The Victoria Community Development Corporation

Previous Programs

During 2000 the VCDC offered three Learning Vacation Programs in the Trinity Conception Region of Newfoundland. Participants had an opportunity to experience aspects of life in rural areas of our Province while learning about our local culture. Below are the programs offered through Elderhostel.

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Take Me Home - Bridging the Atlantic
Conception Bay / Harbour Grace

Where can you find Houses of lime, blue, or yellow perched on a rocky sea cliff, or people whose accents and idioms would not be amiss in Shakespeare's time? Come to Conception Bay on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula and learn about the history of a hardy people, descendants of 16th- and the 17th- century European immigrants. Area attractions include: Cupids, the first English colony in Canada, 1610; Heart's Content, the first working transatlantic telegraph cable, 1866: St. John's Signal Hill, first transatlantic wireless message; and Cape Spear, the oldest surviving Newfoundland lighthouse.

  
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August 19 - 24, 2001

Newfoundland -- the first stop for early European explorers to North America -- became in the 19th and 20th centuries, the first gateway back to the old homeland by transatlantic cable, wireless, and airplane. Come learn about those 1610 English colonists in Cupids and their compatriots in St. John's, which was a busy port 40 years before the Mayflower landed. Study the attempts of Cyrus Field and others to build a submarine telegraph cable linking North America and Britain, realized at Heart's Content in 1866. Visit the airfield where Amelia Earhart and other pioneer aviators made history by flying the Atlantic. Walk St. John's waterfront, stand on Marconi's Signal Hill, feel the pull of Europe at Cape Spear, "the West's Far East".

 

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Saving the Newfoundland Pony
Victoria Community Development with the Newfoundland Pony Society offers a program rich in the history of the Conception Bay region of Newfoundland.
Thought lectures and hands-on experience discover how the Newfoundland Pony has been helping the people of this island province harvest the rich resources of the sea, soil and forest for over 500 years. Learn how this pony lived on pastures where others starved; pulled loads that killed stronger animals; and outlived its Irish, English, Celtic and Scottish ancestors to become a unique breed. Visit a working farm and harness a pony, make hay and develop other skills. Sail to the Bell Island mines and see where ponies worked out their lives underground hauling iron ore to feed the furnaces of the western world. Discover why the number of ponies has dropped from 10,000 to less than 200 since 1970 and what is being done to save them today.

First Program..........July 16-21, 2000 -- Intergenerational
Maximum one grandchild per grandparent.