Artisan Inn and Twine Loft Restaurant - Trinity

06/01/2026

05/29/2026

In 2014, I was contacted by a production company filming a French cooking show called Goûts du Pays. They were in a bind: they were filming episodes across Canada and needed a francophone chef for the Newfoundland episode.

I am not a chef and have never been known for my cooking. But I owned a restaurant, spoke French, and apparently that was the absolute best they could do island-wide.

I very much wanted to say no, but they were not going to take “no” or “non” for an answer.

The filming took place over two days in late May. The first day was spent with Kris Prince from Sea of Whales as he free-dived for scallops; this was in my comfort zone.

The second day was devoted to the cooking segment. Luckily, Chris Sheppard, an instructor at the Bonavista Culinary Institute, agreed to do the episode with me since our cooks were too camera shy. Trying to follow along in the kitchen, remember my French, hit my marks, and look like I knew what I was doing all at the same time was a challenge. Chris generously did me the solid of making it look like he was assisting me as I described to the host, Quebec actor Vincent Graton, what we were doing. Chris didn’t understand a single thing being said. When they say “the magic of television” it is no understatement. The crew were incredible from start to finish. 

The last scene we shot was of a party with our staff on the Twine Loft deck, where I fiddled and my friend Justin Cooper dropped by with his accordion. At one point, the camera operator opened his camera to change the battery, and somehow the camera card, with all the footage, popped out and fell through the slats of the deck. I remember staring in horror, thinking, “I do not have it in me to do this all over again.”

By some miracle, the card landed on a crossbeam below the slats instead of in the water.

I still think about that experience when I feel myself wanting to say no to something scary. Working in Newfoundland tourism never stopped challenging me and it is always incredible to discover who is willing to show up to help you succeed when you have no clue what you are doing, but you are doing it anyways. 

-Marieke Gow Artisan Inn & Twine Loft Co-Owner

05/22/2026

Rising Tide Theatre launches its season of new performances this coming weekend, so a Rising Tide throwback feels fitting.

Rising Tide Theatre’s New Founde Lande Trinity Pageant was the creative child of Donna Butt and Rick Boland. In many ways, it was born out of the same difficult moment that shaped the restoration of our Campbell House.

After the collapse of the cod fishery, communities like Trinity were forced to imagine new ways forward. The pageant was about more than theatre. It became an economic driver, a source of employment, and a way for people who had suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them to earn a living in a new way, without having to leave home.

The cast brought together professional actors and local residents. For some, it offered a chance to step into work they never would have imagined before the moratorium. There was no physical theatre in Trinity at the time, so Trinity itself became the stage.

Back then, the Lester Garland building existed only as the foundation ruins of the grand house that once stood there. It was a place where we played as kids, and it also served as the stage for the final scene of the show.

This photo shows my oldest sister Francie, who worked as the fiddler for the first two years of the pageant, standing by the ruins either just before or just after her scene.

Newfoundland artist Diana Debinnett later gifted my mother this watercolour of Francie performing in the show. It captures both a moment from the pageant and a time when Trinity was beginning to imagine a different future.

05/21/2026

I often hear a friend say, “I wish people would stop putting Newfoundland on their bucket list.”

Why? Because bucket lists are for things you do once, places you visit once, and then move on from. But this is not that kind of place. It reveals a different side of itself every time you return.

I have lost count of the number of times I have hiked Gun Hill in Trinity, but there always seems to be a new angle on the view, something unexpected on the horizon, or a different shade of season changing the landscape.

05/15/2026

Campbell House came with the purchase of a dug well located between Campbell House and Gover House, our original family cottage in Trinity. My parents’ first idea was not to restore Campbell House at all. They were mainly interested in securing the water source for Gover House, and at first considered taking the old house down.

But once they began looking more closely, they discovered that Campbell House was historically significant. That changed the direction of the project.

To say the house was in rough shape when they bought it around 1990 would be an understatement. The carpenters approached for the restoration were once overheard saying about my mom, “Missus must have more money than brains,” after sizing up the job.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have more money than brains. But because of Campbell House’s historical significance, my parents were able to access a modest amount of funding from the Newfoundland Historical Society. The grant was helpful, but it was not nearly enough to properly restore the house. The larger grant came later, in the wake of the collapse of the cod fishery, through funding connected to job creation.

Luckily, the incredible skills of the carpenters were a match for my mom’s incredible vision. At a time when many communities were facing enormous uncertainty, the restoration of Campbell House became not only a heritage project, but a way to create work and help build something new in Trinity.

