Home to Newfoundland ...

The last couple of weeks I've been in Halifax and St. John's, mostly working but also getting some time in with family and, in St. John's at least, a couple of good walks.


One of the reasons for the trip was to bring two of our global partners, Naty Sunuc of community development organization CEIBA in Guatemala and Isaiah Kipyegon of Norwegian Church Aid in Kenya, to talk with Canadians about the impacts of climate change in their countries and what we might do as global citizens to build a more just and sustainable economy. I knew that Naty and Isaiah would have meaningful things to share, but even after working with partners like them for 12 years, I was still unprepared for how connected my story and theirs are.

I picked up them and my colleagues Caroline and Rachel at the St. John's airport on a cold (about 7 degrees) Sunday afternoon, and we headed out to Middle Cove, home of strong tides (though the tide was out when we visited) ...


...and beautiful beach rocks.


Rachel, Caroline and Naty picking out a few Middle Cove rocks to bring home.


Crab shell, empty but still looking pretty lively. It had been dropped and picked clean by seagulls.


Isaiah revels in his new surroundings.

After freezing them pretty solid, we headed over to Beachy Cove for fish and chips. Kelly's mom met us there.

Rachel, Sara, a very enthusiastic waitress, Caroline, Naty, Isaiah, and Sharon.

The fish and chips led to a discussion of Newfoundland's history and economy. While our national/provincial stories have ultimately played out quite differently, Guatemala, Kenya and Newfoundland share a common history of colonialism and dependence on natural resources. We talked at length about the change in fishery patterns from the time that my grandfather worked as a shareman on the Blackwood family's fishing vessels through to the age of factory-freezer ships and the collapse of the Northern cod stocks.

When I was a kid, the cod that we ate that night would have come from small day boats like this one pulled up on shore in Beachy Cove, or the larger one tied up at Quidi Vidi.



Men in these boats jigged cod, pulled handlines, or fished cod traps. They fished the bay and returned each afternoon to clean and freeze or dry the catch. Larger boats went further offshore or out onto the Banks for a longer period until their holds were full, then returned to one of the many small fish plants that provided work in communities across the island. Over the years they were steadily outpaced by trawlers that scooped everything they could from the bottom and ferried the catch to huge factory-freezer ships. These ships came from Russia, Europe, and Canada, and by 1992 they had devastated a cod stock that, despite some pretty intensive harvesting, had fed much of the world for 500 years. And so the cod we ate was bycatch from another fishery, perhaps halibut, or from the "sentinel fishery" which monitors the state of the cod stocks.

The next day, we drove out to Cape Spear, and in so doing passed through a lot of pine scrub. This led naturally to talk of forestry and paper-making, Newfoundland's other historic enterprise, and the slow collapse of that industry. Later, as we walked along the harbour, we passed supply vessels for the offshore oil rigs . This province's dependence on the extraction of natural resources for its wealth knows no boundaries; it even sends people away to dig oil out of sand in Alberta.

And yet it is a place of stunning beauty.



A walk along the ocean's edge revealed that beauty close up. Savannah sparrows chirped and flew nervously around what must have been their nesting site. I got one good look,and walked away, but spent a little more time with the plant life. Not 100% sure about this one. Its leaves and flowers look like Starry False Solomon's Seal, but it's very low to the ground. Does that just mean it's immature?


Queen Anne's Lace:


Crackerberry, known to the rest of the world as Bunchberry. (We like to be different.)


Alder.


Miscellaneous alpines. There was a lot of juniper in among it, so we had a sampling.


Naty says that in her culture they have a belief that after they die, they must return to everywhere they've ever lost a hair in order to reclaim it. She tries to gather up hair she loses on airplanes and other such places. And Newfoundland?

"I want to leave one here."