Newfoundland: Scenic Seascapes, Friendly Hospitality, Abundant Wildlife On The Edge Of Canada Lies An Island Province With The World’s Largest Concentration Of Humpback Whales And Atlantic Puffins

When the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts at Plymouth Rock in 1620, perhaps the main reason they survived was because they were befriended by an English-speaking Indian who gave them crucial advice about farming and fishing.

His name was Squantum. He migrated there from Newfoundland.

Newfoundlanders like to say that Squantum learned not only his English in Newfoundland, but also his hospitality.

Warm, friendly hospitality is still very much a way of life in Newfoundland - and that’s probably the first thing that strikes visitors.

Also striking is the scenery - a rich variety of natural, rugged, unspoiled beauty. Spectacular seascapes - mile after stunning mile of them. Long stretches of white sand beaches. Huge expanses of scenic lakes and rivers. Vast forests. Lovely fjords. Majestic mountains. Fields of colorful wildflowers. Tiny, picture-perfect fishing villages that look like they are posing for postcards.

Lying at the easternmost point of North America, the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (its formal, correct name) is typically Canadian, yet in many ways almost a different country. Although it was the first part of what is now Canada to be settled by Europeans, it is Canada’s newest province, not joining until 1949.

Prior to that it had been, as Canada itself used to be, a dominion closely associated with, but independent of, Great Britain. St. John’s, its capital, is closer to London, England, than it is to London, Ontario; closer to Ireland than to Toronto.

And not just in distance. Descendants of people who came over from western England and southwest Ireland, Newfoundlanders identify closely to the land of their ancestors and cling to their traditions so strongly that a large share of them speak in dialects that remain virtually unchanged by the passing centuries. It’s not unusual to come across a Newfoundlander who seems more Irish than an Irishman or more hundreds and hundreds of them. Only they call them “ponds.” One pond I drove along was 16 miles long, its water clear and pristine.

Even the air seems special - remarkably pure and wholesome. Standing in the Terra Nova National Park one day, I found myself mesmerized by a wonderfully aromatic pine scent that filled the entire forest.

The highlight of my visit was a 2-1/2-hour boat ride - O’Brien’s Whale & Bird Tours - less than an hour’s drive south of St. John’s.

“We’ve encountered whales the last 84 trips out,” 35-year-old Loyola O’Brien announces in his heavy Irish accent as the large, comfortable boat pulls away from the shoreline of the tiny village of Bay Bulls. We are heading toward the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.

Loyola introduces himself, runs through the safety procedures, explains what we’ll be seeing and then proceeds to entertain us by singing some Irish folk music and telling stories. He even offers to teach some Irish dancing.

Loyola loves what he’s doing and his enthusiasm is contagious. Everyone on board is smiling.

Fourteen minutes into the trip, we spot a humpback whale breaching the water about a hundred yards away. “Oh, that’s just the beginning,” Loyola says. “We’re going to be seeing lots more whales and we’re going to be seeing them up real close. But first, we’re going to take a closer look at these birds.”

Birds are flying all over the place. Loyola tells us a little about each leading species as we approach two islands where puffins, gulls, kittiwakes, gannets and other seabirds are hanging out by the hundreds of thousands.

This is one of the largest bird sanctuaries in the world and the world’s largest concentration of Atlantic puffins. Estimates of the number of seabirds range from two million up. Five times as many seabirds are scattered elsewhere throughout Newfoundland during the summer months.

Like the moose, the puffin is a symbol of Newfoundland. Loyola describes these small birds with big bellies as “wearing white T-shirts and a black jacket, with orange lipstick on their beaks and feet and around their little eyes.” They dive, swoop and “fly” underwater, then pop back up with their beaks full of fish, which they then carry off to their cliff-side homes. When a puffin flies, it looks like an airborne version one of those lawn decorations where the wings don’t flap, but rather spin around and around.

The boat pulls close to the cliffsides of each of the two small islands so we can get better pictures of the birds.

In order to protect whales from harassment, laws restrict just how close whale-watching boats can approach these majestic mammals. Whales, however, have no laws curbing their people-watching.

The area we are in has the world’s largest concentration of humpbacks and soon a second whale decides to do some up-close people-watching. I can’t believe how close he is.

One minute it looks like nothing’s out there. Then you spot a whale spout against the horizon. Another humpback is surfacing to exhale - there she blows!

