Deer Lake

We are so busy enjoying the back to nature of Newfoundland, that the computer postings get forgot. We have done so much since Trinity...a stop at Port Union...the only union town in North America! Maybe Buzz Hargrove should take a look at it...started back in the early 1900's when the fishers sold their fish to the same rich merchants who sold them back all their supplies. So fish was always worth a little less than what they owed the company store. The process was called "truck" then. A thirteen year old Randy Coaker started to organize the fishers and eventually started a processing coop and this town..of course in the long run, the regulations forcing a fish marketing board type thing got undercut by a wealthy owner who just refused to join in and so the government caved...but things did get better. We still see Coop processing plants around the province...right now they are doing snow crab and have finished lobster. It is still seasonal work but it does get them by.
Elliston was the home of the Puffin colony...even a webcam you can watch..Spent half an hour watching TV looking at puffins entirely oblivious to us. They are monogamous during the time they raise their young in borrows they return to each year. Share all the work, they do, and then puff they fly off and leave the young and each other in August-September. The young fledge and have 5 years of freedom before they breed...mom and pop don't meet up again until May..spend the winter bobbing on the North Atlantic. That's the only part I don't like..the rest sounds pretty sane to me.
Onto Bonavista after that where it was wet and cold...hoped to see more whales ..but we did stand at the point where John Cabot landed in 1497. A little sidenote here...we met a scientist down near Trinity. who does whale research and animal communication stuff. He also said he is writing a book with Stephen Hawking on the next big thing for this century...tells us it is altruism, not evolution..guess you have to read the book. But, he did tell us that there has been a big discovery...by some guys doing Phd research at the Vatican for Harvard. Reading Portugeuse handwritten notes ...apparently they have determined that a Portugeuse explorer landed at Trinity bay or thereabouts in 1472. He said this will come out in the Fall...so poor Christopher Columbus has lost his longheld position. Watch for the breaking news!
We are now at Deer Lake on the public internet access...we have just spent the last night at Fogo Island...a little piece of paradise accessed by ferry from near Twillingate. If you remember the adds for Newfoundland and Labrador, the one with the Flat Earth Society referred to Brimstone Head...one of the four corners of the Earth..right there on Fogo! we climbed it to watch the sunset. The sunset was not all that great but the view was terrific. The adds must have worked because we met a couple from Ingersoll Ontario on the summit. Ontarioans are everywhere here. And Fogo Island is like it used to be when folks fished from dories. On the east side of the island is Tilting, settled by Irish Catholics who have made sure their town was declared a Heritage District. Almost seems like a little piece of Ireland broke off and floated over. Too bad the state of the economy in Ireland hasn't accompanied it.
Anyhow, on to Gros Morne.....and then St Anthony's to see the Viking exhibit.
Sue and Jurg