Have you heard the news? Provincial Historic Sites in Newfoundland and Labrador will have free admission for Come Home Year! Come out and see what their sites are all about in 2022!
The season 2022 runs from May 21st to October 7th.
The Commissariat House was built between 1818-1820 as the home and offices of the Assistant Commissary General – the supply officer for British forces in Newfoundland. Today visitors are invited to explore life in St. John’s in the 1830s when British rule was ending and the town was alive with talk of Newfoundlanders having the right to manage their own affairs.
Address: 11 King’s Bridge Road, St. John’s
Dating between circa the late 1700s to the early 1800s the Newman Wine Vaults is one of the oldest standing structures in St. John’s. Constructed of brick and stone, the vaults were used to age the Celebrated Newman’s Port. The Newman Wine Vaults tell the amazing story of a 300-year connection between wine produced in sunny Portugal, aged in the cool climate of Newfoundland, and sipped by England’s aristocracy for generations.
Address: 436 Water Street, St. John’s
In August 1610, Bristol merchant John Guy arrived at Cupids Cove in Conception Bay with thirty-eight settlers. The colony they established was the first English settlement in what became Canada. The settlers cleared the land, fished, farmed, explored for minerals, and tried to establish a fur trade with the Beothuk. Every summer, archaeologists working the dig site uncover more about the plantation and the people who lived there.
Address: Seaforest Drive, Cupids
Over 150 years ago, the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was landed at Heart’s Content reducing the time to communicate across the Atlantic from weeks to minutes. The technology revolution had begun and changed the way we communicate. This little Newfoundland town leaped into the history books and remained a global communications hub for over a century. The cable station opened the world to the outport men and women who worked here and remains a time capsule of the communications technology that connected us all right up to the 1960s.
Address: Highway 80, Heart’s Content
Trinity’s merchants were some of the wealthiest people on either side of the ocean and they made this town a capital in the salt fish trade in the late 1700s. Trinity today is a quaint little place with winding lanes and much of its 19th-century character rebuilt or restored – but two centuries ago its harbour was full of ships. With 3 Provincial Historic Sites, along with other heritage attractions to explore, plan to spend at least a full day wandering Trinity’s laneways.
Address: Trinity, off Highway 230 on the Bonavista Peninsula
A fishery plantation site since the 1700s, the Mockbeggar Plantation was a thriving operation that played a major role in the development of Bonavista. The main house was built in the 1870s and has been restored to 1939 – the time when Newfoundland statesman and advocate for Confederation with Canada F. Gordon Bradley lived here. Today the house recreates a time when the question of whether to join Canada or remain an independent nation was on everyone’s lips.
Address: Roper Street, Bonavista
For generations of mariners along this coast, the light at Cape Bonavista was their only connection to land while out on the dark sea. Built in 1843, the lighthouse at Cape Bonavista is one of the few in the world where you can still climb up the stone tower and see the same seal oil-fueled catoptric light apparatus that was used in the 1800s. One of the most photographed places in Newfoundland and Labrador, this is a prime location to view whales, icebergs and puffins.
Address: At the tip of the Bonavista Peninsula
300 years ago, this site in Boyd’s Cove in Notre Dame Bay was a Beothuk village. Tour the interpretation centre where exhibits and artifacts foster an appreciation for this unique, and now vanished culture. From the interpretation centre, follow a 1.5 km groomed walking trail to the village site – today an outline of housepits is the only evidence of the Beothuk people who once lived here. Along the trail, a sculpture designed by renowned Newfoundland artist Gerald Squires evokes the tragedy of the Beothuks’ demise.
Address: Boyd’s Cove, off Highway 340, 1 hour north of Gander
The Point Amour Lighthouse stands tall amid the limestone cliffs on the south coast of Labrador. Climb the 132 steps to the top of the lighthouse – the tallest in Atlantic Canada – and be rewarded with a panoramic view of the Strait of Belle Isle. The lighthouse has figured prominently in the lives of the people of Southern Labrador for nearly 150 years. Enjoy a hike along the coast to the HMS Raleigh shipwreck site and view whales, icebergs, and fossils along the way.
Address: L’Anse Amour Road, off Highway 510, 10 minutes north of Forteau
