The Tale Blazers, Episode 3: St. John’s

we're here we're finally here take a look at the rugged view these floors are amazing oh yeah oh yeah this is worth it wow oh this is amazing we're here marley we did it we got to the most easterly part of canada [Music] i'm marley and i'm morella and we're the tailblazers we're out here on the road to newfoundland and labrador in search of stories a place where there's a story around every single corner this week we're in the capital city of st john's one of the most colorful cities in north america a city that's filled with art food music culture and with any luck a tale or two let's go story hunting [Music] wow this is amazing gorgeous look at that hi hi hi welcome to ella hi barley good to meet you chris nice to meet you bro okay look at that there it is the original lighthouse the coast and the lights and the lights yeah the dome at the top chris this place is unbelievable totally unbelievable wow i love this this is and and you're saying 80 of it is authentic yeah about about that you know particularly the larger planks you can tell that those are are from this this 1830 time period 1830 so who were the first people here in this lighthouse so the first keeper the light starts operation 1836 and the first keeper is a man called emmanuel ware he's he's a scot he's here for about 10 years and we actually know very little about him yeah but we heard about these catwalls that were given this place as a gift or something what's that story so that's the longer story this this story has some complexity the prince hendrick the seafair is a prince from the netherlands yeah and he visits here at the tail end of 1845 and james yes a very exciting royal visit and james cadwell at the time is working as a harbor pilot so james goes out to retrieve uh prince hendrick and his vessel to navigate in in the thick good job and about a week later he offers to james a thank you what would you like and james bobbing around out there on prince hendricks vessel out in st john's bay points at the 1836 lighthouse and says i would like to be the keeper of the lighthouse so out comes the plume and a royal decree is written by prince hendrick the seafair who gives to james canwell the keeper ship for he and his kin in perpetuity it's a nice lighthouse but that's that's what that's what he asked that's what he asked for i guess he was done of going out on the water he wanted a solid well-paid no not that big treasure chest full of like gold and the blue yes he couldn't dream that that that big but it does turn out to be quite the treasure well it is it is pretty nice and and the job then passes through his family james cantwell's family for five generations after this decree wow right until like nighttime happened no it might have been a little bit of a circus here at the lighthouse now let's keep in mind that this is a a myth well the letter exists but it's more a letter of recommendation and after the the current lighthouse keeper who was working here dies in 36 cantwell gets the job but this this story is such a lovely folkloric sidebar to the history we with parks canada but they did have five generations they did and you can see why that myth would be upholded and it's gorgeous that is an epic length of father to son father to son to brother to brother to father of maintaining this light here amazing what are the what are the mattresses made out of it's actually a a corded bed look at this see oh my goodness sleep tight oh yeah you tighten your you tighten the rope so okay there you go now bring them up the stove oh up those hills oh come on mary we need some water oh a paw patrol nose up there you go oh sploosh oh no squoosh the wheel oh oh now back down to get more water for me this has been amazing thank you so much for giving us all of this information and a tour of this incredible place yes well what a pleasure to have you just like it was thanks for coming i'm glad you can imagine yourself now in 1840 here yeah so what did you think of that lighthouse that was really fun chris was fun wasn't he the best yeah he was and i liked playing with the little water oh yeah yeah yeah that was fun yeah yeah yeah there's a story about that family five generations that is so weird to me you can have anything in the world you want i just want to live isolated that lighthouse for the rest of my life but it was fabulous that was just such a beautiful spot okay so now i want to i want to discuss this whole mind thing with you yeah because we're going to look at where they went to work i imagine there's a lot of stories about that yeah i think that this is going to be i mean hopefully no tragedy because you understand that i am claustrophobic right you are going to be just fine because they're going to give you like a hard hat with the little lappy thing issue just thinking about it blood pressure's going up so this is bell island beautiful wow and we're going to the mine yeah yeah yeah we're going to go to the line for you because you've been helping us that's right the entire time yeah look at these cliffs this is amazing like they just cut right off [Music] wow this is a beautiful museum look at all these wonderful photos of these miners oh hey hi hi my name is fox how are you hi foxy marley nice to meet you fantastic well tell us a little bit about this museum which just looks amazing this museum is all full of artifacts from mining from 1902 out to 1966. okay great we'll take us to the escalator let's go absolute escalator there's no escalator all right let's go i'm ready we got this honey i got this i can do this it's in my blood you don't need those pickaxes oh well i thought uh we're going to be doing some mining that's another working tour well that's what you watch your steps so fox um how many hours would these guys work a day these mine's right here ten hours a day really underground like this ten hours a day six days a week so how much daylight would they see you would never hardly see daylight the only time