Forteau, L'Anse Amour, and Point Amour Lighthouse

Continuing along the coastal route the next community is Forteau.  Forteau has a population of approximately 400 and its name is derived from the French words meaning "strong waters".  A Jersey merchant, De Quettville, started a fishing business here in 1774, and in 1818 reported that Forteau was the largest British settlement in the Straits.  When Bishop Field of the Anglican Church was appointed to Newfoundland in 1845, he was surprised to find that Labrador was within his jurisdiction.  He visited Forteau in 1848 and in 1849 the first church was built here.

This is not the original church, but the site is.  Pretty nice!

Exploring Forteau

There is a lovely hiking trail along the shoreline of Forteau Bay:

During my time here I had a couple of nights at an absolutely lovely B&B here in Forteau.  Grenfell Louie A. Hall B&B is the Old Forteau Nursing Station which was built by the International Grenfell Association in 1946. Over three generations of people from the Labrador Straits were born in this building.

 The dining room - and an amazing selection of homemade jams

At nearby L'Anse Amour there is a National Historic Site where archaeologists have uncovered a burial mound that is the oldest known funeral monument in North America.  The Maritime Archaic people occupied this area between 9000 and 3500 years ago, and this is the burial place of one of their children who died about 7500 years ago.  The body was covered with red ochre, wrapped in skins or birch bark, and placed in a large pit 1.5m deep.  Fires were lit on either side of the body and several spearheads of stone and bone placed beside the head.  A walrus tusk, harpoon head, paint stones and a bone whistle were also placed with the body.

Translated as "Cove of Love", the name L'Anse Amour is actually a romanticized version of "Anse aux Morts" ("Cove of the Dead"), probably named because of the many lives lost in dramatic shipwrecks nearby. Cove of love is certainly a more apt description for L'Anse Amour.  And it's probably one of the smallest communities I've ever been in, with a population of approximately 8.  The Davis family has lived in L'Anse Amour for the past 150 years.

At 53.2 metres from the ground to the light itself, and built of local limestone, Point Amour lighthouse is the tallest in Atlantic Canada and the second tallest lighthouse in Canada.

It is still a working lighthouse, automated in 1996, and the lighthouse tower and surrounding buildings have been designated a Provincial Historic Site. 

The Point Amour Light station is composed of a number of buildings including the light tower and attached original keeper's dwelling and other habitations and work buildings associated with the operation of the station over the years.  Completed in 1857, the stone tower and attached keeper's dwelling is an historic structure.  In subsequent years several buildings were added to the light station: an oil shed in 1875, a storage shed and fog alarm building in 1907, a second dwelling in 1954 and a third dwelling in 1967.

One of the many groundhogs, or "whistlers" as they are known locally, that spend time basking in the sun...and then scurrying into their burrows

 The view from the top of the lighthouse

These concrete ruins are the remains of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Station that was built here in 1904. Originally constructed for the benefit of trans-Atlantic shipping, the telegraph station became the first major communication link between the Labrador Straits and the rest of the world.

On August 8, 1922, the HMS Raleigh, a British cruiser, ran aground in thick fog here.  This 12,000-ton ship remained hard aground and upright for four years.  Deteriorated parts of the vessel can still be seen today.