The Browns go to Newfoundland

The Son poses with two of the actors at Signal Hill.

Taken at Signal Hill. The view from Signal Hill is spectacular, and you could ride a horse into town in just a couple of minutes. In olden days, people would stand up there and look out to sea and spot ships when they were still many miles out. They would signal to the ships using flags and then they would be able to prepare a birth for the ship once they knew who and what was on board.

Signal Hill lookout. How many people over the centuries have sat on that same rock and looked out over the same view?

Queen's battery. Traveling Beauty was freaking out to see The Son posing like this. It looks like a sheer drop, but the ground actually slopes away and downward, posing no real danger on a calm day. She was freaked to see such a vast distance below him nonetheless. So, I stayed and took pictures, she couldn't bear to watch and so she headed up hill to the Signal Hill tower.

Top of Signal Hill and catching our breath.

We couldn't resist taking a picture of this cute kitty behind our apartment. Now we know why they call it Kitty Cat Lane.

Across Gower Street from our apartment.

Looking down Gower Street. Many of these three story apartments were built after the St. John's fire (1906, I think) as temporary housing for the many who were left homeless. However, they ended up enduring and being maintained until today. Our flat, seen below, had a bathroom and kitchen added on at the back, and built at a different level so you had to go down a couple of steps to go in. My guess is that the original apartment had no running water at all - just living room and bedrooms with cook-in fireplace and wood stove. All heating was electric baseboard.

This is where we stayed at 136B Gower Street. Second level. Two other flats on each of the other levels.

This tells the story of the claiming of the New Founde Land by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583. Harbourside Park, St. John's.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Read about his tragic, deadly journey home to England here on Wikipedia.

The Terry Fox memorial at Harbourside Park, St. John's. It is off in the corner of the park, right near the water. Not as impressive or famous as the memorial up in Thunder Bay on the Trans-Canada, but just as poignant. I still remember the day I saw him at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, providing music for the event as a member of the Burlington Teen Tour Band.

Fish and chips at Portugal Cove.

Ziggy Feelgood's chip wagon has a permanent location in front of the Scotia Bank Building in St. John's.

Waiting for our boat tour in St. John's.

This is a lobster boat, I think.

My lovely Daughter1 at Signal Hill.

The late-night story teller of the Haunted Walk met us on the steps of the old Anglican church. In the nearby church yard, 5000 bodies are buried.

Daughter2 and I have a chat while waiting for the boat tour to start. Across the harbour are the container cranes and containers waiting to be picked up or loaded.

If you look at the horizon you can see the fog out there over the water, waiting to swallow up any boat that meets it. That would be us...

The fog tries to sneak ashore like a big sea monster, but the warm air over the land keeps it back.

On board and looking for whales.

An hour and a half into the tour, spirits started sagging: "How much longer will we have to endure this?"

Our spirits were lifted by the Newfoundland sea shanties performed by this fellow passenger and his button accordion. The baby even stopped crying.

The Son keeps things light.

There's no cell-phone signal out here.

More wild irises.

During the Second World War, a very different kind of danger focused activities at Cape Spear. On a direct convoy route from Europe to the North American continent, Cape Spear took on a whole new significance. German submarines and raiders off the coast of the Island posed a considerable threat. A coastal defence battery, equipped with two 10" guns was constructed here to protect the entrance to St. John's Harbour. The gun emplacements were built at the tip of the Cape and connected by underground passages to magazine and equipment rooms. From 1941 to 1945, troops were stationed here, and barracks, mess halls and canteens were built. With the end of hostilities in 1945, most of the fortifications were demolished but the gun emplacements stand as a sombre reminder of that important period in our military history. (Parks Canada website)

Sailors raise the White Ensign over a captured German U-boat in St. John's, Newfoundland 1945.

The old Cape Spear lighthouse.

The present day, operating light-station at Cape Spear.

Cape Spear map.

This shows how the lens in a lighthouse works.

Most of the tourists that visit here are from elsewhere in Canada. It gives you a nice warm feeling to realize that others feel a sense of pride and importance in visiting and enjoying all the amazing places and people our country has to offer.

Early morning snapshot of my only company at sunrise - a little bird. The wind sculpts some of these rocks into hoodoos.

Beauty and fragility in the midst of ruggedness.

Hoodoos at Cape Spear. That would be no small wind that does that to those rocks.

The beauty and subtlety of the textures and colours at Cape Spear belies the fact that it is probably high on the list of Canada's most inhospitable places.

This is a sea anemone that has take up residence in half of an old clam shell.

This is what whale baleen looks like. The fibres and hairs trap little fish and sea creatures, then the whale scrapes them off with its tongue and down the hatch they go.

More subtle beauty at Logy Bay, beside the Ocean Life research centre.

Logy Bay with the fog just out of reach of land.

Someone left their gloves behind at Middle Cover after a capelin netting session. They probably were pre-occupied with getting the little critters onto the frying pan!