By Patrick Newhook/January 27, 2022
St. Shott’s might be small in size, but it’s big in character.
Hidden at the very bottom of the Irish Loop, at the end of a long road running from a little used highway, the tiny community of some 66 people (according to the 2016 Census) occupies a rocky cove that is wind-swept and often shrouded in molasses thick fog.
The waters off the community are known as ‘The Graveyard of the North Atlantic’ for the many shipwrecks that occurred there. Some homes still have furniture that were salvaged from wrecks. Like all towns along the loop, St. Shott’s has a unique history, and some different street and area names.
Take White Stick Hill. As the name implies, it’s a hill that’s also the entrance to the community with several other roads attached to it.
Ricky Myrick is a resident of St. Shott’s and has lived there all his life. Myrick worked for years in the offshore oil industry, but always returned to what he called home.
According to Myrick, legend has it that White Stick hill had a different name at one point.
“It’s believed it was originally referred to as Wide Steep Hill, and somehow through quick (local) pronunciation over the years it got referred to as White Stick Hill,” said Myrick.
There are different theories about how the change happened.
“There’s one prevalent theory behind that,” Myrick said, “involving speed limits and road signs… the Department of Highways back in maybe the 50’s or the 60’s would’ve put up speed limit signs into the community, and that was on a white stick, so that might’ve had some influence on how it got changed or adapted from Wide Steep Hill.”
It’s not just the roads that have unique names. It’s the areas along the shore as well. Sitting between the Cape Pine Lighthouse and St. Shott’s is the Scrape Shore.
Myrick believes the term ‘Scrape’ comes from a steep foot path.
“There is a scrape on the inner edge of that shore in a cove that’s called Arnold’s Cove,” said Myrick Cape Pine lighthouse is located just east of St. Shott’s and the Scrape Shore. It is only accessible through a foot path from St. Shott’s. Myrick describes the path as being steep along the river.
“On the western side of the cove, after you cross the river, you have to come up over this steep cliff. It’s where the riverbank transitions into the cliff from the riverbank from going up the river to cliff going out the shore. This is where people would climb up over and they made this kind of path in the cliff with pick and shovel and that’s passable on foot at least,” he explained.
Myrick believes it has something to do with the steepness of the path. ‘So that shore is named in association with this scrape which is part of the footpath. So that’s how the Scrape Shore got its name, because on one end of that shore you have ‘the Scrape’ which is a passage.”
Myrick also pointed out that there’s more than one scrape in the area. “It’s a scrape, and we have a couple different scrapes around here and they’re similar in how they’re placed because the other one I am thinking about is also in another cove several kilometres away,” he said. “It’s where you go down in the cove and it’s a very steep footpath. So, the people who named it associated this wharf, or scrape, with a passage deep down into a cove, a steep embankment. So that’s the Scrape, and then the shoreline immediately adjacent to that became known as the Scrape Shore.”
Meanwhile, other mysteries remain, like where the community’s name came from. Was there actually a Saint named Shotts? Apparently not. The word shotts is a derivative from the ancient Anglo Saxon term for “steep slopes,” but there is no reference to that in Newfoundland. According to research published in the magazine Decks Awash in 1981, the community’s name comes from the French ‘cap de Chincete,’ which means “little rag” and it’s first known appearance in relation to St. John’s was on a 1544 map. An English map dated 1690 refers to St. Shotts as “Sanshot,” the magazine reported, “while another (map) called the place ‘Chinckhole’ in 1715. Captain James Cook’s map of 1770 offers two names: St. Shot and Chink Hole, of which only the former survived in common usage.”
