Come From Away to Come Home : Red Bay

Canada has 6 time zones. Newfoundland and Labrador are on the half hour, which was always a bit of a joke growing up and watching the CBC:

"5 o'clock Pacific time, 8 o'clock Eastern, and 9:30 in Newfoundland."

The ferry to Labrador actually arrives in Quebec, and for less than 5 minutes of driving we are an hour and a half out of whack, as the port town of Blanc Sablon does not observe Daylight Savings Times (I am with Blanc Sablon on this decision). If one didn't know this and looked at the car clock at the wrong time, one's head might explode.

Bienvenue

What time is it????

Never mind

We are only able to squeeze in two nights in Labrador, and the ferry was very late getting in this evening due to the house on boat drama (see previous post), so we chose to spend our one full day going as far as Red Bay, which is still on a paved road about 80 km away. Apparently the road on to Battle Harbour has just recently been paved, but we did not know that and did not want to take a rental car on a gravel road in Labrador while there is still snow about.

This province has more than its fair share of UNESCO sites - this is our third one in a week! - and Red Bay is one. In the mid-16th century - that is almost 500 years ago - whalers from the Basque country made this their seasonal economic hub. For about 70 years, groups of men from the region that overlaps Spain and France left home in about April, taking several weeks in their small galleons to get to Labrador, hunted and rendered whales which provided oil for lighting Europe, then left before the ice came.

It's never a good idea to look at history with a modern lens without exploring the entire story. Over seventy years, about 25,000 whales were killed for their oil, as well as for meat and baleen. This definitely took a toll on whale numbers. However, since the whaling moratorium in 1986, almost 40,000 whales have been killed, and not for lighting or necessary nourishment.

In 1565 a galleon sank in the harbour during a storm, and 400+ years later it was found still in very good condition given the cold waters. What was a real find, though, was a small boat, a chalupa that was trapped under the galleon and thus almost pristinely preserved. The galleon was raised in sections, studied fully and then resunk for future generations. The chalupa, the oldest surviving example of these small boats, was conserved over decades, and is now on display in a brand new building. Next to the boat is a whale jaw bone, just to show the scale of these little boats that held 6 or 8 whalers, who worked with hand-forged harpoons in rough waters.

There is a good interpretive museum displaying the pieces recovered from the sunk galleon, as well as models of the operations, called "trys" We were able to take a little boat across to Saddle Island, where so many of these tryworks were located, and it was easy to see the indents in the soil where they lay so many centuries ago.

boat to Saddle Island

Huge trypots over fire pits were used to render the fat, which was poured into barrels made onsite.

artist's rendering of a rendering tryworks

excavated trypot ovens

indents of try ovens grown in

One of the guides told us that, as a boy, he saw all these bits of terracotta on the beaches and assumed they were old sewage tiles. But it turns out he was playing amongst 16th century Basque roof tiles! These tiles are still lying in piles or scattered on the beach, which is amazing to me.