Newfoundland and Labrador - Whinging from the edge of the world

I'd thought we'd reached our furthest point at the end of the world when we visited L'anse Aux Meadows in Northern Newfoundland. However, now that we are again headed north and east in Labrador, I can't yet say we've begun the journey home. I can't complain, or at least that's what Newfoundlanders say, so instead they write songs. The songs they write have an upbeat tune, depressing lyrics and usually involve a lot of drinking. In that vein I think I need to do a bit of cathartic sea shanty bitching:

Wellllll IIIIII'se
sick o'de road
and sick o'd' van
and oh me lord help me
I'm sick o'd' man...

no wait that's not what I meant. Let's try again:

Well me name's Lori
and I live on the road
I'se happy and healthy
'Til I smelled like a toad.
All me possessions is mildewy grey
and me passion for trav'lin' is slippin' away...

or maybe:

It's another frickin' night without no heat,
another frickin' day out on the peat,
another frickin' mile of freakin' gloom,
but what I'm sick o'frickin' most,
is "Scuze me" ballet in a 4 foot room

You get the idea. Can you tell I'm ready to come home?

Roughing it more than I am:

Actually I don't smell like a toad, but something fungal is growing on my back and considering the environment I could be breaking out in something larger. I'm hoping for chanterelles.

Gros Morne (literally = "majorly gloomy")

I'm pretty much upside down right now.
I started calling Jack, "Melove."

Mr. Carrot meets Ms. Carrot

I'm eating caribou and actually sorry that I didn't buy the mooseburgers from that really drunken guy in Trout River who just wanted us to come over and get stoned. I didn't go. But I even congratulated a hunter on her killing of a big bull moose. My vegetarian ways don't make much sense here. Not that anything makes a lot of sense here.

Seal Meat anyone? Mooseburgers?

It appears that the moose on the island have done some pretty serious damage to the balsam fir forests. The moose are not indigenous and when their populations were small the wolves helped keep them in check. Now there's no more wolves, and people have come to rely on getting a moose each season so there is no appetite to cull the moose populations. Now the indigenous populations of arctic hare and caribou are so stressed that re-introducing wolves (to an extent that would help with the moose) would only stress their populations further. No easy answers, but to have a moose burger periodically.


I'm not really missing my stuff at home as much as I thought I might, just missing warmth and having 4 walls around me. In Newfoundland, the attitudes about property are more flexible than my Victoria Victorian ways. Property lines are not clearly defined and roads become driveways and vice versa without any warning. I've become accustomed to walking across what turns out to be someone's backyard, and when I've been approached, instead of a gruff warning that I expect, I get a warm hello.

If there are berries around people pick them, it doesn't matter where they might be. Jack and I have taken to carrying paper bags in our jackets, since most hikes turn into berry picking epics.

Now imagine a whole hillside of this:

Then there is the Newfoundland front door. If there is a front door in a house, and there typically is, there is no way to get to it from the outside. Often the door will open out to a 4 foot or higher drop-off onto the front yard. People say they are built that way because that's what's on the house plans, but the exterior finishing is unnecessary and expensive. People only come to the back door, and that enters onto the kitchen. The protocol is: knock once, then enter and call hello. On Fogo Island, people explained that it's usually too cold to wait outdoors, so it's only practical to enter the house. No one ever locks the doors, even when not home. However, it is impolite to enter further without an invitation.

I hope they don't sleepwalk:

I know that my homesickness is also upside down, because I know I'll be homesick for Newfoundland when I leave. I hope to import some Newfoundland protocol when I get home. I'll plant some berry bushes on the front boulevard, and please don't lock your back door.

not everyone makes it home

self-portrait after a month of no yoga

Newfoundland - the Friendly Province

A benefit from our car troubles upon entering Newfoundland was that we had immediate contact with local people who are not engaged in the tourism industry. The impression has been that uniformly, everywhere, people have been ridiculously good-natured, helpful and kind to us. "Whar ya fromme?" starts many a conversation. Now everywhere in Canada people have been good to us, but Newfoundland seems to take it to a different level. It's almost weird and takes some getting used to. It almost feels like we are in some kind of 'Truman Show' where someone is following us around and putting people in our path to show us around.

Last night, we arrived at a tourist information centre too late. We were standing in the parking lot looking lonely and lost for 15-20 seconds before a man got out of his car and announced, "You need information now do ya? I know everything there is ta know about dis place." (I'm sorry I can't type the combination Newfoundland & Irish accent) His name was Michael O'Riley and he told us the best outfit to take us whale-watching (O-Briens - alas, no whales), and where we could camp for the night. "Ya know about campin' in Newfoundland don'tcha? Ya don't pay for the campin' in Newfoundland." He first told us, then drove us to a good camping spot where, "the cops'll look after ya and make sure nobody hassles ya." Yes, the cops in Newfoundland will look after you if you are illegally camped somewhere and make sure no yahoos ruin your tranquil evening.

I had expressed concern that I hadn't had a shower for several days and was looking forward to one. Michael O'Riley just said, "Well there's the pond right there, you can just jump right on in no one will stop ya." Jack said something sarcastic about the ice forming around the edges, and Michael O'Riley responded quite seriously, "Oh no, the ice left long ago. It's got to be a good 4 to 5 degrees in there by now." And he was right. It did feel like about 4 to 5 degrees, but it was wonderful to have clean hair again. Jack stayed in the van playing with his i-phone. Then later he fixed dinner for me as I sat shivering in the back of the van with wet hair. (My desperate search for heat resulted in a new all-Canadian cocktail: Maple wine mixed with Crown Royal. Yum.)

These people for the most part have little reason to be upbeat. "When the cod left, that's when everything else went," we were told by a restaurant owner who was waiting her own tables. Yet everywhere we go people are quick to laugh and give some optimistic advice. They are cheerful and always joking around with each other.

I think the secret is that they don't take themselves too seriously. How can you paint all the rocks in your landscape in 64 crayola colours, or install plastic flowers in the garden without having a tongue firmly in cheek? Or the red plastic roosters mounted on each and every fencepost around a 2 acre property. Or the entire miniature village complete with miniature clothes-lines with miniature laundry drying in the wind.






Or the plywood cutouts of dogs, cats, cowboys, moose. Or the whirligigs of old-men rowing in the wind, of Canada Geese flying, of characters waving, of anything that you can imagine whirling, well, whirling. Although at a small graveyard we did see a grave that caused me to pause. It was for two brothers who had died in a boating accident in full view of their brother on shore. A tragedy for the family and for the small community. The gravestone was sober, but the entire area was covered in Astroturf, had two fanciful wooden boats and a solar powered miniature lighthouse. Whoever did that had to be able to see through their own tragedy to the sense of humour of the deceased.

If you have had an unfriendly encounter with a Newfoundlander, I don't believe it, and if Michael O'Riley was laughing with his friends about the BC hippies out on highway 10 swimming in the pond, well I don't want to know about that either.

But if I were a Newfoundlander, I think my inner curmudgeon would eventually come out. I think I'd start complaining about the weather and saying, "My tomatoes won't ripen, and I wish the hell that the tourists would stop taking pictures of the damn laundry."