There can't be very many people around that have been down to folk club on a Wednesday evening and not heard Stan Pickett use the "F" word. Fair Island, that is (not the other "F" word). It doesn't take much prompting to get Stan to talking about the small island in north Bonavista Bay where he was born and grew up as a child.

In fact, Stan has talked about Fair Island so many times that I was starting to wonder whether or not he had actually grown up there or whether he'd dreamt the whole thing up. You know the expression, "thou protesteth too much Brutus" or similar. Maybe he'd seen some old photos of a bygone era and imagined his ancestors on this idyllic island round the bay, believing that he'd been there himself as a boy and fantasizing a simpler and better life, compared with the complexities of today's modern world.

So how could I refuse the offer of a trip up to this mystical island with Stan to check it out for myself? That's exactly what happened last Thanksgiving weekend when Stan and I made the trip up to his beloved Fair Island. Up at six in the morning and barely awake, heading west on the Trans Canada highway to Gambo, we stopped only a couple of times: once for a moose (to avoid hitting it) and once for a greasy “breakfast special” in Clarenville. After fortifying ourselves with artery-constricting saturated fats and ignoring the chest pains, we headed on to Centreville, where Clyde, an old family friend, took us the rest of the way by boat. The sun shone down on us and the waves were kind as we bounced and bobbed our merry way through the cod-depleted waters to our final destination. As it turns out, Stan had, in fact, been telling the truth; the island did exist and was, in every way, as beautiful as he’d said it was. So Stan, I take it all back and I’m sorry I ever doubted you!!

We set off on an archaeological survey and a visit to Stan's ancestral ghosts, while Clyde fired up the old wood stove in the cabin and put on the Jigg's dinner for later. The island was larger than I’d imagined, about two miles across, with the original settlement, or what was left of it, on the more sheltered, protected side. Only a few remnants of the original buildings and church existed: concrete footings, the odd chimney and the like. In their place, along the water’s edge were many neat little cabins. Sadly the landscape was changing: the flattened meadows that once housed sheep and goats, the many gardens and vegetable patches and root cellars, and even the wide gravel road though the centre of the village, had all been replaced with a tangly undergrowth, and even that was being replaced with the slowly descending tree line from the higher ground. The island had almost reverted back to its original state in a mere forty years as Mother Nature was reclaiming what was rightfully hers.

The settlement was divided into rooms or areas from the landwash up to the higher ground that contained several dwellings of an extended family. We located the original site of Stan's house, at the centre of the Pickett's room (not that there were any visible signs of there ever being a house there). The view from the old house would have been breathtaking and Stan, I'm sure, was consumed with many flashbacks and childhood memories.

Stan's ancestral home was the first one on the island to be moved and floated across the bay to Centreville, during the resettlement period. Eventually all the houses were moved, but being the first one to move was not without its difficulties, the least of which was the attitude of the community; they were deemed traitors, betraying the ones that were going to stay, leaving a sinking ship. Many hands were needed to pull the house down to the water and help was hard to find; family and friends avoided any direct contact and no doubt watched the spectacle from a safe distance.

We continued on a circular tour up to the cemetery on south west point, where the decaying headstones revealed and confirmed that there had been many Picketts on the island. The gravestones also revealed a harsher reality of life in the "good old days," especially for the women, many of whom died in their twenties during childbirth, and the children, many of whom didn't make it into adulthood. As well as Picketts, the headstones revealed the other family names: there were Hunts, Horlicks, Cutlers, Rogers, Ackermans, Ansteys, Browns and Nobles.

We headed on to Backside Cove, the Swamp, Green Head, the Big Hill, Aunt Beet's Head, the Calico Barrens and countless others (with similar romantic names). One in particular stood out - the Rock of No Denial - past which young women would think twice before going with their boyfriends, unless they were sure of their intentions. Back at the cabin, Clyde was getting impatient as well as hungry, and so were we.

For me the island was a monument to a past way of life; centralisation was a blessing for some and a curse for others’, but in the end, an inevitable conclusion, the end of an era. Growing up on a small isolated island obviously had a big affect on Stan and it left an indelible mark on his soul like a leaky sharpie on a white tee shirt. Stan is proud of his heritage and rightly so. He has a real connection with a real place, and his roots are steeped in real history. I have to admit to being somewhat jealous; my background is very much fragmented, my ancestors are scattered all over the world. I wouldn't know where to start the research for my genealogical tree. Stan’s, on the other hand, is firmly planted on his ancestral island.