Day 7: Ode to Newfoundland: “We love thee wind-swept land/ We love thee, we love thee.”

I write this from our car; we’re driving back to Windsor from the Toronto Airport. I feel like a total nerd opening up my laptop on the highway but we’ve been sitting almost stationary on the 401 for almost an hour. I fear there's a bad accident ahead and hope I am mistaken. I’ve been sitting here thinking about our trip for almost that whole hour. It already seems like a dream so I’m hoping writing this will be a way of making it all seem real. Just as last week I marveled at being one place and then another radically different place a few hours later, I’m feeling the same way right now. This trip has been dreamlike; I think both of us are wondering if we dreamed it all.

In my last entry, I mentioned that we got tickets for a chamber opera. We knew very little about it but thought it sounded interesting and we had nothing else planned. As we picked up our tickets, the volunteer asked us "who we had" in the show. She seemed surprised when we said no one. It became quickly apparent to us that we might have been the only people in the almost sold out auditorium who were not related to a chorister. I think we were both a bit nervous that we’d wandered into, well, you know the kind of events only parents and grandparents attend. We had no idea that we’d be treated to one of the most moving theatrical events we’ve ever been to. As the website describes “Ann and Seamus” is a chamber opera (music and libretto by Stephen Hatfield) based on a verse novel by Kevin Major which is based on a true story. In 1828, Ann Harvey, a 17 year old Newfoundlander, and her family rescued 168 people who had been shipwrecked. The story is compelling but the staging of this opera is even more amazing. The performance began with a panel discussion wherein participants talked about the music and staging of this event. It was performed by two casts of 55 choristers ranging in age from 7 to 17 (that’s 110 kids!); they had two complete casts who each performed two nights so that more children could be involved in this tremendous opportunity. They also talked about how the choristers would form the set, the props, the characters: there were 5 or 6 colours of simple costumes each with a small sheer cape in the same colour as their costume. As I re-read the program, I see the colours were inspired by the paintings of Christopher Pratt (remember this). These simple but malleable costumes allowed choristers to be rocks, storms, water, waves, boats or even characters seamlessly and fluidly. The music was incredible, the performers top notch and the staging evocative and original: the performance was stellar. The other moving part of this event was the impulse behind the performance. The producer and musical director, Susan Knight, talked about the need for the young people of Newfoundland and Labrador to learn about their history, learn about courage and learn about leadership through participating in this fabulous experience. The performance ended with cast and audience singing the Newfoundland anthem. It was happenstance that we ended up there but it was a moving ending to the last evening of our trip. I don’t think either of us wanted go to sleep since we didn’t want our last day in Newfoundland to end.

We’re at highway speeds again… more later (PS: Dale is, of course, driving in case you’re worried)

Later: On our final morning, we packed up our lovely room and had a hard time saying goodbye to the very kind staff at our B&B (it was recommended by Julia’s mum and I can’t recommend it highly enough either). Michelle said, “I’m going to miss you two” and the feeling was certainly mutual. I thoroughly enjoyed everyone we met there. Dale and I both felt like we were leaving friends; we’d have liked to have said goodbye to Ally too. We had a bit of time left and I had film left in my camera so we headed back to The Rooms since we both wanted to see the sound installation (or ‘sonic sculpture’ as someone called it) and I wanted to get a photo of the view of the harbour I’d described earlier. Happily, the night before, there was an opening of Christopher Pratt’s traveling exhibit that I’d read about in the Globe last year and also declined seeing when we were in the National Gallery in Ottawa this fall. I remember the review in the Globe saying that there is more to Pratt’s work than initially meets the eye and I found this to be true. I was also very happy that I saw this exhibit here, rather than in Ottawa last November. I’m not sure I would have understood or appreciated his work as much. Seeing his paintings after seeing the Newfoundland landscape filled in a lot of pieces for me and I became a huge Pratt fan after seeing this show. Having seen some of the Newfoundland landscapes made me see these paintings differently, and his works made me re-vision what I’d seen over the past week. As I looked at Pratt’s paintings, I knew we’d be heading out to the airport within the hour and so going to this exhibit was sort of a farewell to Newfoundland. Knowing this made some of his quotations resonate with me: “I have always had a sense that there is an immense presence in ordinariness, in the dignity of things that have nothing going for them beyond the fact of their existence”; and “I knew very early on that the word ‘place’ had many overtones, that there are places of the spirit, soul, imagination— of fantasy and nightmare— places of the mind.” I scribbled down these quotations from the exhibit cards—they seemed a perfect closure and sendoff for this fabulous week.

As our plane took off and I looked down at the cliffs, I felt like I was leaving home; it’s an odd sensation to feel after only being in a place for one week. We left feeling like we were not only leaving a place and a space we learned to love but were also leaving some wonderful friends. I also left feeling like you’re supposed to after a journey— utterly transformed and amazed by the experience. I’m writing this from my upstairs office at home now and on my way up, I looked at the stones I collected from St Vincents. I put them on the ledge by the stairs so each day they’ll be there as a reminder of a magical time and place.

Anyway, that’s all folks. Thanks for reading and for sending your nice comments. I’m getting my (gulp) 8 rolls of film developed tomorrow and hope to have some photos of New York and Newfoundland up on my Flickr site soon. I think all of you have passwords to my Flickr site—if not, let me know and I’ll set you up.

Also, in response to the kind visitor to Heidi’s Café who said, “and i WOULD be interested the continuing adventures of dale and heidi (esp. when you go to the drycleaners... that's great stuff)”—umm, sorry, that’s probably not going to happen. Today’s entry would have been called “Oh! So that’s what happens when you don’t put the coffee filter in the coffee machine” or “Hmm… who knew that 12 cups of grounds laden coffee silently spewing from the coffee filter-less machine could fill my entire kitchen counter unbeknownst to me as I read the paper in the next room?” Besides, gentle reader, don’t you get enough of those tales in my inter-inning (and, ok, intra-inning) chatter at the ballpark?