Outports, Flakes, & Bake Apples
Newfoundland – A Special Corner of
North America
August 2006
I always had this fascination for Newfoundland (accent on the final syllable). I did not know much about it but the little I knew made me think it was a very different place, even though a part of North America. In 1977, I made it to Nova Scotia, including to the very northern point of Cape Breton Island, and off to the northeast, Newfoundland beckoned (ferries go from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Newfoundland and they take a long time).
When David and I, on relatively short notice, decided in early summer we needed a real break from a stressful house sale experience that ultimately crashed, we decided that Newfoundland was about as different from the high desert of New Mexico as one could get. We did some Web checking on flights and air fares, and booked a trip hardly more than 2 weeks ahead of our spontaneous decision.
Although we wondered if mosquitoes, deer flies, and biting midges, along with lots of rain and humidity, would make us regret our hasty action, we went off with a somewhat carefree attitude. In return, we had a fascinating experience, visiting a place and gaining a perspective that made us feel that we could still have something of a very authentic travel experience without going to the most remote regions of Africa or Southeast Asia. (Parenthetically, we arrived late enough in the summer that with one camping exception, the bugs turned out not to be a problem at all.)
We were there just over 3 weeks, July 19 – August 10. While it does not look that big on the map, it has the most complex coastline – a series of long peninsulas that require you to go way out and come all the way back in before proceeding to the next. And there are few roads, so many places we might have liked to have visited would have required substantial retracing of routes to pick up the one road that went to a certain part of the island. Three weeks plus had seemed like a lot of time, but in fact was insufficient in terms of all the places we had to cut out (including a ferry ride over to the south coast of Labrador).
It had been a hot dry winter and spring in Santa Fe, so the thought of a cool, damp northern place with long, long days, seemed appealing. As it turned out, it felt like a warm day if the temperature made it all the way up to 65o F, and many days never got out of the mid-50’s. On the other hand, there was very little variation from day to night, unlike Santa Fe, where we can see fluctuations of over 50 degrees in a single day.
Newfoundland seemed to appeal to my romantic notions of history, geology, language, and landscape. In reality the romance comes from a place that is, relatively speaking, poor, and has had a tough existence. But out of that crucible has come a distinct way of life and a people who, whatever they have lacked in material things, have a cohesive sense of their past and who they are. In some ways, it reminds me of my own New Mexico – a land that was at the outermost reaches of the Spanish empire in the New World, and somewhat forgotten about, and that, amidst a very tough existence (and as a result?), developed a distinctive way of life.
Just for starters, it is the only place I’ve ever been where the local time is a half-hour off from other time zones. Newfoundland is 30 minutes ahead of Atlantic Time (itself one hour ahead of Eastern Time). Also, Newfoundland “belonged” to Britain until 1949, when a vote was taken on “confederation” with Canada, which won the day, but only barely (51% to 49%) and even today there are lots of old-timers who think voting for Confederation was a big mistake and led to the ruination of their traditional way of life. On occasion we would hear people refer to Canada as if it were some other country (though I should say that I think I saw even more Canadian flags flying at private residences than we see U.S. flags in our super-patriotic country).
Somewhat sadly, the elements that made for a very distinctive Newfoundland history are largely in the past, and one learns about them at museums and historic sites. Most particularly, is the incredible story of the great cod fisheries, which led the first Europeans to the famous Grand Banks off the southeast coast of The Rock (as Newfoundland is often called by its residents). More later.
This is a land of rain, frequent gray skies, and much fog. About the sea there are endless stories of men lost to storms, of great boats going down, and this is very much a part of the lore and folksong of the province. But despite the overcast and frequent rain, we were able to have a rich set of experiences and when the sun came out, it intensified our sense of vision and the play of light, as far northern lands can do.
