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Cultural Innovation: A Community Talk with Architect Todd Saunders

Article
August 24, 2023

Design and architecture can be used to stimulate innovation and give centuries-old knowledge, traditions, and culture an economic foundation.

In early June, Todd Saunders, the Newfoundland-born, Norway-based architect behind Fogo Island Inn and the four artist studios on Fogo Island, hosted a talk for community members and visitors at Shorefast’s historic Orange Lodge building.  

Tracing the trajectory of his career, Todd provided context and advice for people at the beginning of their careers and offered his thoughts on the future of architecture – citing his belief in a hybrid approach that mixes different elements together, with the caveat that “You make great architecture when you know a place.”   

Originally tasked with a mandate to build Fogo Island Inn as demonstrative of “what has been learned from 400 years of clinging to this rock,” Todd shared insights alongside Shorefast CEO & Founder and Fogo Island Inn Innkeeper, Zita Cobb, about how leaning into the specificity of a place can be the very way that we connect the local economy to the global market.  

“Culture is a living thing. If it doesn’t innovate it dies,” Zita remarked. Through cultural innovation we can find ways to illuminate the specificity of our place and carry it forward in ways that support dignified and meaningful employment, and a greater sense of belonging.  

The following is an excerpt from a conversation between Zita Cobb and Todd Saunders on the 10th anniversary of Fogo Island Inn, shortly after the on-island community event.  

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Understanding our Geographic Context: The Importance of the Labrador Current 

Article
July 12, 2023

As an organization grounded in a place-based approach to economic development, we always start with what is in front of us.   

View of Greene’s Point. Photo by Paddy Barry.

On Fogo Island our geographic context is strongly informed by the Labrador Current.  

Positioned in the pathway of this current, our island has developed a culture and way of life (from the foods we eat to the livelihoods we’ve sustained to the traditions we love) that is deeply rooted in our relationship to the waters around us.

As with any relationship there are both challenges and benefits. The strong winds and colder temperatures that move across our landscape result in a shorter outdoor growing season; this can be contrasted with the abundance of marine life that the current supports – the primary reason people have settled here for centuries.   

The Influence of the Current  

Whether you live in the direct pathway of the Labrador Current or not, its influence is significant to our global health.  

Considered a distinct ecosystem, the Labrador Current helps keep the world’s oceans alive. Cold winter temperatures in the Labrador Sea are responsible for pushing oxygen-rich surface waters to depths far below the ocean’s top layer where they are dispersed by deep boundary currents. These oxygenated waters work in similar ways to our bloodstream – feeding oxygen-rich waters to the Arctic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans – giving context to the Labrador Current’s moniker as “a lung of the ocean.”  

Crucially, this oxygen stream supports marine life around the world, that in turn supports human life. On Fogo Island, it enables our traditional and primary livelihood: the fishery.   

Collecting Data for Academic Research  

As more revelations are made about the importance of this cold current and its influence on other oceans globally, our waters have become a significant area of research. Scientists are especially keen to understand how climate change is altering the current both through an increase in temperature and wind change. At the local level – community members and fishers are keen to know what warming waters will mean for the fishery as more species begin to migrate.  

One pillar of our Environmental Stewardship work on Fogo Island has us partnering with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Marine Institute at Memorial University to support academic research geared around tracking changes in our local waters. A key initiative to support this goal is Community Science – a collaborative community-based approach to building up scientific knowledge by employing trained community members who can bring their background lived experience (cultural, industrial, environmental) to each project. In rural and remote locations, where it is not always easy to bring in scientists for study, community members are bridging the gap.   

Recent projects on Fogo Island in partnership with community members and academic partners include ice tracking and species monitoring; both of which contribute to our understanding of changes in our local waters year-over-year.  

View of Brimstone Head. Photo by Alex Fradkin.

“We thought we were one of the four corners of the world; turns out we are at the centre.” 

