Secular Jones Visits St. Jones Within

SHOW NOTES ▬

I take a day trip to a community with my last name, but a name that’s not the name of a saint: St. Jones Within ▬ 

Sources: 

→ Blue Star Juniper. “St. Jones Within.” YouTube, Apr. 26, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkQ8bosW5Ik. ||

→ Chris Anderson. “St. Jones Within.” YouTube, Deb. 11, 2021, https://youtu.be/t0LGLHGw9bM?si=HseRQMxJgg35LCb9. ||

→ Juanita Mercer. “Rural Reality: Finding Serenity—and Change—in the Small N.L. Community of St. Jones Within.” Saltwire, July 17, 2024, https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/lifestyles/rural-reality-finding-serenity-and-change-in-the-small-nl-community-of-st-jones-within-100980117/. ||

→ “Saints & Angels.” Catholic Online, https://www.catholic.org/saints/. ||

→ South West Arm Historical Society. “St. Jones Within.” South West Arm Historical Society,  https://swahsociety.com/communities/histories/st-jones-within. ||

→ “St. Jones Within.” Decks Awash, vol. 15, no. 6, Nov.–Dec. 1986, p. 7, https://collections.mun.ca/digital/collection/cns_decks/id/5022. 

→ “St. Jones Within, Newfoundland.” Facebook,  https://www.facebook.com/groups/5390826529/. ||

→ Statistics Canada. Census Profile, 2016 Census: Hillview-Adeytown-Hatchet Cove-St. Jones Within. Updated July 12, 2024. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=DPL&Code1=100374&Geo2=PR&Code2=10&SearchText=Hillview-Adeytown-Hatchet%20Cove-St.%20Jones%20Within&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&GeoLevel=PR&GeoCode=100374&TABID=1&type=0. ||

→ Wayne Jones, Photos of St. Jones Within, August 17, 2024, Google Photos, https://photos.app.goo.gl/tCgXVh3MRKJaNnJ49. ||

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Transcript

I finally took a day trip last Saturday to a place I’ve always been curious about since I was young, given my last name. St. Jones Within. It’s about 90 km from my home town of St. John’s “as the crow flies,” as they say, but as the mid-sized sedan drives it’s about twice that distance. The crow would head northwest and have to cross two bays to get there directly, and by car you have to drive southwest, then northwest, then north, and finally east on a road off the main highway that’s equal parts paved, dirt, and potholed, finally arriving at St. Jones Within on the northern side of a harbour off Trinity Bay.

The name of the place intrigued me for two other reasons. One is that there is no St. Jones. I checked the list on Catholic Online, and, alas, there is nobody listed between Saints Jonatus and Jorandus. (Just as a side note, I have petitioned the Vatican to be named as a saint myself. It’s a long process, but one of the criteria is that there be evidence of having performed two miracles. I’ve listed my uncanny ability to prevent my eyes from rolling completely back into my head when the Pope talk about ethics and morality, but that has been summarily rejected by the committee. It’s going to be a long struggle.)

The other reason I was intrigued by the name of the community is that I remember clearly that when I was growing up in Newfoundland in the 1970s and 1980s, the highway sign listed not only St. Jones Within but also St. Jones Without. It turns out there’s an explanation for one of these things but not for the other. The Within and Without were distinguishing two separate communities. As one source puts it:

The “Within” is to distinguish it from the “Without”; St. Jones Without (referred to elsewhere as Outside) being ‘out’ nearer the bay, and St. Jones Within (Inside) being more ‘in’ (distant) from the bay.”

The St. part of the name is apparently still a mystery, or, as the source puts it succinctly, “without known explanation.” The place apparently used to be called Jones’ Harbour, named after some Jones brothers who wintered there around 1840.

It is a really pretty place, basically a community in the middle of a forest and with a beautiful clean harbour around which most of the houses are built. Abundant Nature. If you love only the hustle and the bustle of Toronto, or even of St. John’s, then this is likely not the place for you. A journalist visited there just last month, and reports that St. Jones Within has a population of 70 (yes, 70) full-time residents, mostly senior couples or seniors living solo.

Almost everything I read about St. Jones Within mentioned the poor quality of the road leading to it from the main highway. And they have a point. It’s 15 km of slowing down for some stretches, and swerving around the really damaged parts. It makes me wonder how the politics and the lobbying for such an obvious repair work in the area. There are some total repavings here and there but they are short and rare. Does the provincial Member of the House of Assembly simply ignore any pleas because he’s only going to be losing 70 votes, tops? One of the saddest photos I took—check the show notes to see it and many more—was of a sign that read CAUTION POTHOLES AHEAD, on which someone had scrawled, like a hostage begging for relief, FIX ME. (That Member of the House turns out to be a member of the opposition BTW, which may explain a few things. His name is Lloyd Parrott and the district is called Terra Nova, but during the whole time he’s been a member since 2019, the Liberal Party, and not his Conservative Party, have been in power. It may be a long wait for those road repairs.)

The community lacks a few other things, too. The journalist who wrote the story last month was actually born in St. Jones Within, and she says:

There’s no school here anymore. I was the youngest pupil educated here when it closed in the early 1990s. At the time of its closure, there were nine students. There’s no shops or stores. The softball field is gone, but a small playground now exists in its place. There is a United Church, but services are now biweekly, and residents worry that soon—likely within months—it will be shuttered, too.

I took a picture of that church as well, and maybe not surprisingly it looks exactly as it does in an archival photo I’ve seen. If the place is still standing, then why renovate anything? In passing, I like the practicality of the services now being every two weeks. It’s either that the congregation has decided that they will worship in their homes on the off week, or that they’ve decided that God gets enough attention already, so not remembering the sabbath and keeping it holy (Exodus 20:8) may not be the worse sin in the world.

As I mentioned, this is a pretty town, nestled among trees and close to water. I’m not sure I could live there though. It’s not that it’s so far away from St. John’s, but that with only 70 fellow residents, I imagine you’d be kind of obliged to befriend or at least get to know by first name everyone in town. I like my solitude and my privacy, and I keep my cranky-old-man card in my cellphone case, so I might not fit it. Seriously speaking, though, there must be a psychology to communities this size, where it’s expected that you participate, as if it were just a large family. I wonder if anyone who lives there is an outlier, a man living solo and perhaps with his house away from the main drag. What would people think of him?

So, just a little historical information … the South West Arm Historical Society says that the first people to arrive in St. Jones Within were William George Blundon and his wife Elizabeth Ann, who moved there from Lower Island Cove around 1861. Lower Island Cove is about 50 km away, and at the time the Blundons would have had to travel by land across the Bay de Verde Peninsula and then by sea across Trinity Bay, all pretty much due west.

And St. Jones Within has been celebrated in song as well. Here are short snippets I found from two online. First, from a duo called Blue Star Juniper:

[musical excerpt]

And this one from a singer named Chris Anderson:

[musical excerpt]

So there you have it. I find that everything is interesting is you aren’t dismissive, but instead give it attention and observe it closely.