“The Marine and Mountain Zone Corporation (MMZC), for years have been working with groups in the communities along that route in order to come up with another name that everybody would agree with,” said Lynn MacArthur, Executive Director of MMZC. “Not all the communities along the route felt that the original name fully encompassed everything on that route.”
Isle aux Mort was going through a process at the time where they had a consultant come in to do some work for them on another project, said Mrs. MacArthur. They mentioned to the consultants about wanting to rename the route and they determined after going along the route there was a lot of granite and the lighthouse was also made of granite hence the name, The Granite Coast.
“It’s a very nice and catchy name,” said Mrs. MacArthur.
Mrs. MacArthur said as a zone board they were asked to gather the official response from the communities all along the route and the tourist groups in the area and Tourism Southwest, which encompasses Stephenville and area and North Branch right down to La Poile.
“The community groups liked the name and felt it represented what is along that route,” said Mrs. MacArthur.
“We sent letters to the new minister of tourism and we just got the letter back stating they were in agreement with changing the name,” she said.
The zone board’s next step is working on getting Granite Coast signage and branding along the route.
“We have to start getting signage to make this route identified as the Granite Coast and bring out what is there and highlight it,” said Mrs. MacArthur. “That will be started shortly.”
Unfortunately they did not hit the deadline for the tourism brochures this year but the new name change will be on the website. It will officially appear in the tourism guides next year.
