Stop 29, St Anthony

 The town of St Anthony at the northern tip of the northern peninsula of the island of Newfoundland is not much to look at.  It's a winding road, full of potholes, through a small retail strip featuring the Viking mall, building supply shops, gas stations, of course a Tim Horton's, the Rebel coffee shop, Ragnarock brewery, the hospital and several nursing homes.  At the end of town is a point of land where everyone from out of town drives to to look for icebergs.  We are told that the cold and fog this year is in part due to the high number of icebergs flowing past on the Labrador current.  We wouldn't know because the fog generated by the icebergs makes them impossible to see.  I saw the base of one on our first morning here.  We saw a small one in the bay at Straitsview when we came back from L'Anse aux Meadows.

Last night at Ragnarock brewery we heard Calvin play and sing.  A retired elementary principle of a school with 40 kids in K-6, he also works construction, hunts moose, and plays music on the side.  I think this must be common here.  Very few jobs are big enough in themselves to make a go of things.  Fishing is down due to the devastation of the Cod due to years of overfishing.  However, that's not where I intended to go with this.  Last night, listening to Calvin sing about his beloved Newfoundland, I had a rare moment where art served as a medium to help me see and appreciate the world.  Art teachers and art appreciation course will always tell you that art can do this, but I have not had a lot of actual experiences where it happened so organically and dramatically as it did listening to Calvin sing about his love of the life on this island.  I was able to walk up at the end of his set and tell him so, and I feel he got the gist of my rambling attestation.  It may have helped that I sat in with him on one song, playing the ugly stick.

To top off the evening, Frances and I were "screeched in", which is a way to become an honorary Newfie.  We had to eat bologna, Capline fish, and a bit of fried dough.  We had to dress in all weather gear.  We had to practice talking like a Newfie, dance like a Newfie, and to finish it off we had to toast the crowd while downing a rum called Screech that is part of Newfoundland culture.  As told to us, fish were shipped to Jamaica in return for molasses.  The bit of molasses that clung to the barrel was think and oakey, and it was used to make a type of rum called screech.  Apparently its name came from the sound one made after tasting it for the first time.  For all of this hazing, we were awarded certificates proving that we had been "screeched in" to Newfoundland culture and were now honorary Newfies. 

I can only think of a few other cultures that I would be so thrilled to be a part of.