Humpback can be 50 feet long and weigh 45 tons. They are the most gregarious of the large whales. They like to slap the water with their tail or flippers and poke their heads up to get a better look at you. Before diving, they often raise their large scalloped tail out of the water.

“Whale at 2 o’clock,” spotter Wayne Maloney calls out. A moment later, right at the spot where he has directed our eyes, a humpback whale breaches. Then another whale. And another.

It just keeps getting better. Two whales, side by side. Then three of them moving along together, as if choreographed. Not far-off sightings, but right up close - in front of us, behind us, on each side of us. Not once do I need binoculars.

One whale rolls on its side, playfully flipping its dorsal fins. “Look, look,” a mother tells her small son and daughter, “the whale is waving good-bye to you.” The two children giggle and bounce up and down. They wave at the whale. The child in me feels like waving back, too.

In just 2-1/2 hours, I saw 16 whales breach the water more than a hundred times. Plus I saw a couple million marvelous seabirds. Wow!

Several hours later in the Avalon Wilderness Reserve, a guide named Paul Johnson of Outdoor Adventures helps me track down the caribou herds and, along the way, keeps me enthralled with tales of Newfoundland hunting and fishing.

We see well over two hundred caribou. I’m ecstatic; Paul is disappointed. Sometimes, he says, you can see a couple of thousand. In the fall, he’s a hunting guide whose clients achieve 100 percent success on caribou hunts and 85 percent on moose hunts. He’s also a salmon and trout fishing guide. I make a note of his telephone number (709-363-2181) just in case I ever feel like trying some world-class hunting or fishing.

At Ferryland, I take an interpretive tour of the Colony of Avalon Archaeology Project. In 1621, Sir George Calvert - better known to us as Lord Baltimore - established a colony here and archaeologists have already uncovered more than a million artifacts, including evidence of trade between Newfoundland and colonial Virginia. There is a museum where you can learn about the lifestyle of the early settlers.

Newfoundland also has interesting spots related to Viking and Portuguese explorations.

Back in St. John’s, I realize that I should have scheduled more time for this historic and pleasant little city of about 105,000 people, home to roughly 20 percent of Newfoundland’s population. But I manage to catch all the high points of the city and its surrounding area in less than a day by taking a well-run excursion with All Seasons Tours. Guide Derek Hayter is a walking encyclopedia of information about both St. John’s and Newfoundland.

We begin with a commanding view of the city from Signal Hill, which went by that name even before Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic wireless signal there in 1901. Downtown highlights include Water Street - the oldest street in North America - and both the Anglican Cathedral and the Catholic Basilica, each of which, like the city, is named after John the Baptist. Also included is a visit to Cape Spear, North America’s most easterly point and site of one of Newfoundland’s most picturesque lighthouses.

The tiny town of Trinity (pop. 325) on the shore on Bonavista Peninsula is frequently called a gem and I want to find out why. Home to several historic sights and a national heritage community whose settlement predates even the 1564 Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida, its setting is postcard picturesque.

Walking along its neighborhoods of brightly colored, saltbox-style homes makes you feel as if you were back in the early 1800’s. During summer days the Trinity Pageant moves about town, stopping at different locations as they depict scenes from Trinity’s colorful past. Evenings, Newfoundland’s Rising Tide Theatre, about half of whose performers are Trinity natives, conducts well-attended plays, more than a dozen different ones each week.

Something I’ll always remember about Trinity is the view from my room - across the inlet was an iceberg that had floated down from the arctic. A short drive away is the town of Bonavista, about eight times larger than Trinity, but still quaint. It is widely believed to be the site where John Cabot first came aground in the New Founde Lande.

This year marks the 500th year anniversary of Cabot’s coming ashore in Newfoundland, and Canada plans a year-round celebration. Festivities include a reenactment of the voyage of Cabot’s ship, The Matthew, starting in Bristol, England, landing at Bonavista on June 24th and then remaining in the province for 45 days of visits to other parts of Newfoundland.

Newfoundland is much too big to see it all in a short time, and it would be foolish to attempt that, for this is a place to be savored. But I did manage to get as far west as the Terra Nova National Park for a remarkable two days with Wildland Tours.

“We should have a good chance of seeing a moose if we turn down that trail up ahead,” says our guide, Keith Snelgrove, a knowledgeable and enthusiastic 30-year-old naturalist who seems to know all the highlights of this spectacular 400-square-mile national park.

