An extraordinary journey across the magnificent, delinquent coast
of Newfoundland and Labrador.
John Gimlette's journey across this harsh and awesome landscape,
the eastern extreme of the Americas, broadly mirrors that of Dr
Eliot Curwen, his great-grandfather, who spent a summer there as a
doctor in 1893, and who was witness to some of the most beautiful
ice and cruelest poverty in the British Empire. Using Curwen's
extraordinarily frank journal, John Gimlette revisits the places
his great-grandfather encountered and along the way explores his
own links with this harsh, often brutal, land.
At the heart of the book however, are the "outporters," the
present-day inhabitants of these shores. Descended from last-hope
Irishmen, outlaws, navy deserters and fishermen from Jersey and
Dorset, these outporters are a warm, salty, witty and exuberant
breed. They often speak with the accent and idioms of the original
colonists, sometimes Shakespearean, sometimes just plain
impenetrable. Theirs is a bizarre story; of houses (or "saltboxes")
that can be dragged across land or floated over the sea; of eating
habits inherited from seventeenth-century sailors (salt beef, rum
pease-pudding and molasses; ) of Labradorians sealed in ice from
October to June; of fishing villages that produced a diva to sing
with Verdi; and of their own illicit, impromptu dramatics, the
Mummers.
This part-history-part-travelogue exploration of Newfoundland and
Labrador's coast and culture by a well-established travel writer is
a glorious read to be enjoyed by both armchair tourist, and anyone
contemplating a visit to Canada's far-eastern shores.
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