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travel / travel magazine / summer 2007
Ecotour
Earth tones
Art, history and ecology converge on a trip through Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula
Story and photography by Nance Ackerman
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| Minzse Wu (at left) and Meghan Casper, members of the Azmari Quartet,
warm up on the shore of Rocky Harbour before performing for the tour group at a seaside church. (Photo: Nance Ackerman) |
Most of my travelling life, I have avoided tours, tourists
and anything that remotely resembles a planned or an orchestrated experience.
I have had the privilege of seeing the world with my own unguided
eyes, staying in local dives rather than resorts, visiting barrios as well as
beaches. I have been to remote Mayan villages, climbed mountains,
jumped out of airplanes and paddled wilderness rivers. So when I heard
musician and environmentalist David Maggs of Rocky Harbour, N.L., on
the radio speaking about his new Earth to Human luxury tour in
Newfoundland, I was shocked at my reaction.
I wanted to go.
This is a testament to Maggs' passion and his desire to guide tourists along
a road to "discovering their own culture," as he puts it, "within the context
of their surrounding ecosystems."
An accomplished pianist, a writer and social critic
and the artistic director of Gros Morne Summer
Music, Maggs has teamed up with the Toronto-based
travel company Horizon & Co. to launch the Earth to
Human tour, an annual week-long visit to Gros Morne
National Park and the Northern Peninsula. Enlisting
the help of classical musicians, naturalists, poets and
professors, he hopes to bring the province's remote,
stark beauty into travellers' hearts through their cultural
senses.
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Click map to enlarge
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On a sunny Sunday morning last July, I boarded
a flight from Halifax and landed at Deer Lake, N.L.,
southeast of Gros Morne. Our group bustled onto a
little coach and headed to Rocky Harbour. We dined
on surprisingly moist caribou lasagna at Java Jack's
Restaurant & Gallery where, at each table, one of the
tour's experts led us into conversations ranging from
the appropriation of native ritual to the rebirth of the
cod fishery. This was not your average group of
tourists. These were people I wanted to get to know
— people who had something to say and, more
important, people who wanted to listen.
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