“Fair weather to you!”
In Neufundlands nebligen, zerklüfteten Landschaften finden Wanderer ihr Paradies mit Ausblick auf Eisberge. Die Hauptstadt St John’s wartet mit malerischen bunten Häusern auf, und im Ozean tummeln sich die Buckelwale. Eine Entdeckungsreise von FRANCESCA S
High up on Signal Hill, overlooking St John’s – the capital of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador – a breath of easterly wind blows in from the Atlantic Ocean. An eagle has alarmed a seagull colony and their cries rise from the rocks below. A raven hovers just above my head. For a few moments, the raven and I share a bird’s-eye view of Canada’s oldest and easternmost city, and its dramatic coastal setting.
It took me only about 15 minutes to walk from the city centre to the top of Signal Hill, the summit of which is about 150 metres above sea level. Today, I’m joining the stream of hikers, dog walkers and joggers puffing their way to the top. One visitor is wandering around with coffee and a mobile phone, looking for a good spot for a selfie. What a perfect location: right in front of a sign that marks this as the place where Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal – sent from England – in 1901.
Up here, the landscape is open and wild, and I take a big breath of fresh, salty air. Food for body and soul. I follow the footpath around the headland to the Battery: a neighbourhood of multicoloured houses and sheds that sprawls down the steep slopes to the water. Brightly painted homes look as though they’ve sprung straight from a child’s paintbox, but beneath their pretty exteriors, they’re strong enough to withstand hurricane-force winds that can shake them to their foundations.
Leading north and south from Signal Hill is the famous East Coast Trail. More than 300 kilometres of footpaths wind along the spectacular coastline, taking you past towering cliffs, fjords, abandoned settlements and a geyser called the Spout. To the south, I see Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America, rising above today’s low clouds.
Giants in the bay
The population of St John’s is around 112,000, and Newfoundland and Labrador is one of Canada’s smallest provinces.
For thousands of years before the Europeans arrived in the early 1500s, the island was occupied by its indigenous Beothuk people, most of whom settled north of where St John’s is today.
A naturally formed gap in the cliffs, called the Narrows, allows boats to enter the harbour. July and August are the months when you should bring binoculars and watch for whales. When humpbacks migrate here from their winter habitats in the Caribbean, there are more of them in the waters off Newfoundland and Labrador than anywhere else on the planet.
If you don’t spot a humpback from Signal Hill, you can drive to coastal lookout spots or take a whale-watching trip. Tour boats keep their distance from these huge creatures, but whales will occasionally swim alongside the boats, giving the impression that they’re just as curious about us as we are about them.
This part of the world is also famous for icebergs. Blocks of ice 10,000 years old break off from the glaciers of western Greenland and Canada’s Arctic. Nature’s majestic sculptures in white and shades of blue and green, they float south in the spring and early summer, melting as they go, and occasionally run aground.
Britain’s first overseas colony
On the top of Signal Hill, you can’t miss Cabot Tower, built in 1897 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Italian explorer Giovanni Caboto – better known to us as John Cabot.
Cabot was on a voyage of discovery for King Henry VII of England when
he landed by chance on these shores in 1497 and claimed the land for the English king. One of Cabot’s observations was that the “waters teemed with cod” – and it was indeed these fish that brought the British back to settle here. In the late 16th century, the island became Britain’s first overseas colony.
It was an advantage for Britain to have a fishery based in Newfoundland, and the community there grew into a busy port. Early immigrants came mostly from the south-west of England and the south-east of Ireland; you can still hear Irish in the accents of local people. By the mid-19th century, Newfoundland was the world’s largest exporter of salt codfish.
Over the centuries, Newfoundland enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy from Britain, but after the First World War, the country was so poor that its government collapsed. The province was put under direct rule from London. It was not until 1948 that a narrow majority of Newfoundland’s inhabitants voted in two referendums to join Canada, rather than become independent or remain under British rule. In 1949, Newfoundland and Labrador officially became the tenth province of Canada.
Recent decades have seen a dramatic change to the way of life here. Fish stocks dwindled, and a temporary ban on cod fishing in the early 1990s put 30,000 fishermen out of work. An offshore oil boom that started in the province in the late 1990s brought new jobs and a period of prosperity. Now, with lower energy prices, there are doubts that the local offshore oil and gas industry will provide long-term solutions to the economic challenges. Once again, families are leaving the province to work elsewhere.
With the shifting demographic, the population is ageing. Hope for the future rests with a young high-tech sector: maybe St John’s will become Canada’s “Silicon Harbour”.
Festival season in the city
A short walk from the centre of town lies Quidi Vidi Lake, where rowing teams have competed in the Royal St John’s Regatta since 1818. A local public holiday, Regatta Day draws thousands of people to the lake. Most take no notice of the rowing but come with their families for the side attractions.
