Poor-Jack was thus made many times over, fashioned in a building that was determined by a number of needs. The constraints of an Anglo-American building vocabulary shaped the very form of the Newfoundland fish stage; the constraints of an efficient work space permitting speedy processing dictated the stage's configuration at the end near the water; the clean curing of fish determined its form as it stretched back over the land. Surrounding that work house were the built forms on which the cod were finally dried, shaped and positioned by the uncertainties of the weather. West Country and Irish settlers knew about haymaking, and they seemed to adapt some of that knowledge to the making of fish, both in terms of buildings and processes. Yet, the Newfoundland stage and flake remained distinctive built forms that finally had no counterpart in the agricultural landscape of the homeland. These structures remained as unique architectural developments of the ocean livelihood that has always been Newfoundland's reason for existence.

And today the final remnants of this tradition are seen on the Newfoundland landscape, the final forms in this long history of the Newfoundland architectural type. Certainly, all over the province in the past fifteen or twenty years, thousands of the last remaining stages and flakes have vanished. With the collapse of the salt fish industry, and the introduction of fish drying processes within fish plants that involve electric heaters, flakes are rarely seen.27 Most fish is now sold fresh, sometimes not even gutted, and quick frozen to be shipped to markets. Fish stages today are rarely used for their original purposes. The stages that remain in places like Fogo Island stand because of the need for a mooring place for boats in shallow harbours, as well as serving as storage buildings for gear. Those recently-built structures appear to be these last stages of Newfoundland tradition. Martin Hart's stage (figure 36)--the newest section built ten years ago, the older section twenty-five years old--is now used to store nets, and, in the spring, to assemble cod traps.

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(figure36) Martin Hart's stage, Deep Bay.

Bill Godwin's stage (figures 37 & 38), little more than a small room built from aspenite, houses his splitting table and a tiny salt pound.

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(figure37) Bill Godwin's stage and flake, Barr'd Island.

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(figure38) Plan of Bill Godwin's stage, Barr'd Island.

He uses this space only for assembling his gear before he loads it into his boat, and for splitting and salting the few fish that he processes for his own family's use each fall. He does most of his work in his store, and his stage seems far removed from those large eighteenth century fish factories that characterized so many areas around the island.

If Bill Godwin's stage is a typical example of what may be the last type of surviving fish structure used by the individual family, then for many Newfoundland outports, the community stage has partially taken over its role. In many places today, large public structures financed by the Federal and Provincial governments have been built and serve some of the functions of these earlier structures (figure 39).

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(figure39) Dan Greene's stage, Tilting, with the Community Stage in the background on the left.

Boats are often no longer tied up at individual family-owned water spaces, but at the stage that everyone shares. Splitting tables may be found along the edges of these stages, and the minimal amount of processing--gutting and heading--often takes place there before the fish are shipped fresh to the local processing plant. These stages may also have spaces where men work on the daily task related to their fishing: hooking up and baiting trawls, or tending to minimal jobs relating to nets.28

The central reason for Newfoundland's existence has been played out on its stages for generations, the drama changing its plot as the economy reflected the particular ways in which it was thought proper to process fish. Stages developed as an efficient space, strategically situated in the community, and were designed to rapidly process the huge glut of fish that marked Newfoundland summers for the past five hundred years. The stages themselves drew on an architectural tradition relating to existing building forms; in many cases, people built the same size structures--one as their own house, and one as a house for Poor-Jack. In fact, over time, although built perhaps of a more fragile technology, a family stage actually contained more space than the family house (figures 40 & 41).

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(figure40) Leslie Coles' stage, Deep Bay.

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(figure41) Plan of Leslie Coles' stage, Deep Bay.

The largest buildings owned by a family were not to house humans but to house fish, and during part of the year the family all but lived in this stage.

Today, the stage is in many ways an anomalous building that has disappeared from most communities all over the island. Yet, ironically, it has often been replaced by community stages--places where the material world of fishing must collectively focus. Earlier stages of Newfoundland's culture crumble and disappear, yet they were a product of individual and family enterprises, when each household by necessity had to build and maintain this work space. The advent of the community stage indicates, in part, not what some have seen as the increasing individualization of our culture and its material aspects, but rather the necessity for each community to collectively centre its daily activities in one common space. For while in the past the drama of the fishery was played out on many stages, it is now performed in one centrally-located space. Poor-Jack--as the central actor--has essentially disappeared, but a new stage of Newfoundland's culture has begun.