Newfoundland and Bell Island are well known for their friendliness and kindness to others, especially when help is needed. If anyone didn’t know of their generosity it was confirmed in 2001 by the citizens of Gander, when dozens of aeroplanes during the Twin Towers emergency were directed to their airport.
The musical “Come from Away” exemplified this, it ran for over 20 years and was the pride of Canadians. Wonderful stories of giving, kindness, organizing care for thousands of unexpected visitors were shared as dozens of life-time friendships were formed with the Americans who were stranded.
In Cambridge many of our citizens hail from Newfoundland and Bell island, and of those I have the pleasure to have met the theory of kindness and friendliness holds true.
I have never visited Newfoundland. David, my husband, has very fond memories of many visits over the years, one as a student summer camp counsellor and others for business. David’s father worked there and received an honorary degree for work he had done for the government of Joey Smallwood. This was just one of the reasons we chose to take a cruise down the St. Lawrence last fall with several ports to visit in Newfoundland.
We were particularly looking forward to visiting L’Anse Aux Meadows, the Viking settlement founded by Leif Eriksson 400 years prior to Columbus.
The weather had different ideas and bad weather cancelled the planned itinerary. We ended up visiting Prince Edward Island instead as hurricane Earl caused havoc. Another post tropical storm followed, and Fiona did untold damage to many areas causing devastation, loss of life, livelihood and homes and businesses in areas we were to have visited.
This year we plan once again to visit but flying direct and doing a 12-day bus tour. It’s a wonderful and varied itinerary with the group “McCarthy’s party.” The reviews of this trip are splendid. One example: "I have had many experiences with 'good' tour companies in the world, however there are few 'exceptional' ones and McCarthy's Party is one of them.”
My personal bucket list is seeing icebergs, whales, and puffins. The company has sent us the detailed daily itinerary, of hotels where we stay, names of other passengers in our group and a What’s App site for communication.
Provided there are no weather-related interruptions, here is the map of our planned itinerary:
Our flight arrives after midnight, so we found a limo driver prepared to pick us up from Deer Lake Airport to take us to our hotel where we will join the group.
For David, the highlight will be the Viking Settlement founded by Leif Eriksson.
We followed the rich history of the Viking story one year when we cruised from Norway to Iceland. We marvelled at the replica Viking ship that Erik Peterson had sailed on to settle in Iceland, and now that the dates of the L’Anse Aux Meadows settlement been confirmed at about 1000 AD, this completes the history we have followed.
For me this is an exciting trip, to enjoy the friendliness of the people, to hopefully see icebergs, whales and puffins, and the colourful homes on the streets of St. John’s will be the expected highlights, but no doubt there will be unexpected bonuses too.
