Only a few days had passed since we'd drove down to Virginia, but with an upcoming Monday holiday, I had to keep going.

Isy would be sitting this trip out, and even though the July weather was in the single digits with drizzle, I was off on a seven-hour drive to the Burin Peninsula since the to-do list over there had grown unacceptably long.

This morning I was going to take the ferry over to South East Bight again, but I made sure to get to the village of Petite Forte early so that I could check out this old lighthouse that's always intrigued me.

I concluded that it had to be a faux lighthouse last time - until it suddenly popped up on the website I use as one of my main lighthouse information sources.

Foghorn Publishing's Lighthouse Digest database says that the original Petite Forte Light was a "White square wooden tower, red lantern" - which sort of seemed to fit what I was seeing here.

Of course there wasn't a soul around to ask any questions, but I eventually got in touch with the local harbour authority who said it was never a real lighthouse.

So that's that. The total number of Newfoundland & Labrador lighthouses I've seen remains 63 out of 81.

The ferry to South East Bight showed up and five of us went aboard. The crossing was going to take 30 minutes, and upon landing, I would set off to overnight at the resettled communities of Little Paradise & Great Paradise.

I had only found a few references to Little & Great Paradise, with mentions of a simple, rough path connecting it to South East Bight. Looking at satellite imagery, I confirmed that it looked like there was at least some type of path between the three communities.

That still wasn't that concrete of a plan and I was nervous about someone on the boat telling me my plan was hare-brained. Therefore I threw my giant pack inside the boat's seating area, then went outside to the deck to avoid any questioning.

A few of the other passengers from the seating lounge went to see the crew though and questions be damned, I then went inside so I could read and relax in a chair.

It's then that a woman on the boat asked, "you must be headed to Paradise are yee?" I responded, "Uh, yeah I am, here I thought that would be a bit peculiar." "Nope. Just had two people the other day on the boat for the same thing."

Ha, maybe the path would be a little more established than I envisioned.

Considering I've been to South East Bight before, you might wonder how I don't know what the start of the Paradise trail looks like. Well, that's because South East Bight's layout is surprisingly convoluted for a town of 72 people.

Exiting the boat today, I already found myself on a town path I didn't know existed last time, then passed an abandoned home that I totally missed previously. Just behind that home I continued on the trail towards Little & Great Paradise, with signage and a passing ATV leading me to believe that today was going to be an easy day of walking a quad trail.

There was a serious lack of wind out here and I couldn't believe that didn't result in an onslaught of biting flies. At one point I heard a fly, but then its buzz slowly diminished as it flew away from me into the barrens. Everything returned to silence. The lack of noise was actually unsettling and I had to remind myself that at most, I was only 2.5km (~1.5mi) from some type of settlement.

There's also a very long bushwhack I want to do up here someday, so I tried to keep my mind on thoughts of that instead of the isolating silence.

Coming to a fork in the trail, a sign told me that going left would bring me to Little Paradise, while going right would bring me to Great Paradise.

I threw down my pack and ran down to Great Paradise to check if it was where I wanted to camp, and although it was a bit further from the trail fork than I imagined, it looked like a perfect place to camp. I could sort of see Little Paradise through the trees from the fork and it looked steep-sided, with a lack of flat, quality camping spots.

Overnight in Great Paradise it was!

Starting down into the resettled community and weighing whether I should simply camp above it, I could see their community hall up ahead, while also sizing up the mix of abandoned houses and active cabins here. The harbour didn't seem that lively and I quickly threw out the idea of camping above town as I figured I should be able to take advantage of the stairs and wind break provided by the community hall without bothering anyone.

It didn't hurt that I also love setting up camp and organizing things with the help of a good picnic table.

Great Paradise was one of the first resettled places I'd heard of, thanks to the book Places Lost: In Search of Newfoundland's Resettled Communities by Scott Walden.

