August 10, 2018
Blanc Sablon to Red Bay and on to Saint Lewis
Labrador, or Kamistiatusset, a Naskapi word meaning “land of the hard-working people”, is part of the Canadian Province of Newfoundland/Labrador. The Labrador portion of the province covers 113,641 square miles of a whole lot of nothing, except for remote, rugged, starkly beautiful coastline and saltwater marsh, thousands of square miles of sub-artic tundra covered with shrubs, mosses, lichens, herbaceous plants, and unbroken taiga forest sporting balsam fir, black spruce, white birch, trembling aspen, and mountain ash. Not to mention the caribou, musk ox, arctic wolf, arctic fox, arctic hare, lemmings, voles, polar bears, black bears, Canada lynx, red fox, pine martens, short-tailed weasels, mink, beaver, muskrats, river otter, and a bunch of robust, hardworking, helpful, and cheerful human beings who live there, at least cheerful in the summer. Not bad for people who like nature in the raw.
Speaking of raw winters there are extreme with temperatures dipping into the minus 70s, enough to make a grown man cry.
Labrador, in spite of being the largest and northern most of the Canadian Atlantic provinces, only has 6% of the Newfoundland/Labrador Province population, or 522,103 souls as of the 2019 census, about five per square mile. The largest town in Labrador is Labrador City at 7,720 human souls.
Hello neighbor!
If you live in the central and far northern reaches of Labrador, you are living in company and government enclaves, working in mining, oil and gas resource exploitation or hydroelectric power generation, trying your best to stay warm. Of course there are remote villages of native Canadians, the Inuit, who have always lived there.
We could only cover so much of this magical land on our journey because Labrador is big and there are few roads. Much of the province is only assessable by boat or air. But we saw a lot, driving 2,170 kilometers (1,350 miles) on sometimes paved, sometimes dirt and gravel road including the entire Trans-Labrador Highway. We camped alone in the remotest places we have ever been. There are a few spur roads. Forget pleasant, idyllic country roads. They do not exist here.
We started our trip on August 9, 2018, traveling by ferry from Saint Barbe, Newfoundland to Blanc Sablon, Quebec. In L’Anse-au-Clair we picked up a satellite cell phone to carry for emergencies. That is right, a satellite cell phone. The cheerful people of Labrador know well the risks of traveling in their great land, over trackless miles of vast and sparsely inhabited areas, areas with little or no emergency services, no regular cell phone coverage, or law enforcement. So they provide satellite cell phones to visitors, regardless of political persuasion. One picks up a sat phone when you come into Labrador and drop it off on your way out. No charge.
In a hotel parking lot, a long-haul trucker enthroned in his Peterbuilt truck motioned me over.
I have told this story before, but it deserves retelling. I do so because it illustrates how open the people of this region are. And it reminds me that all of us, everyone of us, struggles with some issue, some crisis, some demon and, occasionally all we need is a friend. Sometimes that friend can be a perfect stranger.
The Peterbuilt man and I chatted for a while then he asked, “may I get your opinion on a certain matter?”
“Sure”, I replied.
“Climb in”, he requested.
With mounting curiosity but also a bit of anxiety, I hesitated for a moment. Here we were in the remote Labradorean back country. Who knows what evil lurks in the mind of man? Nonetheless, I said to myself, “What the Hell?”, and complied. Canadians are known to be gracious, happy people.
He turned away and stared out the window for a moment, then turned to me. A tear made its way down the map of winkles on his face. “I have been married for twenty years. My wife told me last week she did not love he any more and wants to end the marriage.”
Being a sucker for tears, I offer a few to lubricate the occasion.
He handed me a folded piece of notebook paper and said, “this a letter I am writing to convince her to stay. Would you read it and help me get it right?”
Keep in mind, this is a perfect stranger.
Feeling entirely inadequate for this task, I replied, “Of course, I will read your letter”.
It was a heartfelt, beautifully written epistle. In it, he reminisced about their time together and reminded her of tender moments they had shared through the years. He talked about their children and relatives. He apologized about the long times he was away from her, on the road, often in dark, frigid winter weather, many miles from home.
I read it carefully, then reread it.
“It is a beautiful letter”, I said, “but three important words are missing I noted. “Tell her you love her, say, ‘I love you’, then go home and tell her in person. Take her to the place where you proposed marriage. Propose again.”
By this time, I decided I ought to be a candidate for an honorary counseling degree.
He looked down at the letter, then at me and smiled. “Good advice. “Good advice, for an American.”
We laughed together.
This man, whom I had never met before today, had just shared intimate details of his personal struggle with a perfect stranger.
I will never forget that man. I will carry that memory with me and cherish, knowing I received a very important lesson that day.
