Sunday 30th May in Corner Brook, we met Canadian GSE inbound team member Adam Anderson and his partner Natalie and Uncle Verbon for a mini road-trip to the “Blow Me Down National Park” (locally abbreviated to “Blomidon” in Newfoundish). There, we hiked up an ever-inclining staircase to the top of a mountain where there were spectacular 360 degree views.
There were just SO many spectacular photos (and silly photos!) taken that day, that I’m going to bore you with a whole bunch right now:
Blomidon Park had a rugged rocky beach where we stopped and sat, and enjoyed staring out to the Atlantic Ocean. For some of us, that was enjoyable enough, for others (Cate and Colin!!) a little dip in the freezing Arctic temperatures seemed necessary.
I apologise for sharing the below pictures of Colin with you, but we had to suffer it, so you should have to also!
We drove for most of the day, and on the way home we finally... SAW A MOOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!
We’ve been keeping our eyes peeled the entire time, as all the locals assured us that Moose were a daily occurrence along the highways (660 car vs moose collisions last year!), but we were starting to become sceptical. When we finally spotted one (a lonely fellow standing by the side of the road minding his own business), we nearly caused a freeway pile-up by doing a screaming U-turn across 4 lanes of traffic and hollering “MOOSE!! MOOSE!!” while hanging out of the windows with cameras!
Picture (as evidence!)
Dinner than night was at Rotarian Ron Dolomount’s cabin in the woods. We’d met Ron at the District Conference, and his Rotary club sportingly hosted us that night for a hot lobster supper!! (Mmmmmm so good!!!)
That night goes down historically as the night we became “Honorary Newfoundlanders”!
Newfoundland has a tradition for newcomers to the province, an initiation ceremony if you will, called a “Screech In” – named after their local rum – ‘Screech’ rum.
Our Screech In was presided over by Sean, the club president. It involves a 4-step process:
1. Eat a piece of boloney
2. Bite the head off a Capelin fish (and chew and swallow! Aaaaaargh!)
3. Drink a shot of super-strength Screech rum
4. Recite a traditional Newfoundland saying (bearing in mind Newfoundland is the only province which has a full sized dictionary, just to be able to understand it’s particular brand of English!” – “How’s she-goin me ole cock?”)
Then Sean knighted us with a fisherman’s oar and proclaimed us: “NEWFOUNDLANDERS”!!!!
We have photos and a certificate to prove it!
The night progressed with lots of fun! Adam Anderson played some traditional Atlantic music on his guitar and sang for us, we danced, Colin and I fought each other with a spray-can of whipped cream (that wasn’t part of the traditional night, and had nothing to do with being Newfoundlanders!). Colin decided to take another dip in the freezing ocean, much to the local’s horror and concern!
The next morning (Monday May 31st) was a vocational day.
I spent the day with Major Larry Goudie from the Salvaion Army, touring various Salvo facilities in the area of Corner Brook and Pasadena.
At lunch, Major Larry took me to a meeting of the “Social Services Community Council” where I was surprised to learn I was the key note speaker! Haha ... whoops! Lucky I am able to talk randomly on any topic, and occupied a 30 minute time-slot, even facilitating a question & answer session at the end! (Lucky I passed the impromptu speech part of the GSE selection process, eh? It turned out to be a required skill!).
Dinner that night was a combined meeting for the Rotary Club of Humber and the Rotary Club of Corner Brook. Once again, I was kindly supplied with a French Horn, where I was invited to lead the meeting in a rendition of “Oh Canada”!
And that, my friends, was our final night in Corner Brook.
Sensible team photo:
- Suz
No comments:
Post a Comment