3 Days on Abandoned Island with a Tragic History

Hidden off the coast of Newfoundland is a remote cluster of islands that was once home to a thriving fishing community of nearly 200 people. But today, not a single person lives here. Mikey and I were driving back from another adventure when these islands caught our eye. And the more we looked into them, the stranger the story became. But almost nothing online could tell us what remained. So we headed into town looking for answers. We started at the museum learning what life was like when the community was still thriving. Then we stopped at the pub for a few beers and a chat with the mayor. It's amazing what's on this island to see. We might have to come back. Oh yeah well I hope you do right. But strangely no one could tell us much about the island community itself. So for the next three days Mikey and I are going to be heading out in Placentia Bay to explore the Iona Islands and check out this amazing terrain that Newfoundland has to offer. Our trip starts with following our GPS to a secluded stretch of coast where we'll be launching tomorrow morning. Placentia, totally a place to birth your next adventure. This is one of the more spontaneous trips that we've done on the channel. It's nine o'clock, it's a little rainy out, we're just setting up camp for the night and from first views the scenery is beautiful but we're not gonna get a full look until tomorrow when it's light out So we're just going to set up our camps and we'll see you then. Morning. Morning. So at this exact spot in the summer of 1941 during the Second World War, Prime Minister of Britain Winston Churchill and the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a secret meeting here in Newfoundland and this is the exact spot where they met. We went down this gravel road for some time and then we pulled up to this managed park area that is full of these monuments. A nice historic spot to start. Everything's ready to go in our bags because we just fired it in from the last trip So packing up to get in the boat should be quick. The weather over the next few days looks a little rough But the last trip we did the last few days were just gusting wind like 90 kilometer-hour winds So because of that the sea state is gonna be pretty mean. I think we were forecast 0.8 meters of swell so that could be you know our shoulder or head height when we're in our boats I wouldn't say it's perfect That's good. The closest access point to these islands is about seven or eight kilometers down shore But the crossing itself is about five so that's enough to be weary of conditions Yesterday, we just got off our other adventure and it was a holiday So we couldn't do much of a restock of supplies. So we have limited stock some old food We did manage to get some water from a gas station which is pretty important on this first point there's a lot of breaking waves and they're pretty big i wouldn't want to get hit with one broadside looks like mikey's going right into the juice oh he's getting some cheeky surfing mikey is a way more experienced sea kayaker than me a lot of these sea kayaking trips you see that i do with mikey it's because he's a great guy but he's also very experienced in the ocean as part of this trip we wanted to get some hand lines to jig for cod unfortunately the season closed yesterday and it's closed for a week before the fall season opens up so just bad luck we missed it but cod at one point built the economy here but where we're going to today it's an archipelago made up of four main islands merchant hole in the wall king and burke and together these islands are known as the iona islands shag rock seems to be the one that's firing off yeah there's a green cabin with a brown roof there's an old cabin on this island the driftwood on satellite this looked like a nice fine gravel beach for camping but we're looking at a big cobble look at this though all this rock here would have been pushed up from big storms behind the cobble there's this flat grass but it is swampy as heck i believe it says welcome to our cabin hard to read keep an eye out for rusty nails here hello you know what not in the worst shape i was expecting a total wreck in here but floor still seems pretty sturdy arrival date 11 2002. is that maybe 2002. yeah this wouldn't be one of the original cabins part of the fishing community it looks much worse on on the outside than the inside. From our research, this fishing community was sort of spread out among the islands in different coves. We don't know exactly where, so it's gonna be a bit of a guessing game as we travel through these islands, checking out the coves, looking for clues. How's that meat looking? The sight of it is changing from day one. So we're gonna have a quick lunch and continue on. Quick backstory of this spot. Iona Island was once known as Ram Island. In the 19th century, there's about 200 people that lived here, and they were fully self-reliant. They made their own fishing gear, they had a church, they had a school, they were thriving. But then come the 1930s, the dirty 30s, there was a depression, and this community thrived off the cod fishery. And the price of cod plummeted, which was an economic hit. But then they had three years of freak bad luck. In 1935, a lightning strike hit the school and burnt it down. Then in 1936, a fire burnt down the church. And then in 1937, there was a large storm and a storm surge wiped out the entire fishing fleet and the coastal infrastructure. From then on, families started to move out and head back to the mainland. And then by 1950, there was a mandate for a lot of these island fishing communities to come inland to make it more economically feasible for schooling and church. so by the 1950s all the families had left and this once fishing village that was totally self-reliant was abandoned and from our online sources these houses were just left to rot but today they say that you could still see some some