If this is a dream, don’t wake me
Newfoundland’s Quirpon Island is a wild world set apart from the rest of the province
Newfoundland, while technically part of Canada, is really a world of its own. Quebec may make occasional noises about separating, but Newfoundland has always been separate in its own special way.
Tiny Quirpon Island (pronounced harpoon), off the northern tip of Newfoundland, is a separate world from the rest of Newfoundland. In 2012, I named my trip to Quirpon Lighthouse Inn, a bed and breakfast, my favourite destination that year.
Getting to Quirpon is half the fun. Landing at Deer Island airport in western Newfoundland, you drive west, then north on the Viking Highway. The further north you go, the stranger things become. First are the signs that show how many drivers have been killed by moose on the highway. There are more moose in Newfoundland than people.
You arrive at the end of the province at L’Anse aux Meadows, where Vikings established the first European settlement in North America in 999. Today, that Viking village has been fully recreated, with animators playing characters from a thousand years ago.
Finally, at the northern tip of Newfoundland, you embark in a small fishing boat on a seven-kilometre voyage into the North Atlantic, looking for the lighthouse. If the seas aren’t too rough, you disembark and trek three kilometres through soggy tundra to the B&B, a former lighthouse keeper’s house.
If it’s too rough to land, it’s a seven-kilometre slog.
Not to worry, there’s a cart that carries your luggage.
Even in summer, Quirpon Island can be cold, wet and foggy. Not 50 metres from the B&B stands the actual lighthouse, still functioning. The deep and vibrant tones from the foghorn boom throughout the night as waves far below the deep cliffs join in. In a cove a few minutes walk from the lighthouse, the deep ocean currents of Iceberg Alley split into two directions and provide a wealth of nutrition for the huge humpback whales that dine here. There aren’t too many places in the world where you can reach out and touch a 24-tonne animal.
Sitting on the steps of the lighthouse was a German couple. They sat there for three days, hardly speaking. I finally asked them what they were looking for. At home, they said, nobody would believe you could sit on the steps of a lighthouse and watch giant icebergs float by all day while dozens of humpback whales breach and 30-metre waves smash against the cliffs.
They were hypnotized. It was wilderness supreme, some sort of dream from which they didn’t want to wake.
I tried kayaking in a cove, mastering the waves, then ventured forth into the open ocean to look for whales.
Immediately, I started bobbing up and down like a cork in a bottle, scared witless, barely able to turn around and make it back alive to shore. In winter, I was told the waves breached the top of the 80-metre cliffs and the lighthouse keeper’s house had to be chained to the rock to stop it from being blown away into oblivion by 100km/h winds.
Sitting on the front porch, the view over the ocean seemed halfway to Greenland. Inside, three hilarious old ladies kept up a continuous chatter of jokes in the kitchen while the delicious odour of baking bread and potatoes wafted forth. Lobster was the main entrée; there is so much lobster in Newfoundland, I’m told, you can eat it every day.
The foghorn boomed, the wind blew and wild birds keened in the sky. It was wild. It was heaven — Newfoundland style.
There aren’t too many places in the world where you can reach out and touch a 24-tonne animal.