Hollywood East

Yesterday, we visited a film set. “Random Passage” was a 2002 TV miniseries about the lives of early European settlers in Newfoundland, based on the historical fiction book by Bernice Morgan. The filming is long past, but the site has been maintained by a non-profit group that runs educational tours for the public. It’s an interesting conflation of fiction and reality, as the tour guides educate about both the living conditions of early settlers and the plot and characters of the TV show.

The site is located in New Bonaventure, a town that is at the end of a highway on a remote coastline of the Bonavista Peninsula. It’s about 1.5 hours from our house. Our neighbours Kay and Wayne asked if we would be interested in going with them, and so of course, we said yes. It’s a breathtaking setting, as you can see in these photos.

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So we learned about how settlers survived by catching and salting cod, which they traded to the fishing merchants in return for enough supplies to last them for the next six months until the merchant boat returned to pick up fish and/or drop off more supplies. Except they didn’t usually get enough supplies to survive. Those who did survive were forced to rely on their wits to supplement their dwindling supplies, and were often malnourished. Sometimes, the boat never arrived.

We learned about the fictional lives of the people in the TV show, and their complicated relationships. There was the bachelor, who was a target of the unmarried women in the settlement because he could read and write. And the headstrong woman, fleeing her past. And the rich but unstable matron who slowly went insane in her bedroom. All the characters needed for an engrossing TV show were present in this small settlement, but was life in these small outports really so dramatic? Wasn’t it just drudgery, leavened by occasional celebration and rum?

Incidentally, the island you can see on the horizon in the middle of this photo is Ireland’s Eye, site of one of the largest drug busts ever in Atlantic Canada. Our tour guide told us this after the tour was over; she knew people who were busted.

After our tour, we went to the tearoom for lunch, where we had a choice of moose stew or fish cakes. Then it was on to another movie set just down the street — this time, a bar that was constructed in the heart of New Bonaventure for “The Grand Seduction”, a film about a small town that is trying to lure a doctor to take up residence. Joe’s Place was built with the intention of being removed at the end of the shoot, but apparently, the locals advocated successfully for it to be left standing. It doesn’t operate as a bar with regular hours, but is used for special events, weddings, performances, and karaoke/open mics on Friday nights. We were there to see a performance of traditional Newfoundland music featuring guitarist and accordionist.

I sort of expected the bar to be full of tourists, but it wasn’t. Most of the 100 or so people looked as if they had been coming to this bar for decades – except that the building is only 9 years old. But they were clearly familiar with the performers and the music, and were there to have fun.

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There have been a number of other movies and TV series filmed on the peninsula, including a current Disney production of Peter Pan and Wendy. But Newfoundlanders aren’t overly impressed by celebrities, unless they are of the home grown variety. There’s a story that makes the rounds here about when The Shipping News was filming in Trinity (near New Bonaventure). Some of the cast and crew were in a local bar, and a fisherman walked right past Kevin Spacey to shake Gordon Pinsent’s hand, and then walked right past him again to leave. Another reason to love Newfoundlanders!