Rediscovering Canada

I owe a debt of gratitude to Donald Trump. His war on Canada gave me the needed impetus to bring my family to the one province we had not yet visited, when we normally would have taken our summer vacation time at least partly in the United States.

Last week, leaving from Moncton, New Brunswick, where we have lived for the past year and a half, we drove to North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to catch the over-night Ala’suinu ferry to Argentia, Newfoundland and Labrador. When we got off the ship at the end of the 16 hour journey Thursday morning, we visited the local tourist information office and were given a lot of valuable insight into what we could and should do over our short visit to the island.

From there, we visited Castle Hill National Historic Site, then Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve, a bird sanctuary along the south coast, neither of which we were aware of before visiting the tourist office. After getting our fill of birds, we headed for Signal Hill National Historic Site in St. John’s, which offers a stunning overview of the province’s largest city. After that, we walked Water St, which is open to pedestrians only in the summer, and enjoyed an excellent supper from a local restaurant there before sleeping in a hotel west of downtown.

We woke up early Friday morning and left St John’s around 6 am to head to the town of Fortune, where we caught the ferry le Nordet to the island of St-Pierre in the French archipelago of St. Pierre Et Miquelon.

On the ferry, and in line to check in at the hotel, we met many other Canadian tourists who were traveling there for the first time. Most of us had one thing in common: we would normally have traveled to or within the United States. The ferry was full. The hotel we stayed at was booked solid. The restaurants required reservations days in advance if you hoped for a seat, and as we ate superb local food at Le Select, we saw many tourists turned away who had not heeded the advice to reserve a table in advance.

Saturday morning, we continued exploring the island to the extent we could on foot. Bringing a car with us on the ferry would have been expensive and unnecessary. We found a local bakery and had, among other items, chocolate croissants. We were unsure whether St-Pierre would call these “chocolatine” as they are referred to in the south of France or “pain au chocolat” as they are referred to in the north of France, and wanted to find out. We learned that in St-Pierre, they are simply called “petit pain” — little bread — which wasn’t one of the options we had expected, but they were nevertheless satisfactorily buttery and chocolatey.

After indulging ourselves on French baked goods, we boarded the smaller pedestrian-only ferry Jeune France for a guided tour of local wildlife, getting our first look at the impressive sight of a very active puffin colony on the rocky island of Grand Colombier. On our return, we caught le Nordet back to Canada, passing through Canadian customs via sea back in Fortune.

That night we stayed in the town of Marystown, the nearest place to Fortune in which I could still find an available room when planning the trip some weeks earlier. Sunday morning, we headed for the thriving tourist town of Bonavista and neighbouring Elliston, where we were able to observe another puffin colony, before sleeping in Gander after another great meal, this time at Bistro On Roe.

Monday we got up and started our day at the North Atlantic Aviation Museum in Gander, detoured to Botwood to see their Canso PBY at what had once been a wartime seaplane base, then stopped for a very quick visit with an old colleague of mine in Grand Falls-Windsor. We lost an hour to directional traffic through a construction zone on the only highway to cross the island before finishing our day in Corner Brook, the province’s second-largest city in which we planned to stay for two nights.

Tuesday, we doubled back north through Deer Lake to go to Gros Morne National Park, where the hot, dry weather reached 34 degrees which had caused most of the park to be shut down. We visited the Tablelands, a spectacular rock formation described locally as being one of only two places in the world where one can see the Earth’s mantle directly. We did this pushing a stroller over decidedly unfriendly terrain for such a device, wobbled our sunburnt way back to the car, and had another good meal, this time in Trout River on the west coast. That night, we had supper with a friend in Corner Brook after exploring the city, noting with surprise the presence of a cruise ship downtown.

Wednesday morning we left at sunrise, stopping briefly at Wreckhouse, a patch of land known for having winds so strong they regularly blow trucks over, and then the lighthouse at Cape Ray, on our way to Port-aux-Basques to catch the Blue Puttees ferry back to North Sydney. We slept that night in Sydney before making the final push home Thursday. With a two year old in the car, driving over five hours a day is challenging!

For years, when we wanted to go on vacation, we would usually travel south of the border and explore the United States. As a family, we’ve been on numerous road trips, with our longest stretching from Ottawa to Omaha, Nebraska to Galveston, Texas to Miami, Florida and back. Our modest tourist dollars spent years leaving the country.

Now, with the United States philosophically off-limits, we are doing what we should have been doing all along: exploring more of Canada.