Bringing the b'ys (back) to the Bay: mediating rural renewal in Codroy Valley, Newfoundland using a critical regionalist, ecomuseological praxis

Abstract

This thesis considers how tradition, broadly construed, and narrative shift through time, place, and context, and might be mobilized in a community-building project that seeks to avert sociocultural, economic, and ecological crisis in Codroy Valley of southwest Newfoundland. It focuses on residual desires and grievances of a consistently forestalled utopia by sketching a palimpsest of structures of feeling across time and space. Guided by the malleable form of the ecomuseum, a community-led "museum without walls," framed by critical regionalism, public folklore, and autoethnography, I underscore how custom and narrative may draw attention to commons, queerness, and posthumanism as antidotes to heteronormative, xenophobic, and ecophobic discourses and practices that devalue and endanger sense of place and belonging. I suggest that renewed attention to place in this framework may encourage a diversity of "b'ys," from past residents to newcomers, to build a desirable life in rural Newfoundland, or "the bay." Where this work enhances previous studies of rural renewal in Newfoundland and Labrador is in its 1. critical regionalist approach, connecting local material and discursive processes to larger-than-local narratives and phenomena; 2. use of autoethnography with critical theory, providing a convenient vantage point from which to analyze discourse critically and affectively; and 3. application of findings in a multimodal, public folklore project that builds community as participants negotiate identity, heritage, and wellbeing. Desirable outcomes include the revival and strengthening of ecologically/economically mindful narratives, customs, and art. Caveats related to objectification of culture and identity in the ecomuseum are tempered through phenomenological practices surrounding in situ interpretation, third space dialogue, and collaborative ethnography. My methodology lays interpretations out transparently to facilitate open dialogue that garners disparate and marginalized perspectives, builds grassroots praxis, encourages research, and, ultimately, decolonizes violent discourses. I urge ecomuseum practitioners to use this methodology in Codroy Valley and elsewhere. One year after I pitched the ecomuseum idea to residents in 2023, Codroy Valley Ecomuseum became a member of the Museum Association of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Association of Newfoundland and Labrador Archives. Today, it is managed by dozens of volunteers collecting, interpreting, and displaying their multifaceted heritage. This thesis is an addendum to their work.