The construction of the "Dole Road" began around 1935-36. It commenced at what was then known as "Cathouse Hill" near the present Fudge's Lane, went northward toward Bulley's Marsh and then swung westward toward the Two Mile Hill. Unfortunately no information is available as to how far it went, but possibly it linked up with an old rail-bed constructed nearly three decades earlier at a point somewhere in the valley east of Muir's Pond.

The Dole Road was a "cut and grubbed" road (or trail) part of which is still used, mostly by snowmobilers in winter-time.

The only purpose, known today, for the Dole Road's being built was to force people to work for their social assistance or "dole" as it was then derogatorily termed by those fortunate enough not to need it. Perhaps, too, many of those forced to avail of the "dole" were more than willing to work for it, rather than being looked down on and condemned as being lazy by their better-off peers. Thus the Dole Road was an early example of what is now labelled "workfare" and which is currently in vogue again in some jurisdictions in Canada.

The "dole" at that time was six cents per day per person. Thus a family of four would receive twenty-four cents per day (about $1.20 per week, or $5.00 per month). Keep in mind that the prices were lower and that there were far fewer demands on their finances that there are today.

The major household expenses were for such staples as: flour; molasses; tea; salt, and kerosene oil (which was used as a lamp fuel to light their homes). Most people raised their own: vegetables, chickens and other domestic animals for meat and dairy products, and some had their own apple trees, berry bushes and rhubarb patches, for preserves. Most, if not all, also picked sufficient wild berries to tide them over the winter (i.e. blueberries, partridgeberries, bakeapples, squashberries, raspberries, etc...) 

Local residents also hunted wild game in season (and sometimes not in season for which more than one was prosecuted) without having to buy licenses - game such as caribou, rabits, partridge, ducks, and geese. The sea provided more sustenance in various species of food fish, such as cod, salmon, herring, mackeral, caplin, lobsters, etc., as well as providing fertilizer for thie gardens in the form of kelp and caplin. No fishing or harvesting licences had to be purchased to catch these species.

Sometimes fish, game and produce was bartered for staple commodities. One interesting anecdoteconcering this practice was told of a local resident named James Gillingham, son of William Gillingham, one of the earliest settlers, and father of Walter Gillingham still living in his 90s in 2001. James used to hunt caribou on the ridge about 4-5 kms west of where the Alexander Murray Hiking Trail is located today. After a successful hunt, he would bring the caribou on his back, down through a gulch (gulley), in the Green Bay Fault Scrap (Ridge) at Crooked Brook, which was then known to local peopple as "Jimmy's Joggle". He would then lug the caribou all the way out to his home at King's Point and, when he needed flour for his family, would carry the caribou on his back all the way to Little Bay Mines, over some of the roughest terrain known to man, and sell it to buy other necessities of life for his family.

Much of the clothing worn by local residents were made from wools taken from their own sheep and spun into yarn by women using "spinning wheels", which they then knitted into socks, sweaters, mitts, caps, and even underwear (ouch!).

Everyone cut and hauled their own wood for heating fuel. They would haul it out by "hand-cat", dog team, or horse and slide. It would be cut with cross cut or buck-saws and/or axes, and sawed up and split using these same tools (usually by the boys and sometimes by the girls and women in the family). Everyone had to work in those days in order to survive.

There were no taxes to pay, and no utilities to pay for (no hydro, phone, cable, water, gasoline, insurance, or property tax bills). A gallon of kerosene would probably keep a family's lamp burning for a full month, especially since everyone usually went to bed shortly after dark and rose with the sun. Transportation, when required (there was far less travelling outside the community than today), was inexpensive and either by motorboat, rowboat, by horse and slide/cart, dog team, or on foot. Most transportation around the community was by "shank's mare" (on foot).

Except for a few patent medicines available from the local merchant(s), most cures and remedies were homemade from herbs and bushes grown locally or harvested from the woods and barrens or the sea - such items as juniper berries, cod-liver oil, tansy, elderberry tea, spruce tea, etc. Prescription drugs were unknown and the nearest medical facility, except for a brief time during the mining days at Pilley's Island, was the hospital at Twillingate, a long boat journey on the far side of Notre Dame Bay.

Even when all these factors are taken into consideration, the lives of the local people, especialy those who had to subsist on the "Dole" including those who had to work on the "Dole Road", were very hard, and many suffered ill-health then and in years later as a result of their deprivation in those times. There were few or no luxuries and little or no leisure time in their lives during the Great Depression of 1929-1939. This account is a tribute to those hard-working men who worked on the Dole Road for so little reward!

Contributor: Jim Card