In 1840 an American clergyman named Robert Lowell described
Newfoundland as "a monstrous mass of rock and gravel, almost
without soil, like a strange thing from the bottom of the deep,
lifted up, suddenly, into sunshine and storm", an apt evocation of
this fearsome island, which is still referred to - by
Newfoundlanders and mainlanders alike - as "The Rock". Its distant
position between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of St Lawrence has
fostered a distinctive, inward-looking culture that has been
unfairly caricatured by many Canadians in the stereotype of the dim
"Newfie" - a term coined by servicemen based here in World War II.
This ridicule can be traced to the poverty of the islanders, the
impenetrability of their dialect - an eclectic and versatile mix of
Irish and English - and even to their traditional food. Fish and
chips, the favourite dish, is reasonable enough in the eyes of most
people, but many stomachs churn at stand-bys such as cods' tongues,
fried bread dough with molasses ("toutons") and seal-flipper
pie.
Isolated from the rest of the country, Newfoundland is also a
place of great isolation within its own boundaries. Only in recent
years have many of the outports - the ancient fishing
settlements that were home to the first Europeans - been linked
by road to the solitary highway, the Trans-Canada, which sweeps
900km from the southwest corner of the island to the Avalon
Peninsula , where St John's , the capital, sits on the
northeast shore. Ferries from Nova Scotia touch the southwest and
the Avalon, but most visitors fly straight to St John's, the
island's only significant town and the obvious place to start a
visit, for its museums, its flourishing folk music scene and
its easy access to the Witless Bay sea-bird reserve. Yet
there are more delightful spots than this: tiny Trinity , on
the Bonavista Peninsula north of the Avalon isthmus, is
easily the most beguiling of the outports; the French-owned
archipelago of St-Pierre et Miquelon is noted for its
restaurants; Gros Morne National Park , in the west,
features wondrous mountains and glacier-gouged lakes; and at the
far end of the Northern Peninsula you'll find the scant but
evocative remains of an eleventh-century Norse colony at L'Anse
aux Meadows , the only such site in North America.
The definition and control of Labrador is the subject of a
seemingly interminable dispute between Québec and Newfoundland, a
row so intense that a Newfoundland senator, Alexander Baird, was
once roused to declare, "We Newfoundland-Canadians don't want to
fight, but, by jingo, if we have to, then I say we have the ships,
the money and the men", to which Québecois senator Maurice Bourget
added sneeringly - "and the fish". The major point of contention
was the establishment of the massive Churchill Falls
hydroelectric project, whose completion was a boost to the
Newfoundland-Labrador economy, yet despite the last few years of
industrial development and the construction of a few incongruous
planned towns, Labrador remains a scarcely explored wilderness,
boasting some of Canada's highest mountains, wonderful fjords,
crashing rivers, a spectacular shoreline with minuscule coastal
settlements and a forested hinterland teeming with wildlife. A trip
to Labrador is not something to be undertaken lightly, but its
intimidating landscapes are the nearest thing eastern Canada can
offer to the challenge of the deep north.