Come to Dildo for the Selfie But Stay for Good, Clean Fun

They’ve heard all the tiresome jokes. They roll their eyes at people taking selfies at the road signs. Dildonians—the proud people of Dildo in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada—say get over the provocative name and come visit for some good, clean fun, like drinking new craft beer, rowing a dory, or listening to the unofficial anthem about the time one local dared petition for a new name.

But let’s deal with the name first.

Dildo was not named for a sex toy. Then again, the story of who named Dildo and why has been lost to history, so theories abound in this picture-perfect outport community of 1,100 that was built on fishing, whaling and sealing and boasts typically colorful homes neatly spread out along the ocean about an hour’s drive from the capital city of St. John’s.

I’m with those who believe Dildo was named for a piece of a dory. A dory is the traditional, flat-bottomed, wooden boat used by Newfoundland cod fishermen. A dildo is a wooden peg once used to lock oars in position.

Foreign explorers might have named Dildo after a ship or a captain. Dildo may be inspired by an indigenous word for running water. Dildo could be the bastardized abbreviation of “d’isle duo,” a term that roughly translates into French, Spanish or Portuguese to mean “two islands.” Two islands—Dildo and Spread Eagle—do in fact protect the harbor.

Newfoundlanders are well known for their unique dialect and irreverent place names.

Dildo is on the highway to Heart’s Delight, Heart’s Desire, and Heart’s Content, and is loosely between Cupids, Blow Me Down, and Come By Chance. Suddenly this summer, the town is making headway as a legitimate tourism destination and not just a fun place to drop a postcard in the mail.

“How do you name a beer in Dildo? Tastefully, owners say,” read a CBC headline just before the Dildo Brewing Co. and Museum officially opened July 1 on Canada Day.

The brewpub more or less avoided double entendres with Red Rocks Ale, Blonde Root 80, and I’se Da Bye-PA—named for a fishing spot, highway, and famous folk song respectively. Only Stout Dildo elicited smirks, but it was meant as a shout out to South Dildo. For summer, Blue Eyed Buoy is the decidedly wholesome moniker for a beer built around wild blueberries.

“People may come to Dildo for the name, but when they come they discover it’s much more than this quirky name,” reasons Roger George, one of the five partners behind the craft beer company. “It’s a beautiful place of hardworking people. We wanted to do it professionally and make people proud.”

The second-floor brewpub is perpetually packed and the demand for souvenir shirts and beer glasses is unrelenting.

The brew team—as part of the deal with the previous owners, the local Society of United Fishermen lodge—spruced up the building’s ground-floor museum showcasing the area’s fishing and whaling history, geology and Indigenous roots. There’s a binder with typed notes on the possible origins of Dildo’s name, plus old newspaper stories, like the one insisting “Giggle-inducing harbour has much to offer.”

Local historian Gerald Smith has spent years patiently fielding media calls from around the world about the origins of the unusual and still mysterious name Dildo. It turns out he’s also the inspiration behind the community’s unofficial mascot, Captain Dildo. When Smith’s three kids were young, one asked why there was a Captain Newfoundland (the name of a popular newspaper comic strip and its main character) and not a Captain Dildo.

“I said `Alright my son, we’ll have a Captain Dildo,’ ” reminisces Smith, who fashioned a physical version of the character out of his old clothes and put it outside.

The scarecrow-like captain was stolen and so was a second version, so Smith decided to pose in character for an artist who drew a larger-than-life Captain Dildo on plywood. This plywood superhero cutout, that could be safely screwed against a building to ward off thieves, still exists today. The brewery/museum still has the original and the town is rife with variations.

What thrills Smith, though, is finally seeing results from an economic development plan set in motion after the 1992 cod moratorium and fishery collapse. That’s the year the Canadian government shut down the cod fishing industry indefinitely because the once-plentiful northern cod had been nearly depleted by hundreds of years of fishing by local and international fleets. About 40,000 people lost their jobs, and abandoned the province’s outport communities to find work elsewhere. Even today, only a small commercial cod fishery is allowed. Smith always said that “tourism and a host of little projects” was the way forward for the province.

Smith admits Dildo jokes used to upset him. “Now I think the laugh is on the people that’s trying to make the jokes.”

A water taxi is being planned to shuttle brewpub and museum patrons to the new Dildo Boathouse Inn, where Paula and Dennis McEntegart also run the Music and Friends Café (try the fish cakes) and Dildo Boat Tours and Adventures.

The McEntegarts host whale, seabird, and iceberg trips as well as feasts built around cod fishing and mussel diving outings. They will weigh in on Dildo’s name if pressed.

“A lot of people didn’t know. It was just a name to us,” sighs Paula, about the fact that dildo is also the name of a sex toy. She will never forget the first time she was teased by kids who saw the address on her letters home from a volunteer stint.

Now she wants Dildo—home to Dildo Days every July—to be known as a place to “throw your worries away and come and just relax.”

Relax I do at the Dildo Dory Grill over the locally famous Dildo Sticky Pudding with Newfoundland rum sauce—apologies for a few lewd thoughts—after taking photos of the Captain Dildo statue on the seaside patio.

Captain Dildo figurines are for sale at Dildo Cove Coffee & Krafts. So are “Believe in Dildo” T-shirts as well as ones featuring the green highway sign for Dildo. (An official sticker for Dildo Harbour has been slapped on the real sign, diluting the visual impact.)

Dildonian Dean Reid and his Quebec girlfriend Karine McDonald run the shop as well as Dildo Cove Outdoor Adventures in a new space for dory experiences, kitchen parties, fish fries, and the silly but irresistible screech-in ceremonies that turn visitors into honorary Newfoundlanders if they drink a shot of local screech (rum), do a short recitation and then kiss a cod (usually frozen).

Rent traditional yellow dories with green trim and row around the harbor, or pay a little extra for a guide. I give it a valiant try but let Reid do most of the hard work as we focus on harvesting mussels from an old anchor rope for lunch.

Sadly, my particular dory had stainless steel oar locks, but I admired another on shore with traditional wooden dildos, that do look strangely like miniature versions of the other kind of dildos.

Over cod and mussels, Reid and McDonald admit that giving a Dildo address often solicits disbelief until Google Maps backs them up. Writing Dildo in emails and on social media posts can trigger spam filters. These are very real business challenges.

Back in the late 1980s, one local fellow circulated a petition to change the town’s name. It didn’t gain any traction, but it made international news and inspired Reid’s uncle John Reid to pen the “Dildo Song.”

On cue, Dean whips out a guitar and launches into lyrics that urge Dildonians to take pride in their “precious name”—a name that God would never “laugh or joke about” and even named a corner of Heaven after.

“So friends who work far away/When you return again/Try to teach our younger folks/To never feel ashamed,” Reid solemnly sings.

“For of an old sex object/Made of rubber not of gold/For rubber could be melted down/But not the name Dildo.”