Brigus
Brigus gets a special mention in the blog for two reasons. First, I was attracted to it because Rock Solid Builds is the least slick show on HGTV and the videography and characterization make the town look real.
I’m not a fan of the two designers on the show but the rest of the crew are hilarious and the opposite of the usual glib talking heads on the other building shows. They live in the area, so they can’t just whip something together and disappear. Their clients are their neighbours.
Secondly, Brigus is pretty. It is everything you would imagine an ideal coastal town should be. There is an impressive collection of well kept, occupied heritage homes scattered about. They seem to be haphazardly placed until you realize they were built around the rocky topography and reflect a life where people walked from one place to another. The renovated homes on the harbour front are stunning.
The harbour is narrow, sided by sharp cliffs. It was once a ship building hub servicing the seal hunt. Now there is small fishery but many of the boats looked like they were for personal rather than commercial use. There is a light house high on the cliffs on one side of the harbour. On the other side, there is a tunnel through the rock that was used by one of the original ship builders to reach his docks.
The town has a significant history. Hawthorne Cottage was the home base for Captain Bob Bartlett who accompanied Peary on an early voyage to the Arctic. Bartlett conducted another 20 trips doing both scientific work and capturing animals for the world’s zoos. One of his descendants lived in the house until the 1970s. It became a National Historic Site 30+ years ago. The park ranger had been there since it opened. The house reminded me of places I used to visit as a child in New Brunswick.
St. John’s
As we traveled around the island, we noticed that a great many of the houses were newly built or newly renovated and postulated that we were seeing the effects of the O&G business. Almost everyone we spoke to had either worked in Alberta or had a close family member who had. When we said we were from Alberta, they often assumed that we were visiting family or a friend from our own work in the industry.
The other obvious trend was the transition from the cod fishery to tourism. The fishery was shut down in 1992. There’s a whole generation who have not had the fishery as their first and most likely option in their lives. It still exists, but it is no longer dominant. Many of the smaller towns are still adapting and trying to embrace their new way of life.
St. John’s also reflects the changes. It is a mix of old and new. The Trans Canada Highway (labelled TCH here) coming into the city looks like the major thoroughfare coming into any large Canadian city. The suburbs are just burbs, except that there’s a lot more waterfront still occupied by reasonable single family homes. The downtown area is a mix of heritage buildings, formidable churches whose origins go back to the 1700s and new office towers skirting a very active harbour. There’s no shortage of restaurants and bars.
“The Rooms” is a museum covering Newfoundland’s history prior to its entry into confederation. I found the dioramas and displays on the fishery, including the back-and-forth ownership between Britain and France, and the island’s soldiers in World War I especially poignant. The building’s position high on a hill and glass walls make it a great viewpoint for the city. The site was once a citadel, like the ones in Quebec City, Kingston and Halifax, but there is virtually nothing left of it now.
We visited the three forts that once protected the city: Signal Hill, Fort Amherst and Cape Spear. Each has a long history which is well documented and presented at Signal Hill and Cape Spear.
The Forts – Ken
Signal Hill has amazing views of the city – when it isn’t foggy, which isn’t often if our visit is any indication. The Cabot Tower at the top of the hill commands the entrance to the harbour and the visitor centre has a nice show about the communications and military history of the area.
This side of the harbour offers a great view of why Signal Hill was considered a great place for both a lighthouse, a place for military defense and to be on the receiving end of the first trans-Atlantic, wireless signal.
Fort Amherst, across the harbour from Signal Hill is a small, very windblown lighthouse. Getting to it requires navigating the working side of the port until you get to a small residential area comprised of narrow streets and houses in the middle of the road. The last half kilometer is a walk up a blocked-off roadway. Along the way is the start of the East Coast Trail that leads to Cape Spear and beyond. We weren’t even inclined to take the first step up the trail as it leads almost straight up from the road!
Cape Spear is Canada’s most easterly point and has Canada’s oldest surviving lighthouse. It too has a long cultural and military history. Our trip to the point included being almost blown off of the cape, but more importantly gave us an understanding of the life of the lighthouse keepers and a history of the two gun emplacements on the cape. I hadn’t expected to stumble upon the WWII cannons and batteries, but then again, I didn’t do any research into Cape Spear prior to our visit.
While the guns were never used, a terrific amount of work went into building and maintaining the guns emplacements during the war. There were numerous signs and a slide show showing the work and seeing the slides on a cold and blustery day made me think how miserable it would have been to have been posted there. Or, for that matter, to have been a lighthouse keeper at any time in the last 200 years.
Terry Fox
Right below the hotel we stayed in is a memorial to Terry Fox, the iconic Canadian hero, at the place where he dipped his foot into the ocean to start his cross Canada marathon. While it is a small site and memorial it was very touching to see that the city has honoured one of our Canadian heros. His statue is the picture at the top of the page