On September 15, 2017, Faye and I left Vancouver Island for a long-awaited trip to the maritime provinces of eastern Canada. We flew overnight to our farthest point, St. John’s, Newfoundland, and stayed there our first day and night with generous friends. Among other things, they took us a few miles even farther east to Cape Spear, the easternmost point of North America. On the walk back to the car we watched a whale repeatedly rolling and thrusting itself out of the Atlantic Ocean, blowing spray into the air. Was it playing, or hunting? Or both?
Exploring the Edges.
We stayed in Newfoundland for ten days, driving up peninsulas and around coastlines, venturing to smaller off-shore islands by bridge and ferry. The trek began in the small fishing towns of Trinity, Elliston, and Bonavista (Trinity, not shown, is below Elliston on the Bonavista Peninsula, on the lower right corner of the map). From there we went southwest back down the peninsula and around the deep inlet, and then up through Terra Nova National Park, made a quick pit stop in the larger community of Gander, and then motored on northward over two bridges connecting small islands to Twillingate where we spent a pleasant night and morning at the aptly-named Tranquility Hill B&B.
The next day we drove from Twillingate back over New World Island and around to Farewell, to take the half hour ferry ride to Fogo Island for two more days and nights at Tom’s Tilting Harbour B&B. After we returned to St. John’s our friends took us south down the Avalon Peninsula to the spectacular bird sanctuary at Cape St. Mary’s.
It’s tempting to launch into descriptions of the interesting places and beautiful sea- and landscapes we experienced on Newfoundland. Colourfully-painted “salt-box” style houses, infinitely-varied rugged coastlines, expanses of small, densely-packed evergreens broken by green meadows, waterways, and rock outcroppings. Seemingly constant wind and rapidly changing weather.
The people we met were as interesting and impressive as the land they inhabit. The land, the sea, the people, and their difficult and often painful history, weave a rich tapestry that defines Newfoundland as a unique place in Canada, and in North America.
A person could go on and on (and I’m sure many have). But I’m afraid this already is turning into more of a travelogue than a blog about culture, ideas, and occasionally current events.
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
But why am I, an anthropologist, even worrying about that? What else is there to see when you or I travel but culture? It’s hard to find a landscape that hasn’t been modified by humans—and even if I think I’ve found one, it’s already been labeled or categorized in some culturally-defined ways as a national park, a wilderness preserve, a bird sanctuary…. (Makes me wonder: is there such a thing as true wilderness any more?) Like travelers everywhere, we met people, shared ideas, talked about what we saw, explored perceptions. We visited museums and monuments, and came away knowing a lot more than we did about Maritime history and culture.
Maybe even more important, we also gained more subjective but still tangible impressions of life on the East Coast of Canada, which in many ways is quite different from where we live on the West Coast. For me especially, as a relative newcomer to Canada, it added depth and perspective to my appreciation for this country—which despite sharing much history and the longest international border in the world with the U.S., remains relatively unknown to too many residents south of that border.
History, Economics, Politics
One of the great things about traveling is learning about the places you visit. We didn’t study Newfoundland in depth, but did learn enough by talking with people, visiting museums, and a little reading, to get at least a rough understanding of how Newfoundland’s difficult history, both politically and economically, is important for understanding it today. Here’s a brief overview (for quick summaries in a little more depth, see here and here):
Newfoundland-Labrador has always had a natural-resource-based economy, largely based on fishing. European fishing crews—and later local fisherman of European descent—mined the rich cod fishery off the coasts of Newfoundland-Labrador and Nova Scotia for export since the early 16nth century. The coastal villages we visited still rely heavily on this resource; but much has changed.
In the beginning, fishing crews from Spain, Portugal, England and France all participated, but Spain and Portugal dropped out of the game in the late 1700s. France and England continued fishing the rich Newfoundland waters until 1904 when France pulled out, leaving the resource for the residents of the large island.
Here begins a familiar unhappy story. Unregulated industrial-scale fishing began to decimate the fishery. By the late-1960s it was in decline, and collapsed in the early 1990s from over-fishing. Only now is it recovering under tight controls. We did eat a lot of cod while there, including a local delicacy: cod tongue fried with salt pork.
It’s economic history intertwines (as is true always and everywhere) with political history. A former colony, Newfoundland participated in WWI in defense of Britain, coming out of the war heavily in debt. It’s dependence on declining fisheries and unpredictable markets for natural resource exports compounded Newfoundland’s economic problems. Out of necessity, it became a British Dominion in 1933, and later entered the Canadian Confederation as the tenth province in 1949. As a relatively poor late-comer whose remote populations seemed relatively uneducated and had their own distinctive dialect, Newfoundland sometimes found itself the butt of jokes in other parts of Canada—though I have the impression this is less so now than in the past.
Impressions of Newfoundland’s Present-Day Tourism
I was surprised (but maybe shouldn’t have been) by how important to local economies tourism has become, and by the numbers of visitors we encountered, especially this late when so many tourist facilities are shuttered for the season. Tourism, where it flourishes, clearly is important in the Maritimes.
But despite having become so central, tourism doesn’t seem to disrupt or displace people’s immediate connection to their traditional economies, way of life, and sense of identity as much as it does in some other places. The dramatic coastlines, the beauty and mystery of the sea, draw visitors to the Maritimes from elsewhere. For the resident coastal communities we saw, the sea with its many riches, and dangers, remains elemental and eternal.
