and to land, but I will take it. I mean, where else in this country would you even hear a fifth generation middle aged white man offer, unprompted, that his ancestors were immigrants -- that we were all immigrants who came to this land.
. . .
I’ve really enjoyed whipping around the Island in a cherry red pick up truck listening to Selena Gomez. The ride is courtesy of FIA. Everyone on the island knows that if you’re in a red pick up, you are with Shorefast, and if you are in a white SUV, you are with the Inn. Steffen spotted me in Deep Bay before we even met, and followed me for a minute in his lemon-coloured FIAT. I wonder if he will make friends with the banana-yellow Hummer sitting on Brown’s Point Road.
Steffen is pals with Winston, and I have invited myself along to their next fishing trip. Hannah is also on standby for a future fishing expedition with Winston. His name has come up the most of anyone on Fogo. By day, Winston and Linda Osmond run the Herring Cove Art Gallery and Studio in Shoal Bay, which sits at the end of the dirt road near Foodland. According to Steffen, the produce is far superior in Winston and Linda’s garden. Winston never showed me his vegetable garden on the day we met, but he did talk up his wife’s squash pickles. I ate half a jar with buttered toast for breakfast this morning. Painting local scenery from memory, Winston seemed disappointed when I asked him if he painted any dogs. He knows what a fish looks like, so he paints those.
A painter for about as long if not longer than he was a fisherman, Winston knows what he likes to do, and he’s gone all in with his gallery and studio. In the past he’s left for Alberta and the Yukon, but he always comes back. Most Newfoundlanders do. He knows the land and the sea tie him here. When you leave and come back, he says with his arms wide open, you head straight out to the ocean like greeting an old friend.
