A century ago, believe it or not, reindeer lived on the island of Newfoundland. In the early 1900s, Sir Wilfred Grenfell imported 300 reindeer from Norway with dreams of the population flourishing on the island, providing a new source of food and fur – and a handy draft animal – for Newfoundlanders.
But despite his best intentions, the good doctor had unknowingly set in motion a chain of events that are still felt in Newfoundland today – long after the reindeer have gone.
In the winter of 1908, the reindeer, accompanied by Lapland herding families, arrived. Fifty were trotted to Millertown (for use by the AND Company), while the remaining 250 stayed in St. Anthony.
During the first several years, just as Grenfell had hoped, the reindeer flourished. Eventually, they grew to a population more than 1,000 strong. But a variety of factors – including poaching – caused the herd’s numbers to dwindle. By 1918, what was left of the reindeer were shipped to Canada.
Unfortunately, they left something behind.
Grenfell’s reindeer carried brainworm (the parasite Elaphostrongylus rangiferi), which, while harmless to humans, has deadly consequences for caribou and reindeer. The parasite causes Cerebrospinal Elaphostrongylosis (CSE), a severe neurological disorder. During the reindeer’s decade-long stay in Newfoundland the island’s native caribou became infected with the parasite. The disorder was first detected in Newfoundland’s caribou in the 1970s and has since been found in herds island wide.
With caribou herds all over the province dwindling for a variety of reasons in recent years, the deadly seed Grenfell planted a century ago is yet another odd stacked against them.
For more information on the caribou’s decline – and the measures being taken to bring them back – see the February 2012 issue of Downhome.
You could say Robert Carter’s life turned out to be one long round-trip adventure. Born and raised in Gander, Newfoundland, Robert went to work in the airline business. Over the next 36 years, his career took him to Nova Scotia and Calgary. He is now back in Newfoundland, enjoying retirement in Conception Bay South and pursuing photography with a hobbyist’s passion.
Robert is a relatively new regular submitter to DownhomeLife.com; readers and visitors to the website will have no doubt taken notice of his outstanding scenic photos. But he has been interested in photography for many years, inspired a long time ago by the work of famous Canadian writer and photographer Freeman Patterson of New Brunswick. Now that he is retired and back in Newfoundland and Labrador, Robert has been able to leisurely develop his talents and expand his portfolio.
“I am self-trained, and now in my retirement years I spend a lot of time photographing all areas of Newfoundland, especially the very isolated communities,” Robert says. He is particularly drawn to Change Islands, Fogo, Francois, McCallum, Rencontre East, Southeast Bight, Petit Forte and Isle Valen.
“My favourite photo was taken many years ago of my two sons on a fishing wharf jiggin’ tom cods, or conners, at Isle Valen, Placentia Bay,” Robert says. That photo won first prize in a Canadian Geographic photography contest and third place in an Air Canada photo competition in Frankfurt, Germany. It has also been painted by an artist in Calgary, Alberta and by another in Avondale, Newfoundland. “I still love this picture,” he adds, “especially the facial expressions.”
Typically, Robert carries a Nikon D200 with many lenses. “My favourites are my AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm and AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm lenses,” he says. And he’s recently purchased a Nikon D7000 camera. With these, he shoots in all types of weather and captures the beauty in a variety of subjects including people, fishing villages, boats, wildlife, and other symbols of rural living.
Robert enjoys going out of his way, off the beaten path, to get his photos, and often this approach has its rewards. Once, near Banff National Park, Alberta, he waited for hours to get the perfect shot of a train winding through the snow-capped mountains. “I eventually captured the picture that I wanted and it later won in a photo contest,” Robert says. Proof positive that persistence pays off.
To see a beautiful spread of Robert's photos, see the February 2012 issue of Downhome. For more photos from Robert's collection, click the slideshow below.
Are you an amateur photographer with a great portfolio? Would you like to be featured in an edition of Sure Shots? Tell us a bit about yourself and send us a few sample photos by emailing editorial@downhomelife.com (subject: sure shots).
In today's consumption-driven society, more and more people are resorting back to bartering goods and services both in their communities and online as a way to lessen the amount of waste created and to heighten one's economical lifestyle. What's one way of achieving this? Instead of heading to the nearest retail outlet to breathe some new life into your closet, host a clothing swap with friends and acquaintances. Here's how:
• Invite your friends and ask your friends to invite their friends (about 10 to 15 people is the goal - aim for all shapes and sizes).