these miners work there to see daylight was on the sunday and right now we are going to go where it's dark dark dark where no light shines here jack these mines were never ever modernized so there was never no electricity in these mines listen uh fox how did they know that there was iron on this island well fishermen would use it i thought they found a red rock and they would use it for ballast in their boats when they came across here fishermen discussion about when when would that have happened in the early 1800s wow that's incredible now why does that look like why is it all jagged like this well this is how they would mine in these mines right here they would drill into the walls into the iron ore and when they bled when they would blast it out with dynamite air drills and diamonds when they would blast it out they would all fall in sheets of course like it's pennies from heaven he's pennies from heaven and because he only made 10 cents an hour while he worked in these mines so it really was pennies 10 cents an hour oh my gosh so can i see iron ore here right now oh no everything you see this whole thing is everything you see vertically going up it's all iron ore there's a layer of rock going horizontal that's the rock that lays between the two sediments how many like how many people would work would work a shift in here in this all the mines together was approximately about 2 200 people on the ground at one time what was life like what would work like down here be could i handle it no you couldn't no it looks fantastic wow i just have to use the powder room could you just direct me to where i would it's a bigger spot it's right here right it's everywhere you know what i think i could live here seriously i would like seriously it's nice and cool and um it's actually very it's very chic it's very cool six degrees here all year long right yeah right an industrial look to it right and that's really in so what would you do well i like some of the purple i would keep some of the purple but i think up top i would like to put right um a skylight would be nice no you can't have a skylight because then i like to keep the ambiance all closed and cozy um drapes yeah okay and we definitely need to take out this wall are you seriously thinking about moving down here yeah oh the girls right here those three sided shacks you see right here always built into the face of the ore the only thing was ever kept in this was the lunch boxes belonged to the miners of course where they would bring down bottles of tea they would heat yes tea real tea yeah this was the old famous screech bottle i'm not suggesting that anybody drank liquor down these mines of course not this was an amazing tour and so awesome a place perfect temperature yeah that's true i love that any ideas going in my mind you should call a real estate agent see if you can i don't start who's father i'm a real estate agent oh you're a real estate agent yes this could be the start of a beautiful friendship fox yes that was a lot of fun yeah this is you know i just i love the people here too and everyone's such a great sense of humor yeah so where are we off to now now we're going to signal hills and we're going to talk about um there's going to be somebody there talking about marconi marconi i i'm gonna check to see if he's a relative of mine you know i'm italian right yeah right yeah so everybody with an o and i on the end of their lane is my relationship we're all related probably and especially if they're brilliant was awesome look at this wow wow [Music] wow this is amazing can you imagine the story or stories that goes oh yeah if this building could talk right yeah beautiful hello bonjour oh hello my name is john i work with parks canada and i'll be your uh tour guide for today hey cool fabulous and where were you touring this too uh so we're gonna head straight up to the top of this uh tower kappa tower and uh we'll have a little chat about uh marconi's transatlantic signal oh i bet she's got stories to tell yeah yeah all right so i think we should know about the stairs so this uh the stairs are a bit narrower than modern stairs so hold on to the handrail and be behind us to catch us of course this is what they meant and they're curvy oh my god okay oh wow it's bright out here right at the top oh my goodness nice well welcome to the top of cabot tower the viewing deck oh so is this where the signal would have come like around here like in this general area so not not the tower specifically but there was a multi-level structure down at our uh uh parking lot that was a hospital that was used by marconi to receive the signal and so he came over here to newfoundland to send this first signal or to receive it yes or to receive it it was sent from poldu in england in cornwall okay that's really cool what did this mean for people like i mean it was this like what did this break open for the world well i mean literally it had never been done before so it's for the first time a a radio signal was sent through the air and received before that uh the telegraph was firmly entrenched which is cables that were laid on the sea floor and it would take longer for those signals to reach and of course if there's any damage to the cable you have to go and repair it or replace it and this was just said through the air it was yes and what was the first the first message uh it was the moore's code letter s so it's just three dots so marconi came over on a ship to do this this thing to send to to receive an s yes he received the s here and then what happened well i mean then he got a uh congratulations a personal congratulations from thomas i would hope so he broke the a medal did he get a medal um i'm not sure about a medal but honey but he eventually he was awarded the nobel prize for science oh it's just that thank goodness yeah okay yeah that's important yeah to some people those italians like to talk yeah will do anything to communicate right that's the thing that's the important thing to remember