Waiting for the whales
By Lynn Coady with photography by Ned Pratt
Your heart will leap with each 30-tonne splash off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, a humpback hideaway where sea mammals dance and dive before your eyes
IMAGINE A COASTLINE so pummelled by the elements that
even the trees have given up, growing low against the ground
and shaped into permanent windblown sculptures. Imagine the
kind of damp that fingers its way beneath your skin and settles
there almost smugly, defying your attempts to get warm. Now
imagine encountering these things without the appropriate
clothing. I arrive on the Newfoundland and Labrador coast at
the tail end of summer, but my suitcase does not, leaving me
with nothing with which to battle this singular rawness of land
and sea but a cashmere cardigan and ballerina flats.
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The farther Dave Snow of Wildland Tours ferries our group
along the rollicking unpaved Trans-Labrador Highway, the
more certain I become that the cardigan, which doesn't even stay
buttoned half the time, will not prove equal to the increasingly
northerly elements. Snow keeps reminding me that we are essentially winding our way toward the doorstep of Arctic
Canada. "It's the most southern part of the North," he says, seeming
to relish this geographical oxymoron. "We have polar bears
in winter and tropical sea turtles in the summer."
But it's whales we're on our way to see, and I am going to need
a coat. After pickup at the Deer Lake airport, we've taken the ferry
from Sainte Barbe, N.L., across the Strait of Belle Isle to Blanc-
Sablon, Que. From there, we head straight to the seaside village
of L'Anse-au-Clair, in Labrador (where I am assured my bag will
be waiting for me in the morning). We continue the next day
(bagless) up the Trans-Labrador toward Mary's Harbour, where
we'll take another ferry an hour across St. Lewis Sound to
finally arrive in the historic village of Battle Harbour. Meanwhile,
the farther we bounce along the rocky highway - which, with
its composition of pink granite, reminds me of an endless,
bumpy tongue - the colder the weather seems to get and the
smaller my bag becomes in my mind.
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