Tracking Down the Details of a Long-Ago Tragedy
This article initially appeared in Volume 78 of Avalanche.ca, Winter 2005-06
Earlier this year, we received an e-mail from our friend Susan Hairsine, who was vacationing in Newfoundland. She wrote:
From: Susan Hairsine
To: canav@avalanche.ca
Subject: Newfoundland Avalanche
I met a guy in L’Anse Aux Meadows who told me a story about moving his grandfather’s house from a place called Ireland Bight, and that the house had an “avalanche hatch” for escaping. His grandmother had told him of two kids who had died there in an avalanche when she was a girl, and he wondered if we had record of that. I told him I’d check it out.
We forwarded Susan’s e-mail to David Liverman, who is currently researching the history of avalanches in Newfoundland. He replied:
From: David Liverman
To: canav@avalanche.ca
Subject: Newfoundland Avalanche
We had heard rumours about the Ireland’s Bight avalanche for some time but only pinned it down last year. Good to see that oral history is alive and well, and the ‘avalanche hatch’ is a new one for me! That avalanche occurred in 1891, and this is what the newspaper reported:
David added this background to the story:
The best-known community of Ireland’s Eye lies in Bonavista Bay. The community described here is in fact that of Ireland’s Bight (variously known as Ireland Bight, Ireland’s Bite, and Ireland’s Eye), which lay on the northern side of Hare Bay on the Northern Peninsula, and was abandoned during resettlement in the 1960s. Levi Andrews married Susanna Canning in 1865 (it appears his previous wife Elizabeth died in childbirth in 1863). We know of the birth of Charlotte Andrews in 1867, James in 1870, and William in 1872. It’s thus likely that Charlotte was killed in the 1891 avalanche.
Levi Andrews died in 1892, aged 57, a year and four days after his wife was killed. William is the head of household in the only Andrews family living in Ireland Bight in 1898, and died in 1915. Thus the likely fatalities in the 1891 avalanche were Susanna Andrews, James Andrews, and Charlotte Andrews, unless there were children of Levi and Susanna who were not recorded in the registry of births.
The community of Ireland’s Bight lay at the mouth of Ireland’s Brook in northern Hare Bay. Maps from 1970 show the remnants of the re-settled community with 12 buildings on steep ground northwest of the brook. Most of the community lies under modest slopes but a single building at the western extremity is overhung by steep cliffs, rising to 75 m. This is the most probable site of the Andrews house. Snow would build up in the lee of such cliffs in northern to northwesterly winds, making it vulnerable to avalanches.
