I hail from the oldest and most easterly city in all of North America - St. John’s, Newfoundland.
For thousands of years, the Indigenous people of our island drew cod from the rich fishing grounds surrounding the rocky shoreline. One thousand years ago, Vikings became the island’s first European visitors, harvesting timber from the rugged northern peninsula. Five hundred years later, John Cabot would claim to discover the island, a moment that sparked the international fishing industry in Newfoundland.
Thousands of fisherman from England, Ireland, France, Spain, and Portugal crossed the ocean to spend each summer fishing for cod. Eventually, they brought their families, built year-round settlements, and created a unique island culture.
My family arrived on the island a few hundred years ago. At that time, we were English and Irish. Today, we are Newfoundlanders.
But we’re never far from our roots.
Those early settlers brought their Celtic customs across the ocean and firmly planted them into the land and the people.
Hundreds of years later, we carry on this tradition:
We are Storytellers.
We are songwriters, playwrights, novelists, and poets.
We love to spin a yarn, crack a joke, or tell the fishing tale of the-one-that-got-away.
We speak of fairies, mermaids, and legendary shipwrecks.
We are Survivors.
We have clung to the Rock for hundreds of years.
Our Indigenous populations, even longer.
We tell stories of long winters, when the cove iced up and no one could move for months.
We talk of small boats facing epic storms, of the ones that returned, and the ones who never made it home.
We tell the stories of those who can no longer speak for themselves:
For Shawnadithit, the last of the Beothuks.
For the fallen soldiers of Beaumont-Hamel.
For the 84 workers of the Ocean Ranger offshore drilling station, swallowed by the sea on a stormy winter’s night.
We’ve faced tsunamis, prejudice, isolation, and a moratorium on fishing that cod that started it all.
We’ve lived to tell the tale, so tell it we will.
We gather in our churches, lifting prayers of gratitude, harmonizing songs of struggle and faith.
We sing it our pubs, rousing our voices together in shanties and laments.
We laugh about it in our kitchen parties, fiercely choosing joy in the face of adversity, weaving tales of hope and humour.
We gift it to our children, passing our creativity and resiliency down to the next generation.
Our Celtic ancestors gave us the gift of storytelling for survival, hope, and legacy.
With each new chapter, we continue to share our story …
HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY!
ALLISON LYNN:
Singer, songwriter and worship leader, Allison Lynn, is drawn to the power of story to grow hearts and communities. Allison and her husband, Gerald Flemming, just released their 9th Infinitely More album - The Sum of All Love. Publications include The Anglican Journal (national newspaper), Taste and See (journal), Love STC (Niagara Tourism Blog), and four stories with Chicken Soup for the Soul. www.InfinitelyMore.ca
