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Eastern Canada
  • Nathaniel Stott
  • Anne Archambault
  • Nathaniel Stott
  • Anne Archambault

Eastern Canada

A cross-country van odyssey to the Easternmost point on the continent Read more
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  • Eastern Canada

    Labrador Heritage Society Museum

    August 15, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    We've seen videos online about the heritage museum in North West River and we weren't disappointed. Huge kudos to Evan who answered a bunch of questions and provided a bunch of other interesting information.

    This place had a wealth of information on life in this area and a ton of interesting artifacts. There's a great re-creation of a trapper's tilt but the real attraction are the animated models. And there are a bunch of them, all made by Elmer Lakata.

    Basically this place is a must stop if you're in the area. Entry was $3 CAD per person but I feel like that's the best money I've spent in a long time.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Labrador Military Museum

    August 15, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    No visit to Goose Bay would be complete without a visit to the Military Museum. Goose Bay has played a significant role in US and Allied forces military history since World War II.

    This location was a vital part of the aerial highway that delivered aircraft from the United States to Europe during the war. And once the cold war started, Goose Bay held incredible strategic importance to station bombers and interceptors.

    It's also been a vital hub for civilian life. With the introduction of aircraft in the area, local populations have benefited from the ability to get better access to supplies and the airport has served as a critical landing spot for aircraft low on fuel or suffering other emergencies. Goose Bay was also a critical landing spot for many aircraft during 9/11.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Labrador Landscape

    August 16, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    A stop along the road to capture the landscape here. Incredible combinations of wetlands and forest that are simply beautiful.

  • Eastern Canada

    St. Lewis

    August 16, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

    One must stop location for me was the Fox Harbor Radar Station. True or not, this place has the distinction of being the easternmost place you can drive to on the North American continent. Note that it's not the easternmost point, that's in Newfoundland. But you need to take a ferry to get to that place. Fox Harbor is still connected to the mainland.

    It was a worthwhile detour. I got to check off a point of geographical interest but more interestingly we got to see icebergs! Fittingly, this place is known as iceberg alley and in late spring and summer it's renowned for them.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Battle Harbor

    August 17, 2025 in Canada ⋅ 🌬 14 °C

    We took a day trip today to Battle Harbor. First established in the 1770's to fish the abundant cod in the area, this small settlement became the fishing capital of Labrador and Newfoundland. However, with the decline of the fisheries and after a major fire in 1930, it was permanently abandoned in the 1960's ass part of a major government resettling project.

    The site was given to the Battle Harbor Historic Trust, which now runs the island as a historic preserve. You can overnight in some of the homes here, which transport you back in time to another era. Some of the original buildings were preserved and others have been refurbished or rebuilt. There's an excellent tour by a man who was born on the island and he walks you through how the village operated during the fishing boom.

    For us, it was simply beautiful. The setting is idyllic and we had incredible, though very windy, weather to walk the 2km trail around the island. Cloudberries were abundant, there's wreckage from an aircraft crash in 1976, and we even saw an iceberg just offshore.

    I'm working on some video footage that I'll add when I'm able to download and edit it.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Red Bay

    August 17, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C

    Red Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Here, between 1530 and the early 17th century Basque fisherman would come every summer to fish and whale. This fact was lost until the 1980's, when archaeologists rediscovered the remains of dwellings, grave sites, and documents corroborating these expeditions. Incredibly, they've even discovered the remains of a Basque galleon in the small bay off Saddle Island.

    Alas, most of out time in Red Harbor was spent inside because of the weather. The wind kicked up with gusts up to 40mph and driving rain, so there are only a few pictures and sadly, we weren't able to visit Saddle Island because they shut down the boat service.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Ancient Funeral Monument

    August 19, 2025 in Canada ⋅ 🌬 12 °C

    If you didn't know what you were looking at, you'd miss it entirely. But the pile of rocks in this picture is an 8000 year old funeral mound from the Maritime Archaic people who lived in Labrador long ago.Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Point Amour Lighthouse

    August 19, 2025 in Canada ⋅ 🌬 13 °C

    Today we visited the Point Amour Lighthouse.

