{"id":6347,"date":"2017-06-02T16:09:19","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T20:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=6347"},"modified":"2025-09-30T09:38:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T13:38:23","slug":"zita-cobb-fogo-island","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/zita-cobb-fogo-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Reimagining Fogo Island"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Reimagining Fogo Island\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

\u201cOn the surface, it\u2019ll sound like I\u2019m talking about Fogo Island,\u201d began Zita Cobb, speaking at Carleton University\u2019s spring Ottawa Leadership Luncheon<\/a>, \u201cand I am. But I\u2019m also talking about us, about the idea of human community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On June 1, more than 160 alumni, donors, and members of the Carleton community gathered at the Fairmont Ch\u00e2teau Laurier for Cobb\u2019s keynote address at the bi-annual luncheon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cMaybe a small island is a good proxy for a small planet,\u201d she said as she described efforts to turn her home \u2013 an island off Newfoundland – into a self-sustaining, healthy economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The multimillionaire high-tech executive turned arts patron and island innkeeper spearheaded a redevelopment of Fogo and the Change Islands, north of the province\u2019s main island in the \u201ciceberg alley\u201d of the Atlantic Ocean. Her Fogo Island Inn, world-famous for its futuristic design that also pays homage to local heritage, leads the charge for remote locales to become tourism hotspots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cobb, who became a member of the Order of Canada last February, was presented with the Carleton alumni association\u2019s highest honour of distinction<\/a>, named after the university\u2019s fourth president Arnold D. Dunton. President Roseann Runte briefly introduced Cobb as someone whose efforts exemplified the best of Carleton\u2019s alumni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Zita<\/a>
Zita Cobb receives the A.D. Dunton Award from President Roseann Runte and Alumni Association President Louise Hayes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Growing Up on Fogo Island<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in Joe Batt\u2019s Arm, a small Fogo Island community of 700, Cobb was one of seven kids in a house without running water or electricity. She was born nine years after Newfoundland became a Canadian province in 1949, and witnessed the industrialization of cod fishing affect her community\u2019s livelihoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know it wasn\u2019t the fish that let us down,\u201d Zita said, quoting her father Lambert Cobb, who never adapted to the new fishing technology of the 1950s and \u201860s that allowed for bloated catches and led to dwindling fish populations, effectively ending the centuries-old local fishing industry when a cod moratorium was declared in 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Cobb, who left the island in 1975 to study business at Carleton (BComm\/80), had gone on to become CFO of JDS Fitel and then senior vice-president of strategy for fiber optics manufacturer JDS Uniphase. In 2001, Cobb retired at the age of 42 and began to rethink how she could help Fogo Island as she sailed around the world. In 2004, Cobb and her oldest and youngest brothers, Alan and Anthony, registered a charity of Canada called the Shorefast Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA shorefast is a tether that joins a traditional cod trap to the shore,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not all that often you get to find a word that says exactly what you are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The metaphor fit like a glove, as it described the charity\u2019s contribution to cultural and economic resiliency of its small island community, and the return of the cod. As it promotes the island\u2019s furniture-making, hand-line cod fishing and other small producer industries, the foundation operates on the idea that economic models that work well for big places don\u2019t necessarily work for small places.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe should be creative and intelligent enough to realize we don\u2019t need a one-size-fits-all answer.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The multi-faceted foundation also set up the Shorefast Business Assistance Fund to offer micro-loans, advice and guidance to island businesses and startups. Sixteen businesses have benefitted from preferred rates and friendly repayment plans, including a bakery that expanded, a new B&B, and a local agricultural co-op.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Zita<\/a>
Zita Cobb mingles before her talk on Fogo Island at the Leadership Luncheon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Citizens as Economic Agents<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe believe that business belongs to every citizen and every citizen is an economic agent,\u201d said Cobb. \u201cBusiness is a part of life, but it needs to behave in every gesture as supportive to the whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shorefast operates a number of community-based initiatives that began with an arts residency in 2010, and now features a geologist-in-residency program that explores the island\u2019s singular landscape and the New Ocean Ethic that redefines the ocean as a finite resource.  As the Ethic\u2019s mandate reads:<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIf we are to continue to benefit from the bounty of the sea, we have to rethink the way we use and manage it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Inn\u2019s locally-produced textiles, linen and furniture attracted enough interest from visitors to launch the Fogo Island Shop<\/a>. It sells items with an \u201ceconomic nutrition label\u201d describing the labour, materials and packaging costs in percentages, and the surplus made with each sale. From each of the social businesses\u2014the Shop, the Inn, and Fogo Island Fish – which sells hand-lined cod to high-end restaurants in Ontario\u2014all profits are returned to the charity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every new building\u2014from the six artist residency studios to the 300-foot-long Inn\u2014draws inspiration from the wooden houses and fishing stages built in Newfoundland for centuries. The Inn\u2019s dining room, with massive bay windows facing the sea, resembles the prow of a ship as it weathers the perilous North Atlantic. From there, Cobb is prepared to navigate her foundation as far as it needs to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even after 13 years of work, she admitted: \u201cI do feel like we\u2019re just getting warmed up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn the surface, it\u2019ll sound like I\u2019m talking about Fogo Island,\u201d began Zita Cobb, speaking at Carleton University\u2019s spring Ottawa Leadership Luncheon, \u201cand I am. But I\u2019m also talking about us, about the idea of human community.\u201d On June 1, more than 160 alumni, donors, and members of the Carleton community gathered at the Fairmont […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[17,28,19],"cu_story_tag":[1924],"class_list":["post-6347","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-alumni","cu_story_type-community-partnerships","cu_story_type-technology-innovation","cu_story_tag-advancement"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97515,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6347\/revisions\/97515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=6347"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=6347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}