Skipper

She's a dory, not a taxi.

Where do you want to go.

Skip to the page

Plan a trip

A shared trip

Games

Come in. Pull up a chair.

Trivia

The Board

Them days you sent a youngster up the road to say there was a game on. Now you send the code, and if a chair's still empty when you deal, one of the regulars takes it.

Advertise here

Down the road

Well, Sunday after Mass we'd walk it. Start at the gate and go down, and every house along here I'll tell you who's in it.

The screech-in: ancient rite or 1970s welcome?

Kissing the cod and downing Screech to become an honorary Newfoundlander is a centuries-old ritual.

The ceremony tourists know - reciting a dialect tongue-twister, kissing a cod, drinking a shot of Newfoundland Screech, receiving a Screechers certificate - was formalized in 1974 by St. John's educator Myrle Vokey and grew with George Street pubs like Christian's Bar. Folklorists class it as an invented tradition: a study appears in Tad Tuleja's edited volume 'Usable Pasts: Traditions and Group Expressions in North American Culture', and Heritage NL calls it the province's most controversial non-calendric custom, historically related to older seafaring initiation pranks rather than being ancient itself. CBC pieces marking its 50th anniversary and Vokey's passing document the history.

The story they tell

The yarn that the screech-in is an unbroken island rite handed down from the first fishermen. In fact it is a 1970s creation consciously modeled on older customs, and some Newfoundlanders - musician Sean McCann among them - dislike it as a stereotype performance for tourists.

How to get there

Done at bars on George Street in St. John's, most often in the summer. Ask at the door which night they run it.

Some story

Where that comes from

On the go

Them days the garden party was the whole summer. Here's what's on the go now, and when.

The kitchen

Well, Sunday the pot was on before Mass and the smell of it met you at the gate. Here's what was in it, and how it's done.

The hall

Them days the hall had a dance Saturday and the kitchen had music the rest of the week. It's still playing. Come in and listen.

The yarns

He said, you know the one about the light on the water. I said, I do. That's a story, mind, and I'll tell you which parts.

Not the house

No, I said, that's not the house. It was down just below there. Go back up the road.

Back up the road