Fogo Island Inn, Joe Batt's Arm, Fogo Island, NF

Likely one of the most adventurous and decidedly non-culinary uses of pumpkins occurs every autumn in Windsor, Nova Scotia on the first Saturday in October. Since this is the home of both the Atlantic Giant Squash and the Atlantic Giant Pumpkin and since Canada is renowned for its paddling experiences, a group of somewhat wacky business people decided to have a pumpkin race!

Fogo Island Inn, Fogo Island, Newfoundland

The Fogo Island Inn may be a work in progress at this writing but by the end of 2012 it will be a world class destination for ecological and culinary tourism. It is one of a kind in Canada!

There’s no where else quite like Fogo Island which is home to Brimstone Head, one of the official four corners of the earth according to the Flat Earth Society. And, as this island is unique, I’ve honestly never met a woman like Zita Cobb, President and chief dream-meister of the Shorefast Foundation, the organization that has pulled together the funding and is building the inn.

“The fish is why we came here….it’s part of our songs, our stories…it’s part of us.” And fish for Zita, like it is for all Newfoundlanders, is ‘cod’. Just in case we needed to be reminded, she pointed to the wall on which the largest tile mural of a cod is embedded. Inside a modest frame building and her small, passionate staff are creating one of the most imposing inns anyone has ever attempted in Canada.

She holds forth as only a Newfoundlander can with a staccato lecture on her business plans. “Know your markets, know yourself. Resist mediocrity. Have a plan, adjust on the way…” And what a plan!

Fogo Island, first settled in the 1680′s and which only got electricity in 1971, sits on the edge of the Labrador current and Iceberg Alley. “It’s the only part of the world where people live with moving ice.” she explains and quickly adds, “We are a sealing people.” And fishing was central to that lifestyle. Fogo Island also happens to be one big berry patch. The indigenous food sources are incredible.

Zita, who left Fogo and her home in Joe Batt’s Arm to make a good living in the high tech industry, has come home and more than anything, her goal is to honour the stories of the island and share them with the world. She named her foundation ‘Shorefast’ after the tether that holds a cod trap to the shore. Her businesses (she has invested in Nicole’s Cafe and Growlers Ice Cream) are akin to that in economic terms. She quips “Beware of normalization.” There is no question that she thinks holistically and outside the proverbial box. She and Shorefast have built a series of extraordinary artists studios (Squish Studio is pictured at the bottom right) that all face the sea and are seemingly perched on rocks, much like the fishing stages of yore. They can only be reached across boardwalks that protect the plant-rich bogs. She helped to fund Todd Boland’s reference book on the Wildflowers of Fogo and Change Islands which, naturally, includes the island berries. (The introduction is by that Newfoundland icon, John C. Crosbie, another proud islander never lost for words.) The construction of the 29 room inn, designed by Todd Saunders / Saunders Architecture, has been respectful of the site and of local style.

During some time she spent in Ottawa, she met Chef Robert Bourassa while he was running the legendary Cafe Henry Burger’s in Hull which closed after 83 years in 2006. He is now the consulting chef for The Fogo Island Inn and insists that the dining experience will have a ‘sense of place’. To do that he has scoured old records and catalogued decades-old techniques from local cooks. He’s even done research into Beothuk ways of cooking. The menu will be a reflection of what’s on the land and from the ocean including some of the more unusual species like sculpin and grenadier and eel. There are tanks being designed for cod, crab, scallops and lobsters. There’ll be local lamb (It’s delicious!) and goat and game meats like caribou.

And all of this will be served in a dining room with walls of glass facing the drama of the North Atlantic ocean scape and the Little Fogo Island bird sanctuary, the tiny fishing community of Barr’d Islands and the incredible sunsets in the west.