infrastructure some cellars as well as foundations i'm sure we're going to see a lot of these shacks and fishing camps we don't know exactly where they are so it's going to be a bit of a scavenger hunt possibly do you think that's the hole in the wall that looks rough in there this side of the wall is like definitely too narrow i can't really see on the outside of that it depends on what comes in for spell he's gonna do it oh he's doing it oh okay that was pretty sweet i'm not gonna do that how was that I got a wave from behind and kind of surfed through a little dynamic yeah that got my heart rate pumping. Do you guys follow the channel? You know that this past winter Tristan and I did a ski trip in Newfoundland but other than this this is my first time in this province and I've been blown away by one the people best kind out here and to the landscape large cliffs high relief rugged terrain and it's not just one spot it's the entire island it's known as the Rock and you can see why Reverse, reverse. There are sheep on this island. Oh they just keep popping up. The island adjacent to Hole-in-the-Wall Island has sheep. It'd be a rough life out here man. We got to a pretty narrow passage that both islands look like there's potential camping and potential spot for a previous village to set up shop and there's a deep cove right ahead of us that we're gonna go explore. We might be onto something here this harbor collects a lot of garbage lobster traps and seal oh yeah look at that look at those teeth old stairway oh it's fell through that's a sign of something yeah it looks sort of cleared here and there's a trail going back there okay let's see here there's a bit of a trail coming back here oh look at this stick the GoPro definitely right on the floor and around the stove yeah the deck is pretty sketchy here i think this is a different generation of hunt camp but still abandoned it's got to be it's falling apart unfortunately seems very open back here i just want to see any signs of the original yeah it's very possible that these trees would have grown in after the families left the island originally what do you think history's grown over if it were here it could be many other places i'm not sure the name of this moss but this is the best stuff for wiping your butt it's a really long root and it doesn't hold on to a lot of dirt and if you give it a squeeze it's sort of wet it absorbs it's an antiseptic by nature and it's nice on the butt nature's wet life nature's wet wife so if you ever find yourself in the woods having to do number two you don't need toilet paper just look for this stuff sphagnum peat all right well we found an abandoned camp but for camping it was pretty nasty with all that uh garbage so we're gonna go across the way here to this beach that looks pretty promising it's beautiful flat and dry this island's looking like it's going to be home tonight very good access as well as a flat grassy spot for camp. So we're gonna set up our tents up against the tree line there. Okay, so this looks like a piece of seaweed, but it's not I just found the mermaid's purse, which I believe might be an egg sack from a winter skate, kind of like a stingray. What is this? There's this gummy substance that looks like fat that's stuck on this rock. The sea blob? Taste test i don't think i'm gonna go that far i'm just walking down the beach because there's another beach that i saw from the water that i wanted to check out to see if there's any signs of that original community raspberries no real signs of any sort of infrastructure but beautiful island very rugged and wild out here there's a lot to explore i could see myself coming back for years and never running out of things to do out here just in the process of getting a fire started for dinner we moved to the other side of the island because it's leeward and we can watch the sheep we've got the kitty bitty day boil it seems appropriate for most kayaking occasions yeah well isn't the other side just a cliff yeah i suppose as i mentioned earlier our food supplies are slim pickings so tonight we're doing a rice and sardine that's it that said these look like some pretty good sardines so there's a patch of this seaweed back there and i'm pretty sure this is good to eat it's like a like a sea lettuce really good patch right here as i grabbed it bubbles were coming off it uh and that's that's oxygen because photosynthesis is taking place look at that that is something that's gonna be our veggie to fix tonight any moment of truth oh it smells decadent oh they get a bag of rice each and a can of sardines each we've been talking about these sardines for a few days now do you want all your sardines in do it man we're both going to be eating a school of sardines you're doing not small tins eh no did you want some veg oh yeah i'll have some veg for sure okay add some veg on top give it a little spiral yeah just like that that's the easier way to do it complete inversion wow clean six eight we get ten sardines each that's great decadent okay why don't you take the cleaner one you deserve it thank you chef it's actually nice it's good yeah i don't know what i expected but that's that's nice sardines is the ultimate food for nutrition there's protein there's omega-3s and with bone in you're getting all that additional nutrients from the bones what is that calcium there's been some comments asking how i lost about 20 pounds over the last year part of it is i've been eating a lot of sardines at home at least once every couple days as a main meal it's a really good food and it's cheap can't go wrong no luck today finding the original fishing settlement here though we did find a few abandoned houses and it's pretty cool to explore these islands tomorrow we're going to be getting up and exploring the other side of these islands and working our way across to see what we can see we'll see you guys tomorrow morning guys it's been a very windy wet night and it sort of led