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Fogo Island, the largest of Newfoundland's offshore islands, is off the Northeast Coast of Newfoundland near Lewisporte and Twillingate. The Island is about 25 km long and 14 km wide.
The island consists of eleven communities and has a population of about 5,000 people.
Because the original settlement took place in the 18th Century and the area remained isolated well into the twentieth century, the descendants of the first inhabitants retained traces of their Elizabethan dialect which can be heard on the Island today. The Island has many ancient folk customs brought from England that are disappearing.
Fogo Island was once called Y del Fogo, meaning Isle of Fire. There are three theories for the name:
•Many huge accidental or natural forest fires destroyed the dense forests of the Northern part of the Island.
•Europeans continually saw the burning fires of the Beothuks, when they were visiting from across the Atlantic.
•The settlers deliberately burned the forests to clear land for cultivation, but ironically lost the soil to spring washouts.
History
"In Cod We Trust" - Fogo, like most of the Newfoundland outports, was built upon the fishery. Until the widespread depletion of fish stocks in the 1990's, cod was king.
Fishing was a hard life and there was a widespread perception that the mercantile classes of St John's, Newfoundland were becoming rich by holding a near-monopoly stranglehold on imports to the tiny villages.
On Fogo Island, the general response of fishers to the idea of Water Street in the St John's commercial district holding the largest concentration of millionaires while the people of the outports lived in poverty was F.U.
The F.U. (or Fishermens' Union) Trading Company was a co-operative; general stores owned by fishermen for fishermen. One of the Fishermens' Union stores still stands at Seldom-Come-By on Fogo Island, open as a museum complete with general store, port installations, fishing implements and equipment for the manufacture of cod liver oil.
Crab and lobster fisheries have largely replaced the cod fishery; a fish-packing plant remains in operation in Fogo village.
A Marconi radio transmitting station was once operational atop a hill near Fogo village; operating with a spark-gap transmitter 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. Efforts to rebuilt this station as a historic site commenced in 2002.
Communities
The eleven communities of Fogo Island are:
- Stag Harbour
- Little Seldom
- Seldom
- Island Harbour
- Deep Bay
- Fogo Island Central
- Fogo
- Shoal Bay
- Barr'd Islands
- Joe Batt's Arm
- Tilting
External links
- Official Fogo tourism site
- Central Newfoundland tourism
- Sandra's Fogo Island page
- 10 Historic towns
- Fogo public library
- Ferry schedule
- Archeological survey, 1997