Photo Above: Looking west into Cupids harbour about 3:50 pm. Spectacle Head is on the right.

Photo Above: Looking west into Cupids harbour. 12 February 2014 about 3:45 pm.

March 10, 2014

Cupids, Winter 1613 & 2014

It's been a long, cold winter here in Newfoundland. In Cupids the cold weather has resulted in something residents of the town haven't seen in some time: Cupids harbour frequently has been frozen over. In mid-February the harbour was frozen well beyond Spectacle Head and almost as far as Burnt Head. These photographs of the harbour were taken on February 12th of this year.

The winter of 1612-1613 was a cold one too. In his diary, Henry Crout first reported that the harbour had frozen over "as far as the Spectacles" on 14 December. That cold snap didn't last long. The next day it began to warm and, according to Crout, from dinner time (around noon) until night there was, "very warm and pleasant weather as though it had been at midsummer."

Things cooled down again in January and on the 25th of that month Crout noted that both Cupids harbour and Salmon Cove, just over the hill to the north, were frozen, "unto the Spectacles". He also noted that on that day the colonists were forced to start watering down their beer in an attempt to make it last for the rest of the winter. The weather continued cold and on 5 February Crout reported that "there was a cream of ice all this Bay over within Burnt Head."

However, the winter of 1613 was not as consistantly cold as the winter of 2014. On 16 February 1613, the weather turned mild and "desolved the snow and ice very much". It was, Crout says, "very moderate weather as [one's] heart could wish which putteth everyone in hope that winter is now past for this year." This was Crout's first winter in Newfoundland and, unfortunately for him and his fellow planters, there was lots more winter to come. He may have been amazed, or perhaps just shocked, when, on 13 March, 1613, "there came...this morning into this harbour a very huge, great island of ice."

We don't know if the residents of Cupids will see any "huge, great islands of ice" this year. The forecast for tonight (10 March) is calling for a low of minus 11 degrees Celsuis but, apparently, the weather will be warming up later in the week. Hopefully, after this long, hard winter, spring isn't too far off.  

You can read all the entries in Henry Crout's diary by clicking HERE.

Photo Above: Looking east towards the entrance to Cupids harbour, about 4:00 pm.  Spectacle Head is on the left.

November 22, 2013.

The Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology (SPMA) has just released volume 8 in its monograph series, Exploring Atlantic Transitions: Archaeologies of Transience and Permanence in New Found Lands, edited by Peter E.Pope with Shannon Lewis-Simpson. This well-illustrated, 353 page, hardback volume contains 31 papers originally presented at the SPMA's conference held in St. John's Newfoundland in June 2010. The acknowledgements at the beginning of Exploring Atlantic Transitions thank the Cupids 400 Committee,"who made this collection of scholarly articles one of their legacy projects, to commemorate the establishment of the first English colony in what is now Canada, at Cupers Cove, Newfoundland in 1610."

Fifteen of the 31 articles deal with various aspects of history and archaeology in Newfoundland and Labrador and include works by contributors such as Tania Manuel Casimiro, Amanda Crompton, Barry Gaulton, William Gilbert, Evan Jones, James Tuck and Lisa Rankin. The other sixteen cover a wide range of topics and locales from Norse settlement and trade in northwestern Russia, to the Lords Baltimore's plantations in Ireland and Maryland, to salt raking in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and new discoveries at Roanoke and Jamestown.

To learn more about the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology and/or order a copy of Exploring Atlantic Transitions click here.

October 24, 2013

The crew of the popular BBC Two television series Coast were in Cupids last week filming for an episode called “Outposts” due out in the UK in the summer of 2014. They spent a damp day at the Cupids Cove Plantation Provincial Historic Site on Tuesday, 15 October, filming and interviewing Site Supervisor and Chief Archaeologist Bill Gilbert and a bright and windy morning filming the raising of the Union Jack (or Union Flag) at the Cupids Flag Pavilion the next day (see below). The crew returned to Cupids on Friday, 18 October, and took advantage of a beautiful autumn afternoon to do some more filming at the site and take in the spectacular view of Cupids and Conception Bay from Spectacle Head. While they were in Newfoundland they also spent time filming at the Heart’s Content Cable Station Provincial Historic Site and in Petty Harbour.

You can learn more about Coast by clicking HERE. 

Photo above: The Coast crew film while the programme's host, Nick Crane (in red), chats to Bill Gilbert.