Living On The Edge

From the Toronto Star:

Bell Island should be a beacon for history buffs, but its WWII history is largely hidden

Sep 20, 2007 04:30 AM

Jim Byers
Staff Reporter

BELL ISLAND, NFLD. –It's the only place in North America directly damaged by the Germans in the Second World War. Nearby are the wrecks of four ships sunk by German U-boats, where 69 soldiers went to their deaths.

It should be a beacon for history buffs. But when you arrive on Bell Island, just a few minutes from St. John's, there is no sign of what happened here. Not a Heritage Canada marker. Not a government of Newfoundland placard. Nothing.

It's not until you follow the signs for the shop of a man who makes cement animals that you spot a small roadside sign pointing the way to a "Seaman's memorial and picnic area."

It's easy to miss the turnoff. And at the bottom of the hill, you arrive in a tumbledown RV park, where the only memorial is a patch of grass with a couple of plaques, a flagpole and a giant anchor.

Bell Island, only a few miles from St. John's in the middle of Conception Bay, has stunning cliffs, vertical slides of chalky brown shale and sandstone pounded by impossibly blue ocean waves.

There's a chatty lighthouse keeper who'll give you a free tour of his place. Visitors can check out the iron ore museum showcasing the mines that once reached miles and miles underground, which is why the Germans attacked in the first place.

A mysterious crater appeared on one end of the island in the 1970s, an occurrence some blamed on a ball of lightning, but which others insist was the doing of U.S. army mad scientist or even the Russians.

It's a truly magical place. But aside from the No. 2 mine iron ore museum, which is a sophisticated and highly worthwhile stop, they don't do much here to advertise one of the best day trips you can take in Newfoundland.

Karen Seward shrugs when asked about the lack of signage for the German bombing site.

Her grandfather worked the mines and features in legendary photographer Yousuf Karsh's collection of Bell Island pictures on display at the museum.

"We think like Bell Islanders," she says. "If you're lost, you'll knock on someone's door and they'll take you there."

Luckily, the No. 2 mine signs are a lot easier to find.

The first things you'll probably notice in the museum are the stunning photos, some by Karsh. One shows a boy who can't be more than 12 years old, surrounded by four older, soot-covered workers, three of whom look as though they returned from the depths of hell.

Another shows a worker with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a lunch box popping out from under a well-muscled arm. The story goes that Karsh was here in the summer of 1954 to photograph Premier Joey Smallwood and his Cabinet but ventured to the island and was taken with what he saw. The originals of his Bell Island photos are in Ottawa's National Archives.

Seward explains workers at the mine tunneled miles under Conception Bay, about half a kilometre below the water. All told, 70 million tonnes of ore were shipped from the world's largest subterranean iron ore mine from 1895 to 1966.

Workers started as early as age eight or nine, picking unwanted rocks off the conveyor belts that brought the precious ore out of the depths below the bay. Outside the museum is a giant heap of unused rocks hauled out over the years.

"My son," Seward says, "calls that the `Monument to Child Labour.'"

A short tour takes you deep underground and gives visitors a sense of what it was like for the workers. Back inside the museum is a collection of various instruments and household items that illustrate the life of the miners in the depths of the earth. Included is a box of soap; cruelly, the label reads "Sunlight."

The 10-year-old museum has four full-time employees.

"Don't think that's much, do ya?" Seward asks a visitor. "Well, that means four more families can stay on this island and that's pretty special."

There used to be 15,000 people on the island. Many fled when the mines shut down; a lot of them to southern Ontario. There are now only 3,000, but the population is slowly rebuilding.

"It's a great place," Seward explains. "Ninety-five per cent of people here know my kids' names if they see them on the road."

Seward said Bell Island children are raised to be independent.

"They'll leave, of course," she says. "But they'll come back."

There aren't many more scenic spots in the province than the lighthouse at the north end of the island. It's a cool place to learn something about the 50 or so lighthouses that dot Newfoundland.

"Been here more than 20 years," says Bill Clarke in a patented Newfoundland accent. "We used to be out there on the bluff," he says, gesturing toward a small point now empty of buildings, "But a government geologist came and they found some caves under the point.

"They said it was only a matter of time before we might tumble down into the ocean, so they moved the lighthouse back here."

He also explains the difference between a Clark and a Clarke.

"The good Clarkes have an `e' on the end, or so they say back in England," he says. "The ones without an `e' are the bad `uns."

Clarke lovingly shows off an old foghorn – a two-metre high, hulking metal thing that's probably five metres long. It's no longer operational, but Clarke plays a tape of different sounding lighthouse horns used to emit.

"This here was three seconds long, then 27 seconds of silence. Other lighthouses had different tones, so if you were fogged in, you could tell by the sound just where you were."

After a clamber up some metal spiral stairs and a few steps up a steep ladder, visitors are shown the light itself.

A lone Canadian flag flaps below, overlooking the Avalon peninsula nearly five kilometres away and the blue-green Atlantic.

There's a sign warning tourists not to venture out on to the point where the lighthouse used to sit, but Clarke explains many folks go have a look-see.

"Just don't get too close to the edge."

The small effort is hugely worthwhile. You get a great view of two towers of rock rising from the bay, with a huge, V-shaped chasm between them. The tops are dotted with conifers and dozens of birds, while the bottoms are battered by breaking waves of deep blue water. At the bottom of one of the towers, a small cave leaves a hole for surf to surge through.

It's breathtaking.

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I'm posting this mainly because this is where my father was born; my friend Alan Hawco once suggested the submerged mines as a good location for a story -- and he's right.