I’d like to introduce you to somebody. His name was John Bennett Blandford. He was an Englishman who served as Little Bay’s first Magistrate and he was responsible for the largest public event in the town’s history. Newfoundland was a British co ...
A Bell Named St. Patrick
Culture is made physical by the things we create. There is nothing quite like the history of an object. Artifacts connect us to a history that we can touch, see, and hear. Much of Little Bay’s physical history was lost to the fires but some historic ...
Vessels of Little Bay
Little Bay was visited by a mixture of steamers and sailing vessels. Many of the steamers were the cutting edge of technology. They loaded up on ore for Swansea in Whales where they would unload it alongside ships from the other colonies. Little Bay ...
Little Bay Mine (1878-1903)
I’ve decided to explore the history of the Little Bay mine itself in this piece. However, I didn’t want to tell it from the perspective of the owners or managers and instead opted to focus on the experience of the mine from the point of view of the m ...
Mining Money
If you were a miner working in Little Bay during the late 19th century you would have had a lot of places to spend your hard earned wages. In this piece I’m going to explore the financial side of the miner’s life by considering the movement of their ...
Sergeant Thomas Wells
There was a new Sergeant in town. It was 1883. Sergeant Thomas Wells of the Newfoundland Constabulary arrived in Little Bay on August 3rd. He arrived during the town’s annual regatta but made no mention of it in his journals. He wasn’t there for tha ...
Postmaster Richard Walsh
With the rise of digital resources, more and more people are researching their family histories. This has led to a surge of interest in Newfoundland history. Much of this interest comes from people looking to place an ancestor of theirs into their l ...
Dr. Louis Joseph
I should warn you that this starts with a grave. It’s only fitting, it’s a tragic story after all. There is a modest cemetery in The Bight where I’d walk, reading the names on the aging gravestones. That’s all they were to me then, just names. This ...
Otis Boyden
The story of Little Bay’s first photographer is incomplete. It’s an unfinished puzzle which hints at a fascinating whole if it could only be put together. The pieces I’ve assembled, however, resist joining neatly. The first piece was the name Otis ...
A Tinsmith’s Tale
The first tinsmith in Little Bay was a man named Robert Malcolm. He is first documented in the town in 1882. He was married to Catherine Morisey and the couple had four children. In the late 1880s Little Bay was experiencing something referred to as ...