THEN & NOW
When you are a town like Trepassey, that's been on the map for over 400 years, you can be sure that we have a few stories to tell about some of our most famous visitors. First though we'll tell you a bit of our own family history of being Inn keepers for 45 years and counting ...
45 years ago our grandparents Gordon and Florrie Pennell renovated the former Nurse Abernathy Medical clinic into the Trepassey Motel.
Tourism wasn’t the main goal for the Pennell’s back in the day. Most of their clientele was primarily catering to the Commercial and Public Sector employees’ who would visit Trepassey to support the booming fishery.
Just the same, Gordon and Florrie Pennell dedicated their lives to the hospitality industry, passing this on to their daughter Carol Ann, who is my mother and is still working hard to welcome guests who come and stay with us on #TheEdge.
In 1992 our community was hit hard with the cod moratorium, essentially cutting off the main source of employment when our fish plant closed. The town went from booming, to seeing a mass exodus, as people fought to survive when the fish dried up.
The business persevered through, and was owned by my father until 2015, when my sister and I purchased it to keep the family
tradition alive. We bought it for more reasons than just this though.
We wanted to see our community thrive once again and saw an opportunity of building a strong tourism product around the Mistaken Point fossils, which received its UNESCO World Heritage site designation in 2016.
We rebranded to Edge of the Avalon Inn & Restaurant and invested in extensive renovations while also developing visitor experiences that put us on the map. So much so in fact, that we received the prestigious CBDC Celtic Tourism Business of the Year award in 2018 via the Hospitality Industry of Newfoundland and Labrador.
If you’ve seen the ads about our province you know we take tourism seriously here.
We are currently the largest employer in Trepassey and we take our role in the community to heart.
We are proud to say that this historical Inn has been family run for over 45 years, and counting!
John Devereaux
Owner
