Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store Registered Heritage Structure

The Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store is recognized for its historic, aesthetic and cultural values.

The Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store has historic value due to its age and its origins as a Fishermen's Protective Union (FPU) store. In 1908 William Coaker formed the first organized protest movement among Newfoundland fishers, the Fishermen's Protective Union (FPU). The FPU functioned in part as a cooperative, attempting to weaken the monopoly of merchants on purchasing and exporting fish and on retailing supplies. This included opening stores under the Fishermen’s Union Trading Company (FUTC). Musgrave Harbour was a strong site for the FPU movement, with a local FPU council established in 1909, and the first FUTC store in Newfoundland opening at Doting Cove in 1911. This store was also referred to as the Union Cash Store, as part of its original purpose was to have fishing families deal in cash rather than credit or barter as with the merchant system.

The Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store has aesthetic value as one of the most distinctive buildings in Musgrave Harbour, and one which evokes a sense of time and place, set against the seascape. Its vernacular design, simple rectangular form, low-pitched roof, wood post foundation, narrow clapboard siding and cornerboards, and wooden windows and doors are typical for the time and place in which it was built. These combine with telltale features like exterior double doors on both floors and large window openings, and original interior features like wooden floors and ceilings, visible posts and beams, and retail shelving, all of which make the building readily identifiable as an historic general store.

The Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store also has cultural value as it has operated as a museum since 1977.