Each year, during the onset of summer, Fogo Islanders bear witness to a changing climate through an experience of “Iceberg Alley.” The parade of icebergs that make their way down from glaciers situated along the coast of Greenland – via the Labrador Current – are a seasonal event; in recent years, however, it is clear to residents that there are significant fluctuations afoot. These fluctuations include increased glacial melt and a prolonged or sometimes negligible iceberg season.

This year for example, the season stretched from February (very early) to July (starting to get late). An increase in glacial flow has an impact on everything from the duration of our fishing season to rising water levels along our coast.  

While Fogo Island’s location at the edge of the North Atlantic Ocean has often earned it a reputation as remote, faraway – and a tongue in cheek title as ‘one of the four corners of the world’ – it is increasingly clear that coastal communities like Fogo Island are at the centre of the climate crisis, rather than off to the side.  

It will be coastal communities like Fogo Island that continue to experience an outsized impact and be extremely vulnerable to the changes in climate that we are all observing globally. To raise awareness both locally and internationally, Shorefast launched an artwork by artist Liam Gillick in October 2022, known colloquially as The Fogo Island Red Weather Station. The station is both a scientific tool to collect data and an artwork that seeks to communicate the value of life and knowledge in this place.

Growing our Environmental Stewardship Work 

The climate crisis can’t be confronted or resolved by any one community; it will take all of us working at different scales to begin to develop a unified way forward.  

On Fogo Island we have been building the case for an Environmental Stewardship program that is multi-pronged in approach, reaches across disciplines, supports the culture of people whose lives and livelihoods are linked to the sea, and can be scaled to create connection and collaboration across many sectors, with a focus on replicability across Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada.  

The Labrador Current is part of our life on Fogo Island; it’s significant to yours as well. 

Read more about our Environmental Stewardship work. 

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Community Science on Fogo Island

Article
June 2, 2023

Engaging community members in ocean research means they bring their historical, cultural, industrial, and lived experience to each project.

Walter Penton (second from left) applying new research skills on Fogo Island

Like most Fogo Islanders, Walter Penton has a deep appreciation and understanding of our surrounding waters. “At the edge of the northeast coast of the Atlantic Ocean it often feels like our waters are limitless,” Penton says, “but there’s a lot more going on below the surface – considering our geographic location, our tides, our cold currents.” 


A recently retired transportation worker, Penton is now utilizing his experience and curiosity about the natural environment on Fogo Island to participate in critical monitoring projects on our island that are helping bridge gaps in research. Commonly referred to as Community Science, it’s a growing area of focus for Shorefast that is supported through our partnerships with The Department of Fisheries and Oceans and The Marine Institute at Memorial University. 


“Community members with lived experiences in nature can assist in data collection and provide researchers with the information they need. It’s a powerful way to scale up efforts in conservation and coastal adaptation,” Amanda Lim, Shorefast’s Program Manger, Environmental Initiatives, says. 


Owing to our geographic location within the Labrador Current (often referred to as a “lung of the ocean”) Fogo Island’s waters are one of the few places where oxygen from the air is transferred to the deepest parts of the ocean with the help of this extremely cold current. This process is critical to keeping marine life alive and influences other oceans around the globe. As such, Fogo Island is a significant bellwether for the changes we are seeing in our climate. 

Fogo Island and Change Islands community members partaking in a training initiative in Terra Nova National Park


Last spring, Penton joined a group of Fogo Island and Change Islands community members in Terra Nova, the easternmost national park in Canada, where Shorefast and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans were offering a training initiative that would support further research projects on Fogo Island. Back home, Penton and others were able to share what they learned and initiate a new monitoring project around juvenile species in eel grass habitats—an important indicator of our ocean’s current health. 


“The training this past year was great,” Penton says. “It opened my eyes to our interactions with marine life, and I am eager to learn more.” Initiatives like these have the potential to establish Fogo Island as a key player in marine research, opening the door for supplementary income and career opportunities that weren’t previously available. 


“From what I have seen so far, the future for Fogo Island is very bright. With the insight of Shorefast and its partners, we can be a role model for the province.” 

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Chatting with Community Host Rosemarie Burke

Article
May 25, 2023

Hospitality is central to everything we do at Shorefast. We believe that every business that serves humans should be built around hospitality: the practice of relationship building and relationship making.

