Rezori | How we shifted from the wharf to the trail

So another summer is upon us, and with it the usual construction activity on the country's infrastructure. Most Canadians will probably associate infrastructure with roads and bridges. But around here those came later. Much later.

Think rocks, logs, and boards. Kelp and barnacles. Sparkles on the water below, gulls in the air above. The smell of pine tar and fish guts. Coils of rope and fishing gear.

Pipe smoke drifting and mingling with the voices of men bantering and laughing as they unload and split their catch. Women biting their tongues as they slave away on nearby flakes or in small vegetable gardens.

Life as we know it here today started on the wharf. That's where it all came together in the early years that seemed to stay early forever.

The wharf is where people arrived and left. Where widows cursed the sea. Where civil engineers got their first experience. Where budding entrepreneurs cut their first deals. Where early politicians made their first promises. Where soon-to-be lovers exchanged their first glances.

Without a wharf you had no public place to gather, to work, to do business on. You had no marketplace, no commons.

An economic generator

Even when much of that older way started to come apart, the wharf itself kept its central role as an essential economic generator, at least for a while.

During the lean 1980s and early 1990s, make-work projects to build new wharves and fix old ones became so common, even the CBC's Fifth Estate came down to investigate. "They're lugging rocks one at a time," Fifth Estate host Eric Malling scoffed in his report. "In comparison, building the pyramids was high tech."

For a while there, as if driven to one last orgy of denial, we were building wharves like never before. And then, suddenly, it was all over.

If you check the provincial government's environmental assessment bulletins, you won't find a single application for a wharf project by 1997, five years into the cod moratorium. There are no applications the next year. Only two the year after that. 

How times have changed

There's lots of other stuff on the go though, and some of it new.

In October 1997, the Eagle River Development Association registered a proposal for a snowmobile trail from Paradise River to Valley's Bight. The next year, the East Coast Trail Association submitted its grand vision of a hiking trail from Fort Amherst to Cappahayden.

That same year saw the Labrador Snowmobile Federation propose the Newfoundland Integrated Snowmobile Trail.

For 500 years, we lived facing the sea with the land at our backs. Now, through a combination of necessity, convenience and choice, more and more of us have made the 180-degree turn to face the other way.

A few years later, the first registrations for ATV trails start turning up. In 2005 alone there were eight applications for more trails — zero for wharf construction or repair.

For 500 years, we lived facing the sea with the land at our backs.

Now, through a combination of necessity, convenience and choice, more and more of us have made the 180-degree turn to face the other way.

Think rocks, logs and boards again, but no more kelp and barnacles. It's ferns and lichen now. Sunlight splinters off ponds, bird voices issue from crows. Pine sap hits your nose straight off the trees, fresh and sweet.

The gear you carry with you is no longer designed to make you work hard for a living but to make your recreation more comfortable.

There's less chewing on pipes but more banter all around. Some of the women might still be biting their tongue as they ride behind the men on their ATVs and snowmobiles or do the cleaning-up at the campsite. But more and more that's changing too.

And it's all good.