The Port de Grave Fishermen’s Museum is a sprawling, three-building museum complex nestled in the cliffs of Hibb’s Cove, Port de Grave, Newfoundland & Labrador.
Our mission is to preserve the heritage of our peninsula and tell the story of its people’s history.
In 1966 artist George Noseworthy and his wife, Margaret, visited Newfoundland for a vacation from Bronx, New York and, upon falling in love with the scenery and people, decided to settle permanently in the fishing community of Hibb’s Hole (now Hibb’s Cove) on the edge of the Port de Grave Peninsula.
The Fishermen’s Museum originally began in 1969 when Noseworthy started a small collection of artifacts from the area and needed a place to store them. With the help of a group of residents who saw the need to preserve and promote the local fishing heritage that was so rapidly changing, the whole community came together to build what is now the museum’s main building.
A few years after the museum’s founding, it acquired and restored the nearby Porter House. An adjacent one-room schoolhouse, leased from the Anglican church that George Noseworthy had for some time used as an art school for local children, including Newfoundland artist Gary Kennedy, has also been restored.
Though George Noseworthy passed away suddenly on September 14th, 1985, at the age of 56, we continue the work he began at the museum by offering tours of the collection he brought together and the museum he built to educate anyone willing to learn of our history.
“The island of Newfoundland, being well out into the Atlantic Ocean, is equal to placing an object on a mirror under a lamp. The surface of the sea acts as the mirror which causes an underlight or backlight. An incident of blue from sea and sky is quite prominent on most objects in this environment. Add to this, wind energy and tidal energy and the result is an effect on all objects which makes the island and environment quite unique.”
– George Noseworthy, 1978
