Mantle board Shoppe was born out of a desire to get more people into the backcountry of Bonne Bay. We wanted the ability to rent, sell and service backcountry equipment that was not available at local shops in Newfoundland. Located in the heart of Gros Morne National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, Bonne Bay South offers backcountry riders a deep and stable maritime snowpack, with an unusually low rider density and easy access to both glades and alpine terrain. Our goal is to provide a mobile board shop that brings cutting edge equipment and technology to the backcountry trail heads in our communities. A community that has been here a long time.
Europeans were slow to settle the west coast of Newfoundland. The British were concentrated on the east coast, and the French were on the Grand Banks. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht gave the French some area on the west coast which was extended in 1783 to the entire coast.
British settlement was spreading, as well. In 1800 the first British settlement in the Bonne Bay area occurred in Woody Point with the establishment of the firm of Joseph Bird. He had an agent and premises to serve the British fishing interests which were principally migratory at this point. When fishermen began to stay during the winter rather than return to England, the pattern for permanent settlement was laid.
By 1904, the French had left the area to pursue fisheries farther up the coast. By this time, Woody Point was bustling. It was considered the capital of the area with banking and customs offices, merchants, and a harbour full of domestic and foreign vessels.
Traditionally, Europeans who decided to settle here, were solely interested in the vast amounts of fishing and timber. Being either British or french, settlers with a skiing background didn't stay on in this area and pushed south into the much higher presidential mountain range and west towards the Sierras and the Rocky mountains, terrain similar with what they left in Europe and based off of knowledge from the mid 1860s from steam trains delivering mail and travelling into the mountains.