On the Point of arrival
In a light rain, we headed over to the Point. Almost like tourists, and there were others already there. The season has started.
For me, another sort of tourism, in a moment of ancestral recall. Almost exactly two hundred years ago my great-great grandmother was on board a ship, with her family. They also came around the Point, but with very different circumstances. In that period there was no lighthouse. That would be built more than forty years after. The ship had left Ireland, made a brief stop in Newfoundland, and then continued on to New Brunswick. At least, that was the plan. The captain had brought the same ship into the area a year before, and I am sure he felt comfortable with his sailing directions. Unfortunately, at the point, there is a reef, with a hungry sandbar. The ship went aground, and the family learned that the waters are not that warm in early June.
They came ashore, and my ancestor, not yet two, got her first introduction to a beach.
They came across the point, along the portage, and they stayed, what with the vessel now a certified shipwreck. Made them castaways. And the family found a piece of land which became the family farm. I have been shown the location of their big barn. She married another arrival from Ireland, about two decades later. I am a result, along with a whole manifest of cousins. Living in the same area. With the same changing weather, and the same realization that this island is a decent place to live.
I did know her granddaughter, and I figure she would feel that the place had changed a lot. More fishing. A railway, come and gone. Roads that can be used all year long. No shipwrecks, at least not recently. But, today, over at the Point, I felt a kindred spirit.
