As Canadians celebrate the summer holidays, many patients will be fighting to celebrate life itself. Roll up your sleeve and help hospital patients in need during Downhome Week, Aug. 9-13th.

Downhome Week
Monday, August 9-Friday, August 13th
This event is a province-wide event.

We have a clinic here at 7 Wicklow Street - St. John's; Grand Falls-Windsor; and Corner Brook. We will also have mobiles across the province during Downhome Week. As well, there will be a BBQ during this time at the St. John's location.

Prizes: People will also have an opportunity to enter to win great prizes, subscriptions, etc. The grand prize is a trip for two to beautiful Woody Island!

Check us out online www.blood.ca or call 1-888-2-DONATE to book an appointment.

One donation can help save up to three lives.
While one in two Canadians can donate, only one in 60 actually donate.

All hail the Queen! The Watermelon Queen that is...

From July 21-22, the 2010 Miss Georgia Watermelon Queen, Whitney Leah Conner, 20, visited the Colemans grocery store locations in Mount Pearl and St. John's to help promote watermelon and its many health benefits.



This marked the third time that Colemans, a member of the National Watermelon Association, hosted a visit from a U.S. watermelon queen.

Whitney competed with the nation's eight regional watermelon queens in a contest where they were judged on their poise, personality and knowledge of watermelons.


2010 Miss Georgia Watermelon Queen Whitney Leah Conner greets a young watermelon lover.

Did you know?

Watermelon comes in many sizes, shapes and colours. Some are red inside; others are yellow. Some have seeds; other do not.

The watermelon is the fruit of a large vine, which grows flat on the ground. The watermelon, with vines, which grow from 12-15 feet, is part of the same family as pumpkins, cantaloupes and squash.

The watermelon flower is not very showy and must be pollinated, generally by honeybees, to produce fruit.

Watermelon varies in size from the five-pound "Sugar Baby" to the "Jubilee," which can weigh as much as 40 pounds.

Watermelon has many health benefits including:
1. Energy production
2. Protects against macular degeneration
3. Fights heart disease
4. Loaded with antioxidants
5. Reduces the risk of cancer
6. Prevents erectile dysfunction
7. Good source of vitamins and minerals

Check out the video to find out more about the health benefits of watermelon, straight from the watermelon queen herself, Miss Whitney Leah Conner!

From skydiving to zip lining, Atlantic Canada is an adrenaline junkie’s paradise.

By Linda Browne and Shawn Hayward

Have you ever dreamt about soaring through the sky like a bird? Does the thought of shooting down a raging river faster than a speeding bullet make your body tingle with excitement? Here in the Atlantic, there’s no shortage of activities that will get your blood pumping and your heart thumping. Extreme sports are not only a chance to step outside your comfort zone by trying something thrilling and new, but also a great way for tourists and residents alike to see Atlantic Canada in a whole new light. Have a look at 10 of these amazing adventures. Are you brave enough to take the plunge?

A Giant Leap of Faith
Dave Williamson may have phobias like every other person in the world, but one thing he certainly doesn’t have is a fear of heights. He owns and operates the Atlantic School of Skydiving in Waterville, Nova Scotia – the only skydiving school in the region, which has been around since 1982. His students can complete either a tandem jump, or take the first jump course before safely and successfully completing a solo jump.

Watch Downhome's Linda Browne and Jumpmaster Dave Williamson complete a tandem jump in the Annapolis Valley, NS.


For first-time skydivers, a tandem jump is perhaps the best option. Harnessed to the front of a certified and experienced skydiving instructor, you’ll jump from a Cessna 182 aircraft at around 10,000 feet and experience about 35 seconds of freefall (at a speed of up to 120 mph) before your instructor deploys a special parachute built for two. You’ll get to drink in the spectacular views of the beautiful Annapolis Valley and the Bay of Fundy as you spend the next six minutes floating peacefully to the ground.

Dave has been skydiving for more than 33 years, having taken 6,700 jumps, including 2,000 tandems. Yet he never gets bored with what has become routine.

