Canada Day in St. John's

Left: George Street on Canada Day (July 1 night). Mardi Gras-esque celebration in Newfoundland.


The week after I saw the Puffins, the buildup to Canada Day began. The national holiday celebrating Canada's independence from the tyrannical reign of Britain took place the extended weekend through July 2. Officially, Canada Day is July 1, but since that didn't fall on a work day, it was a national holiday officially on July 2 this year.

Unfortunately, Ryan and Keith had left earlier that week to chase other mink farmers around the province. I started going to a lot more Ultimate Frisbee practices through the quite well-organized league they had setup in the St. John's area, Mile Zero Ultimate. I met some of the warmest people in all of my life among those frisbee people. Honestly, the credo that the South has the only real hospitality in the world was just false as I learned over my time in Newfoundland. It is a close call between Cajuns and Newfies to decide who's friendlier.

Anyway, Canada Day came that weekend, which was a lot of fun. George Street, the social center of downtown, was bustling with people, music, and food. Oddly enough, the strangest sights were the many men in old-fashioned sailor uniforms (in the style you'd see them in pictures from WWII) walking around downtown. I only learned later from the Irish sailors I met at Hatcher House that these were all Irish sailors whose boat just happened to pull into St. John's for Canada Day. Nice timing.

Dakota checked out that following Monday (Canada Day, recognized) for England for a while before coming back to MUN to do Graduate work in Heritage Studies. As two Americans, we saw Live Free or Die Hard. I thought it was good, and definitely a match for the other Die Hard movies, however, I would have liked to see a bit more Bruce Willis' dialogue reminiscent of the first and third Die Hard, rather than just a lot of action in a complex plot.

Puffins!...Indeed

Left: (R-L) Ryan, Keith, and I in front of a ginormous iceberg that we saw on our cruise out to Witless Bay.
Right: Puffins! on the island of the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve (courtesy of Keith)

After our fun-filled weekend exploring the Irish Loop, we all decided to go see the Puffins at Witless Bay. Basically, the puffins (as an endangered species...i think) have one of their main rookeries on the East Coast on this island in the Witless Bay, at Bay Bulls. Due to this important fact, the whole small island is protected and almost no one (save tops 3 people at any time) are allowed on the island.

So, we all headed down in the pickup to Witless Bay. By we, I mean Keith, Ryan, me, and Maria from North Dakota, a will-be grad student at MUN in Heritage Studies (she really likes museums!). We decided to affectionately call her, "Dakota" in homage to her home state. Thank god they didn't call me Michigan or Louisiana. Anyway, we got overpriced tickets to go out on one of the sightseeing tours. Again, this was another one of the occasions where we HOPED to see whales, but in fact, I NEVER saw a whale for my entire 7 weeks in NL. Anyway, we saw a huge iceberg (see above), which I still think of as one of the more awesome things I've seen first-hand in my life (rank that up with the Rio Grande...). Then, we saw the tons and tons of puffins. Now the picture above doesn't really do justice, because these puffins are really beautiful, beautiful birds. They suck at flying and basically have to flap their wings constantly just to stay in the air, and when they walk on the rocks, they move like penguins, nudging each other out of the way. The coolest thing about them, though, is that they're AMAZING fishers. These birds apparently dive down as much as 50 meters for fish and can stay under! Another point of amazement was that their beaks, the colored things, are only colored during mating season (warmer months) and then they lose them and gain a grey beak instead.

Anyway, the whole experience out on the water was great, despite the price for the tickets, and the not seeing any whales part.

Irish Loop Camping Trip

Bottom:(L-R: Ryan, Keith, and I overlooking the Cape St. Mary rookery)

Left: Ryan and I overlooking the Bay at our day hike on Day 3

Right: Our campsite on Day 2

After having been introduced to Ryan and Keith the week before, we planned to go camping that next weekend.

