From almost anywhere, reaching Fogo, a remote island off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, Canada, is a long journey. But when I got to the little village of Tilting – after disembarking the ferry from “mainland” Newfoundland and driving to the east side of the island – I might have thought I skipped the entire North American continent to get to the other side of the North Atlantic.
Tilting, on an overhang east of Fogo Island, looks across the ocean to Ireland. But when you enter the town there is Ireland too.
A sign on the side of the road announces “Fáilte go Tilting” (“Welcome to Tilting”, in Irish) and shamrocks adorn buildings and flagpoles. However, nothing prepares you for the accent .
When I entered Cafe Sexton’s, I was immediately struck by the conversation between the other customers at the store. Their voices sounded familiar but unexpected. Were they Irish? I thought. Tilting is Irish, I was told.
“It is predominantly an Irish settlement,” Maureen Foley, a local resident, later remarked to me. “The Irish came here before the famine, in the early to mid-18th century, following the fishing, and they decided to stay.”
Foley pointed out the Old Irish Burial Ground, believed to be the oldest of its kind in Canada, with its Celtic crosses and headstones inscribed with birthplaces such as Youghal and Dungarvan, illustrating the site’s deep Irish heritage.
Thanks to the isolation of this remote village – which barely had roads in the mid-20th century – its descendants such as the Foleys, McGrath, Dwyer and Murphy, who have their homes here, have preserved perfectly their accents.
The accents of these villagers is so pure that it causes confusion in their ancestral homeland. Often times when they visit Ireland, Foley said, “everyone asks, ‘What part of Ireland do you come from?’ And we have to explain.”
Known as “ Talamh an Éisc ”(Land of Fish) for many of the Irish who came to its shores in the 18th century, Newfoundland is the only place outside of Europe that has a name in Irish.
“Outside of Ireland itself,” wrote historian Tim Pat Coogan in Wherever Green is Worn (“Wherever they wear green”), “ There is probably no more Irish place in the world than Newfoundland. ”
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However, Fogo Island could have the most Irish place in the whole province: Tilting, which the author Anne Enright described in a newspaper article Irish Times as “pure Irish… go Landés on the rocks ”.
Tilting sits on a windswept sub-arctic rock coastline covered in seaweed. The weather is often wild, but on the morning I arrived, the water in Tilting Bay was so calm that it clearly reflected the redwood stilt buildings and the wobbly drying and salting platforms clustered around the shore.
Under a storm-swept sky, Tilting seemed frozen in time, as if she had been photographed at the precise moment before the old time-battered buildings finally collapsed. in the water.
But the precariousness with which the buildings cling to the rocky shore hides the strength and resistance of the people who built them.
Winters are long on Fogo Island and the farming season is short. It may seem inhospitable, but for centuries Tilting provided excellent access to the cod-rich waters off its shores.
Before the arrival of Europeans, The Beothuk people fished here , although they are not believed to have built permanent settlements.
The French began to arrive attracted by cod at the beginning of the 16th century, but they did not stay either. At the beginning of the 18th century, the English and Irish began to colonize the island and by the end of the century, Tilting had become an exclusively Irish community.
It was a Tough place to live, but the fishermen endured the harsh conditions and made their living going out to sea in their small wooden boats.
But in the mid-1960, overfishing with powerful ships led to the collapse of the industry and, for 1992, the once plentiful stocks became so near extinction that the federal government declared a moratorium on fishing for North Atlantic cod (today, quotas are still in effect).
In turn, many lives also collapsed. With the loss of livelihood, many of the islanders left Tilting and Fogo in search of work elsewhere. As the population declined, the Newfoundland government began forcing and even forcing people to leave their small and remote communities.
The islanders de Fogo were subject to resettlement , but they put up resistance. “They told us, ‘burn your boats, sink them or swim,’” Carol Penton, editor of a local newspaper, later said in an interview. “So we decided to swim.”
Their homes and centuries of deep heritage were worth fighting for.
Fogo Island became internationally famous when the luxury hotel Fogo Island Inn opened in 2013.
Zita Cobb, a native of the island, returned with a fortune she made in the fiber optic industry and established the Shorefast Foundation, through the which hotel profits are reinvested in local programs that benefit the community.
Another Shorefast initiative, Fogo Island Arts, houses artists in four studios: small structures specifically built contemporaries that are scattered across the island.
