A Placentia Bay, NL fog shrouded this 2016 September visit in continuing mystery, and appropriate poetic timelessness, as we set out across the several kilometers of open ocean to Flat Islands from nearby Red Harbour’s Elephant Head. This natural landmark is still a spectacular island journey marker carved by wind and wave in a granite headland—but is now ever more delicate, ever more finely undercut.
Lichen encrusted foundations are all that remain of a big United Church that once dominated Flat Island’s harbour. In its final decade the island was rebranded as Port Elizabeth, to no avail as Government resettlement policies prevailed and all islanders left.
Cousins Brenda and John Ballantyne (Toronto) organized this wonderful excursion/update into our Dicks/Crann family anchors with Port Elizabeth/Flat Islands, Placentia Bay, NL.
It was surprisingly satisfying, and not at all sad, that despite a few summer cottages, lichens, mosses, grasses, and a steady / sturdy regrowth of low bushes, of fir and spruce trees have set about the long process of reclaiming the island to its more natural state for the first time in about two hundred years: its original wild splendour slowly returns.
Thanks Bill Jarvis, an original Flat Islander, for a wonderfully navigated boat ride in dense fog with just watch and compass. And to John Ballantyne for use of this photo.
fillière 