After many late nights spent in the Marine Sedimentology Lab (termed the "Bentley Lab" by yours truly) in preparation of the work days I would be missing, Ryan, Keith, and I rode out in their rented pickup to travel the historic Irish Loop around the lower Avalon Peninsula on the Eastern Coast of Newfoundland. The route bears its name because of the massive numbers of predominantly Irish settlers that settled Newfoundland, while other nations predominated the rest of Eastern Canada: the Scots in Nova Scotia, the English in Ontario, and the French in Quebec (which was later stolen by Britain). Before we could properly begin the trip, Keith and Ryan had another mink farmer to visit on our way to the Irish Loop. So, while they were checking out the mink coops, I looked at some rocks and realized just how rich this island is with great, great geology! Unfortunately, that means that there's not a whole lot of regolith (topsoil) for growing a lot of crops, which is why Newfoundland has historically relied so much on fishing for its economy.

We set off first for the historic Cape St. Mary, one of the largest bird rookeries along the North American East Coast. We just beat the fog to get some great pictures and views of this awesome bird rookery (see above). After that, we had some lunch and headed down the rest of the route, passing through towns like Trepassey and Argentia. In one town, we picked up a hitch-hiker who needed a lift home from school. Later that day, we headed to Cape Race in hopes of seeing Puffins, but instead meeting a very friendly old keeper of the lighthouse at Cape Race. This lighthouse received the last communication from the Titanic before it sunk on icebergs south of Newfoundland. We saw a lot of radio equipment and the like at the radio station, not to mention a few other awesome views of the cliffs and the Atlantic.

The next day, we continued on the route past other towns and parks, finally settling on this beautiful park where we heard there were a lot of moose. After another fine camping dinner, we played Rummy 500 (a game I still struggle to play successfully). The next morning, Ryan, an early-riser, was moose-watching early and apparently saw a moose in the distance. When he tried to wake me up, I was too slow getting out of the tent to see the moose, though. The next day, we returned to civilization--er--St. John's and went down to George Street (naturally). Before we headed full throttle back, we stopped on the East Coast Trail for a pretty cool day-hike.

A fun trip all in all. Plus, I would see many moose later on our next camping trip.

Ryan and Keith left St. John's a couple weeks later to continue their tour of the province to see other mink farms, stopping in Cavendish, Gander, and ultimately Corner Brook. Wanting to explore the island badly and meet up with the two hooligans once again, I headed to Corner Brook about a month later (on a grueling 11-hr bus ride).

First week in NL

Top: Keith at Conception Bay playing with a rock that apparently looks like Jay Leno's head.
Middle: Iceberg I saw at Signal Hill on my first day.
Left: Cabot Tower of Signal Hill. This is where Marconi received the first Transatlantic wireless signal from Ireland.
Right: View of St. John's Harbor from Signal Hill at Sunset. Both were taken only a few days before I left



So, I know I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, but I've had a few things to catch up on at home (notably, a season of LOST on DVD...).

My first week in St. John's was eventful. After Sam had picked me up at the airport, we traveled back to his beautiful home on the outskirts of the city. After a short rest, I awoke bright and early (since there's an obscene amount of daylight hours in St. John's in the summer) for breakfast and packed up to go to check out the office and my residence for the next 7 weeks. First, though, Sam gave me a quick car tour of the area, stopping at the major tourist stop, Signal Hill. Signal Hill is one of the highest points on the narrows, the area that precedes the harbor. As such, it was an optimal place to set up fortifications from a naval invasion. So, the Brits set up Cabot Tower there with a battery of cannons, barracks, etc. Today, all of this has become a national historic site that provides some great hiking and views (which I didn't really take advantage of until my last few days in St. John's). What was great about the day Sam took me to the hill was that I saw my first icebergs ever! Of all the amazing flora and fauna I saw over my 7 weeks, nothing quite compares to a massive iceberg floating down the Atlantic Ocean. These icebergs that have broken off from the icesheets in Greenland are not only beautiful, but a major hazard to offshore oilrigs. For that reason, several icebergs need to be towed away with tugboats to avoid hitting these oilrigs.


After seeing Signal Hill, Sam took me to the Geology building at MUN. Sam helped me get my bearings and fill out the necessary paperwork, etc. Then I settled into my residence at Hatcher House, which was alright: I had a double to myself, although some of the facilities were still kind of crummy, although there was a communal kitchen so I could at least cook some of my own meals.

The first group of people I met were a group of recently-graduated students from Carleton University in Ottawa, not to be confused with Carleton College in Deep Haven, MN. They were a lot of fun to hang out with during my first few days in town. We all went downtown to George Street (the equivalent of Bourbon Street in St. John's) to watch the end of what would be the final game of the NHL season as the Ottawa Senators lost handily to the Anaheim Ducks. To be honest, I was a little happy to see Anaheim win, especially for their goalie, J.S. Giguere, the montreal native.

