Featured image: Heading into the woods for forest therapy with Tara Kroes in Gros Morne National Park | Photo by Jennifer Bain

Seeing the land with fresh eyes 

by Jennifer Bain

My instructions are to text Toni Kearney when I leave my hotel two hours away and then again when I turn left onto Hwy. 434 when I am about 20 minutes from Conche so she can meet me on the outskirts of the outport community she calls home.

“Take your time driving and enjoying the views,” Kearney texts. “Looking forward to meeting you! There was a report of a moose along the way this morning. Drive carefully!”

I know better than to drive between dusk and dawn in Newfoundland and Labrador when you risk life and limb if you hit a moose, but I rarely see these bucket-list megafauna in broad daylight. Today, however, the universe delivers a mama moose and calf standing in the middle of the road just around a bend. I have enough time to safely stop before they high-tail it into the bush. That brings my moose tally on this trip to five.

My adrenaline is still pumping when I meet Kearney, slowly driving towards me in her boyfriend’s truck and waving. We stop on the highway — as you can do on empty roads in remote places — roll down our windows and chat.

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Connecting with communities on a rural road trip in Newfoundland

“Welcome,” says the founder of Moratorium Tours & Retreats, explaining how we’re going to do a whirl around the “big city” of Conche (population 150). “You’ll follow me just so I can show you the lay of the land, and then I’ll drive you back to where you’re staying. I have a little something light for breakfast — a bakeapple and apple chia pudding — and there are some nice teas there from our local little farm. From there, we’ll do our community walk.”

I am the only traveller in town — save for three RVs who’re using the Terego community to connect with local hosts and park for free — and one of just 16 guests Kearney hopes to host (and feed, since there aren’t any restaurants) this summer.

I’m here to experience the social business that Kearney launched in 2021 to revitalize Conche through responsible travel and cultural preservation. She connects visitors with her community, nature and themselves on five-day retreats that are designed for solo travellers and couples.

Now, to be honest, I’m a restless travel writer who doesn’t have five days to spare. But I’ll fill two days in Conche with hiking, learning about a historic plane crash, seeing a storytelling tapestry, trying embroidery, taking a herbal walk, and even having a rare nap.

A detour to “Iceberg Alley”

The island of Newfoundland (Labrador is attached to mainland Canada) is so much bigger than people realize. From where I land in Deer Lake, it’s nearly seven hours southeast to the capital city of St. John’s or four hours northeast to Conche. I stick to Western Newfoundland for most of my two-week solo road trip in June, with one detour to “Iceberg Alley” in the central part of the province. There’s a mega iceberg grounded in Twillingate, so it’s the perfect backdrop for a “mug up” with Crystal Anstey of Wild Island Kitchen.

A mug up is “kinda brunch or tea by the sea,” says Anstey, who also creates five-course beach “boil-ups” starring lobster and other local seafood.

“We’re in Bluff Head Cove and I’ve never cooked on this beach—first time ever,” she says as we watch a tour boat circumnavigate the iceberg while I tuck into fish cakes made with cod and served with mustard pickles, smoked arctic char, raisin bread toast and a fried egg.

“It was just using what I had,” Anstey says of creating her business in 2017. “I was a single mom, and I lived on the beach. I had pots and pans and I knew where to buy lobsters. It’s one of the skill sets that I actually had, and now I’ve created a little industry of cooking over fire.”

Over in Cormack, minutes from Deer Lake, I revisit Lauralee Ledrew’s Upper Humber Settlement. Since 2012, she and her husband Mark have been working towards self-sustainability and eco-friendly practices while creating a farmstay bed and breakfast experience at their growing farm.

I’ve visited before for permaculture farm tours, farm-to-table storytelling meals and a fire circle where Ledrew shares her personal Indigenous journey as an Acadian Mi’kmaq. But this time I get a farm and forage tour and overnight stay.

We pick edible garden weeds and forest plants for a salad. We make spruce tip salt for pan-fried cod tongues and alder pepper to take home. I get to create my own tea from jars of dried medicinal herbs, like river mint, red clover and ox-eyed daisies.

“I’m not a chef. I just cook food and serve it to people,” says Ledrew. “It’s all about the conversation, the connection of the food to the land, and the stories that go with that.”

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A stop at Gros Morne National Park

In between Cormack and Conche, I explore Gros Morne National Park. Western Newfoundland’s biggest draw is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its international geological importance and exceptional beauty.

I hike the Tablelands, where you can walk on a rare exposed section of the earth’s mantle, a layer of unearthly orange rocks normally found deep beneath the crust that helps explain how moving plates destroy oceans and build mountains and the theory of plate tectonics. And I cruise across Western Brook Pond, a landlocked freshwater fjord where Parks Canada allows just one tour company (BonTours) to operate.

