We are travelling 7,000 kilometres away from home, and yet we will remain in the same country.
Newfoundland is closer to Europe than it is to Vancouver. This enormous island saw foreign visitors before anywhere else in North or South America, and yet parts of it remain remote and unexplored. Given about global pandemics, war and geopolitics, a trip to Newfoundland and Labrador offers a safe escape from the outside world and its daily worries, if only for a few weeks.
When Jenny's great-grandmother Emma Gibbson Butler (later McCoskrie) came to BC's west coast from Topsail, Newfoundland, she and her family were emigrating to another country. That was in 1891, when Newfoundland was an individual colony of Great Britain and not part of Canada for many decades to come.
In fact, Newfoundland was Britain's very first colony, formally claimed in 1583 by Sir Henry Gilbert. A colony without colonials, it remained unsettled until 1610.
The whole Butler thing is very confusing, we know. Jenny was not born a Butler but married one. Martin is English-born, with no Newfoundland connection at all.
Jenny's Butler family (that's them in the black and white photo on the top right, probably taken in the late 1880s), has long roots in Newfoundland, and exploring just how deep those roots are will be an added part of our journey. Another excuse to delve into local museums and archives!
This year Newfoundland and Labrador's tourist authority is branding 2022 as "Come Home" year, encouraging Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to return for a holiday. Perhaps they left to find work in other provinces or countries. Perhaps they were not able to visit due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Or perhaps they never actually came from there in the first place, but rather "come from away", and feel the desire to "come home" more than a century later to celebrate generations of family that called it home for decades and centuries.
