Of gannets and Basques

Visiting Placentia on the Avalon peninsula

BY DENISE FLINT

CHRISTOPHER NEWHOOK

When you stand at the top of Castle Hill overlooking Placentia on the west coast of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, it seems like you have the world at your feet. Distance becomes a concept limited only by your imagination. From one viewpoint, the ocean stretches away from you forever. Look in the other direction, and you see the coves and hills surrounding the town, somehow managing to appear both verdant and stark.

Nowadays two red Muskoka chairs, seemingly endemic to any spot with a claim to a vista, allow you to keep watch across the waters and the land in relative comfort. But that wasn’t always the case. This small corner of Newfoundland was once the focus of two raging empires, implacable enemies fighting over control of North America and its riches.

In 1655, the French made Placentia the capital of Newfoundland (of which they controlled about half) and all their Atlantic holdings (most of the Maritimes at that point). That didn’t sit well with the British, who were busy laying claim to as big a portion of North America as they could manage. The French fortified the area not just with soldiers but with the first of many forts built to protect and keep watch against their traditional rival. The area around Placentia saw more than one battle rage and more than one garrison built and destroyed before the British finally took command following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Though many of the French settlers and soldiers relocated to Nova Scotia, their presence is still palpable in the community, and traces of them can be seen today.

Nowhere is this more the case than at Castle Hill National Historic Site. Several fortifications, both French and English, were built on the hill and the remains of Fort Royal with its earthworks, stone walls and artillery batteries, as well as a few cannons, are easy to explore. There are hiking trails, plenty of picnic spots and an interpretation/visitors’ centre to put everything into perspective.

Of course the history of Placentia doesn’t begin with the French. The Beothuk and Mi’kmaq were familiar with the area even if there is no current archaeological record of their presence. The Basque were using it as a fishing base as far back as the early 1500s. Not only is the bay deep and ice-free year-round, the large, pebbled beach was perfect for drying fish. In fact, the original name, Plazencia, is Basque and the earliest civil document written in what is now Canada was the will of a Basque fisherman who decreed that his body be buried in the port of Plazencia.

Nor did Placentia’s history come to a halt with the fall of the French. Because of its

CHRISTOPHER NEWHOOK proximity to the fishing grounds it was once a rival to St. John’s in importance. One tenth of the entire population of Newfoundland lived in Placentia at one time. The O’Reilly House Museum is a fully restored house from the turn of the 20th century, with exhibits and artefacts detailing the town’s history from that period and earlier. It even holds a tea set that was used by a local family to serve Prince William Henry, son of King George III, when he was stationed in the community in the summer of 1786.

In more recent times, it was down the road in Argentia that the Americans built their huge naval/air force base. At a secret meeting off the coast in August of 1941, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt hammered out the terms of the Atlantic Charter to discuss the United States joining the war effort.

Placentia marks the beginning of the Cape Shore Loop and is an easy driving distance from St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve. Anyone with the slightest interest in birds— and anyone without any interest in birds whatsoever—needs to visit this strictly-protected area. When you make your way out the back door of the interpretation centre and start heading for the cliffs two senses are immediately assailed: sound and smell. That’s to be expected when you’re approaching the realm of more than 100,000 sea birds. Cape St. Mary’s is home to the largest accessible colony of northern gannets in Newfoundland. Around 22,000 nesting pairs gather on Bird Rock, hard up

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR TOURISM/BARRETT & MACKAY

CHELSEY LAWRENCE / PARKS CANADA / CASTLE HILL NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

against the cliff edge, where they raise their young in full view of anyone who walks out to see them.

The gannets painstakingly build their nests from whatever small pieces of dried grass and discarded fishing line they can scavenge. They sit on their eggs, hundreds of metres above the crashing waves, and tend to new hatchlings right next to the next pair’s brood. It is not a sight to be missed If you can tear your eyes away from that sight, you find a cliff wall rising out of the sea where every small cranny and extrusion bears at least one murre, guillemot, kittiwake or razorbill.

Placentia lies just a couple of kilometres from Argentia, the site of the summer ferry from Nova Scotia. People who whiz straight past, heading for St. John’s or somewhere else on the island, don’t know what they’re missing. Placentia is definitely worth “swiping right.”

Opposite page, top: a bailiff’s tipstaff given by King George III to Placentia; inset, antique tea set. This page: Gannets at Cape St. Marys; O’Reilly House Museum; Casthe Hill Historic Site. Below: Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve, Avalon.

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR TOURISM/BARRETT & MACKAY