Eastern Region

Fish have always been the currency in the towns of the Bonavista and Burin Peninsulas. From the days when fishermen came over from Europe just to cast their nets in summer, to now when the fish are not as plentiful as the romance for those bygone days of abundance, the sea has ruled the people's of life.

You could say that about any island, anywhere in the world, but in Newfoundland the ocean washes over the souls of the people, shaping them the same way the waves have sculpted rollong beaches and towering cliffs of the shoreline over thousands of years. And that will become clear as you explore the towns and bays that lie between Grand Bank on the Burin Peninsula and the wharves of Bonavista.

From Gambo the next intersection along the Trans Canada Highway heads into Glovertown along Route 310 which dissects the Eastport Peninsula on its way to Salvage.

At Eastport watch for the kaliedescope of road signs that point to the attractions, museums, small amusement parks and, of course, Eastport Beach. By sandy beach standards, it ain't long but it sure is sandy and when the suns out you'll always find families picniking by the shore. If your physical stamina is about as sturdy as one of grandma's crocheted doily's, then maybe a dip in the ocean is not for you.

Even on the hottest summer days the water temperature ocean about the same as the cheese-keeper in your fridge. It's guaranteed to gaff a hangover. You'll come out feeling better than the seals who met the business end of a gaff when Newfoundlanders were still allowed to use the long, hooked poles in the annual seal hunt. But that really depends on how much local hospitality you sampled the night before.

Recuperation on the beach prepares you for a north turn to Burnside where you'll see one of the most amazing archeological discoveries in this part of the province.

Before these bays were exploited by settlers, native people hunted, fished and camped here for thousands of years. Hitch a boat ride across the water to an ancient quarry at Bloody Reach where generations of ancient peoples chipped arrow heads and axes on the side of a hill. The flakes of stone in the quarry were piled up over 5,000 years. From Burnside you can also hop a ferry to St. Brendan's island and on the way you'll see other, uninhabited islands poking into Bonavista Bay.

Route 310 ends in Salvage which does not mean you're driving to a scrap yard. However the picturesque community with its narrow roads clambering over hills looking out over the ocean is an antique. It's the oldest community on the Eastport Peninsula.

The Trans Canada Highway rolls through Terra Nova National Park , past mile after mile of trees and hills and maybe the occassional moose wandering by the highway. The real action is off the highway and down the sideroads where there are over 80 kilometres of hiking trails carving through the wilderness.

You can carve up a few divots on the 18 holes of the Twin Rivers Golf Course in the eastern edge of the park. Newfoundland golfers agree its one of the best on the island for the challenge and the scenery.

At Sandy Pond rent a canoe and paddle down to the end of tall grass where the pond meets a river and lie back to let the boat rock in the ripples. Just beware of the "old hag".

It's those nightmares that you can't wake up from when it feels like someone is sitting on your chest. That someone is the "old hag", cackling as she keeps you in a tortured sleep. There's only one deep-rooted mental condition that can bring the old hag on a person peacefully drifting off in a canoe at Sandy Pond: credit card limit neurosis.

Shag it. After a boat tour in Newman Sound and a night under the stars in one of Terra Nova's camp grounds you'll have the old hag beaten by inner peace and your partner's assurance that there's plenty of space left on the plastic.

The Discovery Trail is named after John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland in 1497. And this journey along Route 230 on the Bonavista Peninsula is its own voyage of discovery through one of Newfoundland's more entertaining and eye-catching regions. From the modern conveniences of a big town like Clarenville to the tranquil quiet waters of Bunyan's Cove to the captivating theatre productions in Trinity.

After thousands of kilometres of roadside and seaside adventures, admitedly, one small town in Newfoundland may start to look like all the rest. But slow down and take your time to discover the treasures hidden down detours along the Discovery Trail.

Just past the eastern border of Terra Nova Park is the intersection of Route 1 and Route 233 that weaves through the stands of birch to Port Blandford. Clode Sound is always in sight as the road stretches into Bunyan's Cove.

