In Newfoundland, if you were wondering where someone was from or who their family was you would ask "where do you belong or who do you belong to?"
I belong to Conception Bay South and though it is now a thriving suburb of St. John's, I still maintain that growing up there in the 80's and early 90's qualifies me as a baymen. My sister, cousins and I had matching fishing rods, I was extremely adept at getting a sculpin off a line, I had child-sized hip rubbers, sneaking salt off of drying cod was one of our treats and the capelin rolling garnered as much excitement from us as being told we were going to Disney World*. I'm always armed with these facts whenever someone who is from an outport in the province shrugs me off as a Townie.
I've just finished reading Alan Doyle's book Where I Belong, which documents his journey from a small boy from Petty Harbour to being a part of Great Big Sea. There was so much about reading his story that felt like a version of my childhood as well. Defending the fact I'm a baymen, wondering what this whole catholic and protestant divide was all about, growing up surrounded by your family, the rock that is our island and the freedom we had as children to explore it. It's a beautiful story to fall in to whether you have a similar experience or not. Living away from Newfoundland, it's a treat to be able visit it like this in the pages of this book from Calgary.
Of course, the whole time I was reading this book I was reliving my own childhood and at the centre of that was my Poppy (pictured above preparing salt cod with his beloved boat The Nipper in the background). My grandparents helped orchestrate the most miraculous childhood for me and my cousins and though they all didn't grow up on that same small piece of land the way I did, each of the eight of us has that same grounding in place and overwhelming love.
We spent every Sunday together. Moving from church to Nan and Pop's for cooked dinner (yes, all dinner is usually cooked, this is what we called our meal of root vegetables boiled with salt meat, a roasted chicken pork or beef, Nan's bread pudding and gravy) . So on this Sunday, it's a treat to be wandering through these rooms in my life and feeling as close to my family as I did on any of those Sundays growing up.
*Capelin, a small fish that is an important part of the diet of cod, whales and many of the larger marine life in the north atlantic. In the summer the capelin literally roll in with the tide in the hundreds of thousands. It's a brief phenomenon and you knew if Poppy said the capelin were rolling you needed to move quick and get ready to head to the nearest beach with a net and a bucket to fill up with these delicious little fish.
Being a Force for Good 