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| Through the second level window, The Rooms. |
We're staying at a place called Monroe House, a very fine mansion owned at one time by Newfoundland Prime Minister Walter Stanley Monroe and now converted into rooms. It's not a bed and breakfast. Just beds. It has 7 large and nicely appointed suites. Fun fact: for the full time that we have been staying here, we have been the only guests.
Today, for the first time, we met someone affiliated with the ownership and operation of the premises, a friendly woman named Bonnie, who kindly drove us to The Rooms rather than send us off into the gale to get frozen and drenched to the bone.
We sheltered in the combined art gallery, museum and cultural centre until well past 3:00 p.m., when the weather broke, the precipitation stopped and it was possible to walk outside without just hating every goddam minute.
The Rooms make it plain that Newfoundlanders are Canadians second. Their identity is forged in the immigrant experience (there's a display that shows the likenesses between locals and folks in Ireland with the same family name), the terrible losses from the first World War (540 men shipped out as the first regiment; less than 70 came home) and the fishery (the Rodney boat in the above display was made by a local).
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| This is listed in a brochure as one of the ten highlights in the museum. The text reads: Would you put a dead cat in your house wall? How about a rat? What if you believed that it would ward off evil spirits and the plague? A deliberately concealed dried-out cat and rat were recently discovered during the renovations of the 170-year-old Thimble Cottage, built by the O'Briens, Irish immigrant farmers to St. John's. Common beliefs were that cats communed with spirits, warding off all evil ones and that rats protected against rodent infestation and plague. |
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| View of St. John's from halfway up Signal Hill. |
Karen
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