“Every jump is different. I do it because I like it. It’s fun,” he laughs. “It’s a thrill every time.”

He admits there are inherent risks to skydiving, However, Dave adds, “A lot of activities we take for granted come with risk also, just like driving a car. I tell people the most dangerous part of their day is actually driving to the drop zone.”

If you have the desire for skydiving but are still on the fence about it, Dave has some simple advice: “Just do it.”

Did you know?
The Scottish Parachute Club (Skydive Strathallan) recently celebrated their 50th anniversary. The club – which is one of the oldest skydiving clubs in the world - was founded in 1960 by Dr. Charles A. Robertson, father of Memorial University graduate Andrew Robertson.

Soaring to Great Heights
If the thought of throwing yourself from a moving plane is too scary, paragliding is perhaps the next best thing, since you start at the bottom and work your way up, literally.

Watch a tandem launch at Pegasus Paragliding in Nova Scotia.


Michael Fuller, chief instructor and owner of Pegasus Paragliding – aptly named for the winged horse in Greek mythology – has been paragliding for 16 years. He’s been taking students under his proverbial wing since his school (located among the Cobequid Mountains in Diligent River, Nova Scotia) opened in 1997. He’s been offering tandem flights for the past six years and says this is a great introduction to the sport.

“I get all types, but mostly those people who are adventurous of spirit and mind,” he says. “I’ve taken a guy in a wheelchair and I’ve taken eight year olds and I’ve taken 75 year olds.”

Unlike skydiving, paragliding begins with an open canopy. At the launching point, when the wind conditions are just right, the canopy is laid out and inflated above your head (like a kite). Once it’s been carefully checked, you take off running down a hill (the steepness depends on your skill level) with the rising air gently lifting your feet off the ground. Before you know it, you’re flying like a bird. If the weather is agreeable, students can look forward to about a minimum of 20 minutes of airtime and breathtaking views.

Michael says tandem flights are ideal for those “who just want a little taste of it, a little something exciting to do for their visit to this part of the country,” or “people who have always dreamt of flying and never thought it was possible, to get that close to being a bird.”

Did you know?
On June 21, 2002, Canadian Will Gadd set the world distance record for paragliding when he coasted a distance of 423.4 km in Zapta, Texas. The current world record is held by Nevil Hulett, who travelled 502.9 km in South Africa on December 14, 2008.

High-Flying Thrills and Chills
Ever wonder how acrobats can fly and twirl around on the trapeze with ease, and did you always think it would be cool to try it? You can – at Acro-Adix School of Acrobatics in St. John’s, Newfoundland, operated by husband and wife team Josh and Dany Munden.

Watch student highlights from Acro-Adix School of Acrobatics in St. John's, NL.


Josh, a Whitbourne native, and Dany, of Sao Paulo, Brazil, met seven years ago while working on the circus team at a Club Med resort in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The couple later spent two summers running a trapeze school in Whistler, B.C. before opening their own school in St. John’s last year. Between them, they have more than 20 years experience in aerial arts.

There are two roles on the flying trapeze: flyer and catcher. The flyer is the one who performs the tricks in the air, while the catcher is the finisher, the person who catches the flyer. At the school, students need a minimum of two flights before they can make a successful catch, and safety is the No. 1 priority. Everyone that flies is in a safety harness the whole time above an 88-foot long safety net.

Josh says acrobatics is a sport that can be enjoyed by both the young, and young at heart.

“The oldest guy I ever caught was 85 years old. My daughter is the youngest I’ve ever seen fly. And she’s been flying by herself on the bar since she was 14 months old,” Josh says. “The coolest experience we’ve ever had was we taught an 11-year-old blind girl, and she did a catch after her fourth try.”

The aerial arts are addictive, adrenaline-filled and open to anyone with a sense of adventure.

“You just gotta experience it. You gotta swing out on that bar and let go in mid-air and just trust this dude is going to come up and catch you, pull you out of the sky,” Josh says. “You’re on fire, you’re electric after you do it. There’s such a sense of accomplishment.”