The only attraction here is the town itself where you can take the time to look over the edge of the community wharf for flounder and tom cods. No one knows why, but Newfoundlanders have been calling young codfish "tom cods" since at least the mid-17 00's. The other mystery is who this "tom" fellow was who had a fish named after him.

With the rolling green pastures of dairy farms slipping by, the road winds through Musgravetown and Bloomfield before connecting to Route 230. The hurried and indecisive will find the Bonavista Peninisula sheer torture with its many detours and side roads tugging at your sense of curiousity. It will be satisfied by the postcard perfection of the scenery from both sides of Goose Bay; Cannings Cove on the west side and Brooklyn on the eastern shor e.

Route 230 skips over the barrens but along the way Sweet Bay will tempt you off the main road where you're keeping an eye out for the sign that leads to Route 239 and into Trinity .

Here it seems the clocks have stopped sometime long ago and the town refuses to surrender its old world charms in the dying days of the 20th century. On those logy days when the grey sky weighs down the day, a walk around Trinity can lift your mood b etter than a swig from a swish barrel.

Smell the decades in the wood of the old Anglican Church where countless fingers have polished the pews that glow from the light seeping in through the windows. Down the road at Hiscock House you can see how one of Trinity's moneyed class lived or have afternoon tea in one of the restaurants in town. However, sea kayaking and whale watching tours may be what you're after.

Weekends are always busy in town especially now that Trinity is becoming a "must see" on every tourists itinerary and most times you'll find as many Newfoundlanders as mainlanders wandering in awe through the village. A lot of them are repeat visitors who are attracted to Trinity for its serenity and its theatre.

Rising Tide Theatre stages the Trinity Pageant throughout the summer. It's an open-air play but you don't have to quat down on the grass for an hour because the players and the stages are found all over town. Follow the actors to wharves and stages, community halls and churches for a romp through the town and four hundred years of its history. This show goes on no matter what the weather is like, so bring along rain gear just in case.

Rising Tide is now staging more than just the Pageant. You may take in a Shakespeare production on the wind blown shores or discover new works by Newfoundland playwrites.

In the early days of the Newfoundland fishery, Trinity was one of the centres of the emerging fishing industry. In 1700, William Tavernor's fish flakes would have been full of large valuable cod.

Back in 1770's the Lester family of Poole, England earned its fortune from the Newfoundland codfish trade. Francis Lester's brick house is nothing more than a pile of rubble today, but the Trinity Trust is raising money to restore the property to its early glory.

If the youngsters seem a bit underwhelmed by the history and the old houses, then set them loose at the amusement park just outside of town. They ride horse back through the woods or take a short ride on the last train in Newfoundland.

Back on Route 230 the next port of call is Port Union. This is more than a town, it's what is left of William Coaker's vision of the future of the Newfoundland fishery.

Coaker realized that the Newfoundland fishermen were not getting a fair deal from the merchants in St. John's, so in 1909 he started the Fishermen's Protective Union to fight for reforms in the fishery. In the end this giant in Newfoundland's fishing history is remembered with a giant tomb, capped off with a statue of th e man himself.

Neighboring Catalina is much older, with its fishing roots deeply planted in the fishery of the 18th century. Both Port Union and Catalina boast modern fish processing plants but the ban on cod fishing shut them both down, devastating the area's econ omy.

The 1992 cod moratorium threw thousands of fishermen and plant workers out of work. A first-time visitor to Newfoundland may not notice just how much the fishing ban has changed a way of life that quietly ticked along over hundreds of years. There ar en't as many boats on the water anymore and those that are cannot jig a fish, something Newfoundlanders consider a birthright.

A jigger is a heavy, unbaited hook used over the centuries to catch cod. Generations of fishermen have yanked a jigging line to entice a cod to swallow the hook. Ironically, while the jigger is outlawed, massive fishing trawlers from all over the wor ld continue to fish inside Canada's 200 mile limit.

As you walk through the old section of Bonavista you'll find the streets are barely a punt wide. It gives you some idea of what this grand old town was like when the only way out was by water and a road was where you danced around puddles.

The Mockbeggar Property used to be the home of one of Newfoundland's first members of the Canadian Senate. You'd don't have to leave Ottawa to see where a senator slept but this provincial historic site is a window back through time to the earlier da ys of Bonavista.

