The Canadian Centre for Architecture will be displaying a model of a saltbox home being towed by a boat at sea as part of an exhibit exploring the impact of the human population’s movements on the environment. The exhibition, called Journeys: How travelling fruit, ideas and buildings rearrange our environment, will open Oct.19 and run until March 13, 2011.
Vera Penney, chair of the Resettler’s Museum, said organizers of the exhibition in Montreal were looking for an example of a resettled home to depict, and became familiar with what Centreville had to offer through Memorial University of Newfoundland.
The significance of resettlement is strongly linked to the communities encompassing Centreville-Trinity-Wareham. Much like the model house headed for Montreal, homes were brought to those towns from communities that once existed on nearby islands.
“Nobody really wanted to move.” - – Ralph Yetman
Fair Island, Silver Fox Island, and Sydney Cove were formerly inhabited by people whose descendents now live in Centreville-Trinity-Wareham. Ralph Yetman, vice-chair of the museum, said there are approximately 19 saltbox homes in the community that once navigated the waters along the Kittiwake Coast to reach their final destinations.
“They would build a raft, put the house on the raft, and the boat would take her with a tow. They used to have motors in those boats,” he said, prior to pressing play on a mini-cassette player that brought the sound of a boat motor to life.
Resettlement was a gradual process in the area, though activity picked up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, by which point the islands became ghost towns.
.jpg)
.jpg)
