Cheryl's Travels: On the way to Twillingate

The Road to the Isles, as this coastal drive is known, refers to a series of islands in Notre Dame Bay that were connected to each other and the main island by causeways in the 1960s. The isolation of Chapel Island, New World Island, and Twillingate Island, helped residents preserve old words and speech patterns that had been eroded by the rising tide of modernity elsewhere. A copy of The Dictionary of Newfoundland English is a good thing to have with you here. As locals will tell you; "why use two words when one will do?", and "here in Twillingate we have no need for all the letters of the alphabet."

A major attraction along the road to Twillingate is the Beothuk Interpretation Centre at Boyd's Cove. The Boyd's Cove area was first visited by Palaeoeskimo peoples sometime between 2100 and 2700 years ago. By about 1200 years ago, prehistoric Beothuk were thought to be occasionally camping in this area and their descendants, the people we know as the Beothuk, continued that occupation in larger numbers and for longer periods of the year.

Boyd's Cove was an excellent site for the Beothuk people. The site has a good beach upon which to draw up canoes, and Indian Brook, which enters the sea here is a good source of fresh water; additionally smelt spawn in Indian Brook, so there was always that food source. The Beothuk may also have been drawn to this area because when they lived here, between about 1650 and 1720, it was located between two European fisheries, and when those fishermen went back to their homes in Europe for the winter the Beothuk from Boyd's Cove were thought to have visited the fishing premises and picked up nails, fish hooks and other abandoned objects, and with great skill the Beothuk worked these iron objects into arrow heads, awls, hide scrapers and spear points. As best as archaeologists can tell, life was good for the Boyd's Cove Beothuk. They dug large, shallow pits into the ground and erected sturdy, bark-covered wigwams in them. The remains of 11 of these comfortable dwellings have been found today. It is believed that the site was occupied until around 1720 when Europeans began to occupy nearby areas of the coast.

This statue, called "The Spirit of the Beothuk" was erected at the archaeological site to honour the Beothuk of Newfoundland. Shanawdithit was a young Beothuk woman taken hostage and brought to St. John's in 1828 - she died a year later and with her death, the Beothuk as a cultural group became extinct.

It's a lovely trail out to the archaeological site, and although you're not allowed on the actual site you can walk around it and the beach area near where the Beothuk would have lived.

The archaeological site for the Beothuk camp - with the numbers indicating where the houses and other dwellings would have been.

It's a bit hard to see - but through the trees at about mid-tree height is the clearing where the Beothuk camp was. The water at the bottom is Indian Brook.