When Zita Cobb was 10, her hometown almost disappeared. Not just her hometown, but all of the communities on Fogo Island, the island off Newfoundland where Cobb was born in 1958. The crisis was triggered by the collapse of the nearshore cod fishery, a resource that had sustained her ancestral community since the 17th century.
In response, the Newfoundland government proposed to resettle the population to other parts of the province — or somewhere. “I remember my parents whispering in the night, and my mother saying, ‘What’s going to happen to us? Where are we going to end up?’ And my dad saying, ‘I don’t know.’ It’s terrifying for a child,” Cobb remembered during a recent interview.
“They had no running water, no electricity. They had little health care and no roads. And suddenly — there was no fish,” Cobb said.
“There was a real risk of starvation.” But the communities of Fogo Island formed a cooperative and asked the government’s support to build a small shipyard so they could build boats that would allow them to fish farther offshore. And it worked.
The people of Fogo Island were not resettled. And they did not starve. In 2013, Cobb drew on that same innovative community spirit in establishing the luxury Fogo Island Inn, which has since earned “three keys” from the Michelin Guide.
Cobb says that the inn is an expression of the island’s culture — in everything from the way guests are greeted right off the ferry to the ingredients used.