It is Day 39 and we are spending our last night in Twillingate, NFLD. Since the last blog, we have also spent time in Bonavista, NFLD. Tomorrow we head westward clear across the island to a place called Rocky Harbour. We are being immersed in NFLD culture: the music, the humor, the food, the expressions, and the history that have both shaped and been shaped by the folks with roots here.

But before I continue on, I must say that yesterday we were saddened to hear that our beloved brother-in-law, Earl, husband to Shannon’s sister Fern, passed away after a lengthy struggle. We knew it was coming and were amazed at Earl’s strength and resiliency to last as long as he did, and a credit to Fern’s care that was responsible for holding him to this life for so long. But death is hard. No matter how much one prepares for it, when it comes it still sets us back and it hurts. His passing is somewhat ironic in that this Maritime trip was one of his favorites. He and Fern were Wagon Masters of this same caravan trip a number of times and loved it dearly. Fern tried to relay our progress to him, but we are unsure how much he understood. We will miss Earl. I knew him longer than I have known Shannon. He was one of those individuals that was truly larger than life. He was energetic, outgoing, loved a good laugh, loved being around people, and knew how to diplomatically deal with people so that problems were solved and everyone felt good about themselves. We are so sorry that we never had the opportunity to go on a caravan trip when he was the Wagon Master. We know our trip would have been more enjoyable and memorable under his leadership. Anaway, we will miss him terribly, but we have so many good memories that he does live on. That’s sufficient for now.

One highlight of our travels so far was our visit to Elliston, a tiny sea port on the east coast of NFLD. When the cod fishing moratorium was imposed and many people were out of work and the town started dying, people looked around for something to revitalize their town. They realized that they had something no one else in Canada, and then through research determined no one else in the whole world had as many as Elliston had. Root cellars. Elliston has 130+ root cellars with a population of about 300 people. Some of the cellars date back over 100 years. And so we had a presentation of the root cellar story and watched a Canadian Public TV video about the root cellars of Elliston. During the presentation, I expected the presenter to break out into a big smile and laughingly say this is all a joke. I kept thinking that the talk could be made into a great standup comic routine by Jerry Seinfeld. During the video I kept thinking what Monty Python could do with this video. But the Elliston folks were quite serious and their root cellars really did exist, and they are very proud of their distinction of being the “Root Cellar Capital of the World.”

Root cellars paled next to seeing for the first time the Atlantic puffins. We sat out along the high cliffs and watched the puffins on top of a large rock that was separate from the mainland. However, puffins did fly over to where we were sitting and some were fairly unafraid of us. The puffins burrow in the ground to make their nests. We were told there were young in the burrows but they stayed hidden from the marauding gulls hanging about. Puffins definitely were a highlight of this trip.

We were in the Bonavista and the Elliston area for three days and then moved on to the Twillingate area. The story all along the coast was the same. People of Scottish and Irish heritage settled the coast to work the rich cod banks off of Newfoundland and Labrador. When the cod stocks diminished, the Canadian government shut down the commercial fishing for cod, and did provide relief for all those people who relied on the industry for their living. However, cod fishing was not just an occupation; it was a way of life. We heard the story repeated time and again, and we heard and saw demonstrations of how cod were prepared, early on by salting and drying, and later by refrigeration.

This is Twillingate, but it really could be a picture of any community along the Atlantic coast in NFLD. The terrain is very hilly, streets are narrow, houses are pretty modern, and the tools of the fishing trade are everywhere.

Part of experiencing the culture of this area is eating the food. This is probably their best meal. It’s called Jigg’s Dinner. The centerpiece is a piece of salt beef with boiled root vegetables typically grown here, turnips, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, pickled beets, and mustard pearl onion. There was also something called peas pudding which was dried peas that were mashed, put in a bag and steamed. Finally, there was a hunk of bread pudding on the plate. It was all very blah, kind of like eating Norwegian food, except for the salt beef which was too salty to eat much of. We also tried brewis which was a bowl of fish pieces, boiled potatoes, and scruntions which were pieces of pork lard. The other new food was called touton which were fried bread chunks eaten with molasses or jam. Along the way, I also had a pulled moose sandwich. Now that was good!

And we were treated to local entertainment. The first night in Twillingate we went to a dinner theater where we were served a fish meal, cod or salmon, and then treated to a show of music and comedy sketches that made any Bemidji Community Theater play look like a Tony Award winning production. But people were having fun putting on the show and the audience loved it, and folks didn’t mind at all laughing at themselves. The most memorable thing about the performers for many in our group was their lack of expressions; they had that stoic Scandinavian look. There wasn’t a single facial expression on any of the performers the entire show, including at the end in the receiving line.  

The next night we went to a musical production by a group calling themselves the Split Peas. It was an all woman group who sang local songs, the members were much more expressive, and the performance was very professional but the feeling was hometown and warm. The group has been performing for over 20 years and the women are all local and most are now retired. They have produced a number of CD’s, and all in all it was a very enjoyable evening entertainment.

And we end with an iceberg. We had all hoped we would see one or some. We kept hearing things like, “Oh, you should have been here last week; there were several hundred out there.”  But now we finally saw them, and our trip is complete. Now onward to more of NFLD.