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In 1840 an American clergyman named Robert Lowell described Newfoundland as "a monstrous mass of rock and gravel, almost without soil, like a strange thing from the bottom of the deep, lifted up, suddenly, into sunshine and storm", an apt evocation of this fearsome island, which is still referred to - by Newfoundlanders and mainlanders alike - as "The Rock". Its distant position between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of St Lawrence has fostered a distinctive, inward-looking culture that has been unfairly caricatured by many Canadians in the stereotype of the dim "Newfie" - a term coined by servicemen based here in World War II. This ridicule can be traced to the poverty of the islanders, the impenetrability of their dialect - an eclectic and versatile mix of Irish and English - and even to their traditional food. Fish and chips, the favourite dish, is reasonable enough in the eyes of most people, but many stomachs churn at stand-bys such as cods' tongues, fried bread dough with molasses ("toutons") and seal-flipper pie. Isolated from the rest of the country, Newfoundland is also a place of great isolation within its own boundaries. Only in recent years have many of the outports - the ancient fishing settlements that were home to the first Europeans - been linked by road to the solitary highway, the Trans-Canada, which sweeps 900km from the southwest corner of the island to the Avalon Peninsula , where St John's , the capital, sits on the northeast shore. Ferries from Nova Scotia touch the southwest and the Avalon, but most visitors fly straight to St John's, the island's only significant town and the obvious place to start a visit, for its museums, its flourishing folk music scene and its easy access to the Witless Bay sea-bird reserve. Yet there are more delightful spots than this: tiny Trinity , on the Bonavista Peninsula north of the Avalon isthmus, is easily the most beguiling of the outports; the French-owned archipelago of St-Pierre et Miquelon is noted for its restaurants; Gros Morne National Park , in the west, features wondrous mountains and glacier-gouged lakes; and at the far end of the Northern Peninsula you'll find the scant but evocative remains of an eleventh-century Norse colony at L'Anse aux Meadows , the only such site in North America. The definition and control of Labrador is the subject of a seemingly interminable dispute between Quebec and Newfoundland, a row so intense that a Newfoundland senator, Alexander Baird, was once roused to declare, "We Newfoundland-Canadians don't want to fight, but, by jingo, if we have to, then I say we have the ships, the money and the men", to which Quebecois senator Maurice Bourget added sneeringly - "and the fish". The major point of contention was the establishment of the massive Churchill Falls hydroelectric project, whose completion was a boost to the Newfoundland-Labrador economy, yet despite the last few years of industrial development and the construction of a few incongruous planned towns, Labrador remains a scarcely explored wilderness, boasting some of Canada's highest mountains, wonderful fjords, crashing rivers, a spectacular shoreline with minuscule coastal settlements and a forested hinterland teeming with wildlife. A trip to Labrador is not something to be undertaken lightly, but its intimidating landscapes are the nearest thing eastern Canada can offer to the challenge of the deep north.
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