Author Archives: Richard Alexander Johnson

From the confluence of history and myth this remote place draws its name: the earliest inhabitants lived on the North Island during the summer months—in shacks closer to the inshore fishing and squid-jigging grounds—and on the South Island during the winter months—in homes protected from the bitter Arctic winds. Thus, twice per year they would change islands.

Men whose fathers had fished came here to fish; the hamlet of Change Islands was one of the most important outports of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Newfoundland fishery, whose annual spring thaw sent sailors “down on the Labrador” to pull cod from the waters all summer long.

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