something i could like send a message out with yeah well there's a small phone receiver downstairs that you can listen to to hear the message that was sent yeah yeah yeah yeah i can hear that yes yes perfect let's do it let's do it i i want to play i want to play oh here it is yeah so it's a small telephone receiver okay when you pick it up your tick tick tick okay tick tick tick okay there's going to be a lot of radio stations okay it's awesome listen carefully no yeah oh yeah okay oh i hear it oh my gosh oh my gosh i feel like i'm right there okay yeah i got it okay bread sausage and onions thank you with ham and pineapple right and okay and i have a pineapple medium yeah thanks there you go the pizza should be here in about four five minutes okay that was a lot of fun signal here now thank you the view of st john's from signal hill honestly that is one of the most beautiful vistas i've ever seen and did you notice how um that narrow is really small yeah when you when you actually see it from above you go how do they ever put chips through there in a fog [Music] yeah just pull up right here here we go perfect okay [Music] you ordered a good day marley it's beautiful it's just gorgeous look at that all these little cuties okay now are we going to this place here this one good morning good morning hi i'm marley i'm dale hi dale good to meet you i'm high you're going inside on the boat all right i'm not really a big boat person but marley will take care of you right now i will oh my god that's like 100 feet down wow okay all right channel your inner goat there you go okay do i have to go too yeah come on you can do this okay right oh okay you're gonna catch me marley oh sure the trust exercises all right ladies there you go alrighty do you have this in like a 3x because this looks very small how elegant all right you guys ready to head out yeah and we're kind of hoping you're going to tell us some stories right today yeah you know a lot about the creatures out here we're gonna head out through this is the gut here we're gonna head out through the gut and then we're gonna head over towards the narrows which is the entrance into the saint john's harbor and uh yeah i'm gonna tell you some stories about sea monsters and mermaids all the strange things that learn [Music] so what happened out here that you can tell us about i figured this would be a good spot as i need to tell you a story about giant squid now you may have you may have heard of uh giant squid so here's an here's an illustration of just exactly how large they can be oh my god you're kidding me so now old sailors would have called this a kraken uh that was the the folkloric name for it and and for a long time they were thought to be a myth but it was here in newfoundland that it was proven that these were actually real creatures they'll grow up to 15 20 meters in in length and just north of they're pretty big yeah just north of where we are is uh logy bay and there was one of these that had washed up there uh a dead giant squid and the fisherman had cut off its head but had saved these long tentacles but there's a much more dramatic story if we continued up north up around cape saint francis we'd come into conception bay and there uh around bell island there were three men fishing two men and one of their sons and they saw something in the water that they thought was wreckage from a ship it looked like a mass of fabric maybe a sail of some kind and they had a large boat hook and they reached out to grab a hold of it to pull it in and as they did uh one giant eye opened up and looked at them imagine oh my gosh and before they knew what was happening uh giant tentacles like these had wrapped themselves around their little tiny fishing boat much smaller than the boat we're on now so thinking they were gonna sink one of the men grabbed out a hatchet and uh chopped off one of the tentacles the the beast kind of sank back underneath the water and they returned back to portugal cove with this giant tentacle and not knowing exactly what to do with it they they took it to the local anglican minister moses harvey and he wrote it up he photographed it he actually hung it up in his bathtub and took a photograph of it wow as you do as you do as one would yeah and it was one of the very first you know scientific articles that ever proved that these mythological creatures were real happened here in newfoundland unbelievable [Music] all right is it time it's time for the mermaid story so right here is the entrance to saint john's harbor and this is where probably one of the more famous sightings of a mermaid was in 1610 it was an early explorer by the name of sir richard whitburn and he was in one of his ships here in the harbor and a bunch of his men were off in smaller boats they were taking fish onto the shore and moving back and forth there are several other vessels here whitburn was standing on the deck like we were and he looked out and he saw this strange creature kind of swimming towards them and as it came closer he saw that it was like a woman it had a woman's features a woman's face but instead of hair it had long streaks of blue something like hair running down her back and as it came closer uh it got within what he said was a pike's length so about like six feet or so uh he was so startled that he he stepped back and the creature dove underneath the the ship and then swam away and then reappeared closer to a boat which was being operated by one of his men a man by the name of uh hockridge and this uh feminine fishy creature came up to the boat and tried to climb into the little the little vessel and whitburn was still standing on his ship he could see the back of this woman and that she had a long fishy tail which she said was proportioned like a broad hooked arrow uh young hawk ridge whoever wasn't terribly enthused about having this uh half woman half fish so he took a he took up an oar from his from his boat and he bashed her on the head with it and she sank down