A man takes to the woods to make a living during tough times. It’s a story most of us can relate to on some level, but Depression era Newfoundland was pretty extreme in the tough times department. Ben Powell was born in a small coastal village of Newfoundland in the 1920’s. Everyone was poor and everyone was hungry. There were few jobs, and the ones that existed paid very little. So when he heard there was opportunity to the north, Ben followed his older brother to Labrador, to find a future commercial fishing and trapping.
To a poor boy from a starving fishing village, Labrador may have seemed like a dream come true, but it was a tough place to live. Small groups of families were scattered up and down the coast, isolated by water, ice, high seas, and frequent storms. Winters were brutal that far north along the coast, but the sea provided food, and the inland forests provided fur.
Powell and his brother fished and sold salmon and cod during the short summer to outfit themselves with food for the winter trapline. They built a small cabin on the coast to call home, and at the start of cold weather they headed into the woods to trap fur.
The type of trapping Ben and his brother Roland did in those days was some of the most brutal and extreme work imaginable. Forget snowmobiles and dog teams, these boys didn’t even have proper winter clothes, and if they couldn’t find game to shoot, they often survived on flour alone.
The trappers covered countless miles to cover their vast lines, all on foot, with all of their gear and food on their backs or in a sled which they towed. They built tiny shelters they called ‘tilts’ at strategic locations to spend nights, but oftentimes they’d find themselves sleeping next to a campfire in temperatures well below zero.
With poor clothing, inadequate food, and limited shelter in the extreme Labrador winter weather, the young men pushed their bodies to the brink of exhaustion, and sometimes beyond. But they did well catching fur. They caught lynx, beaver, mink, otter and other furbearers, and sold their pelts at the end of the season for enough money to outfit for another year.
The lack of good nutrition and overworking eventually put Roland in the hospital, and he gave up the trapline. Ben carried on, and eventually got married and started a family. They stayed in a house he built on the coast while he went inland to trap for weeks at a time.
Though Ben found more success on his trapline each year, fur prices continued to decline, and he and other Labrador men were growing tired of the constant struggle for food, lack of access to hospitals or schools, and the prospect of passing on this very difficult life to their children. He decided to try something different.
Ben and his brother in law scouted a nice piece of timber, bought a sawmill and had it shipped to an unnamed cove along the coast. His plan was to mill lumber all winter and ship it out to market in spring. They hired people to cut wood and run the mill, and families started moving in and building houses around the mill site. They called the town “Charlottetown”. The sawmill business didn’t last, but the town did. Today it boasts a population of close to 300, and plays an important role in the shrimp fishing industry.
Ben Powell’s story is one of incredible struggle and hard times, but also a persistent work ethic and positive attitude that ultimately brought him a great deal of success, and a legacy to be proud of. It’s also an interesting insight into what trapping and hunting was like in the good old days – or rather, the tough old days.
Labrador by Choice was printed four times from 1979 to 1994. Click here to find a copy.
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