Take your binoculars up to the Cape Bonavista lighthouse where you'll find puffins diving off the cliffs into the churning white water.

A statue of John Cabot stands in a nearby park. Somewhere around here the explorer was supposed to have come ashore in June 1497 from his ship The Matthew to claim the land for King Henry VII of England. Not quite the land of gold and spices he was l ooking for, but Henry liked Cabot's handiwork enough to pay for another voyage to the New Founde Land the following year.

Keep a sweatshirt handy because, as Cabot must have discovered, it's a rare day on the Cape when the wind off the water doesn't have a bite to it.

South along Route 235 the waters of Blackhead Bay lap against the towns of Newman's Cove and Ki ng's Cove before ending in Keels.

Heading back towards Route 1, a detour along the shores of Smith Sound lands you in Burgoyne's Cove at the end of Route 232. Across the sound you'll see Random Island. The causeway that connects the once isolated islanders to the rest of the big rock was built in the 1960's. Before that the only way to visit towns like Hickman's Harbour and Lower Britannia was by boat.

Milton is where St. John's native William Eppes Cormack and his MicMac Indian guide Joseph Sylvester began a nine week odyssey across Newfoundland. Before there were buses, roads and Irving gas stations, the pair walked across the island in 1822. The y started hoofing in Milton, Trinity Bay and came out in St. George's Bay on the west coast. Cormack was looking for any trace of Beothuks because by this time they were a near extinct people. Six years later Cormack would open his St. John's home to friend Shanadithit, the last Beothuk.

You'll pass through the Canada Goose reserve in Shoal Harbour before winding up in Clarenville.

This is the biggest town along the Discovery Trail and while it started as a ship building centre in the late 19th century, much of Clarenville now looks like a suburb. The town was named after the Duke of Clarence and was originally called Clarencev ille. It's not hard to see why that name didn't stick for long.

On the highway near Clarenville are the 15 downhill runs of the White Hills Ski Resort. At the height of the winter ski season the slopes are a mecca for ski buffs from all over eastern Newfoundland. A day or evening on the hill ends in the lodge or some other bar or restaurant in one of the area hotels. White Hills is the centrepiece of a winter playground where there's plenty of cross country skiing, snow mobile runs and frozen ponds to spend the day ice fishing.

As the highway winds east you'll see two sideroads that run along the north and south shores of Southwest Arm. Route 205 slices through Hatchett Cove into St. Joan's Within. St. Joan's Without is now without people and what's left of the community is accessible only by boat on the shores of Trinity Bay near Deer Harbour. Route 204 slips by Little Heart's Ease and Butter Cove before reaching Gooseberry Cove.

The Boot pulls up to Route 1 at Goobies where the Trans Can ada Highway intersects with Route 210. Newfoundlanders affectionately call the Burin Peninsula "the boot" and along its 200 kilometres sideroads buckle into magnificent hideaways like Garden Cove that take your breath awa y. Out in Placentia Bay you'll see Woody Island where you can spend a weekend at an old resettled outport.

Back in the 1960's the heavy hand of premier Joey Smallwood's Liberal government swept hundreds of families out of small isolated communities. In theory it seemed simple; just move people from small villages to larger towns where there was more economic opportunities and fewer expenses for the government. Families living on some of the 365 islands in Placentia Bay were forced off the land where they had been for generations.

With houses in tow they were ordered to sail out from Merasheen and Toslo and to never settle on the land of their ancestors again. Today some of the familes return to their old abandoned communities for reunions. Swift Current is a place to come in winter for the cross country skiing and in summer for the salmon fishing at nearby Piper's Hole River. The sun-dappled water is hypnotic as you stand up to your hips casting for the mother-of-all salmon.

The road now skims south over the barrens where you'll see ponds and rivers, bogs and giant boulders dropped by glaciers as they resettled in the last ice age.

Smugglers move up this road quicker than a blue-arse fly with their loads of contraband cigarettes and booze they "imported" from the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Sometimes they make it to the underground market and sometimes you'll see them surrendering to the Mounties.

