Completing the circle in Newfoundland

ST. ANTHONY – I’ve made it to Newfoundland and Labrador! I’ve now reached my 10^th and last Canadian province and were the trip to end today, I could honestly say I’ve seen a good bit of Canada from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic!

And it’s the first province I’ve visited that cared enough to make me an honourary citizen! Lynn of Lynn’s B&B told her assembled guests my first morning at breakfast that the best supper to be had in this busy port town would be the Jigg’s dinner served up at the local Royal Canadian Legion branch that night.

After a drizzly day of riding through tiny wee outports on the Great Northern Peninsula and exploring the ruins of L'Anse aux Meadows, a 9^th century Norse exploration post, I was ready for a good meal.

I dined with a couple who had been more or less following the same route as me since arriving on The Rock. Laurinda and Rob were from Summerland, B.C., and had family in the Maritimes.

They were visiting the area like me for the first time and were looking forward to experiencing this traditional boiled supper. We tucked in to salt beef, potato, carrot, turnip, cabbage and peas pudding washed down with Newfoundland’s own Black Horse and Iceberg beers. A feast!

It was only then that I learned that newcomers were being Screeched In – a ceremony named after the legendary spiced Jamaican rum making us honourary Newfies.

After learning a few new words, wha, we was given a list of the Newfoundlander’s 10 Commandments. My favourites were Mind yer mudder and yer fadder!; No tellin’ yarns!; and Never mind your buddy’s wife!

Then, we sampled some local delicacies including Newfie steak aka bologna; molasses bread; dried caplin (vile stuff) and washed it down with a tot of Screech. Then came time to kiss the cod! After nearly four months on the road, the homely fish looked mighty good!

We danced a wee jig to the tune of We’ll Rant and We’ll Roar Like True Newfoundlanders and each of us – nearly a dozen, mostly from Ontario and Alberta – got a certificate suitable for framing from Branch 17 of the Legion attesting to our new status! I feel truly honoured by this simple and fun welcome!

I haven’t gone as far east as possible. That will come in another few days when I get to Cape Spear, just south of St. John’s.

For all the fun and adventure I’m having, I’m a little homesick and missing my wife after 80-odd days on the road. Only three weeks to go, which might not sound like a lot, but I've been on this lonesome road since May 11!!

It doesn’t take too much imagination to think that the first Europeans to this wild and rugged coastline, across the Strait of Belle Isle from Labrador, must have felt a similar tug from kith and kin far away.

There are no records of what the place was called by the Vikings – or more correctly, the Norsemen and women, as only raiding pirates were called Vikings – who first landed in this isolated spot. Much later. French mariners called it L’Anse aux Medeas (Cove of Medusas) after the mysterious transparent jellyfish that ply these cold North Atlantic waters. That, in turn, became L'Anse aux Meadows.

Navigating coastal waters, mostly by sailing from landmark to landmark, the first Europeans were looking for timber, furs and other natural resources absent or scarce in Greenland, Iceland or their native Scandinavia.

There’s no evidence these courageous travellers met the local natives – Innu, Beothuk and possibly Mi’qmaq – but they certainly knew from stone-lined fire pits and other clues they were not alone. There’s also nothing to say they realized they were completing the last link in the chain of human development that had circled the world for more than100,000 years but had never been completed across the Atlantic.

Now, for the first time since modern man first left Africa and started settling and interacting around the globe, Europeans had come west and connected with early Americans, completing the circle.

Nearly 600 years later, Christopher Columbus got all the credit, proving good PR can make even the smartest people believe things that are just not true.

The National Historic Site has reconstructions of several buildings built by these intrepid explorers. Pretty impressive structures built out of sod, peat bricks and the little bit of wood from the surrounding stunted forests. They used it as a base because they could recognize the local landmarks from miles off at sea – an important attribute for people unused to maps.

They moved well into the areas now known as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, calling it Vinland either due to the wild grapes growing there or the fine fertile ground for crops.

The settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows only lasted a decade or so, possibly because explorers and raiding pirates – the real Vikings – found better sources of resources closer to home. But the evidence of their spirit of discovery and their presence here lives on in the remains of their settlement and the hardy and resourceful people who cling to the place and still take their living from the land and sea – hunters, sealers and fishermen – and the rocky outports that dot the shoreline.

I got to St. Anthony after a 360-kilometer ride up Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula on the well-paved and well-travelled NL Hwy. 430. Not for the first time, I wondered why Albertans and folks from Saskatchewan put up with such poor infrastructure in the name of low taxes.

Nowhere else in the country – and believe me, after nearly 16,000 kilometers, I know whereof I speak – are the roads as poorly maintained as in those two richest of provinces. It’s like choosing to go hungry just to say you have the price of a meal in your pocket!!

I had arrived in Port aux Basques, Newfoundland from North Sydney, Nova Scotia – where I stayed at the Heritage Home, a lovely old Victorian house on the Gulf of St. Lawrence separating mainland Canada from its youngest province.

With the thrills of the Cabot Trail still fresh in my memory, the six-hour crossing aboard Marine Atlantic’s MV Blue Puttees was mind-numbingly boring. I’ll know enough to bring a novel with me for the 16-hour return voyage from Argentia a week or so from now.

I had a great feed of pan-fried cod and scallops on my arrival in Port aux Basques, the perfect dinner for the location. I’ve eaten some delicious seafood in the Maritimes – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. ­-- and Newfoundland looks like it won’t be outdone in that department.

I overnighted in the seaside village and was back on the road in warm sunshine as the MV Blue Puttees headed out of the busy port for her return to the mainland.

My next stop was Rocky Harbour and two days sightseeing in Gros Morne National Park.

I turned away from the ferry terminal and headed along the Trans Canada Highway, NL Hwy. 1, and headed to Deer Lake. There, I took NL Hwy. 430 -- the Viking Trail -- for Rocky Harbour, gateway to the fjords of Gros Morne.

I’ve seen some mighty pretty scenery on this ride, each area has its own special beauty. But it’s no exaggeration to say this glacier-scarred coastline is among Canada’s most picturesque and almost unspoiled splendours!

I would have liked to climb the backcountry to the head of the Western Brook Pond in the national park. But at this point in this great odyssey of mine, I’m not up to a two- or three-day hike into the wilderness.

So, I drove to the visitor centre and hiked for an hour into the lake at the foot of the landlocked fjord at Western Brook. Even from sea level, the mountains are awe-inspiring!

Anyone who can’t appreciate the beauty of the Tablelands of the Long Range Mountains is just being elevationist!

Just as I was leaving St. Anthony for the long ride back down the lone highway, I caught a peek at something that I thought couldn't be an iceberg this late in the season.

It was! A last lonely bergy bit, which I later found out was in the next bay over. Try as I might, I could find no way to get close enough for anything but a long-range pic.

Now I’m headed to my friend Vaughn’s cabin in his home village of Garden Cove on Placentia Bay. I’m going to be jigging for cod, a fishery that has sustained this island for at least 500 years!

In the meantime and in between time, please consider a donation to my Ride for Sight. The money goes to the Foundation Fighting Blindness to fund Canadian researchers looking into the causes and prevention of blindness. Please consider making a donation here to their work.

Ride for Sight is Canada’s largest and longest-running motorcycle charity endeavour. Bikers cover their own expenses so that every penny raised goes to the foundation.