Escape Pod Rambles: Happy Vally-Goose Bay

Sept 4-5, 2024

Arrived in Happy Valley- Goose Bay after a 5 hour drive and the topography is totally different here with the sand dunes and fine white sand beaches

Stopped at the visitor centre and then went to lunch at Athmandu where I had a pad thai full of much needed veggies. Then on to the Northern Lights Building where "if we don't have it, you don't need it". Except for non freeze dried food items, that was pretty much true - complete with a head shop section, all your outdoor gear requirements, a military museum, and a sex shop section.

We settled for the night on birch Island by the Mishta-Shipu/Grand/Hamilton/Churchill River of many names.

Where they had a replicas of a trapper’s main cabin and tree storage scaffold. From October to January trappers lived along the river with a main shack like this for their storage and weekend use, and smaller “tilts” shelters that were a day’s apart along the trap line that served as a place to sleep while checking the line.

There were many trails but we chose the boardwalk trail along the river

At the end of the trail we came upon a more secluded parking area and considered parking there for the night until we saw this parked there - a baited bear trap

So we walked back along the boardwalk to our van and saw this sign along the way. Birch Island residents were resettled off the island in 1965 in an effort to centralize rural communities. Now all that are left of this community are overgrown foundations. On this site a house burned down when the community was still vibrant and two little boys died.

In the morning we drove to the Labrador Interpretation Centre in North West River which had a permanent collection of items from the prehistoric peoples and the Innu, Inuit, NunatuKavut Inuit and Settlers who populated Labrador. This is an ancient sled runner

Interesting fact - Clarence Birdseye learned how to quick freeze food from the south coast Labrador Inuit and sold the patent for $22 million in 1929.

A kayak was a man’s boat and an umiak was a woman’s or family’s boat and was capable of carrying up to twenty people

Dolls were stuffed with tea when a family traveled as a way to transport the tea without weighing down or adding to the baggage that they carried. The girls would carry and play with the dolls and as the tea was used it would be replaced with grass so it could still be played with and then would be refilled with tea once they reached a trading post.

After touring, we went to the theater room and watched a film about writers who went to the Torngat National Park camp for a week. They were taken to several sites around there, and fished and hunted for their meat. They had 24/7 bear payroll and electrified fence around the compound. Most wore bug suits, and rightly so!

After the movie, the woman working the desk told us it's about $12-15,000 to go up there. So, we won't get that sticker!

Then as we chatted further, she told us about how bad the bears have been this year, and the last few years. No one hunts or traps then any longer, so they just come along and help themselves, wearing their ear tags like a decoration, showing they had been captured previously. The hiking trail behind the museum is closed because they have placed several bear snares along it. Blueberries are ripe, and a friend of hers had to quit picking twice because of the bears showing up. So, we aren't taking that trail.

Orange painted rocks are below the Canadian, Newfoundland and Labrador flags as a symbol of the Every Child Matters movement to recognize the trauma of the residential schools on indigenous people

We left the Interpretation Centre and crossed the river into the indigenous reserve of Sheshatshui, and to the Labrador Heritage Museum

It was housed in the former Hudson Bay Company store

This was among the medical exhibit

An American engineer who was stationed in the area began making these dioramas that moved and made sound and gave them to the museum. After returning to the US he would return each year, bringing more of his creations. Now in his late 90’s he no longer can come but he sent a detailed sheet on each one so that they can be maintained and repaired as time goes on.

Until the bridge across the river was built this cable car served as the way to get across from one part of the community to the other

The Hudson Bay Company store exterior

This happened just as we stopped to get gas before getting back on the TransLabrador Highway

We stopped in Churchill Falls for the night - what a depressing place! It’s a company town with most everyone working for the hydroelectric plant that services much of Canada and the housing was mostly the same color and design. It was so cookie cutter and lifeless looking.