Geography Of Newfoundland

844 Words2 Pages

Landscapes over time come to mean much more than just their physical aspects, as a population begins to inhabit a landscape they start to mold it physically and symbolically as an extension of their own culture. The landscape itself also plays a role in how cultures develop. Because of this Landscapes are forever changing over time as more culture is produced in that area. On the Island of Newfoundland culture is being produced at an amazing rate as the province has started to become a “have” province and we see more people travelling to it for school, work or just to experience what Newfoundland has to offer. Yet, Newfoundland is a vast landscape and has much more to offer in terms of cultural production as we see the population grow and …show more content…

It is also a very rocky province, which means its soil is poor for crops, so its inhabitants had to change how they acquired food. Due to the unavailability of rich soil, the people of Newfoundland had to adapt their main food source, the abundance of fish along the coast proved to be the answer and thus the villages that they had started became fishing communities. A good indicator of this is that St. Johns is situated around a large harbor, perfect for the coming and going of fishing ships. Thus, fish themselves have come to represent a huge facet of Newfoundland culture. The relationship between the people of Newfoundland and fish can be seen through the actor-network theory postulated by Michal Callon. It tells us that non-human agents such as fish have an active role in shaping a landscape and by correlation culture production. The theory is also used to represent how often these factors that change a landscape are out of human control, and how humans have to adapt to these changes: how the early settlers of Newfoundland could not farm on the soil so they were forced to adapt to what the landscape gave them, which was fish. This connection has come so far that to be initiated into being a “true” Newfoundlander, one has to kiss a Cod. As time has passed the gruff smiley visage and full body yellow splash suit of Newfoundland fishermen, have come to …show more content…

In Newfoundland this is most apparent with the historical Jelly Bean houses that decorate the city. These houses were originally built as temporary housing after a massive fire swept across St. Johns in the late eighteen hundreds. They were not originally painted in such bright colors but the fishermen at the time decided to make the temporary housing more bright and lively and painted the houses the same colors that they had on their boats. This sudden change in the landscape created a culturally boom in a sense as people started to consume the Jelly Bean houses, they began to grow into more areas of Newfoundland culture. The predominant culture they expanded into was art, which created an abundance of eclectic things to resemble the houses. The houses themselves have taken on such global recognition, that houses and art have popped up around the globe to try to and capture the essence of Newfoundland. Symbolically these houses have come to represent the city of St. Johns as they can be easily identified as historic art created by its

Open Document