• If you are hosting the swap at your house, make sure you have at least two full-length mirrors available.
• To ensure everyone is comfortable, make sure there are other rooms available to dress and undress. If this isn't possible, remind people they can wear a body suit or bathing suit underneath their clothing if they wish.
• Clothes swaps can be seasonal, but they don't have to be. The best clothes swaps have all seasons clothing.
• If two people want the same item, you can have fun with this by either a coin toss, or having each person model the item of clothing and have a vote (do this only if you're sure there won't be hard feelings).
• If you have second thoughts about an item you have up for grabs - speak up quickly. A simple "Hmm, I'm not so sure I'm ready to give that up yet," should suffice, before someone else gets too attached to the item.
• Be prepared for a good time. It’s surprising how much fun you'll have with a group of women trying on clothing!
Source: Marcia Passos Duffy, LifeOrganizers.com
Want to learn more about the movement towards swapping instead of shopping? See "The Return of the Barter System" in the February 2012 issue of Downhome.
From international drug smuggler to prime-time star, St. John’s native Brian O’Dea has turned his life around, and is now helping others to do the same.
By Linda Browne
The voice on the other end of the line is gravelly, yet kind (sounding like a man who has smoked too many cigarettes) as it shares wisdom that can only come from being a long-time student at the school of hard knocks. The conversation, peppered with the occasional curse word, is sometimes interrupted with a sigh as he searches for just the right thing to say. Those who have walked the road to redemption know it is not straight and narrow, but a long, winding road with many bumps and bruises along the way. And while there is often light at the end, only a lucky few manage to reach it. One of those people is Brian O’Dea.
Speaking over the phone from his office in Toronto, the St. John’s, Newfoundland native doesn’t shy away from all the nitty-gritty details of his former life. If anyone knows anything about redemption, it is him. And now he’s helping pave the way for others so their journeys may be a little smoother than his.
Living the High Life
Brian grew up on a farm on Cherry Hill Road in a good, prominent family. His father, John, owned the Newfoundland Brewery before entering politics; his mother, Maddy, was a strong, hardworking woman. Brian got along well with his two brothers and two sisters. His idyllic childhood, however, came to a screeching halt when, at 11 years old, he was sexually abused by a Christian Brother on his first day of school at St. Bonaventure’s College.
“When I tell a story I don’t tell it to affix blame, but I try and find the tracks upon which I walked to find myself,” Brian says.
“Had I found the words to tell what was going on, I think it might have been different. But I understand today that I’m as sick as the secrets that I keep, and that was a gigantic secret. And I was a Catholic. I was constantly in fear then of God striking me dead and putting me in hell for all eternity.”
Drugs, he says, became his means to escape. He started off as a small-time dealer in St. John’s in his late teens and, from there, graduated to bigger, more lucrative assignments. After serving a brief prison sentence, he moved to Jamaica, where he coordinated the movement of marijuana and cocaine from Colombia into Canada and the U.S. It was when he moved to California, however, that things really started to spin out of control. At the height of his career, in the early 1980s, he brought marijuana by the boatloads (literally) from Southeast Asia into Washington with the help of two, 100-foot fishing vessels and 120 people from around the world. Eventually, the threat from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proved to be too much, and he walked away from the business in 1986. It was two years after that, Brian says, that his journey to redemption began.
“August 31, 1988, I had a heart attack from a coke overdose. I had recently finished what they call the biggest pot deal in the history of American pot smuggling. We just brought in 75 tonnes of pot, under the noses of the DEA, and pulled it off. And I just ended up with too much money and not enough brains, got myself a big bag of coke and proceeded to push myself into the threshold that I needed to cross to get out of that life,” he says.
“You know, eight days of no sleep and shovelling as much of that garbage into me as I could, I blew up. And so I got sober. My first sober day was my 40th birthday, September 1, 1988.”
About three years later, Brian was working as a counsellor in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Santa Barbara when the law caught up with him again.
“I was working with people who were getting and trying to get sober, and I had been doing it for no pay for almost three years. And that’s what my life was about when the cops showed up. So I wouldn’t cooperate with them...I said that I would plead guilty and accept responsibility for my own behaviour. But they told me I’d get 30 to life if I didn’t talk. And I didn’t – I got 10. What a relief.”