Immediately, we were struck by the language. This is definitely English with a difference. The accent varies from small town to small town (some folks said they could tell which towns nearby to them someone else came from, the accents being distinct enough just a few miles away). The main English-speaking lands from whence Newfies (we were told it is okay to say that) originated were the West Country of England (Dorsetshire and in particular, the city of Poole), and pretty much all over Ireland. The permutations of West Country British English with Irish led to a dazzling variety of ways people spoke, and it was always fascinating. And then the use of the language could be so different. People might greet us and throw in “Love,” or “Brother,” and begin “G’day” just like an Aussie. One day I heard a father chew out his young son, and tell him to stop being so “bloody saucy.” All this usually made me feel I really wasn’t in North America any longer. Throw into the mix the contributions of the Basques and Portuguese (the earliest exploiters of the cod fisheries) and the French, who followed soon after, and one gets a very rich brew. As one example, an area we explored is called the Baccalieu Trail – this is nothing other than the French twisting of the Portuguese word for cod, bacalhao! Any large body of inland water is called a “pond.” We were told that the poor laborers of England who settled Newfoundland only knew, from the old country, small ponds, and so had no word for the large lakes of Newfoundland – thus they called any interior body of water a pond. Who knows?
Newfoundland’s interior is vast but relatively sparsely settled. Most of the population is on or near the coast, a convoluted meeting of land and sea in a series of long peninsulas. The edge of the sea is furrowed with deep coves, tickles and bights (again more classic terms from England), and most particularly, spectacular headlands, often with sea stacks. In fact, it probably is the most consistently magnificent meeting of land and sea of anywhere I have ever been. And while there are a few towns that are tourist destinations in the sense we all know and probably dislike, most of Newfoundland had a distinctly otherworldly feel – beautiful places, long drives without a house, and no great corporation buying it all up and developing a mega-resort. We always felt we were in a real place that had not undergone plastic surgery on our behalf.
I got to know much more about events and activities that I had always found fascinating, but had never learned as much about as I wanted to. At Cape Race, at the end of a long peninsula, the first distress signal from the Titanic was received, as the ship hit an iceberg only 300 miles from Newfoundland. From Trepassy, Amelia Earhart took off on one of her flights before her ill-fated last journey. Up on Signal Hill, above the Narrows into St. John’s harbor (St. John’s being the capital) Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless (radio) signal from the Old World. At Heart’s Content, the Atlantic telegraph cable came up that allowed instant communication with Europe beginning in 1866. (Actually, the first cable was laid there in 1858, and President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanged greetings, but it fell silent within a few weeks due to corrosion!). A small museum there is dedicated to the story of not just the laying of the cable (you can see its remains coming out of the water, still), but to the whole story of early long-distance telegraphic communication.
At Grate’s Cove, at the very end of the Baccalieu Trail peninsula, we wandered amongst the most fascinating rock wall constructions that meandered over the headlands – these created protected enclosures for vegetable gardens and are a form of 18th century type construction virtually unknown anywhere else. As a result, they have been designated a national treasure. The tiny village of Elliston, on the Bonavista Peninsula, calls itself The Root Cellar Capital of the World. Once you get over your touch of mirth, it turns out to be a fascinating story, and the constructions, using the plentiful rock, built into the hills, is a highly informative look into the pre-modern world that was Newfoundland until only 50 years ago.
At the Ryan Premises in Bonavista, the story of the great Newfoundland and Labrador cod fisheries is spectacularly laid out in a national historic museum spread across five historic buildings on the water. It also tells the story of the great seal fisheries, and of the relationships between the merchants (their establishments were called “premises”) and the fisherman who risked their lives every day. This is such a great story, and the early exploration of the North Atlantic is so closely entwined with the cod fisheries, that David and I were absorbed for a good part of two days going through the site. (Incidentally, the word “flake” which appears in the title of this little report, is the local term for the wooden drying racks upon which the split cod was spread to dry by the sea, as part of the salt cod processing.)