    This lighthouse was built in 1857, part of a series of lighthouses situated to help ships transit the dangerous waters of the Strait of Belle Isle. This route was important because it reduced the transit time between Britain and Canada by two days.

    At a hight of 109 feet, it's the tallest lighthouse in Atlantic Canada and the second tallest in all of Canada. It houses a huge second order fresnel lens visible up to 18 nautical miles away.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Middle Bay

    August 20, 2025 in Canada ⋅ 🌬 14 °C

    A quick stop at Middle Bay. Like Red Bay, Middle Bay was used as a fishing and whaling station by the Basque sailors during the 16th century.

  • Eastern Canada

    Fin Route 138

    August 20, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    The end of the road! Actually this is the road we took east from Quebec City to Baie-Comeau where we turned north to head to the Trans-Labrador Highway. But this time we were traveling West on Route 138 too where it ends at Vieux Fort.Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Red Bay - Take 2

    August 21, 2025 in Canada ⋅ 🌬 13 °C

    The weather has improved and since we had extra time before the ferry to Newfoundland we decided to head back to Red Bay to visit Saddle Island and do a couple hikes we'd wanted to do.

    Our timing was perfect, we got the last boat before they cancelled the ferry due to wind. Much of the islands is left in it's natural state, so you need to imagine how it was hundreds of years ago with improvised docks, whales along shore, coopers huts, and the ever present rendering stations for making whale oil. The photo with the number 8 shows one such rendering station with three pits for large copper pots.

    The Park service is creating a reconstruction that shows how it must have looked all those centuries ago. The wreck in the harbor, a cargo ship named the Bernier that grounded in the 1966 during a gale, helped archaeologists locate the wreck of a wooden galleon just 100 meters away.

    After touring Saddle Island, we climbed the stairs to Tracy Hill, which offers a commanding view of Red Harbor, Saddle Island, and the strait across too Newfoundland.

    Finally, we walked along the Boney Shore. This beach is named for the hundreds of whale vibes washed up here.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    A Tribute to the Labrador Flag

    August 22, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

    Labradorans love their (unofficial) flag. It's everywhere here, not just in flag form but on inukshuks, bird houses, chairs, rocks, trash cans, picnic tables. You get the point.

    The symbolism is interesting. Adopted in 1974, it was created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Newfoundland's confederation with Canada.

    From Wikipedia:

    The top white bar represents the snow which colours the culture and lifestyle of Labradorians like no other element. The bottom blue bar represents the waters of Labrador which serve as the highway and sustainer of the people of Labrador. The centre green bar represents the nurturing land. It is thinner than the other two, as the northern climes of Labrador have short summers.

    The twig is in two year-growths to represent the past and future of Labrador. The shorter growth of the inner twigs represents the hardships of the past, while the outer twigs are longer as a representation of the hope Labradorians have for the future.

    The three branches represent the three founding nations of Labrador; the Innu, the Inuit, and the European settlers. The three branches emerging from a single stalk represents the unity of the distinct peoples in the brotherhood of all mankind, thus representing people of these and all backgrounds in Labrador. Since the black spruce, a member of the pine family of trees is the official tree of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador it also serves as a reminder that Labrador is part of that larger entity.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Ferry to Newfoundland

    August 22, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    Labrador is now behind us and we're crossing the Strait of Belle Isle on the ferry. It's a beautiful day for the crossing, sunny with practically no wind.

    We were fortunate to make it aboard. There was a mix up with the timing and we almost missed the ferry. But we figured it all out and were the second to last aboard.

    During the crossing we saw some puffins flying across the water with binoculars and I just managed to catch a whale (I think it was a pilot whale based on size and color) swimming out of the way of the ferry.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Thrombolites at Flower's Cove

    August 22, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Flower's Cove has one of only two known fossilized microbial colonies known as thrombolites (the other is in Shark Bay, Western Australia). They form impressive round shaped mounds that look a bit like fossilized coral heads.