beneath the waves but she she popped up later uh terrifying some of the other soldiers who uh beat it to shore so this is a this is an etching a rather fanciful etching of st john's harbor and you can see whitburne here uh admiring this uh this fishy creature but she just wanted to say hello she just came over look at her hands and she's like hey guys what's up oh my gosh some guy just takes an oran bash's arm so that's the story of uh sir richard whitburn and his mermaid wow totally cool i love this place so thank you so much oh thank you for coming i hope you learned something and enjoyed the stories i'm glad there's lycra in these pants you can do it baby i gotcha oh this reminds me of pe class okay we're done all right see you later ladies okay bye bye thank you dale that was awesome thank you thank you thanks for the great ride so that was just awesome i love being out in the atlantic ocean i just loved it it is it was awesome and i like dale yeah feels very nice he had wonderful stories and i particularly liked the mermaid story and the uh and you see there are merman okay we're gonna go to a place called kitty bitty kitty vitta kitty no it's cute it looks really weird because when you spell it it's the queue and i always think of roman reigns but that's not it now that this guy is gonna come he's like an expert okay he's like a linguist and folklore expert and he's going to tell us about like the reason for the name how it's actually supposed to be pronounced and hopefully why why why why is it called kitty bitty yeah and i've heard that the beer is fabulous oh they've got this iceberg beer okay i just want to say i like beer well and it's made from real icebergs okay we're sure all right so tell me again what's the guy's name dr phillip his car okay all right you got that there we are perfeta vada brewery no it's not that you say that one more time i'm gonna smack you it's kitty minnie [Music] tell us a little bit about you so okay well i i'm a retired professor of folklore uh before that i was an archivist so i spent 20 years or a little more 20 years as an archivist and then as a folklorist another 20 years as a as a professor awesome so i have a question then about quitty vidi sure so like you call it teddy bitty but it looks like a roman word it looks like quitta that you know vinnie veda you know that word yeah yeah and uh here you are conquering all these pronunciations i'm trying to conquer the names conquer this well you you mispronounced it once okay that was when you tried to say quidd yeah yeah but you got it right the second time kitty bitty but there are two major pronunciations here okay and one is quite a vida and the other is kitty vidi now most people say kitty diddy but uh some people in here in st johnson for the last hundred years have said quite a vita and there are reasons for that but the earlier spellings of it definitely indicates something closer to kitty vitti one of the joking explanations of it is that it's com it comes from the name of a woman who ran a hotel well i don't think it's true there's no evidence except the joking and the and the jokes that people make about it the most common um folk etymology for kitty vitti is that this is a line that divides something this is nonsense this is historical knowledge why don't you keep telling me historical nonsense because another dividing story is yeah is that it's actually english now in 1610 one of the first commercial outfits in newfoundland was a plantation over i know 45. there was a place in here the plantations all yeah several what did they grow sugar they were just planted that's all they were fishing communities but they were planted so they were called plantations okay and um the it was run by john guy and so at around the same time about ten years later there was another plantation about i don't know 40 or 50 miles that way yeah and people said this was the line that divided the two so it was the guy divide this this guy divide is what led to people pronouncing it qui divider in the late 19th century now we're getting somewhere he's going to say that he's going to say that's going to say that's nonsense historical nonsense there you go i knew it somebody all right i'll tell you no i'll tell you what's probably the real reason because this is what you asked all right the real reason why it's a kitty bitty okay almost uh one of the great name scholars in newfoundland was a guy 50 years ago siri was his name ron siri and he said that kitty bitty had more spellings in the historical documents than almost any other name in newfoundland he he counted something like 40. i think there are a few more than that wow so 40 different spellings most of them begin with q u even though people were clearly pronouncing it he had a theory and he's probably right that this was a fishing premises a plantation as it were a room as people say uh belonging to the channel island family caterville or villa and that when people call this ketovilla's room yeah then and people started getting confused quite early had a villa village even because they became yeah and that eventually grew into something like kitty vidi and some of the earlier spellings have those else but they seem to be a holdover from the name ketovilla so this is probably named for the french channel island family ketterville or kedeville i don't know about you guys but i'm getting really thirsty yeah thank you so much phillip that was awesome you're a very knowledgeable man i make it all up yeah it's good well i like that about you too yeah all right good oh look at that okay a variation of color isn't that beautiful you got it [Music] cheers was one amazing day yeah i really wanted time and i can tell you right now yeah you are not driving oh good thank you yeah but you know no i don't you're not driving on no we're walking yeah do you have any idea how to get back that'll be fine here all right well that's my kitty baby you

2021-03-26 00:40

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