An Iceberg Inundation

This massive iceberg has drifted into entrance of the harbor at Griquet, NL

Mr. Taylor is a thin, spare man. He's a bit deaf. But he is Newfoundland-friendly, which is to say he made us feel welcome in his little cove at Griquet.

I met him on the stony beach and bid him good day. “And good day to you, sir,” he replied. I complimented him on the beauty of his little cove but he said it was beautiful until the storm came through last fall. “Then all the wharves were washed out... even some of the houses were moved inland by the waves,” he said.

We talked about the storm and he told me his wharf was in ruins. His boat sat high on the stones. “But a boat is no good without a wharf,” he said grimly.

Mr. Taylor told me he was a retired fisherman. “I caught the cod,” he said. And he added “When times got hard and the cod disappeared, I caught crab.”

We talked about the enormous iceberg that occupies the entrance to the cove. Jo and I had seen it on the way in with the motor home. Now we were back in the car for a photographic visit. “It's been here a week,” Mr. Taylor told us. “I think she be aground out there.”

He had seen us wandering among the rocks, looking for a good angle to shoot the massive berg and he, being nosy, I suppose, thought it worth his time to come on down to the beach and meet with the folks from away. As always, the little encounter enriched our stay.

We drove down a dirt road and came upon a young boy squatting beside a box on which were 20 pairs of mittens, knitted caps and socks. We asked him if these were his work and he told us “Nah. It's my Nannas's.” He also told us he had taken the boat out to the nearby icebergs and had bags of the pure ice in the Igloo cooler beside Nanna's socks. Quite enterprising, I thought.

The bergs are quite astonishing. We had planned to take a boat to go in search of them. But they are so numerous and so spectacular hiring a boat seemed pointless. So we just drove down the coast to St. Lunaire and then to Quirpon and photographed to our heart's content.

They are utterly spectacular great blue-white behemoths. Some are serrated on the top. Some are flat-topped like an aircraft carrier. CBC Radio alerted us a couple of days ago to a iceberg on the east coast of Labrador that is six times the size – wait for it! - of Manhattan. It broke away from the Greenland iceshelf and is slowly drifting south along the Labrador coast. This is all tied to global warming, of course. I doubt we will see this monster because they move pretty slowly. But it would be a spectacle.