2017 Recipient
The Fogo Island Inn is an initiative of the Shorefast Foundation, a registered Canadian charity with a mandate to provide relief of poverty on Fogo Island, a small fishing community off the coast of Newfoundland. Shorefast employs business-minded means to achieve social ends. In the midtwentieth century, factory overfishing by international trawlers caused a dramatic decline in commercial cod stocks off the coast of Newfoundland, eventually leading to a moratorium on cod fishing in 1992. Since that time, the people of Fogo Island have struggled to make a living in the place they’ve called home for over 400 years. The Fogo Island Inn is a direct response to a pressing need to find new relevance for traditional knowledge, and was created to be a cultural and economic engine for Fogo Island. When taking stock of existing skills on Fogo Island, they chose to build on Fogo Islanders’ innate predisposition towards exceptional hospitality, creating the Inn as a further expression of that talent.