By the end of the week, I'd also met two graduate students (Ryan and Keith) from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia who I'd go on two big camping trips, not once, but twice in my time in Newfoundland. Ryan and Keith were working on their masters in the Resource and Environmental Management studying the environmental impacts of mink farming in Newfoundland for their summer work. That weekend, we all went down to Conception Bay to hang out on the pebble beach. I thought it was cool because of the awesome geology of the rocks. Soon, I'll fill you in on my camping adventures the next weekend.

Day 0 on The Rock

My dad and I left at dawn from Kalamazoo, Michigan to drive for an hour to Grand Rapids, where I departed on the first of many flights that day to my ultimate destination, St. John's, Newfoundland. After a stint in Detroit and Newark, that went more or less seamless, I arrived in St. John's on a tiny Jet. I had been forewarned by my supervisor for the summer, Dr. Sam Bentley, I should pack for some cold, as well as warm, weather. Even though it's June 3, summer anywhere in the continental U.S, St. John's was freezing. True to his word, I arrived at 1 AM into the St. John's airport, and was greeted by a 2 degree Celsius temperature.
Sam picked me up at the airport and we rode back to his house in Inner Cove, Newfoundland, just outside the city limits of St. John's. Sam’s beautiful house is about 100 meters from the vast Atlantic Ocean, which visibly crashes on the rocks near his home. After a drink to welcome me to Newfoundland, Sam told me about the project I will be working on for the duration of my time in Newfoundland. Essentially, I was expected to devise a statistical method of analyzing a set of around 100 x-radiographs of seafloor cross sections from Sam’s field work in Waitetuna Bay, New Zealand last spring. I’m looking to see how much disturbance (bioturbation) and at what depths critters are altering the otherwise ordered sedimentary stratigraphy of the seafloor by their burrowing and excavation. Ultimately, we want to quantify this relationship with a mathematical coefficient. The work has implications for sedimentology as a whole, which always has no way of accounting for the amount of bioturbation in a seabed.
Sam is quick to mention that he does not want the work to consume me, but rather wants me also to explore the culture of St. John’s and the whole province of Newfoundland. Sam’s generosity has not gone unnoticed. He allowed me to take off work for trips around the island with friends I meet here. On days where his schedule permits, Sam took me and other colleagues on cool outings to local field sites (which I’ll discuss later).
Last summer, I took an intense 3-week course in Marine Field Geology at LUMCON on the Louisiana coast taught by Sam through LSU. Sam had already accepted a position at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) in St. John’s as a Canada Research Chair, and was planning to move to St. John’s later that summer. From what I’ve gleaned, MUN prides itself on its Earth Sciences Department. As opposed to Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, which share small buildings, the Earth Sciences Department is housed in the spacious Alexander Murray Building. In addition, the department hosts the headquarters for the Geological Association of Canada, the equivalent of the USGS in Canada.
As my potential opportunities for summer internships and research positions dwindled in the U.S. this spring, I contacted Sam to see if he had any opening for me at MUN. Initially, it seemed that my American residency would be a thorny issue for working in Canada (visas, etc.). Then, I pointed out to Sam that I was a dual-citizen of Canada and the U.S. (Montreal by birth!), and could therefore legally work in Canada without any thorny paperwork and hassle. Seizing the opportunity, but a bit apprehensive about going to a new land alone, I accepted Sam’s offer and am the better for it. I feel very fortunate to have been offered this internship, which has allowed me to explore a land, and experience a culture I would never have had a chance to visit otherwise.

Introduction

Let me preface this blog with a little bit about my objective and rationale for writing this blog. I was going about my internship just fine--seeing many new things--meeting many new people. Then, I checked the Haverford website, only to find that many of my friends were blogging about their experiences abroad as well this summer in myriad internships (mostly funded by CPGC fellowships). So, I thought a great way to force me to record my experience in Newfoundland and Labrador for the summer would be to write a blog.

Although I'm publishing these posts in mid-July, I'm going to write these posts in the order that events occured during my past 7 weeks here.