7-Western Newfoundland --The Northern Great Peninsula

We are back in Newfoundland exploring the island’s western portion a bit more in depth. The people and the land are as wonderful as ever and no blog in the world would do them justice.

We started out our journey at Deer Lake (airport) and then drove up the Great Peninsula driving all the way  till St. Anthony where we stayed to explore the region a bit.

It is difficult to come up with a fitting biome for this part of Newfoundland; it is neither taiga nor tundra but contains elements of both. Areas exposed to the elements are referred to as barrens (part of the Long Range Barrens ecoregion) characterized by low-growing coniferous trees, bushes in wind-protected areas and lots of mosses and lichen on highland moors. Peat-cutting was definitely an occupation before modern times and is immortalized in the street name of ‘Old Peat Road’ in St. Anthony.

The northern ecoregion is the coldest on the island and has the shortest growing season: 110 days. This is a function of the northern latitude combined with the cold Labrador current as well as ice floes flowing south late in the season. 

In June/early July the barrens are in bloom as evidenced by the pink and white moss flowers as shown above and other acidic-soil-loving plants.

Looking at this landscape and the sea one wonders how people make a living here in the north, especially after the moratorium on the cod. The population numbers of St. Anthony show what most towns except the area of St. John’s in Newfoundland show—a downward trend. Young people leave the area and in many little hamlets the old and some middle-aged seem to be left behind. This doesn’t mean there aren’t any children, just not all that many. In some instances, Newfoundlanders return with their young family because kids can still be real kids here—there is no crime, houses aren’t locked and everybody helps everybody. Again, that is now a little different in St. John’s where violent crime is somewhat on the uptick.

The most important employer in St. Anthony is the Hospital which provides services to the entire region which might include some areas in Labrador.

 Fishing still plays a large role on the Great Peninsula as well. Fishermen go out to catch halibut which only can be caught in the St. Lawrence Stream, shrimp, scallops, lobster, crab, caplin,  and some cod (all are subject to a quota). Fishermen in the area of Porte aux Choix half-way up on the peninsula will fulfill their quota there and then move for the rest of the season to St. Anthony. Once they have reached their quota there, they are done for the season. There are fish processing plants in both Porte aux Choix and St. Anthony—there are also trucks going back and forth between the two towns. Most of the fish/seafood is exported to other areas in Canada.

There is also a water bottling facility in St. Anthony. The US reality TV show Iceberg Hunters (Iceberg Hunters is produced for the Weather Channel in the U.S. (CBC)) showcases two brothers from St. Anthony, Newfoundland hunting icebergs and collecting iceberg fragments, heaving them into their boat and bringing them ashore in St. Anthony. Here, the ice is sold to a water bottling company which produces the product ’80 Degrees North’ –natural iceberg water.

The bottle has been designed to look a little like an iceberg with most of the bottle representing the underwater portion. From the inside, the label actually shows an iceberg but you’d have to look very closely. Incidentally, this is the water I bought while in the only supermarket in St. Anthony not because I knew it was bottled in St. Anthony—that revelation came later—but because it showed a globe. 

While driving up and down the peninsula we observed many plots of lands by the roadside that were surrounded by fencing. What is remarkable that these plots of land can be miles (!) away from the nearest hamlet/cottage. So, what are these? According to a little private museum in a gift store in St. Anthony, these are gardens! The road construction that occurred in the area in the early 1970s helped find good and deep enough soil  which explains the odd location. Glaciers thinned out the soil tremendously, the last glaciers left the area between 9,000-11,000 years ago. It takes roughly 100 years for the development of 1 cm of topsoil in warm, humid climates and much, much longer in cold climates. So, people developed their garden plots wherever they could growing potatoes, onions, cabbage and tubers. The fencing around the plots is to keep moose and caribou out.

And indeed, moose and caribou cross the roads, one right in front of me when I was behind the wheel. They tend to feed on new growth of balsam spruce and birch causing quite some destruction in the forests. In general, they will leave spruce and the alien/exotic alder alone so these are thriving plants in this environment.

In addition to random garden plots, there are also lots and lots of cut woodpiles along the roads--seemingly not belonging to anybody in particular. This wood does belong to individuals and everybody knows what belongs to whom.  Access to the wood is usually from the highway, hence the high visibility. The wood, spruce, fir and sometimes birch, is usually cut in winter, transported to the roadside with bobcats or sleighs and left out to dry over the summer. Towards the fall, the wood will be transported to the individuals home for heating purposes.

Last but definitely not least, St. Anthony is increasingly becoming a tourist destination. Icebergs and whale-watching attract tourists from as far as Gros Morne which is about a 4-5 hr drive. Even though the town is located far north on the peninsula its location is actually quite good for tourism because it is about a 15 minute drive from a UNESCO World Heritage site along the Viking Trail. The first Viking settlement on American soil occurred around 1,000--it is believed to have served more as a support center for boat repair than a settlement.

Icebergs seem to have magical powers and attract a lot of visitors, including myself. Newfies actually categorize icebergs as to their appearance and size—for particulars please see the provided chart (Museum at the Lighthouse store, St. Anthony). For particulars on icebergs please see the chapter on 'Icebergs and Sea Ice'.

Tourist tours take travelers around the icebergs; in some cases they even let people touch the iceberg. While this might be great fun for the visitors, one should be mindful of the fact that once such an iceberg starts rolling or calves off a portion of its own self, the resultant wave may not be the safest thing to experience. And, such splitting occurs very suddenly.

Of course I had to see an iceberg as well so we booked a tour with St. Anthony's only tour operator. Our guide was a trained marine biologist, well versed in anything that went on in Newfoundland's ocean as well as on Newfoundland's land, for that matter. We ended up circling a huge iceberg, probably a  blocky medium to large iceberg when applying the chart above. What is interesting about this particular iceberg is the fact that there are sections upfront where the surface looked totally smooth--this is from water action from the time when this portion of the iceberg was underwater. Maybe a block calved off the big berg causing a different balance ratio and thus more of the 90% of the berg emerged from underwater. While most of the ice appeared snow-white, there were sections where the ice appeared more greenish; this are areas where there were original crevasses in the ice that were filled in with new water as can be seen below. 

Apart from icebergs large ocean animals, e.g. whales, attract tourists as well. And it is indeed amazing to see these huge, curious creatures swim around their environment feeding or checking out boats loaded with tourists who are told to wave to them. On this particular tour we saw one or two humpback whales very busily feeding away on capelin--small heringlike fish that used to attract cod and in the absence of cod attracts these whales. More on the lives of humpback whales can be found in the appropriate listed above.