PAGE 1/2

    There was another source of French blood on the peninsula. Agreements reached between France and England in 1884 and 1885 confirmed the right of the French to allow whole families to winter in the vicinity of French fishing installations, in order to watch over the facilities and keep them in good repair. These agreements simply confirmed what was already a well established practice. One must conclude that it was the presence of these families on the otherwise "uninhabited" peninsula, which allowed for the eventual establishment of true communities. The present-day village of Winterhouses no doubt indicates the dwelling place of former caretakers. The agreement probably explains, too, some of the ties between Newfoundland and St. Pierre families, ties which, not infrequently, have been maintained to this day.

    It was from this small number of deserters from France or St. Pierre, and the few French families whose presence was sanctioned, that were founded the villages of Cape St. George, Degras, Mainland, Winterhouses and Black Duck Brook. Following the establishment at St. George's, in the seventies, of a religious authority (which naturally exercised secular powers, too), several Acadian families left the Stephenville and St. George's region to resettle on the peninsula, where they might at least share a common language and culture with the French who were already there. The Acadians brought with them a few Micmac Indians, descendants of those who had come to Newfoundland at the time of the Placentia colony. It is known that the two groups often intermarried, and there are at least three families on the peninsula to whom oral tradition attributes Micmac blood. And finally, there came English and Scottish settlers to the area, although the peninsular French seem generally to have shunned intermarriage with anglophones until a fairly recentperiod.