Heading back into town from Portugal Cove, I picked up Rosie and we grabbed takeout tacos at The Sprout for lunch. Driving out of town, maybe this wasn't the easiest food to eat while navigating, but we managed.

Down in Tors Cove, about 30 minutes south of St. John's, I'd admired their Sacred Heart Church on previous trips. That's because Tors Cove was one of those towns which I didn't count by simply driving the South Shore Highway, so back in 2013 I went out of my way to drive more of the side streets, which brought me beneath the towering steeple of Sacred Heart.

I'd return once again in 2015 and while the church looked a bit rundown, I didn't think it was closed or abandoned - until one day I found an article about its last mass, and later saw pictures of its increased dereliction.

If a gorgeous and prominent church like Sacred Heart, built in 1908, was headed towards demolition or even sitting unused, then I really wanted to get down to Tors Cove in order to document it.

Pulling up today, I was in awe of the failed wooden buttresses along the side, separating from the wall and falling back into other standing buttresses like dominos.

Maybe they weren't going to save this place after all? Even after seeing that Sacred Heart held its last mass, I assumed the building would be repurposed because it's such a well-known and handsome landmark in Tors Cove. Not to mention how close this is to St. John's and the wealth and population that entails.

If this church couldn't be adaptively reused, it would be a bad sign for other stately and grand wooden churches here in truly rural areas - churches like those in Change Islands, Fortune Harbour, or Badger's Quay.

The church's condition also soured my opinion of Tors Cove, as this seemed like a big enough and prosperous enough village where they should be able to do more to help preserve Newfoundland's built heritage.

I'm really glad I never told my opinion of this to anyone from Tors Cove. As it turns out, the residents here fought valiantly to raise money through the 1990s in order to complete an extensive renovation of Sacred Heart.

It's during this renovation that the paintings on the vaulted ceiling were exposed and restored.

It was only in the late 2000s or early 2010s that the church needed even more work, but this time it would be much more of an undertaking. Sacred Heart had been built on an unstable foundation and heating oil had leaked into the ground.

Not only would Sacred Heart need the normal painting and maintenance of its facade on this go round, but the renovation here would have involved 6-digit figures in order to hire a company capable of getting to and remediating the fuel-laden soil below the church, while also dealing with a failing foundation and eventually fixing that foundation. The building was condemned because of these conditions and renovation was the only way to move forward.

With a dwindling congregation who just raised a lot of money ~15 years prior, this was too much to overcome. Sacred Heart's last service was held before 100 people on June 27th, 2014.

In addition to really trying to preserve their church, Tors Cove would also make me eat crow by not letting the special objects here fall into ruin along with the building.

Stained glass and other artifacts were removed after that last service. These glass pieces and pews and other things were put into a new, modest chapel that the congregation built in the local cemetery on the other side of the hill from Sacred Heart.

The chapel looks pleasantly attractive in the Google StreetView from July of 2019. I'm going to have to stop and check it out next time I'm in Tors Cove.

After sitting vacant for a half-dozen years, Sacred Heart was taken down on June 27th, 2020 - exactly six years to the day after its last service.

There's a video of the demolition and I was amazed how easily one measly excavator seemed to take the building down.

One online comment lamented how no one was allowed to salvage any of the old wood and timber.

He then replied hours later that he was up in Tors Cove and it was all rotted and not worth it after all, but still remarks "lots of southern shore crowd hauling away truck loads though."

Here's hoping one day I'm walking a woods road near Cape Broyle or Fermeuse and spot a gothic arch on a cabin, haha.

Standing on the balcony and taking it all in, having this big empty space to ourselves reminded me of a church I explored in Prince Edward Island over a decade ago.

Today was more of a laugh with this crowd though, as Rosie wasn't making much of an effort to be quiet and her dog Budders roamed every last square inch of the interior, ignoring us and getting his explore on.

This wasn't a complex building and just about the only thing left was checking out the church tower. It's here that I've found dead or trapped pigeons in other places, but in Tors Cove some yellow bird sadly met its demise.

After grabbing one of the feathers, my friend later informed me that it was from a Northern Flicker, which is interesting because our Northern Flickers are yellow-shafted due to the yellow shafts on their primary feathers. If this church was in British Columbia, the same bird would be a red-shafted flicker with red shafts on their primaries, which would leave behind red feathers instead of yellow.

I'm really excited to keep this information in my back pocket for the next time someone sends me pictures of an abandoned church, wondering if I can figure out the location. "Well Nando, in picture #7, you'll notice the feathers of a red-shafted Northern Flicker, so this church must be somewhere in Western North America." LOL.

Staring out from the church steeple, I could see Ship Island and Pee Pee Island at centre, out past the Tors Cove body of water. (map)

Fun fact: Tors Cove is a corruption of the original name Toad's Cove, which they think may have come for the old English word for fox, Tode.

Following our explore, Rosie asked if we could pop down the East Coast Trail right across the street as this is one of her favourite spots along the 336 km traverse.

A warm, yellowed clearing with an offshore island? I was more than happy to allot some time for this & confirm that its a great spot.

Following that, we had to get back to town as not only did we have a birthday party, but I had misplaced my phone and we realized it wasn't in the car by this point. Thankfully we reached someone on the other end of the line, and because they were at the Mix Hotel, they said they'd leave my phone with someone at the front desk.

This all happened before we explored Sacred Heart, where it was hard to focus since I was so nervous and wanted to get back to St. John's because I like securing my possessions whenever I lose them. I simply want the saga to end. Except that we couldn't figure out where the Mix Hotel was, and the thought of the phone finder fucking with me in a callous fashion was entering my mind.

So we sat dejectedly in Rosie's car for a minute. My phone was so old and rundown that the only reason someone would steal it was simply because they liked to hurt others. It held little value, although this is a strip of road where any phone might be worth picking up to someone.

Rosie tried calling again and miraculously someone else picked up. The guy was seriously disinterested though.

As we went into a spiel about the problem, he quickly interrupted that he just found a phone ringing in his lobby and that he'd leave it there for us at the "Mix Residences."

"No, no, we're right here, we're standing on Duckworth, we'll grab it" we insisted, as we jumped out of the car, raced over, and still found Disinterested Man leaning over to put the phone back down just as we appeared 5 feet away from him.

Unable to believe our luck in saving the day and all this craziness, we excitedly explained what happened, but true to his name, he was extremely disinterested and walked away.

So I guess the first guy who found my phone decided to simply leave it leaning against the wall in the lobby of these apartments?

Whatever. I got my phone back! And I would have a great time at the party tonight!

All in all, a fantastic quick trip to the capital for Rosie's bday.