The far east of the western
world.
Come to the place where the New World
begins. Feel the power of the Atlantic as it meets North America for the
first time. It happens right here at Cape Spear. Where Newfoundland's
oldest surviving lighthouse has stood for 16 decades. Where the wind
warms your soul and where you're closer to Ireland's Cape Clear than
Ontario's Thunder Bay.
Come to the city that started it all, the
first in the New World. Come to St. John's and take a walk on Water
Street, the oldest street in North America. Look out over a
naturally-sheltered harbour, where 40 vessels lay anchored 40 years
before the Mayflower landed. Raise a glass in a place that boasted over
80 pubs before the Americans began their battle for independence. Now
that's history.
Take a walk in our park.
Come to Gros Morne National Park.
Recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its exceptional beauty
and unique geological features. Ramble over an ancient expanse of mantle
rock. Where colossal collisions of tectonic plates created formations as
barren as the moon. Take a stroll through a jumbled mass of rust-coloured
rocks. Visit the Tablelands, a 600-metre high plateau that forms one of
the world's best examples of rock exposed from the earth's interior.
Rock usually found only deep beneath the ocean floor. This is the land
of the Titans, where human travellers are dwarfed by Precambrian cliffs
towering thousands of feet above land-locked fjords.
A serious hike takes you all the way to
the top of Gros Morne Mountain and rewards you with an unforgettable
view of Ten Mile Pond and the Long Range Mountains.
This is where giant arctic hares make
their home, and woodland caribou and moose can be found. Steep valley
slopes are alive with lichens, mosses, and tuckamore trees. Orchids
thrive, over thirty wild species in all. Berries answer to names like
bakeapple, partridge, and alpine bear. Gros Morne is like no other place
on the face of the earth. Come see our wild side. Take a walk in our
park.
Breathing room.
Come to Labrador, one of the last great
wilderness areas on earth - a colossal frontier. Over 300,000 square
kilometres of unspoiled land. Mountain ranges containing some of the
oldest exposed rock on the planet. The Torngat, the Kaumajet, and the
Kiglapait mountains feature sheer walls that soar 5,000 breathtaking
feet out of the ocean.
Wildlife roam in spectacular numbers. One
of the largest barren ground caribou herd in the world lives here, the
George River Caribou Herd, 450,000 strong. There are moose, wolves,
lynx, porcupines, and polar bears. Whales, seals, and giant arctic
hares. It's wild.
If you're a fool for fishing, you'll be
crazy about our fish. Brook Trout tipping the scales at seven and eight
pounds. Ouananiche, a landlocked salmon, the largest in the world was
caught here, a 22-pound trophy. And Atlantic salmon run upwards of
20,000 fish in some of our rivers.
Labrador
You can see forever in Labrador. And you can see where the Palaeo-Indians
lived 9,000 years ago. See the 7,500-year-old Maritime Archaic Indian
burial site which is the most ancient evidence of a funeral in North
America. And Red Bay is where the Basque whalers, in the early 1500s,
rendered whale oil for Europe, establishing the first industry in the
new world.
The people of Labrador are your hosts in
this big-hearted place. You'll notice that it's a personal thing when
you come to our home. The Innu and Inuit are Labrador's indigenous
peoples. Their history dates back many centuries, and it is they who
first learned how to live in this land. Whaling, fishing, and fur
trapping brought European settlement around 1700. You can see how it was
at Hebron, Hopedale, and Nain where original, preserved Moravian mission
sites still hold out against the elements.
Come to Labrador. A place that will
awaken your heart and soul.
