On 6/5 our destination was the historic town of Bonavista but
we made two stops along the way: Terra Nova National Park and the historic town
of Trinity.
Terra Nova NP—here is the description of this
National Park from its Park Guide and Map:
“Terra Nova National Park is a magnificent coastal
landscape, with long inlets from the sea touching the sheltered landscape of an
island boreal forest. Since the days of
the Beothuk and early European settlers, people have found refuge in this
area. From mighty whales roaming the
rich feeding grounds of the Sounds to the beaver, bear and orchids of the
boreal habitat, this area has supported an impressive array of marine and terrestrial
life for thousands of years.”
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| We noticed that all Canadian National Parks put out red Adirondack chairs at convenient photogenic locations. |
We began at the Visitor Centre and explored the video
displays, aquariums and the large touch tank with live marine organisms like
starfish, crabs and sea urchins.
Storyboards about icebergs and their formation were very
interesting. There is also an underwater
camera. Few activities were available since their season was just
beginning. Guided boat rides in Newman
Sound and kayak rentals were available and of course, the hiking trails were
open. There was a large elementary school group tour and it was fun to watch
them in waders and nets examining the animals that they found close to shore
with an interpreter.
We took a trail
along the shoreline for maybe half a kilometer until it got steep and we turned
back. There were warning signs for moose
on the road but of course we didn't see any!
Other warning signs talked about black bears and coyotes that apparently
are much more aggressive here that we are used to in the U.S. West. Again, time was a problem for us and we
needed to move on towards Bonavista.
Trinity & Iceberg—Trinity is one of the
best preserved historic towns in Newfoundland. It is also very scenic, set on a
harbour with 21 miles of shoreline, regarded in the days of sail as one of the
finest natural harbours in the world. Some said the harbour could hold the
entire British Navy! Trinity Harbour has
been used since the early 16th century by European fishermen.
English fishermen used it as a summer station in the 1570s. In 1615, Admiralty Court was held here for
the first time in the New World.
Smallpox vaccination was introduced here in 1800, again the first in the
New World. Its first year- round
residents are thought to have come in the 1660s! The 1675 census reported 5 families settled
in Trinity. In the early 1700s, 300
fishermen came to Trinity for the summer each year. Remember cod was king! Trinity was the headquarters for merchants
exporting fish, fur and seal products back to England for over a century and a
half. Trinity was captured twice during
the Anglo-French wars in 1697 and again in 1705 and burnt. In 1746 Fort Point
was built to discourage attacks. Trinity had a whaling station between
1904—1914 when dwindling whale stocks forced a shutdown but meanwhile the
station processed 472 fin, humpback or sperm whales in its 10 years! Trinity has lived through an amazing amount of the early history of
Newfoundland!
Trinity had 3 churches—St. Paul's Anglican first built in
1820 with the current church built in 1892, a Methodist Church built in 1877
but removed in 1935 and The Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity built in
1833 and now the oldest wooden church in Newfoundland. St. Paul's is called “the best built wooden
church and a masterpiece in the Ecclesiastical Gothic Revival style.” The Trinity Historical Society in its 51
years has taken a leading role in preserving Trinity's historic buildings and
now owns and operates most of the heritage buildings open for tour. Rising Tide Theatre in Trinity puts on
dozens of plays in summer and fall including their classic New Founde Lande Pageant, a historical trip around town
depicting the early years of Trinity, that has been performed for over 21
years. Their theatre and arts centre is located in William Taverner's fishing
plantation established in 1700! Like
many of our other visits, we were too early by nearly a month for the theatre
and some of the buildings were available but we didn't have time and had to
drive on to Bonavista. It's a fantastic
town and we'd love to return!
On the way
out of Trinity, at a high point in the highway we could see a large iceberg
nearby and after taking several gravel roads, we arrived a point close enough
to get photographs.
We stopped later at
the nearby Port Rexton Post Office to mail a letter and the postmistress told
us that the iceberg had been here 2 weeks and had turned over twice! We finally arrived at Bonavista and our
campground, Paradise Farm RV Park about 8 miles away.
Ye Matthew Legacy--The only Caravan activity on
6/6 was a group visit to Ye Matthew Legacy, a full scale 65' sailing replica
of the Matthew, John Cabot's 3 masted
sailing ship called a caravel, Giovanni
Caboto, the Italian explorer, or John Cabot as he was called in England and his
crew of 20 sailed the uncharted Atlantic Ocean in the original Matthew from Bristol, England at a maximum speed of 8 knots heading
west for the Far East in early May 1497 with English King Henry VII as their
patron or financial supporter. Cabot
made landfall on 24 June 1497 at the present day town of Bonavista,
Newfoundland, in the New World after sailing for 45 days, claiming the land for
England and discovering the very rich cod fishery. This voyage changed the course of history and
led to the beginnings of the British Empire and the settlement of North America
and Newfoundland in particular.