Guest Experience Director, Sandra Cull & Community Host, Rosemarie Burke (left to right) at the Inn. Photo credit: Valerie Howes.

Fogo Island Inn was built to showcase the culture and nature of Fogo Island and add another leg to the economy by complementing the primary and traditional fishing industry. Since opening its doors in 2013, the Inn has become a world leader in the practice of regenerative, community-based travel, and is inspiring other industry leaders to adopt practices that benefit both people and place.  


Initiated through Fogo Island Inn, the Community Host program pairs visitors to the island with community members who are incredibly knowledgeable about the island’s history, culture, and geography. Through informal island orientations, community members bring Fogo Island to life though their own lived experience and offer visitors a nuanced perspective of daily life.


Recently, we chatted with Rosemarie Burke, a Community Host who hails from the community of Tilting on Fogo Island, about her experience as a host and her reflections on Fogo Island Inn’s first decade of community business. The conversation has been edited to reflect highlights of our conversation.  


Becoming a Community Host 


When Rosemarie first heard that the Inn was being built, she was 56. “I’ve got to be a part of that,” she recalls thinking. After three years as the Head of Housekeeping she moved into the Community Host Coordinator role, one that she loved, but ultimately led her to see that a role as a Community Host would suit her best.  


“The thing I didn’t realize about the community host role until I started was that I’ve been doing community hosting my whole life,” Rosemarie adds. “I’m an avid outdoors person, always walking and hiking, and whenever I see someone coming toward me that I don’t know, I introduce myself and ask them where they are from; I’ll point out certain landmarks, such as the best spot to look out on the Atlantic ocean, or where to find Eider ducks nesting, and a conversation is started.” 


“I always want to welcome people; to let them know that they’d be offered help if they needed it; to invite them back for a cup of tea.” 

Managing Director of Fogo Island Inn, Amanda Decker-Penton & Rosemarie during the construction of Fogo Island Inn. Photo credit: Paddy Barry.


Creating the opportunity for exchange & connection  


“Now, before I go to work in the morning, I’m wondering and excited about who I am going to meet today and where they will be from. Will they welcome me as I welcome them?” 


When people first learned about the creation of the Inn there was some worry, Rosemarie explains. “We have had very little change since the first settlers arrived. We didn’t know what this was going to mean. When the Inn opened Zita wrote a personal invite to everyone on the island to ask them to stay at the Inn for a night and experience what was being offered to guests. It made a difference.”  


“This Inn has brought new life to this place,” Rosemarie adds. “The community feels represented through this program. Guests come here knowing some things about the island but after a trip with a community host, they feel at home. They feel that they understand where they are.”  


That sense of understanding goes both ways. For Rosemarie, working with visitors has revealed her own island to her in a new way.  


“Now I have a greater appreciation for some of the things I ignored before I met guests. I just see the beauty of it all. Guests come into the Inn and see the Atlantic Ocean and say “wow.” That’s their first word. And you know, now I do too. I think to myself, How lucky am I to be living in a place like this. Now, I take more moments to stop and recognize the beauty around me.” 


In 2022 – Fogo Island Inn’s Community Hosts spent a combined 9,232 hours providing in-person, community-based island orientations and experiences for visitors to our island. Read more about our community-centric approach to economic development in our latest Impact Report.


Small-scale exchanges can have a big impact 


“The Inn is changing the perception people have of small and rural communities,” Rosemarie says. “Not many people knew about Fogo Island before the Inn. Now there are more artists coming here. They are seeing the beauty and painting the beauty. Everything we look at daily – the architecture, the fishing stages, the flakes – artists are painting them, and people are coming to see them.”  


While Fogo Island has always had a strong local artisan culture, increasing the opportunity for the cross-pollination of ideas, art, and experiences between people with different backgrounds is a vital way to strengthen our social fabric at a local level and at a national level. It brings renewed attention to the value of places big and small across our country and reminds us of our common humanity.  


