Dreamscapes Travel & Lifestyle Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dreamscapes.ca/i/679293
DREAMSCAPES SPRING/SUMMER 2016 48 "Half a bun's better than no bread in the house," Oxford reflects as we face the gale, pragmatic in the face of fury. ANCIENT MARINERS The ship is lurching forward as well as up, down and sideways as we cross the Strait of Belle Isle to Labrador. Hogan explains the oxygen-rich Labrador Current and its effect on marine life. The mountains of ice in Ice- berg Alley follow the current in May and June, as do the fish and the whales that lured Basques whalers to Red Bay in the early 1500s. We hike the trails where they rendered oil from 25,000 bowhead whales they hunted over 80 consecutive summers before giving up on this place, too. Next stop, the 7,500-year-old burial mound at L'Anse Amour (pop. eight). A road crew uncovered a skeleton of a child with a walrus tusk flute here as well as the oldest harpoon in the world. "For 9,000 years people have fished and hunted in exactly the same spot. You can't dig potatoes without digging up a 3,000- year-old axe around here," says our guide. A SCOFF AND A SCUFF Our cruise is giving us insights into isolated outport life and the ethos of isolation and hardship that runs deep through this place. It may explain why Newfoundlanders seem so practical, resilient and good at making their own fun. With no roads and only sporadic ferry service, the arrival of a ship such as ours, with a hundred new faces on board, is a reason to "fire up a scoff" (meal) and gather local musicians and cele- brate. So I "put me hard shoes on for a scuff," hop onto a Zodiac and head to the local hall. Daniel Payne, our onboard musician, says these tiny towns are caches of a disap- pearing culture. "The music passed through these people, it goes deeper than entertain- ment," he says. "It's what makes our story, the different people who got together and carved out a life here." MAGIC AND LOSS Every family has an outport story and author Michael Crummey reads his Fishing on the Labrador one afternoon while we are out at sea. It's a tale of the hardships and loss faced by 10,000 men and boys, including his grandfather, who sailed off each summer to work in isolated whaling stations. Loss is still in the air as we motor into Brake's Cove, an outport abandoned as part of former premier Joey Smallwoood's plan to amalgamate the far-flung population. I sit beside Joan Oxford, Tony's wife, and she cries remembering the day her grandmother's house was floated out into the bay for reloca- tion. This community, like 300 others, was emptied out and consolidated into "growth centres" by the Smallwood government. I climb up to the graveyard above the beach with her Uncle Joe who is typically stoic. "We didn't want to move—it seems crazy and it was, m'dear," he says gazing out to sea. "But great-grandfather Brake is still here—all sodded over." ROCK OF AGES Newfoundland is a vast place—more than 110,000 square kilometres of rock and fjords, jutting farther out into the wild Atlantic than any other corner of North America—a world unto itself. When we finally disembark in St. John's, "swarving" around the steep streets on our sea legs, I feel like an explorer returning from the new world. We've found rare birds, both feathered and not. We've tapped our toes to small-town fid- dlers and learned first-hand about the collapse of the cod fishery from families who face all with good humour, grace and generosity. Author Crummey offers an elegant sum- mation: "Life is all about magic and loss and wonder and ruin." I've seen it all on our Newfoundland adventure. T R A V E L P L A N N E R Adventure Canada (adventurecanada.com) specializes in outdoor adventure, wildlife viewing, nature photography and native culture trips across Canada. For more information on Newfoundland and Labrador, visit newfoundlandlabrador.com. DS TOP: A whale breaches off the coast of Newfoundland. ABOVE: Traditional punts on Fogo Island have been locally crafted by generations of boat builders. Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism/ Barrett & MacKay Photo