Outport: The Soul of Newfoundland.

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British
Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and author of The Salvation Army and the
Public.

When Candace Cochrane made her first trip to Newfoundland’s northern peninsula in 1967 to work for the Quebec–Labrador Foundation, she fell in love with the place and the people. For 13 years she nurtured that love by chronicling the lives of outport people, mainly those of the village of Conche—photographing them at work and play, in their boats and in their kitchens, and recording their words of wisdom, their reactions to weather, changing times, and community relationships.

The photos reproduced here are breathtakingly beautiful and emotionally poignant, from the amusing one of “Lizzie Byrne knitting on a skidoo” to the soulful portrait of “Darren Flynn and his father Foss” through to the many magnificent vistas such as “Small boat in White Bay.” They alone would have made this album eminently worthwhile. But, when accompanied, as they are, by the eloquent, sometimes poetic, comments of the people photographed, the experience is doubly enhanced: “I heard me grandmother say that when the first of our family came here, the French settlement was abandoned. They said it was too rough a cove for fishing out of. It just suited our people.” If, as Cochrane (and many others) believe, the “outport” is the “soul of Newfoundland,” then she has captured its essence as faithfully as anyone ever has.