In the book, Walden lands in South East Bight and starts off towards Great Paradise, but along the way he hears a loud blast. Only when he gets over the hill and heads down to Great Paradise, does he discover that he showed up on the exact day that they were using dynamite to take down the last remains of their All Saints Church, as it had become a hazard.

The church was quite the sight to behold right before it came down.

The community hall had concrete steps and a extensive foundation because it was the base of the old church. You can see said community hall at left in the above picture.

Great Paradise was one of the earliest and most important fishing stations in the area, with the French settling near here in the late 1600s. Following the French's abandonment as part of the Treaty of Utrecht, the English used Great Paradise and nearby harbours first as migratory fisherman, with Anne Lake then writing to the government in 1758 to let them know that her husband had setup fishing premises and kept several workers here.

By 1780, additional merchants by the names of Moses Neave & William Saunders had fishing premises at Great Paradise, with William Sweetland going as far as wanting to fortify offshore Marticot Island to protect his property. By the end of the century, the firm Saunders and Sweetman would have one of their largest facilities in Great Paradise.

The population of Great Paradise was 214 in 1810, then by 1816 grew to become the largest community in Placentia Bay besides Placentia, with a population of 310 winter residents and 460 in the summer.

Saunders and Sweetman fell on hard times shortly after and mostly abandoned Great Paradise. With their departure, many of the workers also left, going off to build their own homes in nearby harbours like Petite Forte, Little Paradise, Great Bona and Presque. The local centre of importance also shifted at this point to the village of Oderin.

Due to its proximity to fishing grounds and the abundance of harbour space, Great Paradise continued to grow regardless, reaching a population of 197 in 1921. From there the population would fall though, as people moved to harbours where it was easier to fish the Grand Bank, while some families left - likely for Markland - when they were convinced to take up farming by the Commission of Government land settlements. There were also men who left to work at the new Argentia naval base.

The 1960s would bring resettlement with the last of the families leaving Great Paradise in 1967.

There's a CBC article interviewing a woman named Jeanette Brown, who as a child in the 60s left Great Paradise with her 8 siblings, pregnant mother & father, to head off to the growth centre of Placentia.

Another family, Loyola & Patricia Pomeroy, were the last to leave Great Paradise later that year, with both of the parents crying as they pulled out of the harbour and left boarded up houses behind. Their daughter Rosanne recounts how her father got a carpentry job in Placentia for a while, until he quit because he never got paid. Needing income for the family, her father Loyola had to go back to fish the grounds around Great Paradise, which would eventually kill him as he died setting lobster traps 20 years later.

The 1967 resettlement was only 52 years prior to 2019 and many people continue to come out to Great Paradise to visit their old homes or to visit newer cabins. As I walked around, there were maybe 10 homes/cabins that looked like they regularly saw occupants, with another handful that looked like people at least stop by every now and then.

Climbing to the top of the hill behind the community hall, the scenery made it easy to see why this place could have a name such as Great Paradise.

Except that the name Great Paradise comes from the number of shoals and islands in the harbour; because here in Great Paradise there's great trouble in safely docking your boat. Conversely, the nearby harbour of Little Paradise is entered with little trouble.

Over on the southern tip of land was Great Paradise's Roman Catholic Cemetery.

Catholicism took hold here because a lot of the fish merchants would bring over Irish fishing servants, and eventually the merchants of other religions either left Great Paradise, became Roman Catholics through intermarriage, or simply gave in to it being the only religion in town.

This obscure cemetery was actually in the news a few years ago when a human skull was found on the surface.

Apologies to my morbid readers, but I didn't exhaustively search around for it.

After the cemetery, I dropped down to a tiny cove that had enough driftwood for a great bonfire tonight - and I'm not talking about it being a great difficulty.

I didn't know about walking all the way over here and back though, but I guess that was a decision for later. I pushed back up the hill and over to the last of the houses here, ending up on some decks and through yards where it looked like from the patio furniture and barbecue supplies that people must get out here fairly frequently. The trail from these five houses over to the next collection of houses even had a well-maintained, freshly-painted wood handrail.

