You can travel a long way and get the feeling you're not far away at all, as Katie Donovandiscovers when she takes part in a poetry festival in easternmost Canada
IMAGINE travelling from Dublin a considerable distance: two flights, one of them transatlantic, and a long layover in between. At the end of your journey you meet people who go online for The Irish Times, drink Guinness, play fiddles and bodhráns, sing ballads about "wetting the daddy's tea" and tell stories about an aunt who wasn't allowed marry her sweetheart because she was Protestant and he was Catholic.
You'd think you had spent a lot of time and money to end up not very far from home. Especially when these people are talking with semi-Irish accents, unable to pronounce their "th"s and saying harse instead of horse or oyce instead of ice, and using slang such as "shag it", "the missus" and "taking a gander".
In fact you have arrived in Newfoundland. Geographically, this Canadian island, at the mouth of the St Lawrence River, is the closest piece of North America to our shores, and fishermen from the southeast of Ireland, such as the Sweetmans, a family of Wexford merchants, started coming here as early as 1730, lured by the lucrative cod trade. By 1830 the Irish had put down firm roots alongside the French and English settlers.
Financial links persist: there is a memorandum of understanding between Ireland and Newfoundland that fosters trade and cultural exchange. Waterford Institute of Technology has a centre for Newfoundland and Labrador studies, headed by the poet John Ennis, who is also the institute's head of humanities. Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, in Co Dublin, where I teach, has connections with Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, in Corner Brook, on Newfoundland's west coast.
In March Newfoundland is still blanketed in snow, and it will be until the big melt at the end of April. The only tourists are those who like skiing on Marble Mountain, in the west. I am here to read my poetry at the March Hare, a week-long festival of poetry, stories and music that blends the talents of Ireland and Newfoundland.
The Hare was founded to relieve the community from its snowbound spring doldrums. Each event is a balance of visiting writers and Newfoundlanders, who seem, young and old, to ooze with literary and musical talent, busily publishing books, recording CDs and making films. Offstage they are friendly in a familiar, Irish sort of way that quickly turns into slagging - they also use the term - but is laced with kindness and a terrific, outspoken sense of humour.
Participating in the Hare is a rigorous experience. We travel from St John's, on the east coast of the island - and, with 100,000 people, its largest town - to Gander, in the centre, and thence to Corner Brook in three days, performing each night in a different location. The Irish contingent includes the poet Grace Wells, John Ennis of WIT and his assistant, arts organiser Liam Rellis. There is also Yuyutsu Sharma, a Nepalese poet, and two Canadian poets, Don McKay and Karen Solie (Newfoundlanders like to be described separately from Canadians; they voted to join Canada, as the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, as recently as 1949, in a closely fought election).
Driving conditions are hazardous, but the show must go on. Each transition - St John's to Gander, Gander to Corner Brook - takes four hours. As we are driven through sleet and snow we ogle the landscape, which is bleakly beautiful, with blasted pines, spruce trees and frozen lakes. With its fjords and partially melted larger rivers dotted with lumps of ice, the scenery reminds me of Norway. Cloudberries - locally known as bakeapples - which are common to Norway, are abundant here in the summer.
I get a small amount of "exploration time" outside of literary events. In St John's, where I spend the night at the comfortable Balmoral Inn (00-1-709- 7545721, www.balmoralhouse.com), I am transfixed by the view of the harbour, flanked by the dramatic Signal Hill, where Marconi received his first transatlantic wireless signal, in 1901.
The town, full of old-style clapboard houses in pastel shades, is laid out in a haphazard pattern of streets sloping and terracing down to the water. Shopfronts bear familiar names: Murphy, Power, Byrne.
When I reach the harbour I am dwarfed by the enormous ships docked there, some of them being cleaned by seemingly tiny men far above. Their exteriors, edged with rust, give off an air of having been well worked out in freezing waters.
Fishing is still a serious business here, in spite of the shortage in recent years of Newfoundland's staple, cod, which has been disastrous for the economy.
At the Cod Jigger giftshop (245 Duckworth Street, 00-1-709-7267422) I find rails of thick Aran sweaters, plus, for 200 Canadian dollars (€125), handmade patchwork quilts. I spot figurines of mummers; the shop assistant tells me that both mummers and wren boys are still common at Christmas.
Outside I pass the old courthouse, an impressive Victorian building made with local granite and sandstone. I learn later that the last public hanging occurred adjacent to this spot, in 1835, when John Flood (no doubt an Irishman) was hanged for holding up a stagecoach.
Gander is an aviation town, home to the North Atlantic Aviation Museum, which is closed when we visit. It began as an airport, in the 1930s, was a stopover for flights to Europe during the second World War and is now a centre for search-and-rescue services.
