Tinker's Foggy Island Chowder

I was headed out of Quebec via the Gaspé Peninsula that runs along the St. Lawrence River and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence; the route is a road tripper's delight! It winds through picturesque villages hugging the water's edge before doubling back on itself and leaving you at the border of New Brunswick.

 First, however, I had a problem to solve. I’d had a rear tire sent to Montreal, but with all the maple madness going on, I’d never had a chance to get it installed. There always seems to be a bit of traveler's magic floating around me though. I had met a guy in the airport parking lot in Ottawa as he spotted Angie and I pulling out on the tiny 250cc bike with all my gear, plus Angie's bag tied on the back. He flagged us down with his orange safety vest on like he was running a parking lot baggage check. The guy looked at all of our gear, laughed, and asked what we were up to, looking like the Clampetts on tour…a throwback reference for anyone reading this who was born after the 1980s.

The orange-vested man was part of a Quebec-wide adventure motorcycle group, said if there was anything he could do to help he would, and proceeded to put me in touch with his online group of biker friends. A few weeks later, here I was in need of a last-minute tire swap and now had some biker “friends” to reach out to. I got a response from Stephane Guertin who happily invited me over. On arrival, Stephane made me lunch, gave me a beer, helped change my tire, and even offered me a place to stay for the night, incredible! There is not a mechanic shop in the country with that kind of service.

    The highlight of the day was when I sat at his kitchen counter for an after-tire beer and spotted Stephane's helmet staring back at me. He’d had an image of his face inside a visor put on a sticker and had this stuck on the back of his helmet. Riding down the road, Stephane was staring back at anyone behind him, haha, hilarious!

    After rolling out of Stephane’s and later the Gaspé Peninsula on fresh rubber, I was on a mission to uncover New Brunswick’s amazing Acadian culture. As well as the Acadians, I also wanted to find some historically significant people, places, and dishes unique to New Brunswick. To start, I set my sights on Campobello Island, one of the lesser traveled routes in the province as stop number one. What I found on this tiny island was a storybook setting with some regionally magnificent food at the end of a quaint gravel road named for the locals who’d settled there.

Campobello Island is tucked in southwestern New Brunswick within walking distance to Maine, USA. The location is isolated just enough to maintain its charm, relatively unbothered by either country. The 39.6 square kilometer island has no road connection with mainland Canada and you only have two options to get there. During the summer, you need to take two separate ferries (which is how I arrived), or it can be accessed by first crossing into the US, then re-entering via the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge from Lubec, Maine. This is the only winter option. With no fuel stations on the island, I ended up using the bridge to the US one afternoon to fill up, returning thirty minutes later only to realize I had not been carrying my passport on this trip, whoopsies. 

    The island has a lengthy history, having traded ownership numerous times over the years. In the 1880s it was developed as a resort destination for affluent Americans and Canadians, attracting such families as the Roosevelts who had property here and made it their summer residence for years to come. Today, the unique Roosevelt Campobello International Park is the only park in the world owned and managed by both the USA and Canada.

     Those are the headlines, however, I came looking for families and food with historical significance to the Island that couldn’t be found on tourist brochures. With a bit of research and a lot of questions, I was able to track down Mrs Tinker at nowhere other than the aptly named Tinkers Lane. A family with enough lineage on the island to live down a road named in honour of them. I’m not sure where you live, but I have not been living in my neighborhood long enough to have my own street named after me.

With a large part of the island's population employed in the fishing industry and having read that Campobello Island was known for its lobster rolls; a sort of upscale sub stuffed with a mix of lobster, mayo, and seasonings, I asked around about where I could find the best version of this local delicacy. This landed a lukewarm response and directed me to some island eateries. It wasn’t until a local explained to me that the blue-collar population was more likely to sell the lobster and eat dishes like salt fish and chowders. Once I knew what to look for, the local knowledge and assistance came in like a fresh haul of haddock. Then just like that, I had an in with one of the locals, and after first vetting me for nefarious intentions, Blair Tinker put me in touch with his mother, Mrs Tinker of Tinkers Lane.

After a couple of days exploring the island, the parks, and visiting some of the fog-shrouded lighthouses that can only be accessed at low tide, I woke up this particular morning in the Herring Cove Provincial Park, located at the foot of an ancient spruce forest. The air was cool, and like a lot of mornings around here, a thick fog had rolled in. It felt like I had to wade my way through the atmosphere to get from my tent to the picnic table to make breakfast and organize the cold camera gear before heading to Tinkers Lane.