into this morning the tent's been shaking all night uh and i have earplugs in and i woke up and i started feeling some like drops on my face like wet drops i didn't know what it was because i was deep in a dream and i just was lying there with my eyes open and i was like there's all these little drops of rain on my head and then i got my flashlight and i looked and my fly got blown completely off my tent and it was raining luckily my fly was still attached to the side i was just flying and fluttering in the wind but yeah that was that was quite the experience last night around midnight the challenge is can you round the rock without touching the ground the floor is lava actually it once was because this is all igneous rock That's the tricky part. Oh, the old cowboy. Nice. That's definitely a V8. I found a deceased porpoise. Its mortal remains are strewn amongst garbage. What do you think cause of death is? That's a hard one to tell. You don't really see, like, plastic in the gut would be a sad way to go. Hopefully just ripe old age. Yeah. It's kind of a sad monument to be on a beach with garbage. Yeah. those teeth are larger and sharper than i would have expected porpoises are what we have in the north atlantic they're similar to a dolphin but a little smaller and we see them in our summer times around here in nova scotia as well it's a water bottle from southern china i just used the google lens to translate that's a long way to travel so the wind is still pretty strong but we want to check out the other side of this island because there is another lagoon that might have signs of that original fishing settlement you found dinner moon jelly yeah this is a moon jelly moon jelly is a type of jellyfish that doesn't have any tentacles looks like a plastic bag yeah all right let's go see what this headwind's gonna look like just approaching a beach on the other side of Iona island but there's a small lake that drains at this beach so potentially it would be a good spot because of the access to drinking water so we'll go take a look here's the brook coming down off the island it'd be enough you could get some pretty consistent water it is thick back here tangly eh yeah it'd be pretty hard finding any sort of signs back here it's too thick to really explore back there but mike had the idea to get the drone up in the air to see if we could see any signs of use or openings right off the beach we're seeing a bit of a wetland where that creek runs through it looks open but it would probably be too wet to have any sort of building or infrastructure but around here it's pretty thick bush not sure if this would be a spot where people would be building houses but overall this island is quite gorgeous with this large mountainous terrain uh pretty rugged tough spot to live but just down the coast here there's a point that is open and i'm seeing a bit of a trail this could be an animal trail but it's worth checking out anyways it's a nice camping site yeah it is it's got lots of tannins in the water there's no real signs of anything here really puts into perspective you know we're just out here for a couple days in september one of the nicest months of the year and just a snapshot of what life might be out here if you're living out here independently from the mainland catching your own fish finding your own water it'd be a harsh life especially in winter man okay this is pretty cool a little intimidating but it goes pretty deep sea caves are formed through wave erosion constant wave energy smashing the side of rock and it usually starts as a fracture a natural fracture in the rock and over time, consistent waves will break it open until it gets larger and larger. Coming around Iona, there's a little beach here that might have potential, we're gonna go check it out. Again, there's large cliffs surrounding this beach, but then back here, there's a bit of an open spot. This seems like a really good spot, it's very protected back here, there would be a few really nice spots to put up some homes here, but there is zero signs of any sort of infrastructure here such beautiful land though this is awesome the geology of these islands is igneous intrusive rocks igneous being once magma that solidified into rock and intrusive meaning that it intruded into the crust so it was underneath as a liquid and it oozed up through the crust and solidified there's different variants of igneous intrusive rock depending on the chemical composition granite would be one that's very light colored and there'd be a lot of silica in it and that's called a felsic igneous rock here you have more mafic so it's a darker color rock that has more magnesium and iron and less silica but there's also this cool combination and i believe the term is called enclaved igneous rock and it has a leopard print if you can picture underground you have these things called magma chambers and this is mantle material that melted and is liquid and eventually will turn into igneous rock if it cools enough here we're seeing two types of magma chambers that interacted one being darker one being lighter and the final product is a mixed igneous intrusive rock that has this leopard print that is both a felsic and a mafic rock combined in Nova Scotia I've talked about igneous intrusive rocks a lot but there it's mostly granite so think Peggy's Cove but a similar sort of process that makes these rocks here in Placentia Bay Newfoundland you know it's a good thing to always face your fears head on so we're heading back to hole in the wall so I can lace that hole conditions are a little more favorable for me today oh yeah oh dude it's full of mussels here but they're tiny what are your thoughts about sheep island well just like looking at it like right in that flat area right in that in that little valley yeah a couple houses maybe for sure and then that that would be our final that's that's the final unknown we've been paddling around this island cluster for two days now the