Ontario designer and landscaper finding lots to keep busy at in Conception Harbour

By Olivia Bradbury/Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Kristopher Orchard is originally from Ontario. After a busy interior design and landscaping career, he and his husband, who is originally from Botwood, moved to Newfoundland. They decided to make the move following the pandemic.

“We realized in that process that, life, there has to be more to it than working seven days a week,” Orchard said.

When they came to Newfoundland to look at real estate, his husband fell in love with the priest’s house in Conception Harbour, which is locally referred to as “The Palace.”

Orchard and his husband purchased The Palace and have lived there for a year and a half.

The pair took some time to live in the home and take in its vintage design elements. Now they are putting their own spin on it, renovating and restoring it. Deciding whether to restore or replace certain things has been a challenge, said Orchard, as they want the home to retain a reflection of its history for local visitors. They want locals to be able to see these familiar, preserved elements when they tour the house. Orchard and his husband hope to eventually turn the home into a bed and breakfast.

“It wasn’t necessarily all roses when we moved here,” Orchard said. “When you move into a religious home which had a great history of religion and the community wasn’t all for it selling, we were kind of ostracized a little bit.”

It took a lot of hard work to get residents to see them not as “city people” but as individuals who respect their values, and to show them that, while they might have initially been upset the property was sold, it was for the best as the building will now be restored, Orchard said.

After spending some time in the town on his own, Orchard said he noticed certain areas that needed upkeep or renovation such as the Corporal Jamie Murphy Memorial, where the grass hadn’t been cut, and other places in town where a bit of mowing and gravel could make a big improvement and make Conception Harbour, one of the prettiest communities in Newfoundland, even more attractive to tourists such as those who come to see the famous whaler that ran aground.

At first, Orchard said, he had trouble recruiting people for his community improvement projects, but in the past year folks started to notice the landscaping he had done on his own property.

“I said even if we just did little bits here and there in the community and started forming a committee maybe the town could turn a new leaf and draw more tourism, and just when people are out for a nice walk on the road they really feel their town appreciates them because they have nice places to stop,” said Orchard.

Orchard raised the idea of the Conception Harbour Beautification and Historical Preservation Committee with council, which found in favourable. The committee’s formation was announced and a good many people responded and attended the initial meeting. There are currently 14 people on the committee with Orchard as the chairman. He said they are always open to new members.

“I’m a firm believer more opinions, more positive, more futuristic approach to an old-tradition town brought into the twenty-first century is always a plus,” said Orchard.

The committee members come from an array of backgrounds, said Orchard, including people with specific degrees, knowledgeable horticulturalists, residents whose families have lived in Conception Harbour for generations and are able to teach other residents about the town’s historic value, and so on.

Since its formation, the main focus of the committee has been improving the Corporal Jamie Murphy Memorial site. Many of Orchard’s loved ones serve or served in the military, and some have died in the line of duty. While Orchard did not know Corporal Murphy personally, he is friends with people who served with him. He got to know Murphy’s family and listen to the story of his life.

“It was just a shame to see something sit there for 20 years after the original committee worked so hard to raise money to have that monument erected,” Orchard said.

But it’s understandable, he added, because after two decades things can be unintentionally overlooked, and Conception Harbour is an aging community that perhaps did not have the means, energy, or ability to maintain the gardens and stone. Maintenance is also costly — it cost the committee over $1,500 just to clean the monument stone. There were no funds to draw from, so the committee members fundraised. Some companies donated, as did some of Orchard’s mainland friends who are in the military. However, it still was not enough, so some committee members carried the rest of the cost. Along with cleaning the stone, the members pruned neglected shrubs, cleaned and weeded the stone walkway, removed a garden from the front of the monument that hindered accessibility, cleaned the flag poles, tied new cord lines on the flags, and ground down and painted the parking stanchions. Orchard also tends to the site’s lawn weekly.

Some committee members are former military members themselves, Orchard said, and have connections to organizations such as the Peacekeepers Association. “When they make a phone call, because they know each other, people kind of pay attention a little bit more,” he said. Those connections helped the overall project of restoring and improving the Corporal Jamie Murphy Memorial site. “It got enough attention that it truly honoured him, it honoured the community, it honoured the family that still live here,” said Orchard.

The committee is working on a three-to-five-year plan to gain access to some funding programs to do even more work.

“Veteran Affairs is a huge one,” said Orchard, adding a sub-committee, which deals with the financial side of things, is working with Veteran Affairs on plans for future monuments.

Orchard said some of the community’s older residents have shared stories about people they knew who served in World War I and II, and the committee has received permission from the Murphy family to add two new monument areas to the Corporal Jamie Murphy Memorial site to honour all fallen soldiers.

“When a soldier is living, whether they’re in war or not, they never stand alone. And after soldiers are deceased, they never should be standing alone,” said Orchard.

The committee also hopes to incorporate more trees into the memorial garden, specifically trees that grew in the places where the honoured soldiers served in WWI, WWII, Afghanistan, and so on. The committee also hopes to eventually make a memorial tree laneway on Corporal Jamie Murphy Memorial Drive. They want to include writings explaining the trees’ significance and relation to the veterans and have the trees seen and cared for by generations to come.

After work on the memorial site is complete, the committee’s next focus will be the whaler. Orchard said people go there to read the information board, but that the ground there is very uneven and, aside from a picnic table, there is no space to sit and socialize. The committee’s plans for the site include levelling the land, adding more parking, building a gazebo-pavilion with seating and firepits, gathering zones, and additional picnic tables, several of which will accommodate wheelchair users. They would also like to develop information pamphlets and create a hashtag or website about the town. “It’s really about what the town has to offer, old and new,” said Orchard, who sounds pleased to be part of it all.

“It is a stunning town,” he said. “It has a lot of opportunity that has yet to happen in our community, and it only happens if you start shedding good light on a town. Conception Harbour is a beautiful, beautiful place… And people need to start paying attention to it.”