Newfoundlanders are the Friendliest People

I hate to generalize but seem to do it more often than I care to admit. That said, I think that the people of Newfoundland are the friendliest group I've ever come across. A few years ago we went there for the first time to attend our niece's wedding. We crossed on the overnight ferry from Nova Scotia and landed on a cold, wet morning only to see nothing but a big ugly rock intersected by a highway. I remember wondering how anyone could live on such a barren island.

As we drove, the sun gradually burnt it's way through the fog as the rain passed on and I was finally able to see the beautiful landscape before me. The rugged rocks which surround you in Newfoundland really possess a beauty of their own...they stand solid and timeless, as though they've always been there and always will. Newfoundlanders build many of their homes on flat sections of the rocks, often with a wall of rock as their backyard. They also paint their homes in lovely shades of blue, or green, or red, or yellow...foregoing the drab shades of white and grey that mainlanders seem to prefer. I believe this is their way of adding color to an otherwise drab climate on the rock.

During that trip we toured the island a bit and one of my favorite memories is having lunch in a small fishing village and then wandering down to the wharf where a full crab boat had just docked. My husband asked them if we could buy some of their crab to take back to my sister-in-law's for the evening party and they were happy to oblige us. Remember I'm a born and raised Ontarian so I was expecting them to bring us processed crab...dead and packaged. They instead filled a few large bags with live crab which seemed to be intent on escaping back to the ocean. My husband and brother-in-law piled the bags into the trunk of the car and we drove home. The men cooked those little devils in a huge pot that evening and crab never tasted that good before or again.

We had planned to return to Newfoundland in the summer of 2005 and stay a whole month. We talked about renting a cottage in a fishing village and spending our days hanging out at the neighborhood pub with me writing the great Canadian novel at one of the tables. My husband would shmooze with the fishermen and we'd soak up all the local lore. Well, things don't necessarily work out the way we plan. My husband became ill the summer of 2004 and passed away within 12 months so we never were able to fulfill that little dream of living for a while on the rock. I still sometimes think about making that return trip but it wouldn't be the same now. Things change, circumstances change...but it would have been nice, wouldn't it?