Where You Will Stay

The E.J. Sooley House at Heart's Delight, Trinity Bay

The E.J. Sooley House is located on the Baccalieu Trail, one hour and fifteen minutes from St. John's.  The house and decor were featured in the spring edition of Canadian Home & Country Magazine. The 1930's outport house was originally built on the North East side of Heart's Delight harbour on Trinity Bay, and in 1937 the house was dismantled and brought over to its current site by four men on a railway push car, attached to a flatcar on which the pieces were loaded for transport. Edward J. Sooley, a railway employee, had purchased the partially completed house from its original owner and with the assistance of his three young boys and a neighbor known for his carpentry skills, reconstructed the house which you see today. Moving houses from place to place was apparently not an unusual activity for Newfoundlanders, although using the railway tracks to do so would have been. This one story structure was atypical for Trinity Bay at the time it was built, most house styles of fourth generation Newfoundlanders being two storey with central hall and flat roof. The original family home was of this traditional type and stood on the site of the current barn, closer to the water and the fish flake and store which are no longer there.  E.J. Sooley House Photo Gallery click here

The house is deliberately in keeping with traditional outport decor. It serves as a complete contrast to Hipditch House.  Iron beds, handmade dressers and washstands, linoleum floor cloths and wooden floors, all original to the house, along with vintage appliances, provide an authentic outport living experience similar to Heart's Delight in its heyday as a thriving fishing village. Three bedrooms at the back of the house face the ocean.  Two bedrooms have double beds, one bedroom has two twin beds.  A daybed resides in the kitchen. There is a deck with a BBQ that affords wonderful views of Trinity Bay. The sunsets are fantastic.

Population of Heart's Delight in 1990 was 868 people but recent out migration has left a community of fewer and older residents. The first census of Heart's Delight taken in 1836 show a population of 164 and the first census of Islington in 1845 has 36 people living there. Until the collapse of the northern cod fishery, cod fishing was the primary industry. Today very little exists in the local workplace. Sawmills, a Flower shop, Garages, Bed & Breakfast, and stores make up local industry.

Heart's Delight, like many other Newfoundland out port communities has different theories on how it received its name. None of these theories can be proven, but are traditionally accepted by people of the town. One theory was that a weary man traveling from Whitbourne looked the place over his heart was filled with delight and so on he went to name Heart's Desire and Heart's Content. Wherever it got its name, it is a picturesque community.

Although there are very few records or writings on any full-time residents or activities in the community of Heart's Delight before the 1800's, there are numerous indications that show it was inhabited long before that time.  There is a story that is told of the grave of a Frenchman buried in Islington during the early 1700's and the baptismal registers of the first Anglican Parish located at Trinity records surnames common to Heart's Delight and Islington from a period starting in 1753.  John Guy's visit to Trinity Bay in October 1612, when he landed at South Dildo, tells of Indians living in many coves and harbours along the bay.

Click here to see more pictures of the E.J. Sooley House and the Heart's Delight neighbourhood.