Description
This image depicts the event of pulling my parents’ house one winter in the 1940’s, from Wild Cove to Smith’s Look-Out, Twillingate, a distance of about 4 km. Here, they are crossing the ice off Beatrick’s Island, Back Harbour, Twillingate. The house had gone through the ice and was there, stalled, for a couple of days. It took five hundred local men to eventually free the house and haul it to its final destination, high on the hill overlooking Twillingate, where it still stands today. The town’s women cooked large meals in outdoor pots and fed the workers in the Orange Hall. Dad had stored lots of homebrew in the cellar.
House hauls were relatively common in outport Newfoundland years ago. The men sang the hauling song, “Tow Me Johnny Poker”, as they worked. The title – Pulling Together – is meant to reflect the tremendous will and community spirit of a rural people who persevered through often difficult times and circumstances.