After a couple of days exploring the island, the parks, and visiting some of the fog-shrouded lighthouses that can only be accessed at low tide, I woke up this particular morning in the Herring Cove Provincial Park, located at the foot of an ancient spruce forest. The air was cool, and like a lot of mornings around here, a thick fog had rolled in. It felt like I had to wade my way through the atmosphere to get from my tent to the picnic table to make breakfast and organize the cold camera gear before heading to Tinkers Lane.

While the sun rose, the last rumbling echoes of the island's fog horn I’d been hearing throughout the night rolled across the island. Finally, the thick grey mist began to evaporate as I rode the main route to Tinkers Lane. Here, near the end of the gravel road, I spot the steps of a little red cottage with a red swing, matching red flowers, and a hand-painted wooden sign that reads - There’s No Place Like Home. The front door creaks open and with it comes a warm Hello from a delightful grandmotherly-looking lady with a peculiarly colorful accent influenced by Eastern Canada, island life, and American neighbors.

I stepped inside the warm cottage, and the scent of baking filled the air like the island fog; my camera gear instantly began to steam up. Inside, the house has a notable chicken theme, with hen-painted flour and sugar containers, a rooster paper towel dispenser, a chicken teapot, rooster salt and pepper shakers, and every other chicken accent you might imagine. Sylvia says they tried to count all of the chicken trinkets one day, and after reaching a hundred, they called it quits.  

I pull up a chair at the table while Sylvia sits on the seat of her walker and we get right down to the details of Campobello cuisine and what it was like to grow up in this somewhat isolated part of the country. Sylvia says this is a wonderful place to live, and to confirm my assumptions, the Tinkers have lived here on this part of the island so long that it was only natural that this road was named in honour of them. 

Sylvia says her grandfather was a fisherman and her father was a fisherman, so they grew up eating fish and a lot of it! She notes they regularly ate; Fried fish, boiled fish, chowdered, smoked, you name it. They ate so much fish as a kid that she fondly recounts the time her father was away and had come back from a trip with macaroni. Her and her siblings had never seen macaroni before and thought it was such a treat to eat this rare dried pasta. I can feel my brain sifting through my childhood memories, trying to remember if there would have even been a time when there wasn’t a box of macaroni, specifically Kraft Dinner in our cupboard. KD and I knew each other well.

With a lifetime of well-tested fish recipes to choose from, today I’m treated to a recipe that's circled through this dining room for decades, Tinkers Foggy Island Chowder. Built on the back of what was available at the time, the main ingredients are potatoes, onions, butter, canned Carnation milk, salt pork, and fish. Today we’re using Pollock as Sylvia says it's a bit denser than Haddock​ and holds up better in the chowder. She says the ingredients were based on what you could get at the time and a lot of households would have had a little garden for the veggies and likely a pig, but fresh milk was hard to come by so families used canned milk. Back then, she says, the main ingredient fish, was plentiful, plentiful – Sylvia repeats the word twice, I’m assuming to make it very clear that today's resources are fading faster than real home cooking. 

She emphasizes that even in the winter you had salt fish that could be used. 
What is salt fish? I ask.
 She pauses as though she's never been asked to answer a question that everyone knows the answer to. Sylvia repeats the title, which doubles as the recipe salt fish, like asking what the recipe is for a grilled cheese sandwich.
 She proceeds to explain that in the fall locals would often salt the fish to preserve it, then soak it in water to un-salt it to then eat it in the winter. Where I grew up, if you wanted fish in the winter, you either drilled a hole in a frozen lake and went fishing or your fish came breaded in sticks from a blue box via Captain Highliner. 

We sit at the chicken-accented table while Sylvia walks me through the recipe. First potatoes are peeled and cubed; the amount is determined by the number of people you plan to feed, in our case, the two of us plus leftovers. Next, a small white onion is cut into smaller cubes and added to the potatoes. Everything is then put in a pot, covered with water, and brought to a boil. Once the potatoes are soft, she adds the fish, some seasoning, and salt pork that was frying in a cast iron pan. 

We chat a bit while she stirs this and measures that, and into the pot goes some butter, real butter not margarine, she is clear to point out, then finally the Carnation milk. Sylvia says you could use cream, but this is how she learned to make it, with canned milk. She allows the milk to heat up, but not boil. 

