Oh Happy Sight – Newfoundland

An iceberg graveyard with a moody past, ocean-hugged Newfoundland does wonders for the city soul

London to New York. New York to Halifax. Halifax to here. I had left home tired from the weight of living and working in the bustling city. I was still that and more as our flight, hours delayed, landed with a thud, the force waking me suddenly. It is said that John Cabot the explorer cried, “O buona vista” (oh, happy sight) when he first set his eyes on this land in 1497. In the sharp fluorescent light of St John’s Airport at 12 a.m., it felt anything but. Then again, you know what they say about first impressions.

The weather had changed for the worse just before our arrival the previous evening, as it often seems to do for travellers. It wasn’t a day to be on a boat, yet here we were, heading out of the harbour on the promise of seeing an iceberg near Cape Spear, one of the hundreds calved from glaciers in the Arctic that slowly make the journey as far as St John’s every year.

I stood on the upper deck, one eye scanning the horizon and the other searching for my sea legs below. The roll of the boat left me uneasy and I struggled to maintain my focus until an icy white mass came into view, seemingly stranded on the shallows closer to shore. As we cautiously approached the dry-dock-shaped behemoth the stark white of her top seemed surreal against the backdrop of the sheer, dark cliffs of the coastline behind her. Ten thousand years and a little bit more had brought her to this point, the result of ice, snow and rain slowly combining and compressing to become what I saw before me. Closer still, I found her body rippled through with streaks of every shade of blue, formed by meltwater that had found its way into cracks and crevasses and frozen, bubble-free, over the years, trapped until it would one day be released back into the world, perhaps to begin the same journey once again. I realised that this would no doubt be soon as the mesmerising roll of the Atlantic Ocean swell carved and carved again at her base in a patient battle which could only have one outcome, but which she endured stoically nonetheless.

The roll of the ocean was replaced by the undulating hills of the Avalon Peninsula as we journeyed south along The Irish Loop, weaving our way through the small villages that dot the coast. With time to think and explore we stopped wherever or whenever the fancy took us. A hidden pond here, to dip our feet in the cold water. An ocean lookout there, to gaze out over the rocky coast to where ships – famous and lesser known – had been wrecked in the sea beyond. A walk along some forest track, one of the many on the eastern coast, to see where it might lead and the treasures it might hold.

Hugged by the spruces and birches of the surrounding forests we drove onward, mile after mile of green on green, with flashes of the blue ocean interjecting. And then, just before any thoughts of monotony could creep into the mind, we burst onto an open area devoid of almost anything but low olive-brown scrub, leaving us to believe briefly that we had left this world. Littered with small ponds full of inviting water and with boulders strewn across its expanse, carelessly left by glaciers thousands of years before, it was both peaceful and beautifully desolate. Its one lonely road stretched far off into the horizon, quietly beckoning us forward, “just a little bit further… there’s still more to see… just keep going.”

Obeying this siren call, we turned towards the eastern region of the province, bound for the Bonavista Peninsula where many believe Cabot became the first European to set foot on ‘the New Founde Lande’. We paused in Trinity, a small village rich in history, where English fishermen first settled in the century after European discovery. With the clouds staying away and the sun blessing us with warmth, the cold and wind of the days before now long forgotten, we strolled through the town of saltbox houses taking in the views across the harbour. As we did we contemplated what life would have been like for the residents here hundreds of years ago as they tried to make a new life, in a new world, with nothing but a faint promise of success at the expense of great personal toil.

When we finally arrived in Bonavista we were greeted by its unordered collection of quaint houses and buildings and a harbour full of fishing boats either having returned with their delicious haul or about to head out again for more. High up on the rocky point near the old lighthouse, our view was framed by Trinity Bay to the south, Bonavista Bay to the north and the Atlantic further beyond. We counted the icebergs we could see, far from the ruggedly beautiful shores – one, two… eight, nine, perhaps more? Some were large, some small, some seemingly headed directly into the bays nearby, and others further south, but all to meet the same fate we had already seen days before, one way or another.

Sitting high up on the cape for some time, marvelling at the views, I felt more peaceful than I had in a long time. I thought about John Cabot when I saw his statue in the grounds below the lighthouse. Yes, Newfoundland was as he supposedly said – O buona vista – but in our time here we had found it to be that and much, much more.