The Crooked Top of a Safety Pin is a book published by Partners in Learning. Partners in Learning was formed in 1995 to record the stories and traditions of the Labrador Straits. The stories were put together by Cindy Gibbons. They are told in the words of local people from L'Anse au Clair to Red Bay. The book is written at a basic reading level and will be put in classrooms and libraries in the region.

The project was sponsored by the Southern Labrador Development Association and funded by the Literacy Development Council and the National Literacy Secretariat.

The following story was taken from the book.

I was only a young boy, five or six years old, when I started fishin'. I used to go out with Dad. First we had a sail boat. When the wind was blowin' you'd put up the sail and go out. And when it was calm you rowed, 'til we got an engine, then we used to use the engine. We used to use the trawl and jigger.

You didn't fish no longer than August then, 'cause you had to dry your fish. We used to haul up the boat then and go at the fish. Wash it out and dry it and get it ready to ship. 'Twas no fish merchant here. Organs used to buy a lot of fish here, and Wes used to buy a lot of fish when 'twas dry. ¹ Schooners used to come here from up to Newfoundland and pick it up, and bring a bit of grub. They used to bring food when they came to buy the fish. If you wanted a barrel of flour or sugar and stuff like that, you'd take it up, give 'em fish for it. But we didn't get much for fish, $2.00 a quintal or $2.50, down as low as nothing. 'cause they came on summer and took the fish and we never got paid for it.

We used to sell a few herring, used to catch the herring and salt 'em in barrels. We used to sell them to Red Bay, Wes Bridle ² used to buy the herring. We used to get five or six dollars a barrel for 'em.

Seals was millions then. We used to have the seal fishery out in the spring of the year, have it se just out around here. A net would go off from the land and another one would go down and the anchor used to go off from the land too. When the seals would get all meshed in the net see, out here to the Grassy. ³ We'd catch so many, fifty and sixty of 'em, eight some years, in the seal fishery. We would sell the oil, get a few cents for a gallon of oil. We used to render it out, put it in drums and send it away up to St. John's somewhere. We had a net to catch a few salmon to eat. But salmon was thick, millions of salmon. When we had our trap out for fish, we'd get just as much salmon as we would fish, but we used to dump 'em overboard. You wouldn't bring that home then. Nobody was buyin' that then.

1 - Organs and Red Bay Stores were fish buyers based in Red Bay.
2 - Red Bay Stores
3 - Grassy Point - at the western side of Forteau Bay

The Basic Hitch-Hiker series by Calvin Coish was recently published by the College of the North Atlantic with support from the National Literacy Secretariat. This set of six books is based on The Hitch-Hiker, which was published in 1995. Each book tells about a different area of the province.

Here is an excerpt from the Book 1 (Western Newfoundland): "John and his friends stay in Gros Morne National Park for three days. They hike along the James Callaghan Trail. This trail leads to the top of Gros Morne Mountain. It is warm, but the travellers take lots of warm clothing. The weather can change very fast here. When they're about halfway up the mountain, fog and drizzle roll in from the ocean." The other books in this series are Labrador (Book 2), Central Newfoundland (Book 3), Eastern Newfoundland (Book 4), South Coast (Book 5) and Avalon Peninsula (Book 6).