St. John's in 2015-2016-2017 - Page 15

SignalHillHiker · #**281** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:22 PM**

April 14, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**282** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:22 PM**

April 14, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**283** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:23 PM**

Silver thaw by R C, on Flickr

Silver thaw by R C, on Flickr

******

Icebergs at Pouch Cove by R C, on Flickr

IMG_5134_lzn by R C, on Flickr

IMG_5125_lzn by R C, on Flickr

IMG_5112_lzn by R C, on Flickr

IMG_5098_lzn by R C, on Flickr

IMG_5082_lzn by R C, on Flickr

IMG_5071_lzn by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**284** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:24 PM**

It's the Victoria Day long weekend here. And winter returned - not down in the city proper, but up in the suburbs and high-elevation areas of countryside... it was brutal.

Anyhow, we went on two trips - out to my grandmother's 90th birthday (she's a war bride from Scotland, so relatives from there joined as well). It was a great time. Then I went camping with some friends up in Little Heart's Ease.

A few pictures...

• Video Link

Leaving the city...

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

The Burin Peninsula Highway.

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

A secondary highway through St-Bernard's-Jacques Fontaine, Bay L'argent, Little Bay East, and Harbour Mille. The Burin Peninsula was traded back and forth between the French and English for quite a while. All of the towns are fully anglicized today (excluding the adjacent islands of St-Pierre and Miquelon, still part of France).

Some of the towns, like Petit Forte (pronounced Petty Fort today), still have families with mostly French surnames and the like. But most of the surnames are English or Irish. There are only a handful of Catholic towns left on the peninsula. The main harbour down there is Baie de Mortier, a remnant of the final French loss.

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

The ferry to Rencontre East.

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**285** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:24 PM**

Up in the moorlands.

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

Secondary highway to Petit Forte.

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

Hundreds of communities along Placentia and Fortune Bays (which are divided by this Burin Peninsula) were forcibly resettled by the government. I went down an old gravel back road to two of them.

Resettlement by R C, on Flickr

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

They are still used as summer homes by former residents and Americans. Some of them at least. Lots have left no trace behind save a few ruins and random graveyards seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

Out camping...

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

It snowed that night.

Victoria Day Weekend by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**286** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:24 PM**

Risk of snow flurries again this weekend.

A timely article from Vice:

Why Live in Newfoundland? A Great, Terrible Question

Quote:

...

But a big part of it, I think, is that I survived my first Newfoundland winter in more than four years.

It is easy—and gets easier, the further and longer you are away—to fall into the trap of romanticizing the place. It's a cultural duty to put up a good front while you are a member of the diaspora—the secret fraternal order of Newfoundlanders abroad, every one of us an ambassador of our secret nation, every apartment an embassy. Call it the eternal sunshine of the expat mind.

That first year home, though. November comes and quickly reminds you that the only effective game in town is ambivalence. Not a wishy-washy, 'could go either way' ambivalence, either—I mean the full-throated Freudian abyss of feeling, a simultaneously intense love and hate, an emotional ouroboros cannibalizing itself, a drive to burrow yourself ever further into the beloved even as you're straining away from the claustrophobia of it all.

The Newfoundland winter—both literal and figurative—is enough to break a man. It is always worse than you remember and never ends. You cannot prepare for the wet snow, or the endless freeze-thaw that opens fissures in the pavement and destroys the rims on your tires, or the garbage.

The garbage—my God. Piles of trash accumulating across every surface. Garbage on field and in the water and in the woods, the great wave of garbage swelling up from the pit of human horror called George Street, garbage going up in thick, putrid smoke in the endless dumpster fire at Confederation Building, garbage in great endless heaps along the roads stretching from one vulgar North American suburb to another, tossed carelessly from car windows by people who can neither drive nor think 10 seconds into the future, people who make you doubt the Enlightenment project and an orderly universe and a benevolent God. Lord thundering Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, deliver us from evil.

Why indeed, you wonder in the darkness of a February afternoon, did my ancestors decide to overwinter on this blasted rock instead of Halifax or Boston? Are we sure Australia was the penal colony?

As is its way, grace is in the small things. The late night dinner with friends in their old downtown kitchen. An after-hours party and a shared bottle of wine between a random assemblage of strangers that has all of you dying at each other until the first rays of dawn. A peaceful breakfast around the bay with your spouse. Trans-generational games of cards and Dick Surgery drone shows at the Peter E. Date night at Jungle Jim's and sea ice stretching on for miles along the southern shore. The three minute drive from your mass-manufactured house in the centre of the city to a serene and rugged barren at the edge of civilization.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/w...ampaign=global

Popped downtown for lunch. Deserted.

SignalHillHiker · #**287** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:25 PM**

And caught up to today.

Finally a nice day!?

Went for a long walk downtown both sides of lunch. Join me, in chronological order lol.

• Video Link

May 28, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**288** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:25 PM**

May 28, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

May 28, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

To give you an idea how steep the core is... these buildings...

May 28, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

Are the backside of the little houses on the right side of this view...

May 28, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**289** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:26 PM**

• Video Link

May 28, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**290** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:26 PM**

May 28, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**291** Posted **May 28, 2017, 3:27 PM**

May 28, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

xzmattzx · #**292** Posted **Jun 2, 2017, 4:15 PM**

Nice update!

Your end of May looks like our beginning of March!

SignalHillHiker · #**293** Posted **Jun 20, 2017, 9:25 PM**

It is. We finally went above 20C this week.

Humidex in the low 30s.

Shot from today:

We were both the hottest and coldest place in Canada today.

A few older pictures from days ago... the first day it really came to live a bit.

SUMMER HAS FINALLY ARRIVED!

• Video Link

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**294** Posted **Jun 20, 2017, 9:25 PM**

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

"The oldest store on the oldest street in the oldest city in North America", or so they claim.

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**295** Posted **Jun 20, 2017, 9:26 PM**

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

"And since we put it on this sign, we still believe it and will not inform you what the consensus is today..." lol

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

SignalHillHiker · #**296** Posted **Jun 20, 2017, 9:27 PM**

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

June 11, 2017 by R C, on Flickr

An aside...

Canada turns 150 years old this year. Here's the Newfoundland portion of this Canadian/French-Canadian couple's professional cross-country tour.

• Video Link

Danny · #**297** Posted **Jun 27, 2017, 8:18 PM**

Very nice to see Spring finally arrived to St. John's!
You live in a wonderful colorful city! Love to see the icebergs and the scenic areas in Newfoundland!
Thanks for sharing!
Greetings from Madrid, Spain.

SignalHillHiker · #**298** Posted **Jul 7, 2017, 12:55 AM**

A couple of recent outings...

Brigus Lighthouse Hike by R C, on Flickr

Brigus Lighthouse Hike by R C, on Flickr

And then on to Brigus...

Brigus Lighthouse Hike by R C, on Flickr

Brigus Lighthouse Hike by R C, on Flickr

It was so clear you could see all the way across Conception Bay to Conception Bay South, in suburban St. John's.

Brigus Lighthouse Hike by R C, on Flickr

Brigus Lighthouse Hike by R C, on Flickr

And in the other direction you could see Cupids, Spanish Room, and other nearby towns.

Brigus Lighthouse Hike by R C, on Flickr

And a iceberg way off near the horizon.

Brigus Lighthouse Hike by R C, on Flickr