No lack of trains
To bring closure to our first Tour of the Rock, we found the way to the other ferry terminal. Or to within sleeping distance, at least. Tomorrow morning, the drive should take about one minute, more or less. We found a few other things, along the way.
For the record, the map.
The official story is that the railroad is gone from Newfoundland. The reality is that a lot of hardware was left behind. There are exhibits in almost every corner we visited. Today, the tour started in Corner Brook and finished in Channel Port-aux-Basques (for anyone using a GPS with Garmin software).
Andwe found new animals for the checklist. Cows, horses, sheep, goats, alpacas!
The usual scenery delights were present and accounted for. Waterfalls…
Hills that just made me happy…
Even the occasional road construction site that gave pause. We saw a Euclid. We saw huge bulldozers. We saw people that, literally, gave pause (although never more than a few minutes at a time).
As fervent defenders of the right to speak more than one official language in Canada, our time spent in the Cape St. George area was an occasion to see how other people are getting along as linguistic minorities. In Mainland, NL there is a vibrant community of francophones. I learned that France had fishing rights along that stretch of coast until 1904, when England traded some coffee leases for access to cod stocks. The people didn’t have to follow the game and stayed on.
The school was featured in a documentary on Radio-Canada a couple of years ago. I can now say that I’ve been to the area, and the folks are doing just fine.