“People who live in cities are coming now to enjoy the quiet and freedom of Fogo Island. We have a close proximity to nature. You can feel the ocean. I am sure that lots of little communities across Canada have the same beauty as Fogo Island. Small communities have so much to offer.”  

Hiking Fogo Island’s shoreline. Photo Credit: Amy Rowsell.


A cultural asset: Newfoundlander’s sense of hospitality 


“We live on an island. We know just about everybody here. And when people come to the island you are going to welcome them. Historically, this was a tough place to eke out a living – coming together is important.” 


“Fogo Islanders love a stranger. And when a stranger gets to know us, they love us too.” 

In 2015, Fogo Island Inn was awarded the Community Engagement award by PURE, a leading experiential travel show. In this 2-minute clip Zita Cobb, Shorefast’s Founder & CEO, reminds us why community connection is so important to our understanding of travel.  

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Food for Thought: Reinforcing our local economy through an appreciation of our foodways

Article
May 17, 2023

“Eating is an agricultural act.”

— Wendell Berry, American Farmer, Writer, Philosopher. 

Photo credit: Paddy Barry

Food is so much more than sustenance. What we eat, grow, forage, and fish tells us about the culture, environment, and history of a place. Understanding and celebrating our local foodways is another avenue to build stronger relationships between people and place and reinforce the importance of local growing and sourcing to our economy.

Our newly launched Foodways Program on Fogo Island is designed to unite and build on the many food-related initiatives that have animated our work over the years with the goal of creating a more sustainable food system on Fogo Island that can be a contagious example for other rural and remote communities.

The following is a sampling of some of the past, current, and ongoing initiatives that Shorefast has pursued to support a deeper connection to place through food:

Shorefast and Foodways 

Fogo Island Inn 

Ten years ago, Shorefast opened Fogo Island Inn with the intention to activate the cultural heritage and natural assets of the place, including our local foodways. From the Inn’s kitchen, we brought forward contemporary ways of using local ingredients, broadened what can be grown on the island, and increased the focus on local sourcing to support the creation of a widening food entrepreneur landscape on Fogo Island. 

One such example of a new-to-the-island vegetable is fennel. Having asked local growers to cultivate fennel, initially for use in dishes at the Inn, we see its use within our new restaurant–The Storehouse—as an important gateway to sharing ways to cook with this vegetable, as well as other nutrient-rich ingredients that can be found on Fogo Island.  

Photo credit: Andrea O’Brian 

Fogo Island Fish

After opening the Inn, we also turned our thinking to our primary industry, the fishery, and partnered with the Fogo Island Co-operative Society, which operates three seafood processing plants on the island, to start a micro-enterprise called Fogo Island Fish, designed to develop markets for high quality hand-lined Cod. The practice of handlining involves no by-catch, and while it is labour intensive, we pay fishers double the market rate for cod caught by gill-nets. Fogo Island Fish currently sells wholesale to several fine-dining restaurants across Canada.  

Seaweed Cultivation 


In 2021, Shorefast launched an R&D pilot in collaboration with the Fogo Island Co-Operative Society to explore the commercial viability of seaweed farming. As a sustainable, plant based nutritional food that has significant environmental benefits and economic potential, seaweed cultivation could help diversify our island’s economy, with implications for replicability throughout Atlantic Canada. 

Foraging 


Historically, foraging for wild berries allowed Fogo Islanders to survive in this sub-arctic landscape. People foraged and ate partridgeberries, blueberries, marshberries, and bakeapples. The two dozen or so other berries were, not so long ago, collectively called ‘poison berries’ as a precaution from parents to children. Of course, we now understand a lot more about the berry species we share our landscape with, and that knowledge is often enriched by visiting experts invited by Shorefast who share even more. One such expert was able to expand our understanding not only of the other (not poison but very edible!) berries but also some of the mushrooms and herbs that were never previously understood as food. 

Photo credit: Joe Ip

Medicinal Benefits 


The arrival of Dr. John Weber, a Shorefast academic in-residence and a professor at Memorial University, fondly known as the “Berry Man,” helped us understand that blueberry leaves contain even more antioxidants than the noble berry itself. As we spend more time understanding the rich bounty in front of us, we are re-discovering valuable knowledge.  

