Sunny Sunday Barbeque

The weather cooperated for the 2nd annual Outer Battery bbq on Sunday.  Great Big Thanks to everyone who helped make it possible.  Thanks to the musicians: bagpipers Ean Parsons & Dave Allison, box player Frank Maher and his concertina friend, bodhran player Rick West, fiddler Christina Smith and her friend, and of course to Mike Walsh for playing Ugly Stick.  Also thanks to Belbins Grocery, Dominion & Sobeys who donated some of the food. If anyone took photos please send them along and we'll put them up here.  Dominique Hurley (www.DominiqueHurley.com) took this pic:

Raffle ticket winners were drawn at the end of Sunday afternoon.  They are: 
Coffee beans donated by Coffee & Co, Water St. won by Sydney Chislett
Crystal birds donated by MaryAnne Wyanandi won also by Sydney Chislett

$25 gift certificate donated by Georgetown Bakery won by Mike Walsh

Battery note cards donated by Red Ochre Gallery won by Christina Smith

$15 gift certificate donated by Coffee Matters won by Emily Connelly

Gift certificate for 2 pizzas donated by Gracie Joe's Cafe, Quidi Vidi Rd won by Anne-Marie Carew

$10 gift certificate donated by Tim Horton's gift certif  won by Angie Drake

$10 gift certificate donated by Tim Horton's gift certif  won by Michel Savard

Blue Moon Pottery brooch won by Wes Pretty

The magnificent wooden firetruck model made by you-know-who was up on separate tickets, and Carl Pearcey drew the winning ticket: Lee-Anne Facey-Crowther.  The draw raised $282 for the summer heritage project (Lisa & Annie). Thank you Carl.
And a new sign has been placed on our signboard.

OBNA board met with city, province etc

This morning we convened a roundtable of reps from City, Province, federal MP & MHA, etc to focus on Outer Battery issues - mainly the heritage fishing structures.  Ask board members for details at the barbeque!

2nd annual Outer Battery Barbeque!

Sunday, July 17th from noon to 4pm

Mark your calendars!
Music! (including the incomparable Battery box player Graham Wells with friends, Battery 4-stop legend Frank Maher with fiddler Christina Smith & Rick West on bodhran, plus bagpiper Ean Parsons and Dean Ryall!)
Burgers!  Hot Dogs!  Veggie Sausages! Sunny weather forecast!
Raffles raffles raffles!  (All proceeds go to Outer Battery heritage projects.)

If you can volunteer to help, call Chris 576-0359


Special raffle/auction:  Carl Pearcey's beautiful hand crafted wooden firetruck (thank you Carl!)

Heritage hello & goodbye, bbq & birds

• Eric Jokinen the heritage engineer will be here Wednesday & Friday this week documenting material for a heritage inventory of the stages & stores. His report will be ready early-mid July, and will be available to everyone who wants to see it.

• Meanwhile, City issued 2 tender calls to demolish Critch's fishing premises. Demolition is currently underway. Image on 'photos' page. Certainly changes the look of the place. Tourism will have to change their posters.

• Community barbeque being talked about for July.

• There's a webcam taped onto binoculars trained on the seagull nest atop Jack's twinestore. Link is on the right side of this page.

Moratorium extended

On Monday, City Council complied with our request to extend their moratorium on Outer Battery demolition orders and major city construction until the end of July.
Unfortunately this doesn't apply to the Critch property which the city decided to exempt from the moratorium.  They have issued a 2nd tender call to demolish these 2 structures.

Inventory of fishing structures

The engineer Eric Jokinen confirmed today that he'll be starting his inventory mid-June and we should have his report in our hands by end of June.  For the record, the Province/Heritage Foundation is engaging him.

Summer Project & Moratorium alert

We have engaged two MUN folklore grad students to help gather historical information and people's memories about our community.  You'll probably see them around during the summer and they may knock on your door to introduce themselves.  The plan is to build up an archive of Outer Battery heritage material made up of recorded voices, plus photos and other material.  We hope to make some of it  available to residents as a booklet, and some of it to visitors via a few small signs along the road featuring people's voices telling stories (like the HereSay downtown project).

Their names are Lisa Wilson and Annie McEwen.  The funding to engage them has come from MUN GradSwep and Canada Summer Jobs so thanks to those organisations.


Any time now the engineer Eric Jokinen will be doing a "heritage inventory" of Outer Battery fishing structures - identifying the importance of each stage, twinestore, wharf etc from a heritage point of view.  We'd expected to have that study in hand by now, but Eric has been delayed apparently.  So in a couple of weeks if you see a guy out in a boat taking pictures from the waterline, that will probably be Eric.   Don't worry, he's not working for the city he's working for us (and provincial Heritage Foundation).  For individual owners, this study will give you a measure of the value of your property from a heritage point of view.   And for the community, it  will give us the ammunition we need to talk to the city and province about ways of preserving and restoring the structures.


OBNA board has learned that on May 5th, City Council issued a memorandum to update the Battery Guidelines to consider fishing structures.  This is not something that OBNA asked for, it seems to be entirely a city council initiative.  For some reason the city was initially reluctant to give us any information about it (they said we'd have to file a Freedom of Information request!) but we now have a copy of the memo and you'll find it on this blog's "Documents" tab.


HEADS UP!  The moratorium we asked for on City construction & demolition orders is set to expire mid-June (or - the City's written agreement is contradictory - it may expire in July).  We'll be asking for an extension until we get Eric Jokinen's report in hand, but PLEASE BE AWARE that if they don't grant it they may decide to push more legal action and demolitions again.


There'll be more frequent updates to this blog over the next weeks.  Feel free to add your comments, photos, etc.  (Does anyone know how to add a photo to a comment? If so please let us know)