We drove northeast along the southern Labradorean coast, a short distance (50 km) to Pinware River Provincial Park where we camped and were thrilled to hear howling wolves in the distance.
On August 10, we mushed on to Red Bay, a fishing village notable for harboring one of the most precious underwater archaeological sites in all the Americas. Red Bay, where in the mid-1500s Basque men and boys came from southern France and northern Spain to harvest North Atlantic Bowhead and Greenland Right whales. These remarkable men and boys left their families, crossed 4000 kilometers (2.160 nautical miles) of the North Atlantic Ocean, often in extreme weather and frigid, dangerous seas, in search of these valuable cetaceans, to collect the whale oil, needed to fuel the lamps of Europe. They were paid for their efforts in whale oil, much more valuable than than gold in those days. Good thing because health care insurance premiums were exceedingly high then, and Obama care had not yet been invented.
Whale bone is common on Red Bay beaches and hill sides, testament to its past, when many of these grand cetaceans were slaughtered and rendered in the bay. Some say the bay was named for red granite cliffs of the region. Some say it is for the color of the water during the whale harvest, running red with the blood of these grand beasts.
On Saddle Island in the bay over 130 mariners are interred in shallow graves, men and boys taken by the chilly North Atlantic. Countless others were likely lost at sea. The Basque whaling enterprise lasted for a mere 50 years along the south coast of Labrador, just long enough to reduce whale populations in the region to very low levels.
Now, dear friends, this is why I write about Red Bay. A place of wonder and a place to contemplate the power of human endeavor, curiosity, ingenuity, accomplishment, persistence, and dedication.
In December 1565, disaster struck at Red Bay. The San Juan de Pasajes, a three-masted merchant “whaler”, broke its moorings, the ship’s anchor chain parting in a violent storm. The crew were unceremoniously dumped into the frigid Red Bay 36 degree F waters and, against all odds survived, one and all. How could such a thing like that happen in those frigid waters with no death? The ship, at the mercy of the raging sea, struck an island and sank in 100 feet of dark, paralyzingly cold water.
Four hundred years later, in the early 1970s, a team of brilliant and determined researchers and adventurers carried out excavations in the sea around Red Bay. They found the San Juan de Pasajes and decided to bring it home. The chilly Red Bay waters had preserved the boat for all those past years. Over that vast expanse of time the San Juan de Pasajes had stood it’s ground in a cold, watery grave, unfazed, biding its time.
“I think there is something here, “one diver exclaimed after repeated dives into the frosty Red Bay waters. What was his mother thinking to let him pursue such a profession? Why not become a shop keeper?
Since then, over a twenty-two year odyssey, a remarkable gathering of human beings dismantled the vessel, piece by piece, inch by inch, plank by plank, beam by beam, some three thousand pieces in all, all work mind you that took place in the biting, cold waters of Red Bay. They brought those puzzle pieces carefully and lovingly out of the depths, to be reassembled, studied, evaluated, measured, characterized, placed in historical context, and replicated. And replicate they did. Measuring, sizing, modeling and then constructing exact copies of the boat’s structure and working parts, now on display at the Red Bay National Historic Site Museum in Red Bay, an exceptionally fine one indeed, worth the short drive from the Shenandoah Valley.
But make sure you bring plenty of insect repellent, not that citronella stuff. I mean DET.
After all the tedious work of examining the San Juan de Pasajes in detail, then, and only then, did these same exceptional human beings reassemble the original boat, in the same manner and order as the disassembly, only in reverse, from top to bottom, from side to side, from bow to stern, and in a years-long funeral procession, returned it to its final resting place in the loving arms of Red Bay, where it will remain silent and undisturbed, protected by the very same waters as before, to serve testament to the wonders of our adventure on planet Earth.
That is why I will return to Red Bay, Labrador as often as I can and also to places like Red Bay to celebrate our world and the people on it.
After Red Bay we drove on through Lodge Bay and in to Mary’s Harbor, where a curious red fox came looking for a handout.
We finally ended up in Saint Lewis, the end of the line, a charming fishing village with a gazebo and benches on the waterfront where one can sit and contemplate the chilly North Atlantic Ocean and the myriad of mariners lost in its unforgiving waters.
Baye Saint Lewis, the earliest named place in Labrador. That is, named by French explorer Lewis Jolliet in 1694. Before Europeans came to Labrador, every place had a name. They just happened to be Inuit names.
One can find these rock “figurines” scattered throughout the Canadian Atlantic Provinces. they are called “Inukshuk”, used by native Inuit as land markers, guiding posts. cairns of a sort.
Peace out.
Chapter 3 coming soon.
The Management