Wildflowers 


In 2010, Shorefast commissioned Todd Boland of the Botanical Gardens in St. Johns, NL, to produce a Fogo Island wildflower guide book. The goal was to highlight the wide range of plant life on the island with a particular focus on edibles and traditional uses. This important work laid the foundation to better understand the land under our feet – land that Captain Wadham famously said Newfoundlanders, with their over-focus on the sea, had for too long regarded as a “conveniently-anchored ship.” 

Food Circles 


Adapted from the notion of sharing built into our traditional song circles, Shorefast has been bringing people together to share place-specific growing and cooking learnings and stories. Past panelists include Mitchell Davis, James Beard Foundation, and Lori McCarthy, a long-time Shorefast partner and Newfoundland & Labrador foodways expert.  

Food Circle at Big Space
Mitchell Davis, James Beard Foundation, hosts a food circle on Fogo Island

Learn More about our Foodways Program. 

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Know your neighbours, know yourself,” a conversation between Zita Cobb & Michael Bungay Stanier.

Article
May 12, 2023

Recently, Shorefast’s founder & CEO, Zita Cobb, joined Michael Bungay Stanier on his podcast MBS Works to read two pages from one of her favourite books—The Third Pillar —and talk about the importance of community, economic dignity, and finding the right people to help create real change.

Recently, Shorefast’s founder & CEO, Zita Cobb, joined Michael Bungay Stanier on his podcast MBS Works to read two pages from one of her favourite books—The Third Pillar —and talk about the importance of community, economic dignity, and finding the right people to help create real change.  


Written by Raghuram Rajan, The Third Pillar, was foundational to the creation of Shorefast’s first national initiative – a Community Economies Pilot that focused on discovering the key levers and interventions to strengthen local economies.  

“If we can put community at the centre of the economy, there’s a seat for everyone to be there.” -Zita Cobb 

Listen to the full conversation here: 

Know Your Neighbours, Know Yourself: Zita Cobb [reads] ‘The Third Pillar’ » Michael Bungay Stanier (MBS)

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Zita’s Story

Article

Zita Cobb was born on Fogo Island in 1958, part of the eighth generation in her family to call the island home. Forced to leave after the collapse of the inshore cod fishery, she and her family ended up in Ontario, Canada where she studied business in Ottawa. Following a subsequent successful career in high-tech, Zita returned to Fogo Island and established Shorefast in 2004 with two of her siblings, Alan and Anthony Cobb.

The story of her early life inspired the National Film Board of Canada’s immersive, interactive film in 2021 called Far Away from Far Away.

You can experience it here or Far Away From Far Away (nfb.ca)

Listen to Far Away from Far Away here

Far Away From Far Away marks the next phase in the National Film Board of Canada’s continuing relationship with the people of Fogo Island.

More than 50 years ago, a film crew led by Colin Low headed to the island to shoot a series of short videos
and films as part of a larger project known as Challenge for Change.

Learn More Here

Don’t miss these stories about Zita and Fogo Island

View More
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Cauliflower Thinking

Article

Fogo island is a small floret with big stories. Here, we share these stories to present varying views on life, work, and art on this island of the North Atlantic. But first, why a cauliflower?

Why a cauliflower? Shorefast Founder Zita Cobb first encountered a cauliflower after moving away from Fogo Island and it was just about the most exotic food she’d ever seen. Its structure fascinated her and it eventually became a symbol for Shorefast’s community economies theory.

The noble cauliflower is a fractal and its differently-sized florets make up a repeating pattern of beautiful clusters: some big, some small. The stem of the cauliflower directs nutrients to the individual florets. 

At Shorefast, we think about the planet and its individual places as a cauliflower. Communities are the florets, with small places like Fogo Island comprising the little florets, and big places like New York City comprising the larger ones. The stem of the cauliflower is representative of our economic systems, which, when they work as they should, hold us all together and channel nourishment to the florets to keep them thriving. When that stem becomes too self-serving, or prioritizes bigger florets over the little ones, the florets begin to suffer. 

