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Note: Picture shows store after restoration.
Mr. Martin’s Store in Kingman’s Cove, Fermeuse is one of a handful of traditional fisheries buildings remaining on the Southern Shore. In her travels around the province Mr. Martin’s daughter Margaret Best noted the numbers of fisheries sites in places like Change Islands and felt that it was important to save her family’s store. “Because of the changing face of fishing, small fishing stages and store lofts may not currently be the structures that the industry requires,” says Margaret, “but that does not keep us all from wanting and needing to preserve what is part of our culture.”
The store was built in 1950 by Martin Walsh across from his family home. It was used to house fishing gear for Mr. Martin’s trapping enterprise while the lower floor served as a workshop for the repair of skiffs, punts and dories. The store was later used by Mr. Martin’s son and son-in-law for the baiting of trawls and mending and storing gill nets.
In 2005 Margaret decided to apply for restoration assistance under the Fisheries Heritage Preservation Program to make some much needed repairs to her father’s store. By the fall of 2006 the building had been jacked up and several new shores installed. The roof had been resurfaced, the ramp leading to the second storey had been repaired, several windows had been replaced and a new door frame and door completed on the ocean facing side. The entire exterior was also repainted a light grey, the original colour of the store. The project resulted not only in the stabilization of Mr. Martin’s Store but allowed his wife Betty and eleven sons and daughters the opportunity to protect a part of their family’s past and their community’s heritage.