I suppose nothing in North America has so fascinated me as the discovery, only in the 1960s, that the Norsemen (Vikings) had reached North America 500 years before Columbus. At L’Anse aux Meadows (The Cove of Meadows) proof-positive was found, in one of the lesser known but utterly amazing unearthings (by a very persistent Norwegian nobleman-scientist) that the Norseman had arrived, and established an outpost. They stayed about 10 years, it is estimated, about 1,000 C.E. (i.e., 1,000 A.D.). L’Anse aux Meadows is at the very, very northern tip of Newfoundland, right on the Strait of Belle Isle, 12 short miles across from the Labrador coast (the province is officially The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador). It is one of the loneliest feeling but loveliest, most peaceful places I have ever been – how the Norseman found such a protected, tranquil place, without really knowing where they were, is beyond me, but as much of the story as is known is explained in the small museum, and the sod long houses have been re-created in a very, very authentic way. The story of finding L’Anse aux Meadows is equally as exciting as learning that the Vikings made it here in the first place. Part of the clue to locating it came from one of the extant Norse sagas! From the saga, it is pretty definite that Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, was the leader of the party that came to North America.
While perhaps not quite as incredible as the story of the Norseman, still quite marvelous is the story of the Colony of Avalon, the first serious attempt by the English to settle the North Atlantic. This is now a private site, but with government funding, and the excavations have revealed much about life here. One of the men who tried to colonize Avalon was Lord Baltimore, who moved on to Maryland where the city that now bears his title was a more hospitable locale than the cold, damp, foggy coast of Newfoundland. Before the 17th century, there were settlements, primarily by the Basque, Portuguese, and French, all along the Newfoundland (and Labrador) coast but they were fishing outposts, almost entirely men, rather than permanent communities. These outposts went all the way back to the beginning of the 1500’s, shortly after John Cabot’s (actually Giovanni Caboto) presumed “discovery” of Newfoundland in 1497 and just a few years after Columbus’ first voyages.
We visited several sites where we could explore and learn about the ancient peoples who lived here, including the southernmost penetration by an Eskimo people, the so-called “Dorset Eskimos.”
The recent past has its rich (and often sad) stories to tell. The one you hear about most often was that shortly after Confederation, the Canadian government decided to move people from the outports. Outport is a Newfoundland word, referring to any of the small communities that were virtually cut off from the rest of the world right into the 1960s. There were no roads to them, and much of the year they were completely cut off, due to snow. These were entirely self-sufficient places, without electricity, modern health care, or educational set-ups that the rest of the developed world had known for many decades. The Canadian government offered to relocate the populations of the outposts to more established centers and offered a monetary inducement. If local populations resisted, they were told that all medical care and traveling teachers would be withdrawn, and by this kind of “hardball” most of the outposts were depopulated. Now there is a well-established system of coastal roads to many of these abandoned communities. Some have returned, some were never entirely abandoned, and some are being “recolonized.” As you learn about these places, you realize what rich, though very, very tough life they represented.
Our one “souvenir” of Newfoundland was a beautiful soapstone inukshuk carved by a master craftsman (3rd generation, and his sons are the 4th) doing this sort of thing. He could remember when his town, Raleigh, was an outpost. The nearest large town, St. Anthony, could only be reached in winter, he told us, by dogsled. The rest of the year, they went by their small fishing dories. (An inukshuk, by the way, is a lovely cairn used by the native peoples of Labrador to either show the way, or mark someone’s hunting area. The stones are piled in a way that makes them look like a giant Japanese letter).
The other bit of recent history that is very sad is that due to industrialized fishing of the great North Atlantic cod fisheries by many nations, in 1992, with little warning, Canada declared a complete moratorium on cod fishing within its 200-mile territorial limit, in the hope of restoring the depleted stocks. This had the effect of putting countless Newfoundlanders out of work, of destroying a historic way of life that was the only trade thousands had ever known. And since the industrialized fishing of the open waters could not be controlled, those who were hurt were the local fisherman who went out in small boats. The cod fishermen maintain that they were not the ones who depleted the great schools of cod, and today, 14 years later, it is unclear if the cod will ever return in their previous numbers and sizes. Meanwhile, there is a very limited relaxation on catching of cod for “personal” use. This is an issue that generates a great deal of excitement. (We had fish or seafood every night that we didn’t camp, and two of our real treats were fresh pan-fried cod and a local specialty called “cod tongues” or “cod cheeks” which was also delicious.)
