I say when I go travelling that I am off in search of “a change of scenery”. In the case of Newfoundland this was quite literally true. A bonanza for this aspiring ‘geologist in my next life’.
The Bonavista Peninsula is a 3-ish hour drive from St. John’s, on the northeast coast. Travelling up the peninsula to our destination at its very tip, the town of Bonavista, watching the rocky land pass me by, I soon noticed a couple of things. What looked like fields between rock outcrops were anything but and there was not a farm in sight. Not one.
What I was looking at was a mass of land that long ago had its top layers scoured away completely by glaciers leaving whatever could exist on rock to face the windiest place in the country. There’s a good reason they call this island province “The Rock”
“Barren land” comes to mind when looking at this scenery. But look closely and it is not barren at all. Tiny plants grow around and in between the rock and small evergreen trees slowly crawl as if prostrated against the ocean’s winds.
The town of Bonavista couldn’t be more different from at home in Qualicum Beach on the west coast. There are no gardens at all. None. No trees of any significance, few bushes. All the houses are completely exposed to each other – you can stand on one side of town and have a clear view right across to the other. Low white or weathered picket fences partially surround some structures – with no particular function apparent to me, at any rate.
Privacy in this town must be pretty close to zero.
There is a big effort to restore the old saltbox houses and to preserve the historic look and feel of the place. There are many boarded up and abandoned looking old buildings, but the signs of change are around. Quite a few had been restored, or are currently undergoing renovation, to be resold or used for vacation rentals.
Ours was one of them, this blue house across the road from the ocean, separated from the beach from a weathered board fence – a wind/wave break.
In 1755 a massive earthquake in Lisbon, across the Atlantic, caused a tsunami that struck this coast line including Long Beach across the road from us. There are the usual reports of the water receding all of a sudden out of the bay and then 10 minutes later returning in full force flooding the open meadows on the shore. Today those meadows behind Long Beach are covered with houses. Sitting on the porch, looking out at the ocean view, thinking that one over…well yes indeed. We are definitely tsunami bait.
The house we stayed in, about 700 square feet on 2 stories, was built at the turn of the last century by James Guy, a carpenter, fisherman and sealer and was a typical fisherman’s house for the time, probably serving as home for a family of 8. The property has stayed in the family and when it was acquired by the current owner it had been vacant for many years. It has now been beautifully renovated, restoring many of the features and woodwork of the original, while opening up tiny rooms for a more modern esthetic. There are views of the ocean from every window. The story of the restoration and more pictures are in this feature article here.
Then there are the puffins. A short distance from Bonavista in the community of Elliston, you can get up (not too) close and personal with the puffin colony that hangs out in the naturally burrowed rock of an island close to the peninsula where the humans can check them out. (Long lens and binoculars helps). People come to this small coastal community from all over the world to make the short trek along the cliff path to see these birds. There’s something about those faces. The word “cute” keeps coming to mind.
Another claim to fame for Elliston. It bills itself as The Root Cellar Capital of the World. I find no evidence to suggest any other community is fighting for possession of that title
Cape Bonavista Lighthouse. The new modern one definitely lacks the charm of the old.
Bonavista is where, the story goes, John Cabot first reached land in 1497. He is described as the first European discoverer of North America. Except he wasn’t. He was preceded by the Vikings who actually settled for a time in what is now l’Anse aux Meadows 1000 years ago.
Well, then, let’s call him the first European whose name we know.
Except we don’t. John Cabot was actually Giovanni Caboto from Genoa, who shopped his expedition plans around a number of European capitals before the King of England took him on.
The replica of his ship, The Matthew, is now in a semi-permanent dry dock museum in the Bonavista harbour, undergoing a slow restoration.
The modern harbour and its remaining fishing boats. In 1992 when the moratorium on the dying cod fishery was imposed, it changed a way of life in Newfoundland forever.
On the last afternoon I took my camera for a walk to look at the old and the new of this town and to talk to some of the locals. I met a man, sitting on a bench in the rare minutes of sunshine that day, and asked him about the pond in the middle of town. Old Day’s Pond. I’d discovered its new-looking 1 km boardwalk around the circumference.
He had a story to tell.
Some years ago a channel was dug between what was an inland pond and the sea, intended as a protected place for fishing boats to moor or dock. It didn’t quite work out as intended, what with tidal flows and sediment shifts and so on. So the channel then became the outflow dump for the town sewage, probably on the hope(?) that the tides would just take it all away. Wrong. The pond became hopelessly polluted. “Oh the smell on a hot day!” my new friend remembered. “But it’s much better now” he continued, “It’s getting there”. Meaning? It looks like it’s been a success story, as the wildlife has returned and it is now a pleasant walk around this former cesspool, now a bird sanctuary.
Before that though, when the original pond was being dredged for the boat docking plans, they made a discovery. The land surrounding the pond is a section of peat, and they dug up a very well preserved man. A Frenchman, identifiable by his still mostly intact soldier’s uniform, preserved in the peat. Over 300 years old and lost from the time of fighting between the English and French to capture and recapture this land that was so significant through its proximity to the fishing grounds.
The last night in Bonavista I watched the heavy fog roll in. Everything on this rocky land was grey except for the odd pops of colour from some of the brightly painted houses. The rain came and was fitting. I felt that I had just barely scratched the surface of this place, which is true. I could have stayed longer for sure.
We returned to St. John’s for one last Saturday night before leaving Newfoundland. That night was a bit of a dream come true.
25 years or so ago I found an album called Gypsies and Lovers by a Newfoundland group called The Irish Descendants. I have been listening to it ever since, and indeed one of my favourite songs of all time, Cape St Mary’s, is on it.
Well it turns out that that very night, that very band was playing at O’Reilly’s on George Street and guess where I was. Propping up the bar, a matter of feet from the stage floor, listening to my favourites with an enormous smile on my face.
Could there be a better ending to a Fine Time in Newfoundland?