one that we haven't checked yet is this island that has the sheep on it it's different than the rest there's little less relief and it's pretty barren mayor said something about this how newer generations would would build on old land what happened is the government back in the day done resettlement a lot of them resettled there at the center and but they still got there's people got family cabins over there which were homes and they built up the places and stuff like that so in the summertime over there there's people around when we paddled past this island originally we saw this fence along the beach and we just thought it was to stop those sheep from coming and drowning but it looks like it's a fence around a small specific area there's no fencing there recent cuts looks to be like a rock fence over there See that there's a few mounds, one two, three, four. Look at this one, indented but up ahead here we do see definite signs of human infrastructure any ideas what this could be? It looks like there's, there's corners and it's got to be for use other than the current Sheep Island. Alright guys, we need your help They would have lived here in the 1800s all the way to the 1950s. What could this be used for? So from the air, the rock wall is very apparent, but there's not much else that we're seeing on this island. But throughout our last couple days of travel, I would think that this island, King Island, would have had a settlement, as well as Iona Island, the first bay that we saw yesterday with the cabin on it, as well as the bay this afternoon. Even where we're camping looks like it has a potential spot at one time There's about 200 people living here, which is hard to believe. Yeah, Noah and I were just talking and some of the Physical evidence of the fishing history of these islands is elusive But it's not so far distant in my lifetime my parents My father grew up in St. John's, his parents both grew up near St. Johns on the Avalon Peninsula and they would have led subsistence lifestyles of being connected to the ocean, fishing cod, drying cod, having a garden patch of potatoes and turnips in a cold cellar, all the traditional Newfoundland things that we think of. And we see some evidence of some of the livestock here that would have been common and we've seen a few cabins, you know, probably where cabins previously existed. And just spending a few days amongst these islands we get a sense of the place we see that there's different resources there's water, there's trees obviously the ocean has bounty here, the wind and the swell and and where's a nice place to be and where is not we're just starting to get a sense of the place and the connection to the land and we may not have had a aha moment on a discovery of an old remnants of a cabin but you know certainly have appreciated the time and the sense of place can only imagine what life would have been here during the time that this was a thriving community and you know you know from meeting all the people along our journey so far that there were you know tremendous bonds between neighbors and the friendliness of the Newfoundlanders and it's just coming through and loud and clear you know we didn't have an objective to paddle really really far to get to different places but i think we've achieved something just being in this place and seeing what it has to offer it's an interesting few days certainly some unanswered questions but gonna be very interesting to hear some of the stories that might come out of it of people that have a connection to this place it's an Indian night tonight yeah we have some boil in a bag two different flavors a dal and a paneer and um yeah we're just going to immerse these into hot water to heat them up and the naan bread the day boils keep falling out in the knees bon appetit thank you sir wow look at that there's just an accumulation here of moon jellyfish and they're kind of fun to play with even though you shouldn't because they're live animals just saying i'm gonna throw them all back hopefully they don't wash up again and dry up because we might need to eat them. Our morning weather we're just checking now as the morning rolls on we get more and more of a headwind and it is reasonably severe in the afternoon it goes up to 60 kilometers. 60 kilometers and to put that into perspective this afternoon it was gusting at about 30 kilometers an hour and that was some hard work. Yeah, it gets serious. Yeah so we want to get on the water and back to the car before that hits so it's going to be an early rise for us but the sun's set uh this is the wrap of the day we'll see you guys tomorrow six o'clock gonna get the water boiling cold night in the tent use my puffy jacket it's puffy pants all right guys it is 7 30 earliest start and it's hard to tell because we are in the lee right here but we have about eight kilometers of paddling five of being an open ocean to get to our starting point our historic starting point so i suspect it's going to be kind of a tough paddle this morning it's a nice spot to hang out in the distance there you can see our ferry that we're taking back to nova scotia don't leave without part of the reason we made this trip work to uh the iona islands we finished the other trip tried to book a ferry and it was absolutely booked full so the closest one we could get was four days away so that gave us this opportunity to look at maps we had all our sea kayaks gear and all our food to make a little trip happen and i'm very grateful we did newfoundland has blown me away with its rugged beautiful terrain as well as its kind people the place i'll definitely be back to guys thank you so much for watching if you guys enjoy this content please consider subscribing and if you find yourself in Nova Scotia check out Old Krill Canoe and Kayak that's Mikey's Paddling Shop you can buy canoes you can buy kayaks and a lot of other good paddling gear guys we'll see you on the next one hopefully we make that ferry