Did you know?
Look closely and you’ll see Josh in Nelly Furtado’s video for the tune “Forca.” Josh has also worked as a rigger for Britney Spears in Toronto.

Under the Sea
Newfoundland and Labrador is a natural scuba diver’s paradise. “We’ve got decent currents here…so you can pretty much go diving anywhere there’s a beach, anywhere you can get into the water,” says Sean Farrell, Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) divemaster with Pretty Safe Enterprises (PSE), based in Portugal Cove.

Watch Sean Farrell scuba diving in Bauline, NL at night.


Sean has been scuba diving for about 10 years and counts Middle Cove, Outer Cove, St. Philip’s and Spoon Cove (on the Avalon Peninsula) as being among some of the best sites. However, the most famous dive sites are the four shipwrecks around Bell Island: the Lord Strathcona, Saganaga, Rose Castle and P.L.M. 27, all sunk in 1942.

“They’re world-class wrecks. People come from all over to see those,” Sean says.

If you’re an experienced diver and need transportation to these sites, Ocean Quest in Conception Bay South offers charter boats. If you’ve never been scuba diving and think maybe you might like it, both Ocean Quest and PSE offer an introductory course in which beginners suit up in scuba gear and spend a couple of hours playing underwater in the deep end of an indoor swimming pool.

“Doing Discover Scuba is a small investment. In just doing that you’ll see if it’s something that you’d like, if you’re comfortable wearing the gear, if your body’s comfortable in the water. That’s the easiest way to find out if becoming certified is something you’d like to do,” Sean says.

To hear about six other amazing adventures you can have in the Atlantic region, pick up the July issue of Downhome, on stands now!

Submitted by James G. Marsden
Burgeo, Newfoundland

This letter was written by my father, Garfield Marsden, born in Francois, Newfoundland in 1916. I don't know when he wrote it, but I think it was for a project my daughter had in school; I know it was before the 1990s, as in his late years he was crippled with arthritis and could not write. My father passed away in 1996.

Well, I started work in the early ’30s and it is hard to explain it to anyone that didn't live with it. We sometimes hear it today referred to as the “Dirty Thirties.” It could very well be called the “Hungry Thirties” instead.

There was no television, no electric lights, no carpet on the floor. The floors were mostly covered with canvas, or what were called hooked mats; most of these were made of old trawl lines, unstranded and crossed into mats – some round, some square. They were painted all different colours and designs – birds, animals, stars, compass – and really looked good.

As there were no washers or dryers, everything was done by hand. We did have hand-powered sewing machines, although there were not many of them around, either. But I really think people were just as happy then, if not more than they are today.

There was no union, no labour disputes, it was just work and more work: no eight-hour days, it was more like 16-hour days. It was all fishing on the southwest coast, in every kind of boat from a one-man dory to a seven- or eight-dory schooner, and if it blew too hard to fish – and it really had to blow – then you would take your axe and go cut firewood. There were no oil stoves in those days; it was all wood. If you were really lucky, you might get about two tons of coal for the winter; then you would throw snow on the coal once in a while to make it wet so it wouldn't burn away so fast.

There were no fresh fish plants in Newfoundland in the early ’30s; the fish was split, cleaned and washed in a large tub and salted. This large tub was made from what used to be called a punching [puncheon] – a large barrel holding 180 gallons that the merchants used to buy molasses in. When it was empty, the merchant would give it to whoever asked for it first; then it was sawed through the middle and made into two large tubs for cleaning fish. After the fish had been in salt for about a week, it was taken out and washed again in this large tub and put on the flakes to dry. Now, a flake was a large platform, made from wood and posted up, something like the foundation of a house; it was then covered with limbs from fir and spruce trees so the wind could blow underneath. When the fish was dry, it was stored until a ship would arrive from Denmark, Portugal, Spain or some other foreign country to take it away; these were all sailing ships, as there were few powered ships in those days. I can just remember the first engine my dad had; it must have been in the mid-’20s. Webb & Co. got it for him, and it was the third engine in our settlement.