    From the sign explaining there formations:

    These are critically endangered microbial structures. Thrombolites-building micro-organisms resemble the earliest forms of life on Earth. These organisms were the only known form of life from 3.5 billion to 650 million years ago. These are some of the earth's most primitive life forms.

    Thrombolites (meaning clotted structure) are large bun shaped Cambrian mounds weathering out of flat lying dolostones. They were the growth form of millions of tiny algae and bacteria.

    These structures are not exactly fossils, but they are evidence for biological activity. These unicellular critters have left a good size trace of their existance in the fossil record. Thrombo, meaning clotted, indicates an internal structure without lamination.

    The darker colored, more rounded boulder is a glacial erratic brought here during Pleistocene glaciation. The furrows, that contain mud-cracked material and radiate from the centre and down the sides, may be drainage channels.

    These organisms are thought to have thrived in the tidal and subtidal zone of a warm, very salty sea, some being exposed at low tide, and covered at high tide, thus explaining the mud cracks.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    L'Anse aux Meadows

    August 23, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C

    L'Anse aux Meadows is a Canadian National Historic Site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site at the northern tip of Newfoundland. Nearly 1000 years ago, Norse explorers created a settlement here.

    The site is mostly outlines of eight buildings that were constructed with sod over a wooden frame. There's also a full reconstruction complete with actors in costume. Since the Norse who came here needed to be self sufficient, they brought supplies enough to weave will into cloth and even smelt iron to fix their boats.

    The reconstructed building was impressive cozy, though I suspect would have been incredibly acrid with wood burning stove and a dozen men who only bathed weekly (though they apparently did take hygiene seriously and took baths weekly, unlike other Europeans at the time).

    One fact I'd never considered was that these Norse travelers would have interacted and traded with the local indigenous people. This meeting would have completed the start of global migration for humans starting 10,000 years ago in Africa and spreading east and west across the globe. While humans crossed from Asia to the Americas on a land bridge, crossing the Atlantic required boat technology to advance enough to travel across the wide expanse of ocean.

    Archaeologists suspect that this camp was only used for a span of 20-30 years. The expense of running such a settlement was more than what was returned in resources. And so the camp was abandoned and left as a story in the sagas.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Guédille de Crevettes

    August 23, 2025 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C

    A spectacular dinner! We bought fresh frozen shrimp in Labrador and made guédille de crevettes. An incredibly tasty and ready to made dish!

  • Eastern Canada
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    Port au Choix

    August 24, 2025 in Canada ⋅ 🌬 17 °C

    Port au Choix is a National Historic Site that protects a significant set of archaeological discoveries. In this location there's evidence of three distinct indigenous cultures, the Martime Archaic, the Dorset, and more recent indigenous cultures. This site also contains European artifacts, including ovens used by French fishermen to bake bread.

    While all this is intellectually interesting, it's not easy to photograph. Fortunately, Port au Choix also has the Point Riche lighthouse and abundant wildlife. Caribou were grazing near the visitors center, there was a family of three Arctic foxes along the road, and we even saw a mink near our campsite outside town!

    The foxes were especially interesting. Sadly, it seems they've been habituated to humans and stayed by the van waiting for handouts. But they were incredibly playful and we watched them for 45 minutes.    Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Arches Provincial Park

    August 25, 2025 in Canada ⋅ 🌬 18 °C

    The rocky arch formation is the highlight of this small provincial park. It's interesting but a little underwhelming after seeing such dramatic coastal formations in the Pacific Northwest and Spain/Portugal.Read more

  • Eastern Canada

    Cow Head

    August 25, 2025 in Canada ⋅ 🌬 19 °C

    A walk out to Cow Head lighthouse and point. Cow Head was apparently named by Jacques Cartier, who saw a formation in the rock that apparently looked like a cow's head.

    The lighthouse is diminutive. It was deactivated in 1988 and feel into disrepair. But the town repaired and repainted it so it looks like it did when active, even if it's now hidden behind a wall of trees.Read more