Tourism, exports, kombucha: How Bonavista is mixing it up to stay alive
Hip boutiques, restaurants and heritage properties have helped revive historic fishing town
There were a few moments during last summer's visit to Bonavista when I wondered what my grandparents would have made of it all.
Artisanal cookies, bicycle rentals, handmade pasta, craft beer, luxury cars with Ontario plates parked in front of the clapboard homes they had rented … not at all the lifestyle that Nan, Pop, Nana and Skipper, as I knew all four of them, had ever known.
And … it's fine.
Bonavista has kind of become a postcard example of change in rural Newfoundland and Labrador.
The snug harbour in the town is still as photogenic as any you can find, and the town still prides itself on its history (even though its proud, yet tenuous, connection to John Cabot has become rather complicated in an age of reconciliation and redress).
Bonavista's more recent history has included some rough times. Mayor John Norman doesn't mince words about what it was like growing up there three decades ago.
"I was a child during the moratorium," he said this week, referring to the closure of the main cod fishery off Newfoundland's northeast coast, which came into effect in July 1992.
"And I grew up in a town that felt like it was dying."
Bonavista's wharfs are still dotted with fishing boats, the owners of which have switched to other species. It's a beautiful backdrop, and I never tired of taking photos of its sunsets.
Knocked back by the moratorium, Bonavista has been rebuilding — if not reinventing — itself for some years now, and it has earned a reputation as a must-visit for tourists. They're drawn to a mix that includes landscapes, lively boutiques, top-quality restaurants and restored heritage properties. I always recommend the puffins and Sealers' Memorial in nearby Elliston, as well as other places on the Bonavista Peninsula.
Norman, whose youthful energy has set him apart from a lot of municipal leaders in Newfoundland and Labrador, has been a champion of all that's been happening.
"To see and help support a lot of these entrepreneurs come to Bonavista to launch their businesses, expand their businesses — it's very, very positive," he said.
New businesses, new ideas
Sylvia Mitford, who owns the Boreal Diner in Bonavista, is one of those entrepreneurs. She and her husband, who owned the coffee shop Fixed in downtown St. John's, decided to move to Bonavista soon after visiting the town.
"When we [came] out here and we saw the landscape, we were pretty motivated to move out of the city right away," said Mitford, who grew up in the Yukon. "I'm a rural girl, like, the city is not really for me."
Boreal Diner works with local producers to get the freshest vegetables, meat and fish. "We're really trying to just serve the flavour of the area," Mitford said.
Mark Fudge, owner of Bonabooch Kombucha, started making his own kombucha — a fermented tea — to deal with his own gut health problems. Out of that came a business idea.
"After I started making it for a while, people started trying it and people started actually [wanting] it, because it started to make them feel better," said Fudge, who is now looking to sell far beyond the company's storefront.
"Hopefully we'll move into a bigger facility and we're going to start shipping out of province and hopefully it just keeps getting bigger from there," Fudge said.
Norman said that tourism has helped Bonavista and surrounding towns, but an ancient practice — exports — will need to be vibrant for the economy to keep growing.
"Tourism is a great added sector to the region, but we're a rural town that now exports goods around the planet and that's that's really exciting," Norman told the CBC's Carolyn Stokes this week.
"And that all started with the fishery. This was an export centre. We were shipping out salt cod hundreds of years ago. Now we ship out crab and we ship out salt and a few other things."
Legacies and looking forward
We're marking the 30th anniversary of the moratorium at CBC Newfoundland and Labrador this month.
Thirty years is a lot of years. I covered the moratorium when it happened; many of the journalists I work with were, like Norman, just kids when it happened, and some were not even born.
The legacy of what the fishery was seems further away as the years pass, and I wonder if it also makes it easier for young adults to imagine futures that don't have that much in common with what generations of people knew.
We'll have many more stories and perspectives to bring you in the days and weeks ahead, from some defiant communities that will not say die to an examination of how temporary foreign workers are keeping other enterprises alive.
Meanwhile, it seems obvious that Bonavista, home to more than 3,000 residents, is self-contained enough now for young people who've made the move from St. John's.
"I've been there like three times since I moved out here, honestly," Mitford said. "I don't even miss it."
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