We have a great view of the historic St. John’s Harbour from our hotel window, other than the fact that the oil industry has ruined it with their commercial concerns. The picture below shown Signal Hill to the left (much more to come there following our walk to the top yesterday) but although you get a peek at the harbor entrance, it is mostly blocked by what we have determined to be a oil platform supply ship. The Harbour is full of them as they off-load trash and tiered, well paid workers and reload supplies and fresh workers for the platforms. 42 years ago the young men hanging out at the bars were Portuguese and other fishermen with fishermen’s wages burning a hole in their pockets. Now it’s oil platform roughnecks with the same problem. The latter have more money in their pockets and the town is more prosperous as a result!
For more in the resurgence of Newfoundland oil see
http://www.albertaoilmagazine.com/2014/01/light-crude-discovery-newfoundland/
I was going to bad-mouth the oil industry even more in the sequence above but despite our initial blog-post pointing our that we are in the middle of a 7700 mile road trip, the sarcasm might have been missed!
While the St. John’s harbour is currently focused to a large degree on their oil boom, this harbour is worth a brief discussion (actually worth a long discussion but we’ll point you to the web for that). An incredible natural harbour within a mile or two of being the furtherest eastern point in North America it has been busy since John Cabot pulled through “the Narrows” in 1497. (Actually Giovanni Caboto. Janet is disgusted with her English education for failing to pointing out that he was Portuguese but hey, we was working for the Brits at the time). In the early 40’s the place was jammed with British, Canadian and American ships organizing convoys and patching up sailors and ships that survived damage on earlier convoys. And always there has been a busy fishery, opened to any and all countries despite the steady British sovereignty over the centuries.
Our hotel would be in the middle-top of the above map. Below, it is the greenish building in the center of the picture.
More history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John’s,_Newfoundland_and_Labrador