Seeing the Light
Even though his journey has taken him to the darkest of places, Brian says he never lost the love of his family along the way. One of his biggest supporters is his wife Susannah, a knitwear designer.
“I met her in Santa Barbara before I went to prison. We got married after I got out,” Brian says.
Once he completed his sentence, Brian’s job prospects were looking dim, so in 2001 (with Susannah’s encouragement) he decided to take fate into his own hands.
“She said to me one day, ‘You have got to go get a job.’” Brian asked her who she thought would ever hire him. “And she said, ‘You mean to tell me that you did a quarter of a billion dollar deal in secret that you were one of the principals in, and you don’t have any transferable skills? I can’t believe that...Why don’t you just sit down and write a resume as it relates to that...”
Brian’s “resume” became a classified ad in the National Post titled “Former Marijuana Smuggler,” under which he detailed his extensive business experience “in a successful pot smuggling venture with revenues in excess of US$100 million annually.” Among his references was the U.S. district attorney, who was responsible for his arrest.
In addition to 600 job offers from all over the world, Brian’s ad also garnered international media attention. As a result of his appearance on “The Mike Bullard Show,” he became producer, and later the host, of the series “Creepy Canada.” He also wrote a book, High: Confessions of an International Drug Smuggler (which won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction Crime in 2007), and has spoken to countless young people about his experiences.
“I just got back from Flower’s Cove (on the Northern Peninsula) where the teachers that booked me in there to speak at this youth conference were students the last time I spoke there...it was awesome,” Brian says.
“When I was in school, people would come and tell us what to do and give us advice. Well, I never paid attention to any of that. I had one or two teachers, though, who were great at telling us their stories and encapsulating lessons of life inside the story...and so that’s what I do. I don’t advise them, I don’t tell them not to do drugs. I tell them what happens when you do. I tell them what happened to me when I did.”
Lost and Found
Now, at age 63, Brian is setting out on a new adventure. Premiering this month on CBC TV is the nine-part series “Redemption Inc.” Produced by Proper Television and hosted by multi-millionaire businessman Kevin O’Leary (“Dragon’s Den”), the show will see 10 ex-cons take on a series of business-related challenges for a shot at winning $100,000 to get his/her own business off the ground. Viewers will meet people like Joseph, a 52-year-old former fraudster/cocaine trafficker who wants to open an antique store; and Nicole, a 29-year-old former drug addict and car thief who hopes to start an eco-friendly cleaning company. The show is all about second chances as it helps the enterprising ex-cons move away from their illegal pasts and closer towards their own legal businesses. And who knows more about second chances than Brian? He will appear in each episode to help Kevin assess the participants and, by the end, determine the winner.
Hear a clip from our interview with Brian:
“This was made for me. You know, my past as a con, my present as an ex-con and my experience producing television – well, that comes together beautifully. I understand television...and I understand character. And I understand these characters particularly, because I am one,” Brian says.
“The people on the show are absolutely incredible people. They are so talented and capable...they’re brilliant. And it’s indicative of who’s behind bars. We gotta pay attention to that now. We’ve gotta find another way of dealing with broken people other than punishing them for being broken.”
These days, Brian counts his blessings, four of which are his kids – two sons and two daughters ranging in age from 15 to 33.
“They were all here for the last three days of shooting...They are so happy. They get to see their dad finally having some sort of success,” he says.
While Brian’s walk down the road to redemption was long and hard, he has reached the end and it was well worth the effort. To those on their own journeys, he says, don’t lose heart – or hope.
“I was considered to be someone who was irredeemable and excludable. So if you know somebody like that in your life, know that what you know is not true. Everybody is redeemable. Nobody is excludable. There’s a way back for everyone, and I’m living proof.”
Catch “Redemption Inc.” on CBC, premiering January 9 at 9 p.m. (9:30 p.m. NT).
Coconut-Curry Butternut Squash Soup
One 3-lb squash, peeled, seeded and diced
2 onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp Thai yellow curry paste (available in 100g tins or 500 ml plastic tubs at Asian markets or in the Asian section of the supermarket. If not available, use 2 tsp curry powder for a similar flavour)
1 can coconut milk
1 small ripe banana, mashed
2 tbsp Lady of the Woods birch-sap wine (made in Newfoundland and available at liquor stores, although any white wine or even sake will do)
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock (water will do - if using canned stock, omit salt)
2 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp dried)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
Black pepper to taste
2 tbsp each oil and butter
Heat oil and butter in deep saucepot; add onions, squash and thyme. Cook, stirring, until it all starts to caramelize (3-4 minutes). Add garlic and saute another minute or two. Add curry paste and stir a couple minutes more. Add the wine and let reduce a minute, then add coconut milk. Add the salt and pepper. Let reduce a few minutes. Add stock and the banana and boil until squash is soft. Purée soup in the pot with a stick blender (or transfer to a regular blender). For a velvety consistency, strain through a medium seive. Taste and adjust for salt or pepper. Garnish with a little toasted coconut or a dollop of sour cream.
