The night was a noisy one as our cabin was fairly near the lounge on the ship – and there were people who did not take a cabin, but chose to “party” through the night! The sailing though, was very smooth. We were up around 7:00 a.m. for the arrival into Goose Bay. The scene that was before us when we went on deck was stunning. The day was very warm, sunny, and beautiful blue skies. We sailed up Hamilton Inlet into Lake Melville. The water was still, and shining like blue ice. We landed about 8:30 a.m. and drove into town. Immediately, we sensed a change. We no longer had the relaxed atmosphere of the outports but now there was a sense of urgency. Things had to happen. People were dressed in jackets, casual pants and shirts. The randomness of the towns had disappeared and there was much more structure to the layout. There was also much more poverty apparent. Goose Bay has a population of about 7572 but an infrastructure to serve a much larger area. An analogy in size might be Stouffville, but the infrastructure is like Newmarket. A magnificent hospital, bus service, large RCMP station, etc.
Goose Bay has a huge military base – 5 Wing. It used to be a strategic air command facility with more than 16000 American service personnel and family members living on the base. This closed down in 1991. It used to have a low level flight training centre for Canadians and flyers from the Royal Air Force, the German Air Force and the Royal Netherlands Air Force. I understand that this has now closed. The airport is apparently an alternate site for the landing of the space shuttle. And, there are North Warning Systems (is it NORAD?) nearby. The community however, is suffering from the down sizing of the base. It continues to be a major distribution centre of goods for coastal Labrador and it is the location of government offices for the region.
We toured the military base and went into the Military Museum which was really interesting and quite fun. Hear a couple of spy stories, and about some tragic plane wrecks. Then we took a drive to North West River, and Sheshatshiu. North West River is quite a pretty community on the shores of Lake Melville with a white sandy beach, and small homes dispersed among lots of greenery. We visited the Interpretation Centre which had wonderful display of the various peoples that make up Labrador – the Innu, the Innuit, the Trappers (Settlers) and the Metis. We also saw an exhibition of paintings of Labrador by Arnold Zageris from Rouyn-Noranda. They are utterly spectacular and capture the stark wilderness that is the Labrador. Check out his photographs at http://www.zageris.ca/. They are so real its unbelievable. Siheshatshiu is predominantly an innu community. It started in the early 1960s with several tents and a few houses and today there are about 1000 residents. Its really important to understand the principles that the Innu live by and they include a healthy respect for the land and what it provides.
There are a couple of other museums, but we really get information overload,, so at that point we checked into the B & B and refreshed ourselves before going out to dinner. There are a number of restaurants, theatre, swimming pool, etc. to entertain people, but we resisted all of that and took a quiet evening in doors. Tomorrow, we head off to Churchill Falls.
Goose Bay has a huge military base – 5 Wing. It used to be a strategic air command facility with more than 16000 American service personnel and family members living on the base. This closed down in 1991. It used to have a low level flight training centre for Canadians and flyers from the Royal Air Force, the German Air Force and the Royal Netherlands Air Force. I understand that this has now closed. The airport is apparently an alternate site for the landing of the space shuttle. And, there are North Warning Systems (is it NORAD?) nearby. The community however, is suffering from the down sizing of the base. It continues to be a major distribution centre of goods for coastal Labrador and it is the location of government offices for the region.
We toured the military base and went into the Military Museum which was really interesting and quite fun. Hear a couple of spy stories, and about some tragic plane wrecks. Then we took a drive to North West River, and Sheshatshiu. North West River is quite a pretty community on the shores of Lake Melville with a white sandy beach, and small homes dispersed among lots of greenery. We visited the Interpretation Centre which had wonderful display of the various peoples that make up Labrador – the Innu, the Innuit, the Trappers (Settlers) and the Metis. We also saw an exhibition of paintings of Labrador by Arnold Zageris from Rouyn-Noranda. They are utterly spectacular and capture the stark wilderness that is the Labrador. Check out his photographs at http://www.zageris.ca/. They are so real its unbelievable. Siheshatshiu is predominantly an innu community. It started in the early 1960s with several tents and a few houses and today there are about 1000 residents. Its really important to understand the principles that the Innu live by and they include a healthy respect for the land and what it provides.
There are a couple of other museums, but we really get information overload,, so at that point we checked into the B & B and refreshed ourselves before going out to dinner. There are a number of restaurants, theatre, swimming pool, etc. to entertain people, but we resisted all of that and took a quiet evening in doors. Tomorrow, we head off to Churchill Falls.
No comments:
Post a Comment