Gunner's Cove: Unearthing the Rock

By Ilona Biro

GUNNER’S COVE, Newfoundland _ I was sunbathing on Bella Hodge’s deck, looking out at her spectacular view over Gunner’s Cove, when a sudden whoosh of air announced the arrival of about a dozen humpback whales. For the rest of the morning they frolicked in the foamy waves below, entertaining us with impressive blows and breaches.

Every morning I awoke at Valhalla Lodge, Bella’s bed and breakfast at the top of the Great Northern Peninsula in western Newfoundland, I couldn’t wait to get outside to see if any whales - or icebergs - had arrived overnight. I’d come here at the end of a three-day road trip up the Viking Trail, a drive that began in Gros Morne National Park and north along the Strait of Belle Isle, past dozens of fishing villages and long arcs of silvery beach lined with tuckamore and driftwood.

Blessed with such magnificent scenery, it’s no wonder that the Trail attracts visitors from every corner of the world. Travellers have spread the word on the Internet about Bella’s unmatchable partridgeberry pancakes and spectacular view. But her best plug came with the publication of "The Shipping News," the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by E. Annie Proulx. During research for the book, Proulx was a frequent guest of Bella’s, and the two became fast friends.

While Bella taught the author all about the finer points of Newfoundland cuisine, Proulx adjusted to life on the Rock, and even took over operation of the lodge for a while. “On one occasion I had to make an emergency trip to Goose Bay, while Annie was staying with me,” remembered Bella. “I told her to send any tourists to other accommodations, and off I went to Labrador. But when I returned a few weeks later, Annie had the whole house full, and was making pancakes and carrying on with the guests as though she’d always done it!" In fact, Proulx enjoyed the area around Gunner’s Cove so much she bought a house there, just up the road from Bella’s.

I had read "The Shipping News" before I arrived, but didn’t want to admit to Bella that I’d been expecting Newfoundlanders to be a seriously strange lot. In the opening pages of the book, Proulx describes the novel’s main character as "A great damp loaf of a body. At six he weighed eighty pounds. At sixteen he was buried under a casement of flesh. Head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ruched back. Features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic. The monstrous chin, a freakish shelf jutting from the lower face." Yikes.

Like many Newfoundlanders, Bella didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with Proulx’s characterizations of islanders as superstitious eccentrics with a taste for hard drink and strange sex. But it’s Proulx’s version of Newfoundland that’s currently impressing movie audiences who are getting their first taste of the region via the screen adaptation. No word yet on what Bella thinks of it, but critics have widely praised the film, and even Proulx was impressed. Only time will tell whether it will inspire a new wave of tourists to explore the region’s savage beauty.

Meanwhile, after a few days at Bella’s, my companions and I had fallen deeply in love with partridgeberries. Beyond the usual jam, we had tasted all manner of sweets, sauces and even wine made from the tart berries. When we asked where we might find some to take home with us, Bella sent us off on a mad berry hunt around Gunner’s Cove: "You never know, you might get lucky and find a patch of your own," she teased.

Visitors to Newfoundland soon discover that islanders are passionate about their berries. There probably isn’t a Newfoundlander who doesn’t know of a decent berry patch, but just try to find out where they are! Berry pickers are a secretive bunch, especially in the case of the bakeapple, whose single salmon-coloured berry sits like a jewel in the midst of a bouquet of greenery. Always up for a challenge, we went for a hike along the cliffs, hoping to find a few elusive berries.

The lichen- and moss-covered cliff tops were as soft as pillows underfoot, and to our surprise we found blue flag irises, ivory mushrooms, bakeapple blossoms (alas, no berries) and Labrador tea plants growing like weeds. In the distance, a procession of icebergs were making their way down Iceberg Alley toward St. John’s. Beneath us, a replica Viking boat was gallantly sailing toward an iceberg, with a full cargo of tourists training their cameras on the huge block of ice. It reminded us of why we had come this far: a visit to L’Anse aux Meadows was our next stop.

Five minutes down the road from Bella’s is the grassy shore where Leif Erikson and a group of Vikings spent the winter a thousand years ago. It’s thought that no more than 75 people lived in the three large houses and workshops that were found here, covered by layers of dirt and grass. Bella recalled playing on the lumpy "Indian mounds" as a child. It was only in the 1960s that anthropologists begin excavations on what would later prove to have been a base camp from where the Vikings explored as far south as the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Bella’s cousin, Clayton Colbourne, is a Parks Canada interpreter at L’Anse aux Meadows. He played on the site as a child and worked on it when digging began in the 1960s. "Back then we didn’t know much about the outside world and we couldn’t have cared less. Today it’s a whole different story."

When UNESCO declared L’Anse aux Meadows a World Heritage Site in 1978 the world took notice, and tourism has grown steadily ever since. In the tiny village next door to the site, Bella’s enterprising daughters set up a little restaurant and gallery called The Norseman. Here, in a cottage once used as an artist’s studio, they turn out lobster and fish dinners, wild berry confections, and cold drinks chilled with 2,000-year-old iceberg ice, gathered at some risk by local boys from the village. In late June, lobster was on the menu, and while the sun set over the Strait of Belle Isle and distant Labrador, we ceremoniously dismantled our main course. We finished off with a slice of partridgeberry cheesecake and a pot of steaming tea, lingering for a while in front of a crackling fire.

Next day we departed Bella’s for St. Anthony’s, the largest town on the peninsula, in search of a whale bone. My husband had spied an impressive set of bleached bones on Bella’s deck and wanted some for a souvenir – badly. Folks up and down the peninsula were sympathetic to his plight, but said whale bones were as rare as hen’s teeth. Bella, meanwhile, had mentioned a carver in town who might have a bone or two to spare. So while my husband conducted a door-to-door search for the carver, I visited the amazing Grenfell House Museum.

