On 6/2 we departed Twillingate at 9AM enroute to Gander, NL
and arrived at the Beothuk Interpretation Centre in Boyd's Cove about an hour
later. Boyd's Cove is the site of a
partially excavated Beothuk Village occupied about 1650-1720 AD with 11 house pits
found with thousands of artifacts.
The
Beothuk (BE-OH'-THUK) people were called the “Red Indians” by the settlers
because of their custom of wearing red ochre paint all over their bodies. The Beothuk lived in Newfoundland well before
and during the time of European arrival in the 1500s. Their ancestors are thought to be the
Maritime Archaic people.
The Beothuk did
not trade with the Europeans unlike other native peoples, but they appropriated
iron tools from European seasonal fishing villages and reworked them for
projectile points such as harpoon blades, arrow points, and spear points and
other objects useful to them. Many
European nails have been found reworked into Beothuk tools and weapons.
The Beothuk survived on fish and marine mammals and even
polar bears as well as caribou inland until the Europeans disrupted and
destroyed their villages and occupied their coastal hunting grounds. In 1829 the last known Beothuk died in St.
John's from tuberculosis, but it is thought that Beothuk blood carried on in
children from intermarriages. They are now considered extinct!
This museum and especially our guide,
Desmond, was fascinating and the exhibits and a very large diorama were
superb! The only possible negative was
this area is heavily populated with blackflies and most of us had multiple
painful bites! As a result, only 4 of
our group were brave enough to walk the kilometer out to the village site and
back.
On to Gander! Before
we left home for this trip, we both read the book “The Day the World Came to
Town.” This is the story of 9/11 in
Gander, when the U.S. closed its airspace after the terrorist-controlled
passenger planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the
Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and the field in Shanksville, PA. 200 Flights were diverted to Canadian
airports and Gander received 38 unscheduled landings from commercial flights bound for or
returning from Europe landing at its international airport with few facilities
to support such a large number of passengers for a number of days! Four military flights were also diverted
here. It's a story of how the small town
of Gander, (population 10,000) and many smaller surrounding communities, in a
mammoth burst of generosity and hospitality, housed, fed, clothed, bedded down
and entertained 6595 passengers and plane crews
for almost a week until the flight ban was lifted and flights could resume to
their original destinations! We were
anxious to visit Gander and get acquainted with people here who had been so
kind to total strangers from around the world in this time of worldwide 9/11
shock and sadness.
Welcome to Gander signs and metal outlined aircraft and
helicopters greeted us as we arrived! We
arrived at the Country Inn RV Park in Gander at 3:10PM and learned that our
group would have a lobster boil in the campground's large hospitality room with
a roof but no sides!
The lobsters,
potatoes and vegetables cooked by our leaders and a few volunteers were
excellent but guess who joined us for dinner??
The blackflies, of course, and they were terrible! It was a very short evening, ending as soon
as you finished your meal!
On 6/3 we stopped at the big Gander Tourist Information
Office with a very helpful girl giving us an armful of brochures and maps.
Incidentally, they say the shape of the town on the map is like a goose
gander's head—can you see it? Then off to Gander's 2 supermarkets, Foodland,
looking dreary in an old rundown shopping center and Dominion, an upscale
market with bakery, bright inviting surroundings and complete selection. The supermarkets here cannot sell beer, wine
or liquor so you find these items at the provincial liquor stores.
 |
| From $24.99 for a 12pack of Canadian to $35.59 for Quidi Vidi Iceberg beer! |
Here's a couple photographs of the stock and
prices (they're high!) in the Gander liquor store large walk-in beer
cooler. And if you think beer is expensive, just about everything else in the market is a lot higher than in the US. What about $4.00 for half a gallon of milk! The only redeeming factor is that the exchange rate is about $1.20 Canadian for the US$ so that makes it a little bit less!
We tried to go to Tim Hortons
for lunch but that part of town had an electric outage and couldn't serve food.
Same with nearby McDonald's so we had a sandwich in the rig. We also
photographed the fuel prices at the big Irving station in town. Price in Canadian dollars per liter. 3.8 L = 1 U.S. gallon. It's expensive!!
Afterwards, Maryke and I drove to the Gander Airport to see
the mural we'd been told was very interesting.
Slight problem, you couldn't get inside the security area to see the
complete mural. We went to the security
desk and asked how to see it and met Jerry Cramm, a 30 year veteran airport
security officer, who made a few phone calls and said “follow me!”
He led us through the security area and up to
a high point where we could see and photograph this huge 72' long, very complex
piece of art. It has a lot of symbolism,
including all the provincial flowers of Canada, a juggler representing the air
traffic controllers, many scenes representing flight including trumpeter swans,
a young man with a kite, large white birds taking off looking remarkably like
the Concorde SST (which didn't exist yet in 1959 when it was painted!) and much
more. We were given a printed page
“Interpreting the Mural.”
In the early 1950s, the current town of Gander was built away
from the airport for safety reasons and was Newfoundland's first planned
community built from scratch. Most of Gander's street names are aviation
related. Many famous people passed
through Gander Airport over the years—Elvis, James Dean, Einstein, John Wayne,
Winston Churchill, Jackie Kennedy, Mohammed Ali, Frank Sinatra and even Fidel
Castro! Commercial aviation really took
off after World War II. Nearly every
plane crossing the Atlantic stopped at Gander to refuel and let the passengers
stretch their legs, making Gander one of the busiest airports in the
world. It still bills itself as “The
Crossroads of the World.” A larger terminal
was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in June 1959 as well as inaugurating the new
mural described above.