However, while Shorefast was setting After Fogo Island on the travelers’ map, Tilting had already quietly started working in a similar company.
“Many of the visitors who come to Fogo Island believe there was nothing to do before, ”Jim McGrath, president of the Tilting Culture and Recreation Society (TRACS), told me. English). “But some of us were already active 15 years before Shorefast started. ”
TRACS was founded in 1960, the year the cod moratorium began – “ a very traumatic time for Terranova “- to address the social, cultural, recreational and economic issues of the community.
” To which we try to give express priority, “he said McGrath, was that “our Irish heritage was preserved.”
Over the past three decades, that has taken different forms, including creating walking trails in the community to attracting tourists, art-in-residence establishment (first for Irish artists, now for artists from all over the world c), the launch of a community radio project to share stories and songs; the creation of an annual festival of Irish culture, Feile Tillting, and the restoration of representative examples of Creole architecture, including the fishing platforms, wineries and houses.
Society’s efforts resulted in Tilting being designated as the first Newfoundland Provincial Heritage District in 2002, and Canada’s National Historic Site at 2003 .
According to Parks Canada [el ente oficial encargado del patrimonio de ese país], Tilting was awarded that national designation because it “possesses the landscape that illustrates the patterns of adaptation of Irish settlements.”
Those settlement patterns are reflected Houses in the colorful bayfront houses where shared fishing grounds stretch along the shore and are grouped into neighborhoods named after the families that live there.
These families retain the specific dialects of the parts of Ireland where their ancestors came from : primarily the counties of Wexford, Waterford, Tipperary and Cork .
But despite being designated as a national heritage site, Tilting is still a working community. McGrath noted that attempts are being made to prevent the village from becoming static with “what would end up being a boring and monotonous arrangement” and calls TRACS restoration work “a living museum process.”
“All the buildings we have restored are being used by the people of Tilting and are open to anyone who comes to Tilting who wants to use them”, whether they are artists or fishermen salting cod.
The living nature of Tilting’s architectural heritage is perhaps best represented in its tradition known as “launching” , which survives to this day. The oldest houses and annexes that were designed for mobility were built without foundations.
These houses are sold regardless of the land they occupy, which allows families to move or “pitch” their houses to new sites.
“Land is extremely scarce on Tilting, ”McGrath explained. “So if someone in a family dies and the house is empty, they don’t need it, they sell it. But they have to remove it from that land; so you take it and move it to another batch you have gotten. ”
“ Launching ”is a communal effort which requires a team of up to 30 men to move the structure (a considerable segment of a population of about 549). “We put some sliders on it and we took off,” said McGrath.
While the emphasis is placed on maintenance of built structures, TRACS Vice President Dan Murphy notes that the inheritance d e Tilting is also in the intangible .
“Tilting was probably the first community to Newfoundland in recognizing the value of ordinary houses and shops, the built heritage of a community, ”he said, but those buildings also contain“ the lives of the people who grew up there for hundreds of years: they are the receptacles in which it is culture lived and continues to exist in the dialect, the songs and the stories. ”
The best time to experience this living heritage is at the Féile Tilting festival, which takes place held for four days in September. The festival began with an exchange between Ireland and Newfoundland, which brought Irish singers and storytellers to Tilting, but has evolved in recent 11 years to include workshops and shed tours, similar to pub crawls [típicos de Reino Unido e Irlanda] in this village that has no bars.
If you can’t coincide with the festival, you can enjoy a typical shed party at Tilting style in the Foley Shed, an unlikely center of activity.
In 2012 , a group of young Irish contractors resided in Tilting while they worked at the Fogo Island Inn, prior to its inauguration ration. Phil, Maureen Foley’s husband, invited them to bring a few beers to his shed, which was used as tool storage at the time but had a couch, a wood-burning oven, and guitars.
Maureen explained how he became famous locally: “Once it was known that the young Irish – young and good Irish men – were in the Foley shed on Saturday night, well it drew a crowd.”
The Irish “couldn’t believe” the accent, Foley said, adding that, in Tilting, they found an Ireland from another era: “They had between 20 Y 30 years, so to them, Tilting sounded like something their parents talked about. ”
These shed parties, which involve “getting together, chatting and having a few drinks and singing a few songs,” Foley said, endure and touch the heart of heritage and sense of Tilting community.
And they are open to all. “There is a shamrock in the window facing the street ”, he added. “If the shamrock is lit, there we are, and anyone and everyone is welcome.”
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