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| The large opening at the back of the building to move the whole ship including masts & rigging for storage during the winter. |
The Matthew Legacy Interpretive Center tells this story in
narrative by Jacomo, a young boy who sailed with Cabot in a series of
storyboards. After viewing this
background, we passed into the boat shed to the replica Matthew which is now
drydocked in the shed for repairs after winter.
She is fully rigged with all 3 masts and rigging and we walked around
the deck and then into the hold to see cargo areas and sleeping quarters for
the crew, merchants and Cabot. The
replica ship is 65' in length with a beam of 18' and was built here in
Bonavista in 1997-1998 for the 500th anniversary of Cabot's
voyage. The Bonavista Matthew vessel
occasionally sails in the local bay. We learned that there is another replica Matthew built and
based in Bristol, England that sailed across the Atlantic and back for the 500th Anniversary and the Queen's appearance in
Bonavista.
Bonavista Downtown area--After the Matthew
visit, we walked around the harbour and then to the 1918 Bonavista Memorial
United Church, a very large wooden Classical Revival style church seating 1375
people, which is in beautiful condition with twin towers and a cemetery with
graves as far back as 1839 and World War I casualties, to whom the church was
dedicated.
A block away Christ Church
Anglican has a very modern church building but a large ancient cemetery
including one readable stone memorializing 2 teenage boys who drowned in 1796
offshore.
The 1907 Orange Lodge Hall is quite impressive especially with its
arched entrance gate.
We read that
Bonavista has 1000 heritage buildings, more than any other Newfoundland town,
dating from early 19th century to 1949 but quite a few are rundown
and need restoration including the very prominent 1900 Provincial Courthouse,
especially when compared to our visit to Trinity where almost every building is
in good repair and nicely painted. We
did enjoy seeing the replica stocks and whipping post from an earlier era in
back of the Courthouse. Bonavista is the most easterly community on
the North American continent.
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| Bonavista fixer-uppers and beautifully restored houses |
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| View of the town of Bonavista from a distance |
Cape Bonavista Lighthouse-- We next visited the
Cape Bonavista Lighthouse, built in 1843, which is a real landmark at the end
of a high cape with its wide red stripes and the different shape of the
structure.
It's now automated but has been restored to its 1870
appearance inside.
Walking below the
lighthouse, the massive rock walls just offshore are a geology showcase for
uplifting forces! On the Trinity Bay side of Cape Bonavista, fairly close to
the lighthouse, there was a large iceberg, which has split apart and the left
side is grounded, while the right side is rolling side to side and from “bow to
stern” too. We hoped it would rollover
for us but no luck. Lots of big bergie bits were breaking off and we were told
that it was much further offshore yesterday.
Afterward, we had a very good hot lunch of fish and chips and battered
shrimp at Little Dairy King restaurant near the lighthouse where they display
lots of puffin photographs!
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| Several inukshuks have been built to indicate the trail through the rocks |
On 6/8 we had a group tour of Cape Bonavista Provincial
Historic Site which took us inside the lighthouse and high up to the light as
well as the large quarters for two lightkeeper families. It has a unique design as a large 2 story
wood structure built around the masonry light tower. Since the Province took over custody in 1970,
they have restored and furnished it to the style of the 1870s. The interpreters were all very good bringing
the stories to life!
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| The lighthouse does not have a Fresnel lens but highly polished brass reflectors. There also is a very interesting pulley system to rotate the light, which needs to be reset every hour |
The Dungeon-- A few miles from the
lighthouse and the iceberg is “The Dungeon” which is a large twin sea cave
whose roof collapsed eons ago. When the
surf breaks, it's quite spectacular inside.
We discovered that walking 20-30 meters on the ground to the left of the
viewing platform, you can see light through the caves and watch the surf build
up as it comes in! The Dungeon is
approximately 300 feet across and 50 feet deep.
Well worth the drive down the gravel road!
Elliston-- Puffins 2X—On 6/6 Lin went out to
Elliston to the Puffin Viewing Area around 6:30 PM with the Fishers when the
puffins were supposed to be active on the large offshore rock across from the
viewing rock. The trail out to the viewing area is on private property and a
loonie (one Canadian dollar coin) is the suggested donation.
I think we saw at least 50 different
birds. Some were flying on or off, some
ducked into their burrows, while others seemed to be guarding their turf.
I was concerned with the close proximity of
many gulls around this nesting area and wondered about puffin mortality at this
site. My handheld 600mm Nikon lens with
vibration reduction, despite the chill, overcast and slight wind, got some good
shots but not as close as I've gotten on a puffin tour boat in other areas.