There were a lot of people in those days on what was called “the dole” (called social assistance now). There was a person appointed in each settlement and you went to them and got what was called a dole order, with so many items listed on it, such as brown flour, yeast, molasses; just the necessities to keep one alive. Thank God, Dad did not have to get one; it was tough, but somehow we came through.

This was not only in Newfoundland; I went to Halifax and Lunenburg in February 1940, having gotten a chance to fish out of Lunenburg, and there were a lot of people in Nova Scotia living on what they called “the town.” It was the same thing they called “the dole” in Newfoundland. Just to give you an example of one’s earnings in the ’30s: I started in 1932, and from then until 1939, my best year's earnings was $112 for the whole year. I remember how that year one of my shipmates and I bought a short leather jacket, $11.95 each; as far as I know, it was the first ever bought in our settlement. Today, that jacket would cost approximately $100, maybe more.

World War II started in 1939, and things started to improve rapidly. Many young men joined the Armed Forces; many job opportunities arose for those at home, prices of fish started rising, and fresh fish plants started to operate. Many people bought radios, as everyone was interested in the war news.

But it was not only the men who worked hard in the ’30s; the women and children all did what they could to help. They would be up and ready for work by daylight. There was so much to get done before school: fish to spread if it was fine, firewood to chop, water to bring – all kinds of chores, not only for boys, but for girls as well, and not by choice but for survival. I think the ’30s made a good many men and women out of more boys and girls. We couldn’t run to Mom or Dad for a quarter or a dollar, because they just didn’t have it. But they gave us love, and anything else they could.

You know how they used to pay church dues in those days? They used to take one day a year for this purpose, and whatever fish they caught that day they would give to the church. Any work to be done on the church cemetery or school was done for free.

Even school was different from what it is today. I can work out a problem and get some answers, but there is so much difference in the way we do it that one would not think it possible to get the same answer. Today grades keep going up to 11, even 12; we used to study what was called the Royal Reader and after you got to Grade 8, Grade 9 was called Primary, Grade 10 Preliminary, and Grade 11 Intermediate.

Transportation and communication were terrible, but started to improve in the early ’30s; we got a telegraph office, and the coastal boat started to make regular trips, about once every two weeks.

We didn’t have any 8-track stereo, or guitar and amplifiers like we have today for music, but we used to have some good old sing-songs. Maybe eight or 10 of us would gather in someone’s house, singing old-time songs about the sea, love songs, all kinds of songs, and accordion music for dances. Sundays we would get together for a good hymn sing, and there was no excuse for not going to church; the only way you stayed out was if you were sick.

And there were some good times in the Hungry Thirties, like dances. Did you ever go to your girlfriend's home and ask her parents if she could go to the dance with you? I did a couple of times, but this rule was just about over by the ’30s when I started to get around. It used to be that if you didn’t ask the parents for permission, she stayed home.

Did you know that they used to make soap out of cod liver for washing clothes, overalls, jackets, mats and heavy things like that? All the cod livers were saved from the fish and put into a barrel. When it had rotted enough, you would dip off all of the oil and sell it, then take so much of the rotted liver, put it in a pot, make an outdoor fire and boil the oil with Gillets Lye (a powder they used to use for bleach instead of Javex in those days). After the mixture had been boiled long enough, it was left to get thick and hard, then cut into blocks about three inches square and used for soap. They also used to take bark from fir and spruce trees and boil what we used to call tan. It had a dark brown colour, and it was used to store herring nets and trawl to keep them from rotting. There were no nylon nets and trawl in those days; they were all cotton and imp [hemp] lines, and the imp lines were much stronger than the cotton.

However, the ’30s are past, so let’s live in the present – have a shave with our electric razors, then a bubble bath and a rub down with Avon body lotion, then take a drive up to the Wander Inn for a game of darts (the losers will probably buy us a round of beer). So bye for now; see you on the way back.