During the Cold War, Gander was the North American fuel stop
for the Moscow to Havana jet route.
Aeroflot, Interflug and Cubana Airways all refueled at Gander. Gander was also a popular defecting location
for disgruntled Communist country defectors. In the mid-1970s Aeroflot had 650
flights stopping annually at Gander to refuel!
We asked about 9/11 and Jerry said he was off that morning about to go moose hunting but was called in and worked 36 hours straight until all the flights were landed and moved to parking areas and the passengers and crews deplaned and moved to various facilities where they could relax, eat and eventually sleep. As a tour finale, Jerry gave each of us a Gander pin and we gave him many thanks. What a treat!
Back in the main passenger waiting area, there is a large
number of huge historic photographs, hanging from the ceiling with many famous
aviation pioneers and their aircraft.
On 6/4 our group convoyed to the Silent Witnesses Memorial
just beyond the airport in the woods.
This is a memorial to 248 members of the U.S. 101st Airborne
Division and 8 plane crew members flying back to Fort Campbell, Kentucky from a
peacekeeping mission in the Sinai on Arrow Air Flight MF1285R. The Arrow Air DC-8 departed Cairo to Ft.
Campbell via Cologne and Gander and crashed just past the end of the Gander
runway in a ball of fire at 6:46 AM on December 12, 1985 with all aboard killed
on impact. The explosion on board was never
acknowledged and instead the crash was blamed on ice conditions. A Canadian investigation board was split over
ice causing the crash or terrorism. It's
a beautiful but somber memorial to a very sad event with a 101st
Airborne peacekeeper and 2 children in bronze up on a hill. At the actual point of impact down the hill
there is a large stainless cross made from part of the plane.
Nearby, there is a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery adjacent
to a local cemetery. The two of us were the only
visitors to this site. Many of the initial World War II graves were moved
elsewhere so this cemetery is unusual with only 90 graves scattered around the
large cemetery. Here are a couple of
typical grave markers that show rank and unit and in many cases, a personal
saying at the bottom. A large sword in
the cemetery center indicates a military cemetery. It is not as well kept as
other British military cemeteries we've seen in Europe.
Our final visit in Gander was to the North Atlantic Aviation
Museum, also close to the Gander Airport.
This museum has 5 airplanes in its collection outside but none are in
flying condition. It's a very modern up
to date museum with excellent displays.
It focuses on the history of aviation in Gander beginning in 1937 and
many of the early pioneers like Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart and many more that
passed through here. We learned that
Gander was the very important primary airbase for British RAF Ferry Command
from Nov. 1940-1945 flying nearly 24,000 North American-built warplanes from
Gander and Goose Bay to Great Britain for the war effort. In fact, Churchill called Gander “the largest
aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic”!
In1943 at its peak Gander had over 16,000 servicemen, including 6000
Canadians and 10,000 Americans stationed at Gander and in Goose Bay during the
war.
 |
| Link Trainer Model of Administration building 1938-mid fifties |
A wartime vintage Link Trainer,
used for training pilots, is set up and apparently is in operating
condition. A modern flight simulator is
on exhibit but out of order. A restored
WWII Tiger Moth biplane is displayed inside the Museum..
 |
| DC3 Cockpit |
The cockpit of a DC-3 is in a separate room
set up just like a plane and you can walk through and see all the gauges and
switches controlling this famous plane, some of which are still in
service! Several WWII vintage aircraft
engines are displayed inside the Museum.
The outside aircraft exhibits include a rare (1 of 6 in
existence) Lockheed Hudson MkIII, Consolidated Catalina PBY-5A anti-submarine
patrol bomber, 1930s Beech 18-S and a CF-101 Voodoo RCAF military jet.
A section of the Museum is devoted to 9/11 and the work of
the Gander-based air traffic controllers getting all 42 flights landed here,
parked and unloaded. There is newsfilm
and newspaper accounts of that time as well as actual flight tickets and an air
traffic control console with taped radio transmissions that are
interesting.
Also a board full of very
moving letters to the Mayor of Gander from all over the world thanking the
community for their help during 9/11. It
also shows some of the caring shown to the passengers. There were some children on the flights and
several had birthdays while they were here and were treated to very special
birthday parties from the community.
Schools, churches and government people tried to help people communicate
with their families and businesses. The
local phone company set up banks of phones with free calling anywhere. Walmart, Canadian Tire and many other
businesses donated clothes, food and many other necessities to the stranded
passengers.
The Jet Age came in the late 1960s and changed everything as
now most trans-Atlantic flights were able to fly non-stop to their destination
reducing Gander's business dramatically.
Today, they have added more flights from Gander to domestic and U.S.
points as well as overseas destinations, but today's terminal is much too big
for the current level of business and 9/11 security measures have been
difficult to fit in the space so plans are underway for a new terminal, while
hopefully reusing the historic terminal in some way.
Speaking of Air Traffic Control, Gander's controllers handle
over 1000 flights over their local 13KM
circle airspace each day—1 per minute!
150 air traffic controllers monitor Gander's Oceanic airspace reaching
about halfway across the Atlantic with 400,000 aircraft passing through per
year!
The North Atlantic Aviation Museum is currently fundraising
to build a large hangar called the Ferry Command Memorial Hall adjacent to the
current building to house its historic Hudson bomber now outside and other
artifacts. Great museum and Gander is a
great town that we enjoyed very much!
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| Driver's meetings were held rain or shine at 8 AM every travel day! |
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