Our night at the Albatross Motel there is a great success: a rapt audience of 100 people stays for five hours as the leisurely programme unfolds. Baxter Wareham entertains with his accordion-playing, singing and recitations; Pat Byrne performs his rousing song Towards the Sunset with his nephews; and the lanky, red-haired Daniel Payne moves effortlessly from flute to fiddle. Anita Best, a singer, stuns us with her unaccompanied rendition of a sean-nós-style song.
Each performer credits the original composer, if known, and locates the geographical home of the piece. Place names are mentioned: Placentia Bay, St Mary's Bay (where a lot of Irish settled), Harbour Buffet, Hog's Nose.
These isolated fishing communities are hatching grounds of talent, blending traditional Irish-style music with threads of the English and French influences on the island.
Our last stop, Corner Brook, is a coastal town flanked by dramatic mountains. We stay at the Tudor-style Glynmill Inn (00-1-709-6345181, www.glyn millinn.com), where readings and music sessions continue in spite of the worsening weather. Themes vary from ice hockey to the Beothuk - the original, aboriginal inhabitants of the island, now extinct - and memories of dances at the Orange Lodge. An ambitious anthology of Canadian and Irish poetry, The Echoing Years, is launched - a fruitful co-production by John Ennis, Randall Maggs and Stephanie McKenzie.
In the meantime, us Hare performers get to feel famous as we are pursued by local newshounds with interview requests. Thanks to E Annie Proulx's prize-winning novel about Newfoundland, I imagine I see Quoyle himself emerge out of the shadows with a notebook, departing from his usual brief of recording the shipping news to get a quote from a visiting Irish poet for the Gammy Bird. But culture is long, fame brief. As the Hare winds down, the talk is all of the week-long festivities planned for St Patrick's Day.
Go there
Dublin-Newark-St John's (with Continental),
returning from Deer Lake via Montreal and Newark (Continental and
Air Canada) cost €685, but was time-consuming. Book in
advance. Another off-season route is Dublin-Heathrow-Halifax-St
John's (Air Canada, €528). In summer (May 20th-Oct 18th)
Dublin-Toronto-St John's, Air Canada, costs €773. Astraeus
Airlines, at
www.flystar.com, flies from
Gatwick to Deer Lake.
Where to start if you'd like to visit
Where to eat
The highlights at the excellent Bacalao (65
Lemarchant Road, St John's,
www.bacalaocuisine.ca)
is caribou steak in partridgeberry sauce. (Partridgeberries, known
in Norway as lingonberries, are like cranberries.) It comes with
Newfoundland savoury gnocchi and buttered vegetables for 27
Canadian dollars (€17).
In Corner Brook, try the Glynmill Inn restaurant, where scallop-and-bacon salad on baby spinach is delicious at 8.95 Canadian dollars (€5.60). Other fare includes mooseburgers, fisherman's brewis (soaked hard bread and salt cod fried in pork fat), cod tongues (actually the chin and cheeks) and toutons (slices of risen dough fried in molasses).
Where to ski
Newfoundland is an obvious destination for skiers,
from learners to risk-takers. Near St John's there is White Hills;
the most popular destination is Marble Mountain (
www.skimarble.com), eight
kilometres east of Corner Brook.
You can take a week's family ski holiday for £3,359 (€4,210), including return flights from London Gatwick to Deer Lake, chalet, four-day lift pass and car (00-44-20-86059540, www.humbervalley.com).
In Gros Morne National Park (see next entry) hiking trails are in use as ski trails in winter. Snowmobiling is also available. See www.newfoundlandlabrador.com.
The holiday season begins in mid-May and lasts until October. Camping is widely available in Newfoundland's many parks and wilderness reserves.
In eastern Newfoundland, you can canoeing and swim at Terra Nova National Park ( www.pc.gc.ca) - home to bears, otters and moose. For whale-, bird- and iceberg-watching, try Witless Bay Ecological Reserve ( www.env.gov.nl.ca/parks).
In western Newfoundland, Gros Morne National Park - a Unesco World Heritage site - has dramatic fjords, waterfalls and rock formations. Kayaking is available.
Salmon and trout fishing is plentiful on the Humber River ( www.explorenewfoundland.com). The Blomidon Mountains have caribou and great views of the Bay of Islands.
For photographers, Newfoundland Learning Vacations offers a course in digital photography in August (8th-15th), all-inclusive over six days and seven nights, for €1,850 ( www.swugc.mun.ca/learningvacations/uk).
This does not include getting you to London Gatwick, however.