Indeed, a few minutes later we’re looking straight into the face of a moose. Keith pulls the van over and leads us for a 40-minute walk in the woods trailing the moose. There are no snakes in Newfoundland, no skunks, no poison ivy, no poison oak, no ragweed. We get very close to the moose, maybe 20 yards away. A moose in the wild - incredible! Within 24 hours, I see five more.

Keith takes us on to Newman Sound, where we board Ocean Watch Expedition to go looking for eagles. Soon British-born Skipper Ian Stroughair and his Newfoundlander wife, Susanne, are introducing us to Brian and Mila, who happen to be bald eagles. Brian and Mila live up on a cliff overlooking the sound. We watch one of them, its wingspan stretching out perhaps 10 feet, swoop down and grab a fish from the water and carry it back to the nest.

“You’ve named the eagles?” I remark in a quizzical tone. “How do you tell them apart?”

“They’re very territorial,” Ian explains. “I know which are which by where we are. Of course, I can only tell the male from the female if they are flying next to each other - female are larger; they weigh 10-14 pounds, compared with 8-9 pounds for the males.”

Ian stops to lift a lobster trap from the water and shows us how it works. Next, passengers participate in some plankton-gathering research that Ocean Watch is conducting for Memorial University. Ian has a special scientific permit from the Canadian government allowing passengers this hands-on contact with the marine environment.

Heading back to St. John’s, Keith plays a tape of Irish folk music by a Newfoundland group called The Irish Descendants. After passing a town called Come-By-Chance, I get out my map to see what other odd names I can find.

When it came to bestowing names, the people who settled Newfoundland did not merely recall some town in the old country and just copy it or stick the word “new” in front of it. Instead, they gave the world places such as Heart’s Desire, Heart’s Delight, Heart’s Content, Little Heart’s Easy, Blow Me Down, Empty Basket, Run By Guess, Ha Ha Bay, Right-In-The-Run Island, Little Hopping Harbour, Table Cover, Witless Bay and Joe Batt’s Arm.

And even when they ran a little short of inspiration, they still managed to come up with Harbour Harbour and Nameless Cove.

I like people who have the good humor to give their surroundings names like that. And I like the land they live in. I want to go back again.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: If you go Getting there: Air Canada (800-776-3000) offers daily service from Spokane to and from Newfoundland with a change of planes required in Calgary. Accommodations: Although there are fine hotels, bed-and-breakfasts are the rule and prices are very reasonable. Prescott Inn in St. John’s (709-753-7733) includes a truly gourmet breakfast that changes almost daily. Other B&Bs I’ve tried and liked include: The Beach B&B in Trinity (709-464-3695); The Clode Sound Motel next to the Terra Nova National Park (709-664-3146); By the Pond B&B in Southport (709-548-2580); and The Downs Inn in Ferryland (709-432-2808). All hotels and B&Bs are subject to strict government standards. When to go: Late May through early August is considered the best time to visit, not just because the weather is so much better, but also because it’s the best time to view whales and sea birds. Food: If you like seafood, this is paradise. People in St. John’s will vigorously debate which place has the best fish and chips - I liked every one I tried. There are a number of seafood dishes peculiar to Newfoundland, including such items as cod tongues, which are quite good. Getting around: It’s wise to either join up with a tour group or rent a car. Public transportation is not practical. There are no trains. Guide Books: All major travel-guide publishers have useful books on Canada, but few offer very comprehensive coverage of Newfoundland. I recommend “Atlantic Canada Handbook” from Moon Travel Handbooks and “No Strangers Here: A Simplified Guide to Travel in Newfoundland” from Creative Book Publishing of St. John’s. Tour operators: The following tour operators are highly recommended: Wildland Tours (709-722-3335); Southern Shore Eco Adventures, (709-432-2659); and All Season Tours, (709-682-1644). For hunting and fishing, contact Paul Johnson at Outdoor Adventures, (709-363-2181). Information: For an excellent package of travel information on Newfoundland, call the Department of Tourism toll-free at (800-563-6353); or write to them at P.O. Box 8730, St. John’s, NF, A1B 4K2; tel. (709-729-2830); fax (709-729-1965); e-mail info@tourism.gov.nf.ca. Ask them to include in your packet the outstanding nature brochures written by David Snow.