On the easternmost point of Labrador's coast sits rocky Battle Island, roughly a mile long and a half mile wide. Beginning in the 18th century, clapboard and shingle buildings were constructed around its natural harbor. Built by sea-faring merchants from England and Newfoundland, materials had to be shipped to this treeless outport. Subject to rain, ice, gales, sea spray, and a destructive fire in 1930, only a few of the original buildings remain, including Harry Jones's 1908 house that once served as the rectory minister's home next to the island's historic Anglican Church.

Residents mostly worked in the fishing trade and, until the 1992 cod moratorium (due to overfishing), migrated to the islands off the coast for the summer fishing season. Jones, his wife Marjorie, and son Jim lived in the house when Harry tended the Battle Harbour general store and worked on the wharves during the months when salted cod and salmon were picked up by freighters and shipped overseas. Like many Labradorians, their winter home was on the mainland, in Mary's Harbour, up a sheltered bay protected from the frozen shores of the Labrador Sea between Greenland and the Canadian Arctic.

In 1978, when I first stepped onto the harbor's wharf, I stepped into a vestige of Labrador's past in a territory undergoing enormous cultural change. This small outpost, with its few residents, was a living part of the province's history. The two-story house's varnished wood paneling, board and batten walls, and colorful linoleum and paint adhere to the traditional style of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. Jim Jones, who spoke with recently and has kept the house since the passing of his parents, says this upstairs guest bedroom appears, even today, essentially the same as shown in this photograph.