Small places have been disappearing – in other words, small florets have been withering. When we practice business in a way that serves community and place, we ensure that the stem services the whole of the cauliflower. 

The stories told here remind us to think and act holistically and to consider the diverse lifestyles, viewpoints and experiences as making up the whole of our human experience.

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Zita Cobb joins thought leaders to discuss paradigm shifts in how we think about capital and the economy 

Article
March 21, 2023

In late February, Zita Cobb, Shorefast’s CEO & Founder, delivered the keynote address at the 2023 Sorenson Impact Summit. 

A platform for transformative change, the Summit encouraged speakers to consider how the impact investing community can supercharge innovative solutions for the world’s most pressing problems. Over the course of 4 days, top changemakers discussed how we can transform our economy to create a more just, equitable, sustainable, and prosperous future for all.  

Zita was able to share her unique point of view, and elaborate on Shorefast’s proof of concept developed on Fogo Island, as a way to prompt people to rethink how our economic systems can be rebuilt to be in service of place. 

“Asset-based community development is essential to every place. Humans often have a very shallow understanding of what economic development is and what our assets are. That has given rise to a world where people make investments, but they are not development. Development is about uplifting the inherent assets of a place.”

-Zita Cobb

Prior to speaking at the Summit, Zita answered questions on why “Place” is our most important economic gift. 

Read the Interview with Zita Cobb

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Exploring Seaweed Cultivation on Fogo Island

Article
December 7, 2022

Over the summer, Shorefast held a community and information consultation at the Lion’s Club in the community of Fogo to present on the progress of our Seaweed Pilot. The meeting, one of several held over the course of the Pilot, marked a year of exploration into the commercial viability of seaweed farming on Fogo Island. 

The Pilot, led by Shorefast and in partnership with Fogo Island Cooperative Society Ltd and local fishers, along with the support of our funding partners Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation and the Marine Institute at Memorial University, involves understanding whether seaweed can grow reliably in different areas around Fogo Island with the ability to produce enough harvest to make it practical to pursue as a new market diversification product. Nascent business exploration has indicated that small-scale production of seaweed products would fit well with the high-value and niche market that seaweed draws. If seaweed cultivation is successful, the Pilot has the potential to be a scalable diversification opportunity for many parts of Atlantic Canada.

Shorefast’s environmental stewardship coordinator is featured on CBC’s The Broadcast talking about the potential for seaweed cultivation on Fogo Island

Listen Here

An important part of Shorefast’s work under the banner of Environmental Stewardship is to find new ways to create economic opportunity for our community while relying on the inherent knowledge and geographic assets already in place. Crucially, seaweed is a sustainable, plant-based nutritional food that has economic and environmental benefits: growing seaweed is environmentally regenerative and adds to the health of the marine ecosystem, while also capturing carbon. Most published literature suggests that aquaculture – including seaweed – enhances lobster stocks in the vicinity, a relationship that dovetails well with our community’s strong fishing economy.

At the meeting in August our environmental stewardship coordinator and other community engagement facilitators fielded questions and feedback about the next steps of the project with many community members showing interest in getting involved with the initiative. The group, as well as Shorefast and its partners, is enthused by the notion of Fogo Island becoming a pioneer in seaweed cultivation along the North Atlantic coast.

In the current phase of the project, seaweed test plots have been mapped around the island and we are preparing to deploy test lines that will be regularly monitored. Recent results look promising and if all goes well, we anticipate being able to harvest the seaweed in the summer of 2023; at this point we will have a greater understanding of the opportunity going forward.

As part of our efforts to build a market, Fogo Island Inn’s kitchen has been experimenting with potential food products that could result from a seaweed harvest. Two recent small-batch products, which can be found on display at the Orange Lodge on Fogo Island, include Black Kelp Mustard and Sea Buckthorn Sauce. Tim Charles, Executive Chef of the Fogo Island Inn, says the condiments can be paired with anything, but, of course, he highly recommends them with cod!

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