Given that this is such a poor place, economically, and that its mainstay commercial activity, cod fishing, has been decimated, another sad fact is that it seems almost every young man who wants to earn a decent living goes off to northern Alberta to work on the oil rigs or in some activity related to oil drilling. Constantly we were told of sons (and their wives) coming in for a brief visit, from Alberta. Various towns in Newfoundland have “Come Home” festivals, where for a few brief days, these depopulated towns return to life
The distinctive way of life in Newfoundland has led, as you might well imagine, to a rich trove of folklore and folk music, and we took advantage, whenever we could, to expose ourselves to it. One music store in St. John’s was famous throughout the island for its folk music recordings, so we did get some CDs to bring back with us. The folk music has a distinct relationship to Irish and English traditions, and the focus is, besides the sad tales of love lost between lad and lass, the sea and fishing. One night in the remote outport town of Trout River, we were enchanted by a harpist playing traditional Newfoundland and Irish songs. Most special, perhaps - as we had a 5:20 a.m. flight back on our last day, we stayed up late and heard a wonderful performer of folk music at one of St. John’s many pubs that features traditional folk music of the Island. It was a terrific way to end our trip.
The natural world of Newfoundland is as fascinating, if not more so. Newfoundland, away from the coast (and even on the coast in many places) is either boreal forest (balsam fur, black spruce, various kinds of birch and aspen, primarily) or bog and fen. The water table seems to be right at the surface everywhere. It is underlain with peat (from sphagnum moss) and rocks, and on a sunny day, the intensity of blue water against coniferous green is something to behold. Due to the short summers, most of the wildflowers bloom at almost the same time, so we saw wonderful displays of wildflowers everywhere – irises, wild roses, fireweed, pearly everlasting, yarrow, harebells, sheep laurel – to name a few. Then there are the insect-eating plants – sundew, butterworts, and most magnificent, the pitcher plant (official provincial plant) which was in full flower.
This is also a land with probably the richest profusion of wild berries of anywhere I have ever been. We gorged on tender wild blueberries which were just coming in while we were there, as well as frequently stopping to stuff our mouths with wild dark red raspberries. And there were many other kinds which we tried as jams, since we were either too late or too early – the one I liked the best was partridge berry, but there were also cloudberries, locally known as bake apples (thought to be a twisting of the French expression bac q’appelle or “what is it?”), marshberries, service berries, cranberries, and many others.
Perhaps what made me feel I was in a special place is that in many ways Newfoundland represents the southernmost penetration of arctic flora and fauna. There are numerous ecological reserves, and at one, at the tip of the northern peninsula across from Labrador, we had the good fortune to be the only ones on a naturalist walk of Burnt Cape, a limestone “barrens” which was anything but. Our naturalist showed us at least 50 flowering plants, all of an arctic nature, none higher than about 2 inches, and several of which were endangered. Had we gone out there on our own, we would not have had a clue what a rich and special world lay under our feet.
Although we were a bit late, the site of icebergs from Greenland floating off the coast is a common sight, though lately less frequent (due to global warming, it is thought). The very idea of spotting icebergs a short ways out at sea had me mentally excited. Then there are at least 20 species of whales that can be spotted, if you are lucky, in coves and a short ways out at sea. At Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, we went out with a small outfit (we were the only two in the small craft) and ran alongside a mother humpback whale and her calf, just a few feet away. Other frequently spotted whales are the fin whale and the minke, and we did see whales blowing out at sea occasionally.
Polar bears are spotted once in a while in the northern part of the island, and seals and porpoises are common. We went to one river where salmon go upstream, and for the first time, saw salmon jumping high out of the water as they tried to make their way up a cascade (to the side a salmon “ladder” had been constructed to aid their efforts).
The southernmost herd of caribou in the world is native to the island, though moose are not. Six moose were introduced in the latter part of 19th century, and now have covered the whole island, to the tune of about 500,000. It is so bad that you are advised never to drive at night if you can possibly avoid it. Just one time we drove back 20 kilometers (12 miles) from a play, after dark, to our campsite, and spotted 4 moose along the road. I drove with my hands clenched on the steering wheel and never taking the speed above 40 mph!
