“My fiction is really about sensual details—and luckily, we have them here.” Newfoundland and Labrador novelist Lisa Moore is right. Icebergs looming through fog, the salt tang on the inland wind, the heavy sighs of the humpbacks, the crazy whirligig flight of puffins. Somewhere, probably, a pennywhistle is tooting a sea shanty.

Newfoundland (pronounce it right: rhymes with “understand,” not “screw the plan”) is like nowhere else in Canada.

Geographically, “The Rock” is out there. Separated from the mainland by the Strait of Belle Isle, Newfoundland is actually closer to Ireland than it is to Winnipeg, MB, or Chicago (USA). (Which gives you an idea how big Canada is: St. John’s, The Rock’s capital, is 4-½ time zones from Vancouver, BC.)

In isolation, things grow differently. There’s no mistaking Newfoundlanders for other Canadians—at least the moment they open their mouths. Lord ‘tundering jay-sus, that’s a brogue-and-a-half. The Rock is home to some of Canada’s best writers: Wayne Johnston, Michael Crummey, Michael Winter, Kenneth Harvey.

But everyone has the Irish gift of the blarney. Words are currency in Newfoundland (witness the annual March Hare Festival in Corner Brook—a poetic romp through the English language). Even the place-namers had the requisite lightness of touch. (You’ll know should you fetch up at Ha Ha Bay, Tickle Cove or Heart’s Delight.) The arts flourish in Newfoundland almost by natural law. “Whatever washes up on the beach,” poet and novelist Crummey once put it, “gets cobbled in together with everything else.”

St. John’s is one of the oldest Euorpean cities in North America, and guides on the cruise ships that stop here talk of all the things that happened on the hard Right Coast first: first radio signal, first non-stop transatlantic flight, first European bootprint in North America. (And, they usually neglect to add, first clop on the head of a Beothuk in a battle over a Viking cow.)

Newfoundlanders have seen a lot. And they’ve suffered more than most. Always they bear up with unpretentious warmth and unfailing good humour. The reason Canadians don’t tell Newfoundland jokes anymore is that it finally dawned on us that nobody is funnier than Newfoundlanders—so the joke was on us.

Newfoundland and Labrador in a nutshell:
Nicknames for St. John’s: “City of firsts,” “City of legends”

Local nosh: “Jigs dinner” (salt beef and boiled vegetables), cod and brewis, Figgy Duff

Snack food: Jam Jams

Beer: Blue Star

Ambassadors of funny: Rick Mercer, Mary Walsh, Mary Jones, Shaun Majumder

Vocabulary builder: Rex Murphy

Local attractions: Signal Hill National Historic Site (just outside St. John’s), where Marconi received the first radio transmission in 1901; the annual Royal St. John’s (rowing) Regatta, the oldest continuous sporting event in North America

Excursions: Visit L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site, hike Torngat Mountains National Park (Labrador), kayak among icebergs in the Northern Peninsula

***Newfoundland and Labrador Day at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games is Feb. 26.

www.newfoundlandlabrador.com/

video:
L’Anse aux Meadows (UNESCO World Heritage Site)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzzAs1noEcA

Norstead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUtm2bQE3wQ

Pub Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCouZiogZLk

Parc national du Gros-Morne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yxBcaxlM2w

Gros-Morne National Park
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA1fyAeqbps

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