While all this is happening, Sylvia tells me a bit about her life and what it was like to grow up in this part of the world. She was born over the bridge in the USA, like a lot of people here were, and even one of her sons was born there. The 274 meter long Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Bridge that connects Campobello Canada to Lubec USA has seen a lifetime of Canadian-raised, American-born individuals who call Canada home but have a rooted connection to the US. 

She talks about her pastimes as a kid and how her grandfather once bought her a dinghy to use in the ocean. He’d made her a half-sized lobster trap to go lobster fishing but just the right size so she could handle the weight. She would row out after school and check the trap: and says she would always have a lobster or two, but the days of hobby lobster catching are long gone. These days, that little girl would likely find herself caught in some legal trouble without a lobster licence. 

Sylvia eventually became Mrs Tinker, and she and her husband used to harvest and cook together; one of their regular outings was clamming. Utilizing a “clam hack” to dig up the clams before turning them into a clam pie! A savory dish with a thick crust, stuffed with potatoes, onions, and clams. My list of things to try is growing with each of her stories.

Mr Tinker has since passed away from cancer, and the brightly colored sign on the way in, “There’s No Place Like Home” was a favorite saying of his. Sylvia has been giving that sign a fresh coat of paint every year for the last eighteen years.

    About forty-five minutes have passed, and she finally lifts the chowder lid while a creamy steam escapes into the kitchen, and she ladles out a large portion of chowder into a colorful yellow bowl served on a rooster placemat. Then out comes a plate of fresh baking powder biscuits she’d hand-crafted earlier at the suggestion of her son Blair, who made it clear that no one should be eating chowder without a fresh biscuit!  

 The chowder is meaty, rich, and incredibly hearty. I can’t believe how much the meal complements the environment. I can picture myself coming off a long day hauling in fishing nets out on the open ocean with my hands aching and a full body chill after the brash sea air had been cutting through my clothes all day. Then rolling inside this quaint, steamy cottage at the end of Tinkers Lane to a hot bowl of hearty chowder. I feel like I’m part of some fisherman's fairy tale story that’s been read to me as a child. 

Then, as I think we’ve reached the zenith of this grand-motherly moment my foggy daze is broken by the sound of Mrs Tinker bumping into the fridge door with her walker, proclaiming; Well, since you’re here, you might as well have some blueberry pie too. The island is famous for wild blueberries, and I happen to be in the right house at the right time to try some…lucky me! 

My gawd, homemade fish chowder, baking powder biscuits, and now a one-pound slice of wild blueberry pie. This foodie fairytale of epicurean enchantment has only one downside: it’s that this whole story eventually had to end.

As I wind my way past the enchanting lighthouses and onto one of the two ferries that will take me back to the mainland, I find it fascinating how two people can grow up in the same country with such incredibly different lifestyles. If a clam pie hit the family dinner table when I was a kid, we would have all stared at it, wondering what clams were and how they got into this pie that should be stuffed with apples and sugar. And I’m sure if Captain Highliner found his way into Sylvia's freezer as a kid, they would wonder where this blue box came from and when fish started growing like sticks. 
Thank you Sylvia for welcoming me into your home, for your gracious hospitality and for showing me some of the unique charm of Campobello Island.   

Recipe: 

• 5 medium sized potatoes 
• 1 small white onion 
• 1 cup canned Carnation milk
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 2 lbs Pollock
• 6 oz salt pork
• 2 tbsp butter

First peel and cube potatoes, 1”x1”. Next, cut the onion into ¼” x ¼” cubes. Add them both to a medium sized pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil on high. Once it starts to boil, turn it down to medium for 20 minutes. 

Once the potatoes are soft, cut the fish into chunks about twice the size of the potatoes and put them into the pot for 10-15 minutes until cooked. Don’t overcook the fish or it will fall apart. Once it comes to a boil, add 1 tsp of salt, wait 5 mins and add 1 tsp of black pepper. 

Next, trim the rind from the pork and slice the meat into about ½” thick slices and fry in a cast iron pan for 4-5 mins until almost cooked, let's call it al dente. Then dump the salt pork and grease in with the fish and let it cook for another 5 mins so the flavor of the pork can cook into the fish and potatoes. 

Finally, add  2 tbsp of butter, allowing it to melt, then add 1 cup of canned milk and one more tsp of pepper. On medium heat allow the milk to heat up, but not boil. A few minutes later it's ready to go. 

Serve on a cool day with good stories and rooster napkins.
* Sylvia noted the chowder is really good when it’s done, but like a lot of dishes, it’s better the next day *