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Published: January 7th 2015
Goose Cove
Our early morning walk in this quiet fishing village.Our morning began with a pleasant walk in
Goose Cove. The air was fresh and the temperature moderate. The sky was clear blue with a few streaks of white cloud in the distance. The village was somnolent, except for one man who came out the front door of his house with a large steel bowl, stepped into a pair of rubber boots, walked down the few stairs and around to an outbuilding in the back. Perhaps he was getting some fish, but he stayed in the building until after I disappeared from sight. We walked slowly around the head of land to gaze at the breakers. A few seagulls called and sailed on imperceptible wind currents.
We drove back along the highway to
St Barbe for the
ferry to
Blanc Sablon in Quebec. Watching the ferry disembark its load was a lesson in itself. Several transport trucks carefully rolled over the platform onto the dock, reminding us that virtually everything we usually take for granted has to be transported over the Strait of Belle Isle to Labrador. An extraordinary number of cars and campervans also disembarked, revealing Labrador as a tourist destination for those with a taste for adventure.
The crossing of
Strait of Belle Isle
Taken from the ferry, looking back at St Barbe about 90 minutes was extraordinarily calm, which I appreciated. Outside in the blustery wind, I sat with great stillness contemplating the distant fusion of sea and sky. All the way, on such a clear day, both Newfoundland and Quebec/Labrador are visible the whole crossing.
The mainland is startlingly different than the island of Newfoundland. Still rocky, the geological history is obviously distinct. We travelled along the escarpment facing the sea. The rocks are sandstone, not granite. They look like giant paving stones, incredibly split both horizontally and vertically into almost regular rectangles. On the top plateau grew bright green low vegetation but few trees.
As we drove east and up the escarpment, the landscape became more treed, especially along river courses. The rivers twisted through the gouges left by the glaciers, tumbling over rocks into the ocean. At the end of the paved highway was the small community of
Red Bay and a national
museum about whaling. I confess to being dull of mind by this point, noting with bare interest the incredible bravery and skill of both Inuit and Europeans in killing whales for survival and profit.
As I wandered out of the museum, a few of
Labrador
The glacier scraped landscape full of erratics us struck up a conversation with the museum guide who had strolled out of another building. She had noticed that
cloudberries were ripe and was picking a few. Now our interest perked up! We have been hearing about cloudberries since Corner Brook, because they are a delicacy of Labrador. We unashamedly ate the berries she had picked. Like clouds, they are puffy and dark apricot in colour. The plants grow close to the ground, and the berries are squashed in clusters about the size of a quarter. The flavour is similar to a sharp apricot with a touch of cranberry; each berry has one seed, quite crunchy. In a parody of human impatience, they are also called “bake apple”, a hasty misunderstanding of a reply in French, “Baie qui s’appelle cloud”, when the English only heard “baie q appelle”.
Another common fruit in the Northern Peninsula and Labrador is
partridgeberries. They also grow close to the ground in loose clusters, are bright red and taste like small-bush cranberries. Now in full season, we have been enjoying them in jams, crumbles, muffins, loaf cake, punch and as decoration on pudding. Unfortunately, it is too early in the season for low-bush
Minke Whale
"A Whale! A Whale! A Whale!" cried everyone on the bus. blueberries.
Back on the bus, our minds were lulled by trees and rocks and our own thoughts when Barry shouted, “Whale!”, and stopped the bus! Excited, we all peered out the windows down to the water far below. A
Minke whale was surfacing, jumping playfully out of the water. Although tiny to the naked eye, I managed to get a few photos before it swam off. Later I was thrilled to have one really good shot, even if a bit fuzzy, of its body coming straight up out of the water. Later at our welcome reception in the bar, as I showed off, Barry repressively said it might be a dolphin, and I joked that by the time I reached Calgary it would certainly be a whale!
Dinner: salad, char fillet, mixed frozen vegetables cooked properly, herbed rice and wild rice
Map of the trip to date
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Deirdre Harris
non-member comment
Strait of Belle Isle
Beautiful picture of the Strait of Belle Isle looking back at St Barbe. The scene looks almost surreal.