Sun 04 – Mon 05 Aug 2019
On Sunday morning, it was ‘Tomato Pasta Situation Critical’. Having irresponsibly leapt at the chance of sampling Kay’s wonderful cooking last night, how could we now get through our excess rations of tomato sauce and pasta before flying back to mainland Canada (space and weight constraints plus no wish to risk a bright red liquid in a fragile glass jar in our hold luggage)? There was only one way – tomato pasta for breakfast!
We were having a well-deserved day off today, visiting Zach and Kay at their house, then having a general mosey around by ourselves. (This was also the morning I realised I had binned my own SIM card a couple of days ago and, whilst I had a mad moment contemplating driving all the way back – 60 miles round trip – to try to find it in a bin that had probably long been emptied, common sense for once prevailed, and I left it. This decision meant that we spent the entire month of August with no SIM as well as rarely any wifi. We were completely out of contact, just like travelling used to be, but now in a world run on the presumption that everyone has internet and a phone...)
Kay fed us a filling lunch of wieners, homemade baked beans in sauce, fresh-cooked bread and biscuits, and we had a nice natter. In the afternoon, we four drove to the Bonne Bay Marine Station at Norris Point. When we first came to Newfoundland in July 2001, this was just a small field station for research use, but a full, modern facility was built on the site and opened in September 2002, and now hosts visitors too. It is an ideal place for a marine biology station because Bonne Bay is a double fjord with terminal and medial moraines, and thus a wide range of water depths. One arm of Bonne Bay is 120 m deep and the other 190 m deep, compared with a sea depth of 90 m just outside the fjords, and there is shallow water over the medial moraine between the two arms. This means that not only do you find sea life that is usual to these mid-latitudes, but also sub-arctic species in the areas of cold, deep water.
We enjoyed our visit, especially the touch tanks – where we practiced holding crabs and discovered first-hand that live starfish are squidgy, not brittle, and sea urchin spines feel like hairbrush bristles rather than being sharp and spiky – and we learnt about current efforts to transition the Newfoundland cod fishing industry to snow crab fishing. The huge snow crabs are a versatile seafood that is not currently overfished (unlike cod), but it is likely that only the larger commercial enterprises can survive the financial outlay necessary to make the transition. We learnt that the lion’s mane jellyfish is the longest animal in the world at up to 37 m long (half as long again as a blue whale, albeit only a couple of metres across), and felt the texture of whale baleen that had been collected from the shore.
We popped across to the bar at the Cat Stop for ice creams, and listened to some live music (a chap singing to his guitar). Before long, we spotted someone we recognised moving amongst the tables and saying a friendly hello to all the visitors ... it was Zach! He had gone out to buy salmon for dinner and, being Zach, got chatting to everyone around the place.
We were invited back for dinner – it was Zach and Kay’s 53rd wedding anniversary, their eldest daughter and husband were there, and their second daughter, and us four – and another sumptuous, home-prepared meal greeted us in the form of a huge, shared bowl of mussels, then a perfectly cooked salmon with all the trimmings.
We are astounded at Kay’s cooking skills and her baking quite simply could win competitions across every category. She still works (in the local pharmacy) yet manages to find the time and energy to get involved in lots of different things locally, pursue her hobby of quilting and create such amazing dinners and sweet treats. She downplays it, saying she only bakes for an hour each evening and makes good use of her freezer, but a whole hour of baking every evening is incredible.
Dave regaled everyone with the tale from a few days ago when I’d insisted on driving the hire car to give him a break. Being from the UK, I immediately went round to the right-hand door so as to drive, even though it was a left-hand drive vehicle as we were in Canada. But that wasn’t the end of it. What got Dave laughing was the fact that I climbed into the passenger seat, still insisting that I would drive, and sat there ready to set off without noticing or seeming in any way perturbed by the lack of a steering wheel or pedals.
Berry Hill Pond, now (August 2019 – first photo) and then (May 2008 – second photo).
We slept back at the campsite and, next day, got up early to decamp as we were now heading to Zach and Kay’s to stay for a few nights. Following the popularity (with the girls) of yesterday’s tomato pasta breakfast, we had the same again. There was just time for a brisk 1½ mile walk around Berry Hill Pond before going to Zach and Kay’s at a socially acceptable hour.
Pep talks and meditative moments around Berry Hill Pond.
Zach had said he would take us out fishing on his boat on the magically scenic Bonne Bay. We missed the best chance to go out fishing in the early morning and didn’t catch anything in the short time before lunch, so headed across to Woody Point for fish and chips at a waterside restaurant which Zach knew, where he got us the top mooring spot right outside the restaurant and the best outdoor table with views straight across Bonne Bay to the Tablelands in one direction and to Norris Point and Gros Morne in the other direction.
‘The Merchant Warehouse’ at Woody Point, where we ate our fish and chips for lunch. The sign they have up on the wall speaks volumes of the Newfoundland sense of humour.
May fishing.
We then continued fishing for a while after lunch. I caught a 14” sculpin but it slipped off the hook as I reeled it in (Zach said it was no loss as it isn’t a tasty fish except for the tail). Dave caught an 18-19” cod. We didn’t catch any other fish and Zach said we might as well head home as the tide had turned and started going out, and the fishing is better when the tide is coming in. Also, we had started to get a couple of bouts of rain, and the wind had begun to pick up from the north-west, which Zach said meant he wouldn’t be able to hold the boat still enough for fishing. To be honest, I didn’t mind as I was feeling sorry for Dave’s fish slowly dying at our feet, and we were all remarkably tired even though it was only early afternoon.
