The French Shore: In addition to the area to the north, another area, in the southern part of the island, is also known as "The French Shore" (confusing right?).

This area stretches from Trepassey on the south eastern corner of the Avalon Peninsula, westward to Burgeo, south of the Annieopsquotch Mountains and east of the Long Range Mountains, a distance of approximately 330 km as the crow flies. Many of the towns as one heads west, included the following towns that can be traced back to fishermen from France, as far back as the early 1600s.

As mentioned earlier, the Treaty of Utrecht changed "who" lived where, and basically the French lost the "right" to settle (although they remained able to fish) along the south shore (except for the Islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre. Historically there were 5 major communities that made up The French Shore.

Trepassey: The community of Trepassey is located at the head of the bay with the same name. It is believed that "Trepassey" come from the French word Trépassés meaning "Dead Men" and it is thought that it is named after a bay on the Brittany coast of France, the Baie des Trépassés, which was known for the many shipwrecks that occurred in the region.

Trepassey Bay has several nick names: Bay of Dead Men, Bay of Souls or Bay of All Souls, River of Roses and The Golden Grave.

Trepassey is a small fishing community that was settled in the late 1600s by French fishermen who started to settle in the area. Later English men "moved" in, followed by the Irish.

By the 1770s the Irish were the predominant ethnic group. Over time Trepassey flourished (reaching a peak of 857 residents in 1921), but the "nail in the coffin" was when, in 1991 the fish processing plant, which had opened in 1954, closed, putting a large proportion of citizens out of work.

The town's economy has never fully recovered as can see by the decreasing population trends - in 2016 there were 481 residents, a 15.6% decrease from 2011 when there were 570 residents.

The best story behind a by far is how a little mountain in Newfoundland became known as "Mount Misery":

In the morning three feet of snow covered the ground in the woods, and on the open ground it was deeper. Our provisions were exhausted, nor could we get through the snow to look for game.

Weakened and miserable, we looked anxiously for a change of wind and thaw... Our fire was buried again and again by the snow from the trees, and we were as likely to be killed while standing up as lying down, by the trees that crashed and shook the ground around us all night, we lay still wrapped in our blankets amidst the danger, and providentially escaped unhurt.

The birch had attained a pretty large size in this sheltered spot, under the lie of a hill, which I called Mount Misery." (From: Cormack's Narrative of a Journey across the Island of Newfoundland, dated October 16th, 1822 cited in Young, 2018).

This was not Cormack's only foray into the interior. Five years later, he travelled up the Exploits River, again hoping to make contact with Beothuk. He explored some of the area previously explored by John Cartwright (and his brother, George) between the Bay of Exploits and White Bay. Hiller (1998c) made the following comments:

These journeys, as well as others of which we have no record, established the basic geography of the interior of the island of Newfoundland - for Europeans.

It is clear, however, that the island's Mi'kmaq were intimately familiar with the interior long before Cormack. European knowledge of the interior was added to gradually over the rest of the 19th century, sometimes with the assistance of Mi'kmaq guides.

TREPASSEY BAY: Located on the southeast end of the Avalon Peninsula the major communities located there are Trepassey, Biscay Bay and Portugal Cove South.

The name for the bay, as mentioned before, is believed to come from the French word Trépassés meaning "Dead Men" and it is thought that it is named after a bay on the Brittany coast of France, the Baie des Trépassés, which was known for the many shipwrecks that occurred in the region.

Trepassey has several nick names: Bay of Dead Men, Bay of Souls or Bay of All Souls, River of Roses and The Golden Grave.

Used with permission from "Uncovering the Origin of 1001 Unique Place Names in Newfoundland and Labrador" 2021 Jennifer Leigh Hill

Address of this page: http://nl.ruralroutes.com/Trepassey