Endangered places: Trinity Loop | Slideshow

  • Downhome Magazine
  • Posted: Nov 21, 2013 3:13 PM
Trinity Loop. There used to be people here. Lots of them. "Kids of all ages," as the saying goes. It was a little downhome Disneyland, filled with so much laughter and so many squeals of delight you couldn't hear yourself think. But here you didn't have to think - you just had to be, and enjoy, and for a few hours this place was the only place in the world.

Today, Newfoundland and Labrador's Trinity Loop is a paradox, both here and gone at the same time. It exists and it doesn't. If you make the long trek down the Bonavista Peninsula highway and make the turn toward Trinity, you can find it. You'll probably have to cast way back into the deep pool of your memory, back to the part where the little train chugs around the pond and the whistle still whines its lonesome note, to remember where exactly it was. And more likely than not, you won't remember, so you'll have to pull over and ask someone. And of course they will know exactly where it is, because how could they not? It's been there all along. It never went anywhere - you did. So they'll probably look at you a bit strangely, silently wondering why anyone would want to go there now, but they'll tell you. You'll find the park road so overgrown that the bushes reach from the shoulder and whisper along the sides of your car. Then, suddenly, wonderfully, out of the woods the park will emerge.

See Trinity Loop as it is today in this slideshow of photos by Downhome staff writer Grant Loveys.

There have been several efforts to save Trinity Loop in the years since it closed, none of which have been successful. Recently, a group of concerned citizens started "Save the Trinity Loop" - a Facebook group and associated petition asking the provincial government to restore the historic site. In 2012, the government received an application from an undisclosed party to lease the loop and surrounding area, though as of print time the land is still property of the Department of Environment and Conservation.