Custer's Head Road

 

                                          Custer's Head Road, oil on canvas, 40" x 90", Steven Rhude


Other than me, who happens to be absent from the picture (because I'm busy contriving it), there is a woman with a standard bucket containing god knows what. The only object to connect us with in 2023 would be the power pole providing electricity to the fishing sheds. Other than that, it could be 1688 when the village was destroyed during the King Williams war. Later the missionaries came and, predictably spread the gospel .The Salvation Army also arrived and built a citadel there. The village remained small and probably peaked at around seven hundred and fifty people. Today it's more like three hundred or so. But what we should be asking is what really constitutes a community beyond resources, time lines, religious and societal conventions? 

 Timeline

  • 1697 – Abbe Baudoin reports that there are four houses at Hant's Harbour.
  • 1801 – Five families are listed as living in Hant's Harbour.
  • 1813 – T.E. and Mary Pelley die. The gravestone recording this still stands.
  • 1820s – The first known church is built in the community.
  • 1830s – The population consists of 400 people.
  • 1847 – Ten vessels carrying 271 men are engaged in the seal hunt.
  • 1853 – Eight vessels totaling 767 tons carry 294 men to the seal hunt.
  • 1868 – 1870 – A second and much larger church is built, serving the circuit until 1907 when it is destroyed to build a new one.
  • 1871 – Lovell's Newfoundland Dictionary lists 81 of the 104 householders in Hant's Harbour as fisherman. Two others are listed as farmers.
  • 1880s – The population grows to its peak of about 750 residents.
  • 1961 – Fire destroys the vegetation which formerly covered the low hills which surround the harbour.
  • time line ends

An alternative narrative. A woman walks the shoreline up to Custer's Head Road. Her bucket is her cultural container - her identity, outside of her generational personality. It is a banal community object, weathered and utilitarian. We don't know if she was good or bad, salient or indifferent; or even if she ever worked in a coffee shop. She just continues to navigate her way to her objective - she is on no ones historic time line.  

 

  • Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

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