Though he never gained the sort of fame that Norman Bethune did, the legendary doctor and missionary Wilfred Grenfell was known throughout the Commonwealth as a good samitarian of the highest order. For decades after arriving in Newfoundland in 1892, the English doctor and his staff tended to the health of the Labrador Innu and Inuit people from his famous "floating clinics" _ medical ships that plied up and down the coasts. To this day the mission operates a shop where delightful embroidered and appliqued parkas, mitts and handknits are sold to fund its operations. There’s no better place to get a taste of the area’s history, and to stock up on some of Canada’s finest crafts.

With a trunk stuffed with handknitted souvenirs, beach rocks and driftwood, we headed south to where our trip had begun. We spent our last few days exploring the area around Gros Morne National Park, recalling geology and botany lessons forgotten since high school.

According to helpful signs strung along one of Gros Morne’s many hiking paths, Newfoundland was at the centre of two great continents which broke apart, came together again, and finally broke apart permanently to become North America and Eurasia. The Rock, as Newfoundland is affectionately known, was like the pit of a peach _ drifting close to Labrador and the mainland of North America, but remaining steadfastly an island.

Part of all this geological movement is a series of flat-topped hills called the Tablelands, which form a strange Martian landscape of coppery red rock. The Tablelands were pushed out onto Earth’s surface from deep within the crust when the churning and twisting of tectonic plates were rearranging the earth’s surface many millions of years ago. Forming a ridge overlooking the highway, the iron-rich ochre slopes have interpretive trails winding along their base. Because of the high concentrations of iron, magnesium and other heavy metals, only carnivorous plants like pitcher plants (the provincial flower) and butter worts can survive.

If you have a full day, a hike up Gros Morne mountain provides an unforgettable view of an utterly unique landscape. Pressed for time, we opted for a cruise up an inland fjord called Western Brook Pond. To raucous island fiddle music and the captain’s salty commentary, we cruised through the narrow inlet, stopping at waterfalls, and bidding adieu to a couple of hikers who set off into the park from a rickety pier.

A few kilometres from Western Brook Pond is Broom Point Fishing Station, where visitors get a close-up look at a traditional family inshore fishing operation. Restored in 1990 with equipment and personal items donated by the Mudge families, Broom Point is an excellent place to learn about the fisher folk who have worked the western shore of Newfoundland for 400 years.

The Mudge family fishery was a small boat, labour-intensive fishery that used traditional fixed gear. The cod net was placed in the water and periodically harvested during the fishing season - not dragged along the ocean bottom, or seined around giant schools of fish, like the factory boat fisheries that began to proliferate in the 1970s. According to Carl Rumbolt, one of the interpreters at the Broom Point site who fished alongside the Mudges for years, the arrival of the factory ships was the beginning of the end of the cod fishery.

Upstairs, in a room heaped with nets and rope, Rumbolt showed me how a lobster trap works. Amazingly complex things, there are a number of style of pots, including the aptly-described parlour trap, where a lobster is caught in a kind of antechamber. Rumbolt’s son still fishes at Broom Point for lobster destined for restaurants and markets in Boston and Maine.

By the end of the trip the trunk of our rental car was heavy with rock samples and a giant whalebone procured from a generous carver. Though my carry-on luggage was just a "bag of rocks" to the security guard at the airport, to me it was a sack full of memories, carefully selected from each place we visited. I left with the feeling that I had been somewhere exotic and utterly beguiling, something like Annie Proulx must’ve felt when she decided to write about this part of the world.

To this day, whenever I want to bring back the stark beauty of western Newfoundland, I rearrange that pile of rocks on my window sill. Some are smooth, of a deep grey-blue, veined with white granite that winds around the centre like a piece of sparkling yarn. Others are a mottled granite of shell pink and algae green, or the chalky red ochre of the Tablelands. They’re as different from the pebbles I pick up on the shores of Lake Ontario as Newfoundlanders are from the rest of us, with customs and a way of life that only centuries of isolation can preserve.

IF YOU GO:

GETTING THERE: To tour the western part of Newfoundland, fly into Deer Lake and rent a car at the airport. Gros Morne National Park is less than an hour away and the entire drive up the Viking Trail to L’Anse aux Meadows is only 5 hours. Plan to spend at least 4 days in the region.

READING: David Macfarlane’s "The Danger Tree" and Bernice Morgan’s "Random Passage" are highly recommended. Both give great insight into how life on the island has changed. E. Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Shipping News" is an entertaining version of island life that takes liberties.

WEB: You Grow Girl.com has a wonderful primer on Newfoundland plants: http://www.yougrowgirl.com/explore/newfoundland/

Check out http://www.vikingtrail.org for a great guide to one of Canada’s best drives.

LODGING: The Valhalla Lodge is open May to October, and charges $50 for a single, $65 for a double, and has a double room with a jacuzzi for $85. Reservations can be made by calling (709) 896-5519 in the winter and (709) 623-2018 in the summer or by writing Bella Hodge, Valhalla Bed and Breakfast, Box 10, Gunner’s Cove, Newfoundland, A0K 2X0. The Web site is at: www.valhalla-lodge.com.

The Sugar Hill Inn in Rocky Harbour is open January 15 to October 15 and charges $76 and $98 for its rooms, and $136 and $172 for suites. Reservations can be made by calling or faxing (709) 458-2147 or by writing Sugar Hill Inn, P.O. Box 100, Norris Point, Nfld., A0K 3V0.

DINING: The Sugar Hill Inn has wonderful food as does The Seaview in Trout River. Don’t miss Jill and Gina Hodge’s restaurant in L’Anse aux Meadows. In St. Anthony’s, the Lighthouse Keeper’s Café has great chowders and is a wonderful whale-watching spot. Binoculars are available.