Yes, I’m going to be talking rubbish … "well, there’s a novelty!" – ed … in a minute.
But before I do that, let me show you my nice and comfy little spec on the harbour at Goose Bay this morning.
Last night, I finished off my notes, made a good tea and then went to bed. Thoroughly painless until the alarm went off at about 06:50. I didn’t feel a thing.
And even though the temperature had dropped to zero by the time I awoke, with ice on the puddles outside and ice even on the inside of the windscreen, that didn’t inconvenience me for a minute. It was the sleep of the dead last night.
By 07:04 I’m on the road. I need to warm up the car, defrost the ice and charge up the laptop so I’m not going to hang about until all of that has been done. I’ve fuelled up half from the fuel can too, saving half of it for later. It has to be emptied before it can go back into storage anyway and it has served its purpose, easing my mind around these enormously long stretches of fuel-less highways. For the next few sections of the highway, it’s a more-realistic 300 kilometres.
While the car is warming and the laptop is charging, I go for a drive around Happy Valley to see what there is to see.
We find a grass lawn – yes, real grass growing here. It’s not quite the High Arctic here. And we also find an old early-1950s car. However have they managed to protect this from the elements?
The queue for Tim Horton’s is enormous. The longest one yet. I upset everyone by driving in through the out door as Idon’t want the drive-in services, and the queue inside is just as long. I have a little smile thinking to myself about what might happen if I were to imitate Charles Hawtrey in Carry on Cowboy
and coffee at Tim Horton’s was first money (apart from fuel) that I have spent since Deer Lake and how many years ago was that?
But how times have changed here over the last four years.It’s like the M6 down here too this morning. There are 5 or 6 vehicles in front of meand one or two behind. And we are in the flaming sub-arctic. This place isn’t anything like what it was four years ago at all. In those days you were lucky to see one car per hour.
Now, this is how I always pictured Labrador to be. Log cabins by the side of rapids in fast-flowing rivers, and I’m glad to see that at least there is some of it left.
No dog sleds though. I’m told that the last working dog team in the region was retired in 1994. Everyone has snowmobiles these days, but where do you find fuel for them in the wilderness? And you can’t eat them if your supplies run out.
This is Gull Island, or as it is known by the local First Nation Innu community, Tshiashkueish. And I can’t even pronounce that with my own teeth in.
I’ve arrived during the Innu celebration gathering, which is taking place from 22-26 September and once more I’m disappointed by everyone arriving in 4×4 pickups rather than dogsleds. Whatever happened to native traditions? But still, it shouldn’t be overlooked that it’s these tribal gatherings are what is keeping the Nation together and I’m glad about that. These days, it seems that the emphasis is on supressing minority customs and traditions.
But I’m having a huge disappointment on this road. When I came by here in 2010 I struggled for hours and hours over some of the worst roads in the world. Not today, though. With the exception of 30 kms in the middle, the entire highway has been re-aligned and surfaced with asphalt as you can see. There’s a bit of the old road over which I desperately struggled, and you can see what it looks like today.
A length that took me five hours to drive, I’ve just done it in 50 minutes at … well, 80kph is the official speed limit here but the road is so much better than that.
Of course, I’m the first to realise that I don’t have to live here and drive it every day, so who am I to complain? But the solitude for which I’m craving has gone for ever here. Now, it’s like any black-top highway anywhere else in the world and the adventure has gone.
Anther advantage of the road is that prices have now normalised. Fuel at Goose Bay was just 140.1 per litre – only 6 or 7 cents higher than in the urbanised areas of Canada. That’s something for the locals to cheer.
This is the current ohm of some local type of sub-arctic bird. It’s done well to build its nest up there.
But it needs to be careful. It would be shocking if it were to fall out of its nest – quite revolting in fact.
And this is the only hint of wildlife that I saw. I was chatting to a couple of maintenance men here and they were telling me that the new road and all of the traffic has driven away everything that I saw when I came over here.
But this is good to see. About 70 kms from Labrador City I come across someone with a similar lifestyle to mine.
Here we have an Air 403 wind turbine going round like I wish that mine would, and solar panels. And he’s had to shin up a ladder to clear the snow away from them.
So bully to him. I’m glad to see that he’s doing it and making it work. We need more people like this.
THis is the town of Wabush in Labrador. And this could be mistaken for any suburb in any town that you might care to mention. Not a dog sled in sight
But make the most of this photo because in 5 years time it will be nothing like this. It’s a mining town and talking to the local security guards there, they tell me that the mine is exhausted and a new mining project in the vicinity has been cancelled.
People are being laid off and many have already left the community to seek work elsewhere. If nothing is done about the new mining project, then this place will be a ghost town.
And on that depressing note, I went to find somewhere to lay my weary head. I’ve driven 520 kilometres and not even broken sweat. Ohh, how times have changed.