Perhaps most spectacular are the sea bird colonies. At Witless Bay, in addition to following the humpback whale, there are islands in the bay that are incredible bird colonies – going out in that small boat, we saw countless colonies of common murres, razorback murres, and most delightfully, the playful (seeming) Atlantic puffins, the symbol of Newfoundland. The most spectacular of all our experiences was visiting Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve, which has the 1st or 2nd largest colony of northern gannets on a rock (“Bird Rock”) just a few feet off the 200 foot high headlands. We were told there are usually 14,000 nesting pairs and the day we went out was one of the very, very rare days it was clear – it is almost always foggy. By some miracle, no one else showed up the whole morning and we had the coastal headlands and Bird Rock entirely to ourselves – “Winged Migration” could not have topped our experience!
Geologically, Newfoundland is beyond fascinating. To us, it seemed practically unique. The southwestern corner of the island (The Avalon Peninsula) was once a part of Africa, and in the ancient times of Pangea, got mashed together with the rest of the island which came from the predecessor to North America. The fault line, the Devon Fault, is still visible. In Gros Morne National Park, where we spent 4 days, the geology and the sheer beauty of the place rival anywhere we have ever been. The Tablelands section earned the park its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (L’Anse aux Meadows, mentioned above, was the very first such UNESCO site anywhere in the world). It earned the designation because the Tablelands represents the most dramatic exposure of the earth’s mantle anywhere in the world, and a 2.5 hour park ranger-led trip helped us appreciate what was so special about it. Elsewhere in the park is the world benchmark standard for the exposure of the divide between two very important early strata, the Ordovician and the Cambrian. Visually, the most striking element is the existence of fjords – we went out by boat into one, with sheer rock walls rising from Western Brook Pond (remember, everything in Newfoundland is called a “pond”) a straight 2,500 feet. (You have to walk a trail for 45 minutes just to get to the boat dock, which puts you nice and far away from auto traffic). At Trout River Pond, David and I hiked in to experience the spectacular fjord-like scenery all by ourselves.
The beautiful meadows atop the coastal headlands are known as “gardens” (most beautiful was the Gros Morne hike to the Green Gardens) and I realized this was another example of old English terminology coming over to Newfoundland, as I thought of the wonderful English song, “The Sally Gardens.”
At Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, we hiked out along magnificent headlands, never seeing another soul, to Mistaken Point, where one of the richest displays of soft-bodied fossils, 600 million years old, can be seen on rock shelves that look just like rippled beach sand, frozen.
We camped about 2/3 of the time we were in Newfoundland, and found that the provincial and national park campgrounds, while very expensive by U.S. standards, were just about the most beautiful we have ever camped at. They virtually always included shower facilities, which was a great plus when you are doing so much camping. Canadians and especially Newfoundlanders are extremely friendly. If you are willing to take the time to strike up a conversation with a Newfoundlander, it is amazing how much about the lore and life of people there you can pick up. Also, drivers are so courteous that coming from New Mexico with its very aggressive driving (particularly extreme tailgating) I found my manners decidedly improving as local custom permeated my own behavior. We were definitely in a much lower key part of the world and it was refreshing that economic calculations did not seem to dominate considerations of what constitutes “the good life” to the degree they increasingly do with us.
Another feature of Newfoundland that impressed us greatly was that every community appeared to have invested in constructing boardwalks and trails, some many miles long, that allowed one to explore some of the most spectacular places outside of formally designated parks. Our guidebook helped us locate some of these, but plentiful local free maps and guides and conversations with natives alerted us to some of our finest outdoor experiences (sometimes a local would sit down and hand draw a map on a piece of paper). To have walked the Skerwinke Trail along towering coastal headlands, for example, or the trail to the look-out above the community of Sandy Cove for a misty view of the endless islands of Terra Nova National Park, or in the far, far north, to take up the invitation of the remote Tickle Cove Inn’s innkeeper to hike out to Cape Onion for a spectacular view on the nearby community’s Back of the Land trail was to have had a series of unforgettable experiences, and all possible because these small towns cared enough to share their beauty with the interested traveler and invest not just limited funds, but hard physical work into making these places accessible to all.
It should be obvious by now that this was, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful and different places I have ever been in North America.
These, for me, are what I bring back from what turned out to be a far more mind-broadening trip than I had ever imagined when I got the idea to go there,
Ken
And now, some additions from David..