Photographing puffins in flight is really difficult as they move very fast and
turn erratically! The Atlantic Puffin is the Provincial Bird of Newfoundland
and Labrador. Puffins always return to
the same island where they were born and even return to the same burrow and the
same mate! They spend more time in the
water than in the air and they swim much better than they fly. Puffins are small, less than 30 cm long,
members of the auk family, who eat capelin, the plentiful small fish in these
waters.
Maryke and I returned to the Elliston Puffin Viewing Area on
6/8 at 3 PM to a much different scene.
There were hundreds of puffins out everywhere on the rock and much more
active with much flying in and out and lots of behavior exhibited. Maryke got some excellent video of all the
activity. It was a great experience
being so close to the sight and sounds of these beautiful birds.
We'll let the photographs tell the
story. Elliston also calls itself the
“Root Cellar Capital of the World.”
There are over 200 root cellars in town with some open on display and
nearly 200 years old, representing a time before refrigeration for food
storage.
Ryan Premises is a complex of 7 original stores, warehouses and the Proprietor's House across the street, dramatizing the size and importance of the Newfoundland international salt cod industry for over 500 years but particularly back in the 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibits and displays tell the complete story of the Newfoundland fishery from early handline fishing to the factory trawlers introduced in the 1970s.
The salt cod industry has been the
cornerstone of Newfoundland's economy for centuries. One of the sad parts of the story is the Cod
Moratorium in 1992 when commercial cod fishing was all but shut down by the
government putting many thousands of fishermen and cannery workers out of
work. The local Bonavista town museum
operated by the Bonavista Historical Society is incorporated in the Ryan
Premises as a whole floor of interesting exhibits, telling the story of one of
Newfoundland's oldest fishing communities.
The Proprietor's House is surprisingly empty with almost no furnishings. The house interpreter told us more details
but the most interesting facts were the drastic budget cutbacks in the federal
parks program that has severely cut staff in most parks and historic sites and
shortened their interpretive season.
That's really sad! The site was
officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
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| The museum had a large model of how the Ryan Premises looked in its heyday |
Mockbeggar Plantation—this 1872 heritage house
and grounds are the oldest fishing plantation still standing in
Newfoundland. It incorporated a cod
liver oil factory, fish processing area and fish storage plus the store that
extended credit to the fishermen in exchange for their annual cod catch. The original fish store here was built in
1733 to store salt fish. The house is
nicely furnished in the style of the 1939-1966 when it was the home of Gordon
Bradley, a lawyer and politician, one of the fathers of Newfoundland's
Confederacy with Canada and later a Canadian Cabinet Minister.
Elliston—Sealers Interpretation Centre—this is
the first and only sealer's museum in the world focusing only on sealing and
sealers. Sealing is shown as a way of
life for early aboriginal people as well as supporting present day people
seasonally in the spring. Sealing in the
late 1700s was for oil for lighting the towns of the world, similarly to
whaling. The sealing fleets by the late
1800s were based in St. John's and evolved from sailing vessels to steamships
and icebreakers.
It tells the story of
sealing captains especially the infamous ones involved in the Trinity Bay
Disaster in 1892 when many sealers were lost.
In Spring 1914, 173 sealers from the SS Southern Cross were lost when
the ship sank and 78 men and boys from the SS Newfoundland lost their lives
when fog and a storm closed in, separating them from their ship and the
sealer's ice floes moved out to sea. The
museum opened in 2014 to mark the 100th anniversary of these
tragedies. Sealing is still carried on
off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The seals are portrayed as “swift and voracious
marine carnivores” partially responsible for decreasing fish stocks.
The museum displays a series of paintings from an artist who
went along on a 1970 seal hunt to show a
sealer's day on the ice. Another room
shows 3 gigantic paintings called John MacDonald's Trilogy, depicting the story
of his great grandfather, John Donovan, one of the survivors of the SS
Newfoundland tragedy in 1914. We found a used copy of the book "Death on the Ice", by Cassie Brown, a very well written description of the disaster, explaining the greed of the captains and lack of communication which caused the disaster.
The
Sealers Memorial Statue is a moving memorial about a block away from the Museum
showing an Elliston father and son lost in the SS Newfoundland disaster.
All the names of the sealers lost in the 1914
disasters are inscribed on the Memorial as well as the survivors and represent
“all the sealers who have risked and lost their lives to support their families
and communities.” While we personally
oppose sealing, we can certainly understand the motivation and human cost to
this risky occupation. Since many
countries including the U.S. now prohibit the importation of seal meat, pelts
and other products from the hunt, it would be good to see this practice
gradually end with the exception of subsistence hunting by aboriginal
peoples.
Back in camp, that night our
leaders grilled and served us a dinner of delicious mooseburger sliders in the
park barn!
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| Several examples of the large iceberg near the Bonavista lighthouse |
We very much enjoyed our time in the Bonavista area with all
its history and many things to do and see!
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