I describe growing up in a small coastal settlement in Newfoundland in the 1940s and early 1950s.
The community of Kingwell is situated on Long Island in Placentia Bay in the Canadian Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Kingwell holds the distinction of being the only community or village to bear that name. It is also my hometown into which I was born on Oct.22,1939. Originally known as Mussel Harbour Arm, it was renamed sometime between 1911 and 1921 in honour of The Rev. John Kingwell, an Anglican Priest who ministered to those of that faith throughout Placentia Bay from 1861 until his death in 1891. It is not clear when the community was first settled but a census taken in 1857 showed a population of ten people! Forty-one years later in 1898, there were 28 families but no actual population figures are given. There is no census for 1939, but in 1945 the population is given as 327.
Growing up in Kingwell was probably little different from that of any of the hundreds of other small “outports”, as we called them, that dotted the coastline of Newfoundland and Labrador. When I started school in 1946, there was a two room all grade school with two teachers. Children today can only imagine what it was like to attend such a school, yet there were those who persevered and managed to complete high school. I had a great interest in reading and was fascinated by the stories in the English Readers used in Newfoundland schools at the time. The prescribed text was The Treasury Reader series, and I have not been able to find a single copy in circulation today. The books contained many of the old fairy tales that had been around for generations, and held little that would be consistent with twentieth century living.
There was one other community on Long Island that was assessable by road and aside from that all travel was by water. Life was simple and I’m sure that other children like myself felt that this was the way that people lived everywhere. While I cannot remember being hungry, by today’s standards, we lived far below the poverty line. There was little entertainment, but there was a freedom which most children can only dream about today. There was no TV or video games, in fact I was more then ten years old when our family got it’s first radio, a contraption that few kids would recognize today.
During the summer we spent our free time outside and wandered the hills, valleys and woods for hours. There were no wild animals to threaten our safety and of course no traffic. Winter meant building snowmen, sliding and later skating. Young men played Soccer, which we called football as it was called in Britain and other parts of Europe. Although we were part of North America, our ties seemed to be more with Britain than with Canada or the US. All this would change shortly and the residents of Kingwell along with those of other such communities, would be resettled to larger towns, but this was not to happen until I was grown and had already taken leave of my boyhood home.
Lovely text. I like your Newfoundland stories a lot. Looking forward to the next one 
Kingwell is such a beautiful place!
I am lucky to have been there 3 times with my Mom
And Sister. I wish you have told more! I
Get homesick just reading about it!
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