What’s Different Here?
I’ve traveled some, and hit my share of tourist destinations. I’ve seen what often happens when local communities struggling on the margins of the global economy turn to selling culture as a tourism commodity. Things are different here. We felt little of the “tackiness” and over-commercialization, the “anything-for-a-buck” mindset, that often seems to be part of tourist industries elsewhere.
No one ran after us peddling local crafts or trinkets of indigenous design made in China. There were no over-priced hotels or glittery casinos. History, the natural environment, culture, were on display, to be sure. But beyond such obvious markers lay other differences that are harder to describe. Most of the local people who we met and talked with in various capacities welcomed our interest in Newfoundland graciously—more like we were first-time guests being shown around, rather than a source of revenue or parties to financial transactions.
With the exception of St. John’s, which is a modern city, the communities we visited in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are all small fishing villages hugging rugged, exposed coastlines. Their small size, remoteness, and harsh climate breeds toughness and resilience coupled sense of community—but not, it seems, in “us-against-them” or exploitive ways. At least that’s how it seemed in the few days we were there.
This was also true of the fishing villages of Nova Scotia we visited. I had to wonder whether perhaps on some level people here had made a cultural choice. Rather than responding to their difficult history and often harsh climate by turning hard, insular, or bitter, these communities instead emphasize the felt comradeship of humans against the harshness of the environment and our shared mortality.
In any event, the people we met there—many of whom worked in the tourist industry—all related to us as interested visitors, not as dumb outsiders from whom they hoped to wring a buck. They were proud of their history and culture, and welcomed the opportunity to share them with us—even the difficult parts—whether or not we bought anything. (The cynical might say that all this is just a better or more effective way to sell themselves to more discerning tourists. Perhaps so. But still, it is better. And like all such cultural things, it must be rooted in truth and makes itself true in the performance.)
Let me give you just a couple of representative examples. Twice in Nova Scotia we arrived at our destinations in the evening, tired and hungry after long days. Fall festivals, seasonal closures, and unprecedented numbers of late-season tourists unexpectedly made it hard to find places to stay. Both times local people who knew the town didn’t just give us possible names and directions, but instead volunteered, nearly insisted, on calling around for us themselves to locate lodging—as had our generous hosts in St. John’s. Similarly, the people we met in shops or in the places we stayed were unfailingly generous in sharing their lives and stories without expecting us to buy or looking for any other immediate return. Little things, perhaps, but little things that matter and show the spirit of the people.
Given the beauty of the environment, and the friendliness and integrity of the people we met, it’s hard not to let a little romanticism steal into the story. There is, of course, always another side to things—as the natural turn of the seasons might remind us. The seasons and the weather are very much part of life here, perhaps even more than in most places. We went in early autumn, a beautiful time of year, and not in the middle of winter. I’m sure a longer stay would give us a more nuanced or complicated appreciation in many ways. As it is, we did get some hints of this.
Prince Edward Island, we found, has a very different kind of beauty than Newfoundland: surprisingly milder climate, emerald green fields, carefully tended houses and gardens, famous red earth, and potatoes. It is similar, however, in having a traditional resource-based economy that has become overlain by thriving, if seasonal, tourism.
I commented to one local shopkeeper there on how many businesses already were closed for the season despite the numbers of tourists still around. He replied that in a few weeks, there would be hardly anyone there at all, except for a few local farm families. I do have to wonder about an economy (and society) that seemed so based on only two forms of monoculture: potatoes and tourists.
Someone else told us that PEI is a great place to visit, but we wouldn’t want to move there. It would take several generations before we’d be accepted, he said. Similarly, the hostess of a motel in a little larger inland town in New Brunswick confided that she often felt lonely because she and her husband hadn’t been able to make friends among the established locals. I can imagine that much the same might be true in many other Maritime communities.
The Question:
In the end, though, I’m still left with the question: Why are the places we visited different from so many other remote, relatively undeveloped tourist destination? I just finished reading an excellent book by Michael J. Sandel, an endowed professor of government at Harvard, that relates to this question. The book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (2012), is well worth reading.
Sandel’s main point is that, contrary to standard economic reasoning, markets are not morally neutral. They tend to crowd out or degrade non-market norms. In Sandel’s own words: “markets are not mere mechanisms; they embody certain values. And sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket norms worth caring about” (p. 113). You’ve probably experienced that effect yourself—it often happens, for instance, in tourism, as local culture or interesting natural features, sometimes even people, are marketed as commodities.
We live in a market society. We’re all shaped by a culture that is itself very largely shaped and defined by its market-based economy. As Sandel shows, it’s always a challenge (and one that often becomes the focus of political contests as well), to keep certain values and institutions out of the market sphere. But it is also a challenge, maybe an even more difficult one, to keep aspects of cultural life that do get drawn into the market from being defined solely in terms of market values and valuations.
For now, even as Newfoundland communities build up the tourism sector of their economy, they still largely manage to keep Newfoundland life as an experience to be lived and shared more than something to be objectified, commodified, and marketed. In this sense, if in sometimes nuanced shades of gray, they answer the stark question Sandel poses in book. “In the end,” Sandel writes in his final paragraph,
The question of markets is really a question of how we want to live together. Do we want a society where everything is up for sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?
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