Feltham Rambles

As we kicked and glided along the frozen, snow-covered fjord, we weren’t really watching where our skis were going. The surrounding 2,500-foot snowy mountains, set against a cloudless blue sky with their ice-speckled cliff faces plunging into the fjord, kept our attention focused upward. We heard melt-water pouring off a snowfield high in a glacial cirque to our left and a raven cawing in a stubby spruce forest to our right. Far ahead, the fjord narrowed and vanished around a bend.

We were talking about Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders, one of Canada’s hottest on-the-radar travel topics. Many people we knew had just come back from travelling there, and everyone was raving about it. My colleague, describing his experience of the place and the people, tossed the word “authentic” into our conversation, and I didn’t like it.

The word “authentic” is such a tourism buzzword these days, and it gets my back up. Today was no exception. The fact is, tourism destinations sell a product. Period. Whatever it is.

My colleague pressed on: “But in Newfoundland, they’re so keen on telling their story, and that makes them special! He began to tell me not only about visiting but also about being in Canada’s youngest province. About climbing off a fishing boat, sharing smiles slick with sea‑salt and sun. About being toasted by the locals, drinks clinking with tiny pieces of iceberg. Peering out of foggy bus‑windows onto waving passers‑by. Staring at happy houses standing like lollipops against grey bluffs – symbols, maybe, of an ironic and witty people.

In spite of myself, I had to admit that this was an interesting point – that somehow the keenness of a people, their willingness to share and interact made them unique in the world of travel. Irony and wit were, I imagine, highly useful traits back in the days when Newfoundland was settled. The province's fish‑full waters enticed its first permanent colonists, people from the West of England, who survived against all manner of trials that included being stripped of their property rights and even banned from fishing. Life on "The Rock" has never been simple, or easy!

Widespread images of Newfoundland continue to invite some thought on the topics of a people’s strength and survival; think about the massive cliffs, the barren shores you’ve seen splashed across the back page of Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism’s ads in the Globe and Mail. They make your eyes go wide wondering how you’d even start to carve a home there (and for that matter, why you might even try). Popular films like The Shipping News have given further life to the notion of Newfoundland being both a hostile and an unbelievably romantic land. And no doubt some of today’s most intriguing tours in the province give travellers the chance to chat and learn first‑hand with people who have explored and survived. Newfoundland is talked about as one of the few places in Canada where travellers can plunge their hands into a sense of life and history through geography – by the land and the people who’ve loved it.

When I sit down with Juanita Keel‑Ryan, Director of Tourism Product Development, I can barely keep up to her thoughts on the connection between Newfoundlanders and their land. In fact, she tells me that Newfoundland’s eldest generation consider themselves Newfoundlanders first and Canadians second. This is the condition of island‑states, she tells me: you love what you know. Whatever their circumstances, what Keel‑Ryan calls the “interrelationship of place and people” is, she says, “what makes Newfoundland authentic.”

That word again. I ask her about it: would Newfoundlanders even use it to describe themselves or, for that matter, to describe tourism in their home province?

She chuckles and says not really. “In Newfoundland,” she explains, “there’s a big difference between the programmed and the experiential. When you come here, you meet people. It’s not part of the package. The locals are willing to share their stories, probably more than in most places. If you’re interested in a conversation,” she laughs, “you’ll certainly get it.”

Even if you think you don’t want to get it, you actually do, says another colleague – writer Michelle Pentz Glave – who had recently travelled there. “I remember when my husband and I first got there, we felt put upon," she told me. "Nobody just ‘stops by’ at home. You always worry about your place being a mess or having no food or other things to do. But, really, how dumb is that?”

She tells me about sitting in her own private house in Heart's Delight, cozy in pj’s, when there was a knock at the door. The delivery? Home‑baked banana muffins from Donna, the neighbour from across the street and aunt of the trip organizer. “And yes,” Michelle says to me, “I know it’s her unofficial job to make us feel at home, but she went so far above and beyond. You know, ‘how’s ya getting’on’ and checking in. There, people are so casual. They’re always cooking; they always have 500 casseroles in the freezer. And it’s just about meeting people, learning something new. And they so want to make sure you have a good time.”

It’s when I call up Stephen Knudsen, co‑ owner of The Dark Tickle Co. (an economusée in St. Lunaire‑Griquet, situated on Newfoundland’s northern‑most tip), that I finally understand how authenticity and Newfoundland people belong in the same sentence. I ask him why, in his opinion, he and his fellow islanders are getting such a good name these days.
“They’re straightforward,” he replies, “they’re open and understanding and not at all conservative.” I probe a little more. Finally he admits he’s heard one complaint: “people tell me that they’re sorry they’ve left coming here so late. They wish they would’ve scheduled more time, come earlier, seen more.”

And I get it. Here I am on the phone with someone who, with his wife Gwendolyn, invites travellers to learn about harvesting from peat bogs partridgeberries, blueberries, squashberries. They teach you how to identify them, how to use them and, at “The Berry Patch,” how to craft them into jams, jellies, sauces and chocolates. He tells me that “things happen here in Newfoundland that don’t happen anywhere else.”

And, thinking back to everything I had heard and read and talked about in the last few days, I knew without a doubt he was telling me the truth. Today, when so much of our travel experience is highly‑tailored, highly packaged and highly precise, like clothing that’s pre‑shunk and pre‑faded and looks like someone has worn it before you, Newfoundland seems to offer something different, something that is, paradoxically, more old‑fashioned but less predictable than other experiences on the market.

Travelling to Newfoundland is like going to a time when neighbours knew each other’s names, and their kids' names, and invited each other over for supper. In fact, maybe it’s like becoming the person you’d sometimes like to be; perhaps, if you can go somewhere and find a little piece of yourself, might not that feeling pass for authenticity itself?