Campbell House became one of the early restoration projects that helped shape what would eventually become Artisan Inn. Piece by piece, the building was brought back to life, preserving its historic character while creating a place where visitors could live the history of Trinity, not just learn about it.

Over the decades, we have come to understand that property restoration is not just about saving physical structures or architectural features. Preserved within their walls are the stories of the residents who once lived there, the people connected to them, and the community life that unfolded, and continues to unfold, around them.

-Marieke Gow Co-Owner of Artisan Inn and Twine Loft

05/12/2026

One of our favourite places to shop on the Bonavista Peninsula opens this weekend ❤️

05/12/2026

This evening we will be serving a new dish!
Beef Bourguignon Served with Garlic and Chive Whipped Potatoes.

The Beef is locally sourced from Riverbend Farms in Lethbridge, NL.

Dinner is served at 7pm tonight by reservation.

05/08/2026

Thank you to Jeff Piercey for capturing this photo of Gover House Vacation Home during our 2026 season opening. We are excited to welcome back familiar faces and introduce new visitors to the magic of Trinity.

05/08/2026

Seeing as Mother’s Day is around the corner, telling the story of how my mom became an innkeeper feels like a fitting post for this week’s throwback.

Before she was an innkeeper, Tineke worked as a technologist in an immunology research lab. She stepped away from her career after my sister Emily was born in 1979 with special needs. My parents dedicated the next decade to Emily’s mental and physical development through a process called Patterning.

By the late 1980s, my parents had four daughters: Francie, Emily, Sandy, and me. Mom was ready to return to work, but she also knew that a traditional 9-to-5 job would not give her the flexibility she needed to support Emily in the way she wanted.

When the opportunity came to buy Campbell House in Trinity, Mom saw a possibility. She could go into business for herself by restoring the house and converting it into a bed and breakfast that would operate for a six-week season each year.

During the summers, Dad continued to work at Memorial University, often making the three-hour drive from St. John’s with supplies, while the rest of us relocated to Trinity. We lived next door to Campbell House in our original Trinity cottage, Gover House.

Trinity proved to be an environment where Emily thrived. It gave her an active social life, a strong sense of community, and plenty of interactions with interesting people. Even Emily couldn’t get out of my mom’s promise to guests that there would be musical performances as part of the evening entertainment before Rising Tide Theatre became the established presence it is today.

What began as a small seasonal bed and breakfast was also, in many ways, a creative solution to family life. It allowed Mom to work, exercise her creative side through property restoration, welcome people from around the world, and create a summer rhythm that included all of us.
Of course, we always joke that Mom started the business to avoid a 9-to-5 job and ended up with a 5-to-9 job instead.

Marieke - Co-Owner, Artisan Inn & Twine Loft Dining

05/01/2026

🌪️Did you know that one of the strongest tornadoes in Newfoundland’s recorded history touched down in Trinity?

On September 6, 1996, my mom, Tineke, looked outside and noticed storm clouds gathering. She saw the coming rain as an opportunity to put out fertilizer, since conditions had been too dry. She wasn’t out long before the unthinkable happened.

The sky suddenly turned a strange shade of green.

Not knowing what she was seeing, she hurried into the back kitchen of Campbell House. From the window, she watched as Fisher Cove rose into what looked like a vertical wall of water. Then it felt as though a train was passing directly over the house. Seconds later, everything went quiet.

When she stepped outside, the damage was already clear. Adirondack chairs from the Gover House deck had been lifted up over the hill and smashed against Campbell House. A large structure in Henry Vokey’s shipyard had been lifted clear off its foundation and collapsed, tearing a hole in the side of the Twine Loft.

One couple, living just a four-minute walk away, had no idea anything had happened until they drove out of town and saw the destruction.

Someone later joked that when they saw all the white patches on our lawn, they thought my mom was taking the heritage living experience a bit too seriously, bleaching her linens in the sun. They couldn’t comprehend that it was actually pieces of furniture scattered everywhere.

She called the insurance company to report what had happened, but she got the sense she wasn’t taken seriously, just a woman with a foreign accent describing something that “doesn’t happen” in Newfoundland. A meteorologist was sent out, and it was confirmed as an F2 tornado, one of the strongest on record in Newfoundland. He even identified pockmarks in the Gover House deck caused by hailstones.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. In a strange twist, the tornado cleared the way for the iconic view of Trinity we recognize today.

— Marieke
Co-Owner, Artisan Inn & Twine Loft Dining.
🌪️Tornado history image sourced from Ryan Snodden’s 2011 article “A Brief History Of… Newfoundland Tornadoes.”