Squash Trivia
How to pick 'em:
At the supermarket, look for a firm unbroken rind with uniform colour - free from green tinges. If you can push a fingernail into the rind of a squash it is immature and will be lacking in flavour and sweetness. Squash should feel heavy for their size (indicating a high moisture content - squash gradually lose water after harvesting).
Did you know?
It is believed that squashes have been cultivated for more than 5,000 years, and were grown by the Incas in the fifteenth century
Winter versus summer:
The split between winter and summer squash is based on usage, rather than botanical classification. Winter squash, such as butternut, acorn and pumpkin, are harvested when mature, with hard skins. Summer squash (including cucumber and zucchini) are eaten when immature and usually have an edible skin and mild-flavoured flesh.
Nutritional value:
Butternut squash is rich in complex carbohydrates (the good kind!). One cup contains three times the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A, half the day's supply of vitamin C, 3 grams of fibre and only 63 calories. A great source of beta-carotene, magnesium, manganese, calcium and potassium.
Storing:
Squash keep very well. In a cool (not refrigerator-cold), dry, well-ventilated place they can keep for three months or more. At room temperature, or in the fridge, they should last a couple of weeks.
For printable recipe cards of the leftover Thanksgiving turkey recipes that appear in this month's issue of Downhome, select the following links and then click "FREE Recipe Card."
Take a behind-the-scenes look at Angela Butler's Dream Day with the Blue Genie (Joshua Dawson) in St. John's, NL, from her initial surprise to her attempts to captain a large vessel during a visit to the Fisheries and Marine Institute's ship simulator. For more on this story, have a look at the August edition of Downhome.
The editors of Downhome were more than a little surprised when a reader submitted his photos and video footage of a lynx he came across in the wild. The reason? Although Canadian lynx are common in Newfoundland, sightings are extremely uncommon. Here, we've compiled some interesting facts about the lynx, including some of the reasons why these wild cats are so elusive.
• Look out, Hare. The lynx's preferred food is almost exclusively the snowshoe hare. In fact, the lynx population tends to mimic that of the snowshoe hare population. When hare numbers are down, so are lynx numbers, and vice versa. When snowshoe hare are not plentiful, lynx will feed on other creatures, including rodents and birds. Lynx have even been known to attack and devour young moose and caribou - not exactly a cuddly kitty.
• Built-in Snowshoes. The lynx is well adapted to its Canadian climate, with large, furry feet that make travel over snow and ice possible.
• Home Sweet Home. The Canadian lynx is found across Canada, from Newfoundland to the Yukon. Lynx typically prefer to live in the deep boreal forest, one reason why sightings are so rare. Where snowshoe hare are found in high numbers, so too, are lynx who feed on them.
• Prefers the Nightlife. Another reason why lynx sightings are not common is due to their nocturnal sleeping pattern. Lynx typically only come out at night to hunt their prey.
• The Cat's Meow. If you've never seen a lynx, you've probably never heard one, either. Canadian lynx actually make the same sounds as the average housecat, though much louder.
• Shy, Usually. Lynx are timid, wary creatures that tend to keep themselves hidden from sight. Even experienced hunters rarely catch a glimpse of these majestic creatures. Although lynx attacks on humans are extremely rare, all wild animals are unpredictable, so if you do happen upon a lynx, exercise caution.
• I Am Not a Bobcat! The lynx is most often mistaken for another wild cat, the bobcat. Bobcats are most plentiful in Nova Scotia - and are not found in Newfoundland. Although the two species share many characteristics, there are subtle differences. The lynx is smaller than the bobcat, but may appear larger because of its thick coat. Unlike the bobcat, the lynx has pronounced ear tufts and an entirely black-tipped tail (the bobcat's tail is black-tipped except on the underside). Bobcats do not have large feet, so it is not as adept as the lynx at travelling over deep snow.
