Tilting: House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching, and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village

by Robert Mellin

One of the best studies of vernacular architecture and winner of the prestigious Winterset Literary Award is now available ina paperback edition. Tilting is author Robert Mellin's personal account of the houses, outbuildings, furniture, tools, fences, docks, and way of life of a fishing village on a small island far off the Canadian coast. Part journal, part sketchbook, part oral history, Tilting is a treasure chest of a book that offers new discoveries with each reading and a reminder of the simpler aspects of life and building.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Dana Biscotti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing examination of life the way it was and the way it now is in Tilting, Newfoundland, a coastal fishing village on Fogo Island that has maintained much of its authenticity and original way of life. I re-read this book as we prepare to leave for Newfoundland and to visit Fogo Island early next week. I look forward to seeing many of the homes, fishing stages, outbuildings, root cellars, cabbage houses, fences, and paths described in the book. I hope Newfoundland has taken notice of this village and is supporting the Tilting Recreation and Cultural Society (TRACS) with grant funding to continue their restoration process of an authentic fishing village that has withstood the test of time.

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thorough description--in many illustrations, photographs, interviews and narratives--of the traditional ways of the inhabitants of "Tilting", a small fishing outport on the coast of Fogo Island in N.E. Newfoundland. Isolated, Tilting was in the past, remarkably self-sufficient, the people living in unique houses, outbuildings and using numerous other structures of their own design for farming, the salting of fish and the like.

[Kevin Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a fascination in the lives of those who live close to earth and water. The difficulties of a living made from the land are more exciting than any fiction, and the character such a life calls forth is more intriguing. Tilting: House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching, and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village is an especially compelling addition to the literature of hardscrabble, and the community it describes from an insider's privileged viewpoint is as memorable as any you could find.

Robert Mellin is an architect who bought an off-season home in the village of Tilting, on a barren island near the Newfoundland coast, and over a period of years ingratiated himself into a community where even families with generations of presence there may be regarded as newcomers. Mellin describes the history and folkways of the fishing community that ekes out a living on the island, and the threats to that community from declining resources and the out-migration of successive generations of youngsters. His observations create a powerful and fascinating record of people forced by circumstance into a struggle that pride will not allow them to give up, and of the ingenious ways they have devised of meeting its challenges.

As an architect, Mellin is drawn to the building styles and methods of the several small coastal communities that make up the village of Tilting and its surroundings. This is understandable, for their architecture both reflects the harsh environment they live in, and the strange lengths they are driven to to survive in it. The houses are small, and many are built on skids, for removal to more-productive locations when the barely-arable soil in a given spot is exhausted. Outbuildings are often cannibalized for wood to build new structures, giving almost every building on the island a bedraggled look. Since window glass is scarce and expensive, and there is no electricity on the island, the houses are often dark, and stuffy from cooking fires. Although the inhabitants are not opposed to modern technology, they lack the resources to make use of it, and so do without paved roads, cars, telephones, and most amenities other than aging engines for their small fishing boats; draft horses are the local means of power and transportation. The decline of the fishing trade has led them to abandon many of the fish drying shacks, built over the water on long piers, that once defined the local method of off-loading their catch. Mellin's years-long familiarity, and his professional architect's eye, let him tell an indelible story of the community and its people just from a description of their housing and infrastructure.

Mellin is a passable amateur anthropologist as well, and his detailing of the local population and their quirks and characteristics adds another interesting dimension to his profile of the community. As in many marginal working-class communities, the people of Tilting are hard-bitten, suspicious of outsiders, long to carry a grudge, and surprisingly close-knit when the chips are down. Mellin describes the seemingly-minor feuding and distrust between the several small hamlets that make up the seafront community, and also their communal potato plots and the camaraderie of the (all-male) fishing fleet. The people of Tilting and its surrounds come off as deeper than they look, and marked by the hard land they have chosen as home.

Mellin's writing style is baldly descriptive, and betrays his academic origins. The book is thus a bit of a dry read, but its subject's inherent fascination makes up for it. It includes extensive photographs, and maps of the community. It should stand as a classic sociological profile of an unique community surviving under harsh circumstances, drawn just when that community may be facing its last days in the face of environmental, political, economic, and cultural forces it cannot withstand.

Tilting: House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching, and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village is recommended for those with an interest in the fishing and farming communities of the North Atlantic Coast or Newfoundland in particular, those who enjoy profiles of self-sufficient living on the land and the challenges it offers, and those who are fascinated by the ingenious and often exhausting lengths determined people will go to to respect and maintain their culture and traditions.

[Lezley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really looking forward to visiting Tilting and this book gives an excellent introduction to this small community.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic representation of the unique combination of architecture and lifestyle in Tilting. Mellin does a great job of documenting both in an easy-to-understand book, using his own essays and detailed drawings, the oral history of Tilting's residents, and beautiful photographs. Possibly my favorite part of the book was the chapter about house launching: "When a house was sold in Tilting, the land was rarely included in the sale. This required moving the house to another location." Can't wait to visit!