MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Spring 2019

38 ML BLUE SPRING 2019 prison for killing a man who either slept with or mistreated his wife—I couldn’t make out which. (Joe: “Ben took his gun and went in and said he couldn’t’ve taken no better shot at a caribou.”) The meagre newspaper records I later find confirm that in 1876 Benjamin Brake indeed murdered a trader from Nova Scotia named Carter. A Newfoundland Express report commented that the “French Shore”—the western coastline of the island, where France retained fishing rights until 1904—was a place where “lawlessness rules instead of British authority on this British soil.” Even with the decline of the fishery and the emptying of outports like Brake’s Cove, life today on the “French Shore” seems not only lawful but enviable in many ways. A serenity hangs over this place that I can’t quite pinpoint, but could be due to a combination of the surf surging on the beach, the luminous green of the surrounding forest, and the unaffected demeanor of cove people like Joe. Though I’m a day tripper and can’t see deeply into the life of this place, it seems to exist somehow outside the accepted and familiar boundaries of time. I’m accustomed to living in an increasingly urbanized culture where everything—buildings, lives, even landscapes—are remodelled and upgraded ceaselessly; we seem to demand constant upheaval. In Brake’s Cove, as the old cemetery slowly erodes into the sea, the upheaval has come and gone. It is a fitting goodbye to the coves as spry 78-year-old Joe Park calls me “m’son” and flies down the vertiginous stairs without even holding on. A lifetime of sea air agrees with him. adventurecanada.com newfoundlandlabrador.com GearforML’stripwasprovidedby:Arc’teryx,Garmont,Gregory,HellyHansen,Manfrotto,Salomon,andTilleyEndurables. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT The first berg, sighted not far off St. John’s;The well-sheltered southern-coast port of Francois; Painter David Marshak en plein air near Gros Morne National Park, western coast.