September 2008 marks the one-year anniversary of Bacalao, a St. John's restaurant that specializes in "nouvelle Newfoundland cuisine." The seeds for this unique culinary concept were sown in Cuba in 2001, when Toronto-born chef Mike Barsky and Andrea Maunder of St. John's met by chance and fell in love while vacationing, separately, on that Caribbean island.

When the couple returned to Canada they commenced a long-distance relationship punctuated by visits back and forth. Mike was chef at the renowned Ottawa eatery, Von's Bistro, at the time. After his first-ever trip to see Andrea he discovered he'd not only fallen in love with a Newfoundlander, but with Newfoundland as well.

Meanwhile on her visits to Ottawa, Andrea would brainstorm with Mike to design new items for the bistro's menu. She suggested that he try dishes made with salt codfish, which led to the creation of "bacalao fritters" - a dish that soon became popular at Von's. Shaped like a football, the fritters are made with salt fish, potato, garlic, lemon and Newfoundland savoury, then dipped in panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and fried. Von's Bistro served the fritters with aioli dipping sauce, which contains garlic, green peppers, lemon and mayonnaise.

Then the opportunity to buy Von's Bistro came up. Mike and Andrea considered making an offer on the business, but they both realized that they actually wanted to live and work in Newfoundland. So in December 2006 they moved together to St. John's and started looking for a place to set up shop.

They spent the next five months trying to find a space with the right atmosphere in a good location; finally in May 2007 they found an old house at 65 Lemarchant Road. After a few months of preparation and renovation they opened Bacalao (the Spanish word for salt cod) in September 2007, and haven't looked back since.

Why am I telling you all this? Because starting with this issue, Mike and Andrea will be lending their creative culinary genius to Downhome as the magazine's "Everyday Gourmet" columnists. We thought it fitting to introduce them this month, on the eve of Bacalao's one-year anniversary.

What do Mike and Andrea mean by "nouvelle Newfoundland" cuisine? In a nutshell, it's a focus on fresh, local ingredients and classic recipes made with a unique twist. So the food at Bacalao would be familiar to many Newfoundlanders, but different at the same time. For example, the salad menu features crispy cod tongues served on a bed of greens with cucumbers and sweet onions and creamy lemon-caper vinaigrette. There is also a blueberry-peppercorn caribou steak salad (it even SOUNDS delicious). A pasta dish made with penne and sausage features chili moose sausages tossed with peppers, mushrooms and onions in a spicy tomato sauce, then topped with shaved pecorino romano cheese and toasted pine nuts.

Those famous "bacalao fritters" from Mike's Ottawa days have made their reappearance on the Bacalao lunch menu, which also offers brie and partridgeberry phyllo cigars (brie cheese and homemade partridgeberry chutney rolled in phyllo pastry and baked crisp, until the brie is warm and melting), and snow crab spring rolls - glass noodles, julienned vegetables, ginger, garlic and Newfoundland snow crab in crispy spring rolls, served with a mignonette sauce of bakeapple wine, rice vinegar and chiles.

Bacalao's suppliers include the organic farm in Portugal Cove and the lettuce farm on Hamilton Avenue in St. John's; meats (including some of my favourites - lamb, moose and caribou) and fish are sourced locally, too. The dinner menu pays homage to these delicious, traditional ingredients with items like bacalao du jour (the daily dish made with salt cod) and crispy skin chicken breast, which is served golden brown with a Newfoundland savoury jus, sour cream and chive mashed potatoes, buttered vegetables and homemade partridgeberry chutney. Other delicious choices include Atlantic salmon in gin and juniper berry sauce, caribou medallion in partridgeberry sauce, and mussels served with fries.

Bacalao's celebration of all things Newfoundland extends to its decor. The paintings adorning the walls in the restaurant's four cozy dining rooms (each with its own fireplace) are all by Newfoundland and Labrador artists, and the other items on display all represent the Newfoundland and Labrador lifestyle.

The crowning touch? The men's washroom is called "John" while the women's washroom is called "The Missus" in honour of the movie John and the Missus, which starred Newfoundland-born actor, Gordon Pinsent.