RHGNL Gallery

One of my earliest childhood memories is of walking a path through the woods with my grandfather and coming out on a beautiful beach in a little cove called Smooth Cove. It is located on Twillingate Island in Newfoundland. That was the early 1950's and I don’t recall any buildings there even at that time. But my father, Wilson Stuckless born in 1916, always talked of Smooth Cove as being Stuckless land, granted to his grandfather David in 1886 and Dad had fond memories of growing up there.

In later years I became more interested in Smooth Cove and what had actually been there. No one in the family had pictures of the cove. Apparently it had been resettled around 1950 and the only thing kept up was the "big garden" which is still fenced to this day. The Government expropriated a section of the land in the 1960's and a highway now runs across it. The beach, however, is still there drawing me back summer after summer to imagine how it might have been all those years ago.

As my father approached his 90^th birthday, I decided I would try to hook a picture of Smooth Cove as it would have looked when he was a boy. His memory is excellent and he described the buildings–his father’s house (flat roof house on the left, built around 1920 and moved to Purcell’s Hr. c. 1950), the big house his grandfather had built before the turn of the century which was later relocated to Black Duck Cove, the stage, store, flakes, milk house, work shed and barn.

In the summer of 2005, Dad and I once again visited Smooth Cove. He was able to point out where every building had been. It was difficult to imagine that so much had ever fit into the small cove. I sketched it out, moving and changing items as he talked--Grandmother’s rose bush from which roses were picked to decorate my parent’s wedding cake; Aunt Bertha’s little vegetable garden from which Uncle Ross had stolen the onions in front of her house; the outhouse on the side of the stage. In conversation with Dad’s sister, more stories were told–of Uncle replacing the brick chimney and almost burning the house down when he first tried it; of the goats which would get under the house and knock their horns against the floor when it rained; of cousins talking house to house from upstairs windows just feet apart. As the design progressed, the cove seemed to come alive for me and I learned so much about my father’s younger days and the way life was in the cove.

Once the design(22" x 30") was completed to reflect Smooth Cove around 1930, it was transferred to linen. That was early January 2006. My father would celebrate his 90^th birthday on February 19 so the rush was on to have it completed by then. I hooked it with woolen fabric using #3 to #6 cuts. Most of the fabric was recycled with some new fabric spot and casserole dyed. A few things were changed and/or added as I hooked–my great grandfather David walking with his stick to the barn on the hill, my grandmother and great aunt spreading fish on the flakes, my aunts playing behind the house, a motor boat in the cove. By early February the hooking was completed. I corded and whipped the edges, put a binding tape and sleeve on the back and the mat was ready–a labour of love proudly presented to my father on his birthday. He was so pleased and it brought back memories to many people as we celebrated his 90 wonderful years.

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