St. John's

Today started out overcast and foggy and it ended up raining most of the day. We had about a three hour drive from Port Rexton to St. John’s and arrived with rain still coming down, so we headed to the Quidi Vidi (pronounced kiddy viddy) Brewery where our beloved Iceberg beer is made. The brewery is named for the tiny village at the edge of St. John’s where it’s located with great views of some working fishing boats and the rocky terrain that surrounds the city.

St. John’s is the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador and also the largest city with about 100,000 residents. It’s also the easternmost city in North America. Still raining, so we decided to visit The Rooms which is the province’s cultural museum with art, artifacts, natural history exhibits and great views of the city below. The museum integrates natural and cultural resources into the same exhibit spaces and there was great representation of the earliest indigenous sites right up to the present. We got to see artifacts from the Beothik site we visited in Twillingate, the Port au Choix site we went to two years ago, and objects from the seventeenth century English sites we’re planning to go to later this week.

 

Whale skull carved by a contemporary Nunatsiavut artist in Labrador 

The rain stopped for a little while in the late afternoon so we walked around the downtown area. St. John’s is an active commercial fishing port (formerly cod but mostly crabbing today) and also a center for offshore gas and oil extraction and processing. The city’s history is marked by one thing: fire. Large sections of the city were destroyed by fire in 1816, 1817, 1819, 1846 and 1892. The 1892 fire is known as the Great Fire because it destroyed most of the downtown commercial center. I know from past conferences that most of the fires have been documented archaeologically and that sites identified during construction in the city can be accurately dated based on their relationship to the burn layers.

The clouds cleared up for a short time in late afternoon so we drive up to Signal Hill which sits 550 feet above the city blocking the harbor from the ocean. The views are incredible and there’s a network of hiking trails that run all around the city on the steep rocky slopes.

St. John's Harbor entrance

We’ll be in St. John’s for four more days so this is the longest stay in one place. We’re planning on day trips to different parts of Avalon peninsula each day so hopefully the weather cooperates!