“I heard me grandmother say that when the first of our family came here, the French settlement was abandoned. They said it was too rough a cove for fishing out of. It just suited our people….”

“Those old midwives that were here then, they were only trying to do the best they could, the best they knew how. Didn’t know very much, but they’d try to born the babies and do whatever they could. I often heard my mother telling about it. When the baby’d be born, you’d be put to bed for nine days; and what clothes you had on you when you went to bed, that’s what’d be on you when you’d get up. She said you’d be so sore you wouldn’t be able to walk; you’d be chafed to death with the clothes. That was their belief. If you took off the clothes you had on—all the warm clothes—you’d get cold then. Die then.”

— from Outport: The Soul of Newfoundland, by Candace Cochrane (Flanker Press, 2008)