Here are some impressions and thoughts that Ken didn’t include.
1) I had never seen puffins. They are enchanting. They have black on their bodies and white breasts, and when they stand up and walk they look like little penguins – except they have enormous, strange, orange beaks. Adorable!
2) Ken mentioned the Dorset Eskimos. When we talked to the carver of the inukshuk, he said, musingly: Back then [when he was young, before the outports were depopulated], we lived like the Eskimos. We traveled in winter with dogsleds; in the Fall we killed caribou and seals and laid the meat down so as to freeze but not get maggots; in the Winter we whittled and carved. Sometimes there was a teacher, but no school. He was speaking, I think, about the 1950s – such an inconceivably remote life, so recently.
3) The provincial parks are indeed remarkable. Picture this. A thickly grassed, level, round tent site, 50 feet in diameter adjacent to a short gravel drive for a car with a picnic table at the end of it. Surrounding the grassy site, a circular thicket of larch, spruce, ferns, providing perfect privacy. The campground road, 20 feet away, is lined with raspberries, ripe for picking. The vegetation at the seaward piece of the arc is broken, revealing the Gulf of St Lawrence, an arm of the sea. You can take three steps beyond the perimeter and look down at the ocean riffling in, frothing at the shoreline. It is maybe 8 p.m., on a long northern day, and the sun is resting above a wispy skirt of fog that forms over the water. The light streams in horizontally, luminous, gleaming as if freshly painted on rocks, tree trunks, ferns. You wonder whether a photographer could hope to catch this almost phosphorescent light. The effect lasts 20 minutes, while the waves, their crests silvered by light, keep lapping the shore, and sea birds keep flying. Can there ever be, have been, in my life, a more perfect campsite? I doubt it … and all night long, inside the tent, you hear the sea patiently lapping.
4) We walked down to one of the outports one afternoon, a place where our B&B host had grown up. It was a perfectly shaped, empty cove, with a little stream running into it from the higher land. There was nothing manmade anywhere visible; except that someone was building a new house. It was still being framed and insulated, but the windows were in. It was raining quite hard then, and I stepped onto the porch under some eaves, to try to keep dry. Through the window, I saw that the house was in fact furnished: chairs, tables, a wood stove, a sink, dishes, some books and gear. Idly I tried the door: it opened, and there was a mat, and I took one nervy step inside and looked around. Later, when we mentioned having walked down to the cove, someone asked, Did you go into so-and-so’s new house? [It was being built – by hand – by someone whose parents had lived in the now-disappeared town.] Our informant said, I hope you went in – He leaves the door open so people can.
5) In St John’s, there is a beautifully designed year-old provincial museum up on a hill, called The Rooms – a reference to spaces in fishing villages where fish were laid out, long ago, to be hand processed. It is a superbly designed structure, and it had first-rate exhibits: not only the sort of dioramas and informative displays that you expect where natural and local history are on view, but an exhibit of silver and wood objects made by an Inuit (but educated) craftsman; a music installation in a huge empty hall, involving the 40 voices of Thomas Tallis’s Spem in aulum fed through 40 individual speakers (each voice part having been separately tracked), so that you could walk around a huge circle and choose your own combination of lines to hear; a very large show by one of Canada’s most important painters, born and living in Newfoundland, Christopher Pratt – whom we thought a world-class talent; and much else of great interest. On the top floor is a gleaming café, all matte black and aluminum with floor-to-ceiling glass facing the narrow shipping channel from the harbor of St John’s out to the North Atlantic. We went there at the end of our first day, tired from hiking and still adjusting to the time warp, and had a glass of wine and watched a sunny day gently give way to a mysterious dusk. On our last day in Newfoundland – the day of the evening we went to hear folk music in the traditional club – we went to have a last glass of wine, and to round off the trip. Now it was drizzling and foggy, and you could not follow the strait out to the sea. But if there had been a long view … we noticed that each table in the café had on it a pair of cased binoculars (probably for whale watching). I thought to ask the waitress whether any of them ever disappeared, but realized it would be a crass question, to which I already knew the answer.
David