When winter blows up an angry gale the route down the boot may be blocked by towering drifts of snow. And when Sheila's Brush (or blush) sweeps through in mid-March to leave piles of late winter snow, the driving can be difficult. Newfoundland sailor s always count on a storm around St. Patrick's Day and once the brush blows through it signals that summer is just around the corner.

In late spring and early summer the Middle Ridge caribou herd wanders close to Grand La Pierre on Route 211, just up the unpaved road from English Harbour East. The paved section ends in Terrenceville.

A nudge to the south is Route 212 where you'll catch a coastal boat that will carry you over the head of Fortune Bay to Rencontre East. From there the ship sails over to Pool's Cove. You'll find another boat ride at Petite Forte that will take you o ver to South East Bight. Your time on the water is entertaining but remember for hundreds of years the people of Placentia Bay made their way around by boat even when many North Americans were riding buses to work.

More side roads take you to more tucked away corners in Rushoon and Spanish Room.

Marystown is the boot's big centre. The shipyard builds boats on a massive scale and from Marystown harbour ships have sailed out to the Grand Banks. Because Marystown is so close to the centre of the smuggling trade, the town has the only liquor sto re in Newfoundland with dusty bottles.

Route 213 heads over to Garnish where the lighthouse has kept watch over Fortune Bay for over a hundred years. The Mount Serat and Deep Water Point hiking trails will get the blood flowing through your legs and the water flowing through your shoes if you didn't come prepared. Down in Frenchman's Cove give your arms a workout with some swings around the nine holes of the Grande Meadows Golf Course.

Grand Bank takes its name from the rich fishing grounds that made Newfoundland famous and attracted people here in the first place. The language reflects just how important The Banks are to the province's history.

Bank fishermen set out on bank ships with their bank lines and bank hooks for the Grand Banks where they'd go over the side of the large ships in banking dories to catch the bank fish. Years ago when the men went to sea the women laid the cod on the beaches to be dried and salted. Unfortunately, their role in the bank fishery is not as well remembered as the men who brought the fish ashore. However, there may be a bank quiz later.

The town's history - from the early days of French settlement in the 1650's to the present day - is laid out in detail at the Southern Newfoundland Seamen's Museum. Take a walking tour of the town to see the grand old merchant houses along the narrow streets.

From Fortune catch a ferry to France's last outpost in North America. The island's of St. Pierre and Miquelon answer to Paris and cater to visitors who come across from Newfoundland to sample the french pastries, wine and hospitality.

Statistically speaking, everyone on the islands should be dead from alcoholism and lung cancer because booze and cigarette companies export enough of the stuff to St. Pierre to bury the island. But it doesn't stay long because smuggler's boats log lo aded to the gunwales with contraband from the french islands provide a constant supply to the Newfoundland black market.

St. Pierre and Miquelon is another country so remember to carry proper identification for the return trip through Customs.

Point May is the toe of the Burin Peninsula boot where you can peer across the water to St. Pierre. Route 220 swings through Lamaline and into Lawn. Around here you're deep in the heart of Newfoundland soccer country where the sport has become more of a religion. Whenever the Burin Peninsula team heads into St. John's for a championship match, the players are always followed by a caravan of the faithful.

St. Lawrence is a mining town surrounded by communities that have depended on the sea for a livelihood. And just as the sea can take its toll on the people who depend on it for a living, the fluorspar mine in St. Lawrence has left its scars. Many min ers died slowly from silicosis, a lung disease brought on by the mining conditions.

In 1942 a vicious storm blew three American warships aground at Chamber's Cove. Two of the ships sank and the crew of the Truxton and Pollux went into the water. Two hundred sailors died in the disaster. But the local people braved the gale and put t heir own lives in danger to bring 180 survivors up over the cliffs to safety.

If we're running this footwear analogy to its natural end, then Burin is the heel of the Burin Peninsula boot. Some people think Newfoundland is a bleak place, suffering the winds and waves of the open North Atlantic. But there are no monsoons, torna dos or tidal waves. Well, except for that one freak tidal wave that washed over Burin in 1929.

Other than that, the sea has been good to the people of Burin since the early 1700's.