Dean Ball

It takes a community. There are days on Little Bay Islands when the past does not feel gone. It only feels quiet, waiting for the right sound to call it back. Today, that sound was children. It came up the harbour road through the fog and damp air, mixed with laughter, voices, small engines, and the soft shuffle of people gathering. The day was mauzy, the kind of Newfoundland day when the sky hangs low and the hills seem to be holding their breath. The trees were heavy and green. The harbour was tucked in behind the houses. The old road, which has known so many footsteps, carried a little parade again. There were balloons tied to side-by-sides and ATVs. There were flags. There were people standing in the road, smiling in the drizzle, waving as if this small procession was something grand. And in its own way, it was. It was grand because it did not need much. A few vehicles. A few families. A few children. A few hearts willing to show up. That is how community begins again. Little Bay Islands has known silence. Since resettlement, we have grown used to quiet in a way few people understand. The quiet can be beautiful. It can be holy. It can settle over the land and water like a blanket. But there is another kind of quiet too, the kind that comes when a place has lost too many voices. The kind that makes you remember what used to be here. Doors opening. Mothers calling. Children running from house to house. Boats coming in. Men talking on stages and wharves. Church bells. School mornings. Summer evenings. The ordinary noise of a living place. For several summers now, that sound has begun to return. Younger couples have come and bought places here. They have brought children. And children change everything. They do not ask permission from sadness. They do not walk carefully around memory. They run through it. They climb over it. They make forts in it. They turn old roads into racetracks, beaches into kingdoms, and abandoned paths into adventures. They remind us that Little Bay Islands was always meant for wandering. I know this because I was once one of those children. I rambled these roads and hills. I explored coves and beaches and back lanes. I knew the freedom of a place where people watched out for one another, where a child could disappear into a summer day and come home hungry, dirty, tired, and happy. Those memories stayed with me when I left here and made my way in the world. They were not just memories of a place. They were a kind of shelter. They reminded me where I belonged. Now I am back home, and life has given me the strange and beautiful gift of making new memories in the same place that made me. Today’s parade was one of them. Not long ago, we had our Santa Claus Parade with only the four of us permanent residents. Four people, a few decorated machines, and enough foolishness and love to make it feel like the whole island had turned out. It was small, but it mattered. Maybe small things matter most here because they have to carry more meaning. A parade with four people on a resettled island is not just a parade. It is a declaration. It says we are still here. It says we still know how to laugh. It says the light has not gone out. Today, there were more than four of us. And what made it special was the children. They gave the day its brightness. Even with the fog. Even with the damp road and the grey sky. They brought a light the weather could not dim. You could see it in the faces of the adults too. Something softened. Something opened. The child in all of us stepped forward for a little while. We remembered the simple joy of decorating a vehicle, waving a flag, walking together, being seen, belonging. It takes a community to do that. Not a large one. Not a perfect one. Not one with committees and budgets and big plans. Just people willing to care for a place and for each other. People willing to come out in the fog. People willing to make something happen because it would be good for the children. People willing to believe that a resettled island can still have laughter on its roads. A community is not only measured by the number of people who live in a place year round. It is measured by the affection people bring back to it. It is measured by who shows up, who waves, who remembers, who helps, who makes room for children to be children. It is measured in small acts of belonging. As I participated in the parade today, I thought of that old Sunday School song - "This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine." I saw that light today. I saw it in the children. I saw it in the parents who brought them here. I saw it in the people who decorated their machines and came out to celebrate Canada Day a little late, because late is better than never when there is joy to be had. I saw it in the green hills, in the old houses, in the road curving around the harbour, in the stubborn beauty of this place. Little Bay Islands is still shining. Not loudly. Not the way it once did. But gently. Bravely. Like a lantern in a window on a foggy evening. Like a child’s laugh coming up the road. Like a small parade on a mauzy day, reminding us that what we love is not finished as long as we keep loving it.

#Sunrise at Little Bay Islands