A year after Fiona hit Newfoundland, people grapple with fears about life near the ocean

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It's been a year since Peggy Savery's home was ripped into the sea by post-tropical storm Fiona, but she's still finding her old belongings washed up on the Newfoundland shore.

"I just found these; that was a Christmas plate I had … this one had a candle on it," said the Channel-Port aux Basques resident.

She's also found old coins and cutlery, and shards of her mother's fine china. There are toys that once distracted her cats, and even a part of her old microwave.

"That's the hard part, I think, is finding all those things and knowing it's still sitting around," she told The Current's Matt Galloway.

"[I'm] just maybe hopeful that maybe one time I might find something of sentimental value that's still hanging on."

Fiona made landfall on Sept. 24 last year, creating an enormous storm surge that destroyed 100 homes and killed one woman in Channel-Port aux Basques. Jutting out into the ocean on the tip of southwestern Newfoundland, the fishing community is home to around 4,000 people. Almost a year later, some residents are grappling with whether to rebuild or move away — a question tied to whether they can ever feel safe again so close to the ocean. 

As the storm receded last year, news reports around the world carried a picture of Peggy's house, already battered by the storm and slouching toward the churning ocean below. Moments after that photo was taken, a wave came over the top of the house and pulled it from the rocks it was built on.

It's not how Peggy likes to remember what she calls her "dream home," with ocean views and a deck that stretched out over the water. She prefers to think of evenings on that deck with her husband Lloyd, stargazing and listening to the dark water lapping the shore below.

She visits the site a few times a week to see what the ocean has spat back, and try to wrap her mind around everything they've lost.

The couple and their son, Josh, have since moved into a new house, albeit one that doesn't quite feel like home yet. Their new place is further inland, away from the ocean that "used to lull me to sleep at night," she said.

"Now I just look at it differently … I can't imagine sleeping here at night, sleeping this close to it. That'd be a little scary."

Peggy and Lloyd had intended to stay home and wait out the storm last year — until Lloyd went outside briefly to get timber, and noticed the roiling sea was higher than he'd ever seen it.

He rushed back inside to tell Peggy they had to leave.