Newfoundland Imagined

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In two weeks, John and I leave for a trip east - to Ottawa, of course, to visit family and to cherish some moments with his mum, now aged 90, and then to Newfoundland for a 17-day driving tour.

Newfoundland would not have been my first vacation choice; I wanted to go to New York City. I've never met anyone who didn't love New York. Likewise, I've never met a soul who didn't love Newfoundland. I guess it depends which skyscraper - made by Mohawk or glacier - you want to climb for the view.

A bit of research raises the enthusiasm for Newfoundland. There are some World Heritage sites, and some landforms pushed up from the center of the earth. Some thousand-year-old Norse sites have been reconstructed, and are said to be particularly affecting. (Annie Proulx wrote "The Shipping Lanes" near them, that has to be a good sign.) There are icebergs broken off from Greenland and sailing south. The icebergs are what I look forward to most of all. Couldn't say why, just want to see them, smell them. I hear some bars serve drink with berg ice, so I might even taste them. Maybe I'm Titanic-romantic, or maybe it's the pull of things ancient, as these bergs are said to have formed perhaps thousands of years ago; I just want to see icebergs.

St. John's is the biggest town, with a population of about 100,000. I lived for a while near a town of 60,000. There were two main-ish streets and a strip mall up on the highway. So I kind of know I won't get lost in St. John's. The rest of "The Rock" consists of miles of wilderland and tiny outposts founded on fishing, which has for the most part dried up. I'm expecting peeling-paint wooden buildings, rotting fish docks, overgrown community parks. There will be a few "touristified" towns - Twillingate, Trinity - and despite my will to hate them, I will probably love them. I like fantasy made real, I have to admit; true reality is dull, if not horrific, when it comes to the places I visit.

That is the best part of travelling: the anticipation. I like to write down my imaginings before I visit, because those images that might occupy my mind for months will be obliterated once I arrive. There is no land like that of the imagination.

I envision Newfoundland as a barren, windblown land not unlike the Burren of western Ireland, a wasteland of rock interrupted by stone fences, neighbour against neighbour in the jealous guarding of patches of rock. I envision the once proud and now neglected fir boxes that represent East Coast architecture, standing alone in boggy lowlands or on storm-harassed stony bays. I imagine the clammy smell of the sea mixed with the fresh bite of passing icebergs. I imagine briny whale-breath, and the salty talk of old fishers now idle in the pubs.

All my life I've known folk songs like "The Feller from Fortune" and "I's the B'y that Builds the Boat." These songs are filled with the names of places I'll now visit: Fogo, Twillingate, Morton's Harbour, Bonavista, Carbonear. I'm hoping we'll find the ceilidh in Newfoundland, as we did in Cape Breton: families in the community hall, dancing up a storm. I'm hoping we'll find kitchen parties, fiddlers, the singers of the old stories.

I expect some sort of spiritual movement inside, as I always experience while travelling, no matter where.

Hey, it's Newfoundland, the only (?) land in the world that posts its time on the half hour, relative to Greenwich. It will probably be half past just about everything.



After Newfoundland, I will be escaping to the city, visiting Montreal, with my poet friend Lisa. She'll come in from Cape Cod, and we expect to . . . hmmm . . . speak about a million words, weep in galleries, consume undisclosed quantities of wine in sidewalk cafes, compete for poetry in the moments we share. We have a B&B booked in the middle of all the action, and, by God, I will need it!




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