I leaned on said rail and peered out at Marticot Island and Paradise Harbour for a bit.

Coming down from that, I could see an ATV up ahead and as I approached, the driver killed the engine and hollered out about how he wondered where'd I'd gone. The man introduced himself as George and asked what my plans were, then told me I was free to sleep in the community hall if I didn't want to be cramped up in my tent. Score!

He even went on to say that I could heat up any dinner I may have on the barbecue out back of the hall, but then apologized when he remembered that the propane tank was actually empty.

While appreciating the kindness, I also had to laugh at the apology, like oh jeez, I can't heat up my sandwich here in this resettled community? Such a struggle! Haha.

The inside of the community hall was decked out with everything you'd find in a small town lounge and more. Old pictures of the area, dart boards, folding tables, a giant dance floor and my favourite, one of those basketball games with the five balls and the fabric bottom like you'd find at Chuck-E-Cheese.

Between ballin' out like Karl-Anthony Towns and looking at pictures as the day's last light faded, I pulled my chair up to the sprawling front windows which provided a panoramic view over the outside community. Along with a good book, I also brought my portable radio that picked up the CBC out here, so I swayed along to Childish Gambino's Redbone as it came over the airwaves.

I was so thankful I ran into George and he told me about the community hall.

Finally going outside in the morning, George was quickly up to the hall and remarking on how long I slept. He invited me over to his place for tea and soon stepping under a low doorway, I was into a kitchen with George's wife and another couple.

I was asked about any animals I may have seen while hiking over or wandering around last night, and saying that I saw a few Pine Grosbeaks in the hills above town, the woman from the other couple looked confused and clarified that she was wondering about things like whales and moose, haha.

Offered a bit of tea, I was pointed towards the stove where I embarrassingly grabbed the kettle and since I rarely drink tea or use a kettle, I started filling up the spout until the crowd looked confused and told me to pull off the top.

Following that, we got to talking about an old Great Paradise character by the name of Harold Ryan. I was told I walked right by his old house as it was the one that was wide open and now missing a wall. Apparently Harold had Canadian Geographics delivered out here & knew more about what was going on in Mongolia and Iran than what was happening in this very harbour.

He was also very proud of his two shoes of mismatching colours that he found in the coves below. In those same coves he also found a jacket where George plus others would offer him a nicer, more gently-used jacket, but Harold would always turn them down.

He had eight dogs and grew tired of letting them out in the night, so he simply cut the bottom quarter of his door off so the dogs could come and go as they pleased. Lastly, he would head over to the store in South East Bight where they would get his old age check, and Harold would simply grab the groceries he needed and wave off any of their comments about how much money he had leftover on his tab.

By the sounds of it, R.I.P. to a good ol' character.

We stepped out for a second and went over to a man named Dominic's house, where Dominic had apparently been contacted by someone who wanted to bring 20 people out to nearby St. Anne's, but Dom said he "couldn't be at that." I had to laugh thinking of my own nervousness to call random people about bringing out like 3 people, or having to ask about bringing a dog.

The conversation then moved to the topic of Corner Brook, which surprisingly rarely happens when I'm out in these outports. We talked about the new hospital, and whether the mill workers still carry baskets, which led to talk of the movie set in Corner Brook, "The Rowdyman", where George said he likes Crocodile Dundee better, especially the hilarity of the scene where Dundee hits the would-be thief with the soup can in the back of the head, lol.

The conversation moved to talking about visiting resettled harbours like Great Paradise and George had a pretty good knowledge of these places - not just in Placentia Bay either, but he was asking me about spots over by Port-aux-Basques and even places like Spirity Cove up on the Northern Peninsula. I stood impressed.

One of the last things we talked about ties into what we were about to get up to, so I'll cover that soon enough.

Continue to Part 2...