Pastels
Petites
This is Petites, a small outport village on the south coast of Newfoundland. Outports have no roads in or out and there was only a sidewalk around the village. Our sailboat was tied to the wall just ahead of the boat you see here but I decided not to include it in this painting. We were there in August of 2003. There were only a handful of people left as the government in Ottowa in their infinite wisdom, had decided to shut Petites down in October of that year, a few months on from our visit. The residents were offered a sum for their houses, enough to relocate elsewhere and most had already done so. I guess it was too expensive to maintain the wires in supplying electricity, the ferry, and the occasional helicopter with a traveling doctor onboard. There were once over 1200 of these little outports on the south coast of Newfoundland but only a small handful remain, occupied by hardy fishing families.