The tiredness had come on very suddenly. We thought it might be due to the sea-sickness tablets we had taken (completely unnecessarily as it turned out: Bonne Bay was flat and calm during our entire trip). At lunch time, May, Poppy and I had dozed across our own knees at the restaurant table – it didn’t seem polite, but we just couldn’t help ourselves. During the short afternoon period of fishing, I developed a technique of fishing with my eyes closed, but occasionally muttering or moving my head slightly to try to disguise the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
After the fishing trip, Zach drove us back to his house, then had to pop off to sort some things out. We said 'bye at the front door, turned around and managed a single step to the wooden bench immediately opposite the door, where three of us sat and immediately fell asleep propped up against each other. There wasn’t room for May, so she staggered another 3 m and fell asleep sat upright on the first wooden chair she found where the hallway widened.
I managed to rouse myself 20 minutes later when Zach’s daughter came on the scene and saw us. She wasn’t sure which bedrooms we were staying in, but was certain the end bedroom would be one of them, so suggested we have a lie down in there. I woke the others. Three of us trundled sleepily to the bedroom and promptly went straight back to sleep, whilst May veered off to the living room sofa and fell straight back to sleep there.
And this is how we still were some hours later when Kay got home from work ... and when Zach returned from his foray ... and when relatives over from Alberta to visit Newfoundland turned up for an early evening cuppa and were informed that there were other guests in the house but that they were all mysteriously fast asleep.
Eventually, we woke up and went through to say a rather embarrassed ‘hello’ to everyone. This was our first day actually staying with Zach and Kay and we were being rather inappropriate guests. We apologised and explained that we thought it must have been the sea sickness tablets that had unexpectedly knocked us for six.
“Oh, that might be it. What did you take?” asked Kay, with her pharmacist hat on.
“They were some sea sickness tablets that we picked up in Vietnam earlier this year. The pharmacist there said they were only slightly drowsy and we took what they said was the recommended dose.”
Kay squinted at the tiny label (at the two words detailing the chemical constituent, the only things not written in Vietnamese). “Hmm,” she said, “This is actually a very drowsy sea sickness tablet. In Canada, the recommended maximum dose is 50 mg for adults and 25 mg for children, although we usually tell people to take only half a dose. How much did you take?”
“Um, Dave and I took 180 mg each and the kids had 90 mg each.” Oh dear, we had each taken 4-8 times the Canadian dose of a very drowsy sea sickness tablet. As Kay said, “It’s a wonder you’ve woken up at all this evening – that amount could have knocked you out until tomorrow morning.”
Whilst we'd slept, Zach had prepared Dave’s cod. To make sure everybody got some, he had stewed it along with the sound bone and breast bone, and served it as a starter along with another huge bucket of mussels. This was followed by lobster, salad, homemade bread and another wide selection of homemade biscuits.
The conversation around the table after tea was lively, with Zach reminiscing and telling us both true and far-fetched stories. He told us that Kay was always very advanced and started walking before she was 3 months old. He didn’t walk until he was 5 years old as he was such a cute baby that people carried him everywhere and wouldn’t put him down.
More seriously, he told us about building his house a few decades ago (just as Art from Deer Lake had done). Zach had enlisted the help of 17 friends for the really heavy jobs, such as laying thick, concrete foundations right down to the red clay substrate (below the top-level bog), and paid them in beer.
One winter’s night, a few years back, there was a ferociously strong wind straight down the valley. The day before, Zach had taken it into his head to reinforce the window facing the prevailing wind. As the winds reached over 150 mph and hit the house with the impact force of a huge lorry, the main window held and that is what saved the house. If he hadn’t reinforced it, the window would have blasted away, the wind entered, the pressure lifted the roof away, then the walls would have collapsed ... as happened to three nearby houses that completely blew down during that night.
In the 1950s and early 60s, under a government scheme called ‘Resettlement’, numerous outport communities were forced to move to more accessible locations. It is not hard to understand why hundreds of Newfoundlanders who had built their own homes alongside their fathers and grandfathers steadfastly refused to abandon and start again. Instead, at great physical effort, they moved their existing homes to new foundations either by hauling them across the winter ice or by floating them across bays and around capes. On today’s fishing trip, we had passed a grassy, green patch on an isolated promontory in Bonne Bay, and Zach had told us that there had once been a small community there. When it got down to just 3 inhabited houses, the occupiers had been forced to move to Norris Point. The houses had been released from their foundations, dragged onto barrels and floated across Bonne Bay, towed behind the little Bonne Bay ferry.
Zach’s relatives were booked into a hotel, but there was a problem with their booking and Zach and Kay didn’t fancy their chances at getting into another hotel because of the rain (meaning that many tourists, otherwise planning to camp, would have bolted into hotels for the night). In the end, they stayed the night as well as us, so it was a full house!
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] The green, grassy patch on the right-hand side of the first picture is where the small community was relocated from on Bonne Bay, presumably to a major metropolis somewhere like the second picture. The third picture is an old photograph showing a house being floated across the waters elsewhere in Newfoundland.
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