I walk down to the end of the lake, where Quidi Vidi Harbour, with its pretty fishing sheds, gives a sense of the old way of life. This is a great place for a beer and a bite to eat. If you pass by the Quidi Vidi Village Plantation, you can chat with artists working in open studios; the views across the water are wonderful.
July and August are the festival season in St John’s. One of the most popular is the annual NL Folk Festival, which occupies Bannerman Park in the city centre for three days. Families and music lovers spread blankets out on the grass or bring chairs and sit back to enjoy the music. There’s a good chance you’ll see fiddles and accordions and hear the strong cultural ties that live on between Newfoundland and Ireland.
“Twacking” in the stores
The centre of St John’s is on the north side of the harbour, with hills rising all around. The heart of the old “downtown” consists of two main streets: Duckworth Street and Water Street, the oldest commercial street in North America.
Three fires, in 1816, 1846 and 1892, destroyed many structures, and the old city has been overlaid with new facades
and modern buildings. But I can still see the bones of the old port city, where some of the buildings date back to the mid-19th century.
Downtown is a good place to lose yourself in art galleries, restaurants and craft breweries – or to go “twacking” (the local word for “browsing”) in a store. Today, I go to the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador store on Water Street.
There’s so much local culture in these products made by craftspeople. I admire Labradorite jewellery, keychains made from moose antlers and pottery with glazes that glisten like the sea; there’s also a stack of rainbow-coloured gloves to keep fingers warm. On the shelves, recipe books include local dishes, such as Jiggs’s dinner, a traditional Sunday meal in Newfoundland, with beef, vegetables and dumplings.
Exploring downtown
“Some blustery out,” the lady at Nonia says as I enter her store. The not-for-profit knitting shop has just celebrated its 100th anniversary. Despite all the changes in the clothing industry, Nonia continues a business model that’s worked for a century, employing around 150 knitters to handknit products in their own homes.
At the back of the store, a map of the province is covered in little pins, showing where the knitters live. Most are spread across the St John’s region, but I can see one in Labrador City. There, I’m told, a woman makes “baby puffin cardigans”. I imagine these are for babies, not for puffins.
Water Street and Duckworth Street are connected by two walkways: Mcmurdo’s Lane and Solomon’s Lane. They take me past a gallery displaying work by local artists, and to pubs such as the Duke of Duckworth and the Ship, which attract regular customers for draft beer and fish and chips. The restaurant scene reflects the changing population of St John’s, with Japanese, Korean and fusion food among the more familiar dishes. Award-winning restaurants on Water Street and Duckworth Street offer excellent meals.
I walk along George Street, the city’s downtown entertainment district. Only two blocks long, it’s home to a surprising number of karaoke bars, dance bars and pubs. One of them advertises “screech-in” ceremonies – where visitors can become “honorary Newfoundlanders”. This tradition varies from pub to pub, but a screech-in usually involves a short recitation, kissing a codfish, downing a glass of rum and a lot of laughter.
Gothic arches and stained-glass windows
I walk up the hill to the Ecclesiastical District. The oldest of its four historic churches is the beautiful Anglican Cathedral of St John the Baptist, built in the Gothic Revival style. The parish has been here since 1699 and there have been several churches on the site. The cathedral I’m looking at was begun in 1847 but had to be extensively rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1892 swept through the city. The structure was actually never completed.
Inside, graceful arches and a high ceiling create an acoustic that allows music to linger in the air. And, important to tourists, the west doors of the church are the starting point for the “Haunted Hike”. I plan to come back at nine o’clock this evening to join a ghostly walking tour to discover the city’s darker history.
Looming over the city is the Catholic Basilica of St John the Baptist. Inspired by Italian Romanesque churches and completed in the mid19th century, its construction materials include 400,000 yellow Hamburg bricks used in the two towers.
With its distinctive shape, the basilica defines the city’s skyline, and the treasures inside include 63 stained-glass windows made in England, France and Ireland. The church makes its opulent space available every Christmas for a concert of Handel’s Messiah, performed by the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra; for some, this marks the beginning of the festive season.
A hidden gem
Nowadays, the basilica has competition on the skyline. Crossing the road, I walk into the province’s cultural centre, The Rooms, which opened in 2005. This large, modern building has a prominent place in the neighbourhood.
Its name and shape refer to fishing sheds that are traditionally called “rooms”. Inside, modern angles frame a large, gleaming atrium with floors of Newfoundland black granite. An inviting wide staircase leads visitors up through the centre of the interior to galleries and exhibits explaining the rich history and culture of the province.
As I walk in, lunch is being served in the cafe, where guests eat in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that frame a panoramic view of the city and surrounding hills.
I look out on to the shimmering ocean and feel lucky to live in a little green clapboard house in the middle of this scenic city. It’s true that St John’s is off the beaten track, but once visitors find it, they often come back for more. And although we’re a bit isolated out here in the Atlantic Ocean, on the far eastern edge of Canada, western Europe is only a relatively short flight away.