But I also take time to look inward with Tara Kroes, who created Transform Gros Morne in 2022 to offer wellness retreats in the park with help from several partners. That’s how I meet yoga therapist Helena Butler for an outdoor session that draws inspiration from Gros Morne Mountain.

After yoga, Kroes leads me to hidden waterfalls to do a “nature offering” that involves picking up a stone, thinking about an emotion I’ve been feeling too strongly, tossing it into the water and imagining it being whisked away to the ocean.

We wrap up with a forest therapy walk, bathing ourselves in phytoncides (natural chemicals released by trees), connecting to our senses and seeing the black spruce forest through fresh eyes.

“People seem to want to protect what they love,” says Kroes, “so if I can get people to remember how much they love being in nature, then I feel that they will want to start to protect it more instead of looking at it as a resource.”

Keeping stories alive on a road trip through rural Newfoundland

Back in Conche, Kearney and I tackle the Glass Hole Trail hike on day two to see a cavern in the cliffs that leads down to the ocean. We hear the forceful exhale of a whale breathing through a blowhole and stop for a charcuterie picnic as we gawk at distant icebergs.

For all the joy that my time in Conche brings, there are sobering moments.

Moratorium Tours is named for that dark day in 1992 when Canada announced a moratorium on cod fishing to help depleted stocks recover from overfishing. More than 30,000 people instantly lost their jobs, and the province has never fully recovered. People like Kearney hope tourism will help revitalize rural communities.

Her uncle, Gerard Bromley, meets me at what’s left of a 1942 small plane crash. He reveals how the three people aboard survived, but how resourceful local fishermen mined the plane for wires and metal to patch their boats, not realizing the potential historical value.

Rachel Foley, a home-schooling mom, introduces me to her chickens, rabbits, goats and husband, shows off her Foley’s House garden and leads me on the test run of a herbal walk she will soon launch. Her sourdough bread anchors the lunch sandwich — made by Kearney with a heady combo of fried egg, melted brie, mayo, arugula, prosciutto and red pepper jelly — that I devour while drinking Foley’s woodland spiced tea.

Preserving culture through embroidery

But perhaps the woman I’ll remember most from Conche is Joan Simmonds, a powerhouse who took steps to keep the stories alive here as the community dwindled after the devastating moratorium.

She helped form the French Shore Historical Society and then worked with 11 other women for more than three years to bring the French Shore Tapestry to life. Inspired by the famous 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry in Normandy and designed by artist Jean-Claude Roy and his wife, Christina, the 227-foot embroidered cloth safely hangs in a windowless room in the French Shore Interpretation Centre.

The tapestry was unveiled 15 years ago and draws about 2,700 visitors a year. But when Simmonds spends an hour enthusiastically describing every panel, it’s as if she’s sharing its stories for the first time. If you have time, she leads embroidery workshops, so I spend several hours trying to stitch a simple salt cod on unbleached cotton fabric.

The image symbolizes how this treasured fish was split open, salted, dried and shipped to places like Spain, Portugal and the West Indies before the moratorium. Salt cod is still a staple in Newfoundland, and when Kearney arrives with a goodbye lunch, it’s a feed of fish cakes made with her partner’s cod, cooked by her grandmother, and served with homemade mustard pickles and pickled beets.

My embroidered salt cod isn’t quite finished, and it’s unabashedly imperfect, but it’s time to hit the road for more micro-adventures.

“If you ever want to think about Conche again, pick up your embroidery,” suggests Simmonds, “and if you never want to think about Conche again, throw it in the garbage.” She’s being cheeky. I may never finish my tiny tapestry, but I certainly will keep it to remind me of the power of community and the fact that travelling solo doesn’t mean being alone.

Planning your road trip through rural Newfoundland

How to get there

Fly to Deer Lake Regional Airport (YDF) on year-round direct Air Canada flights from Toronto and Montreal, or on seasonal direct WestJet and Porter flights. Check flight prices here. It’s essential to secure a rental car before booking flights. Book a car here.

Where to stay

In the Deer Lake area, Jennifer stayed at Upper Humber Settlement, the Deer Lake Horizon, Best Western Signature Collection and the Deer Lake Motel. In Gros Morne National Park, she stayed at the Gros Morne Inn, Neddies Harbour Inn and the Shallow Bay Motel & Cabins. She stayed at Twillingate’s Hodge Premises Inn and St. Anthony’s Grenfell Heritage Hotel & Suites. In Conche, Moratorium Tours & Retreats sets guests up in an off-grid cabin and then a seaside loft suite. Click here to find the perfect place to stay.

Disclaimer: Jennifer Bain travelled as a guest of Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, who did not review or approve this story before publication.

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