Grand Bruit

Our time in Ramea was entertaining, restful, and recuperative, both for our bodies and our gear. Nick fixed his wheel, we all caught up on some laundry, and worked on correcting an issue with our camp stove. It had developed a small leak in the gas line, the most immediate consequence of which was that each time Nick retrieved something from his bag, it emerged reeking of fuel. No amount of bagging (single, double, triple...) had been able to solve this problem, so he was forced to accept it. After a while, he even embraced it. Bringing the clothes close to his face, he would sniff, and then, as if to mimick the old Downy commercials, smile nostalgically and gush over their fresh smell. We're not sure if this was an attempt to be comical, or whether the fumes where just getting to him...

The more important consequence, however, was we couldn't really turn the stove off! It sputtered and hissed and generally resisted having its flame snuffed. Fortunately, it would eventually peter out (after about 10 minutes), so we had gotten used to taking this into account, even throwing something back on the dying flames after we thought the heat source was long gone. But most of the time, it was inconvenient. Trying to pack up a still-hot stove after hot cocoa is hard enough—a still-flaming one is out of the question.

Fixing it involved a lot of glue on Nick's part (fumes galore!), some careful cleaning on Dominic's, and fixed or not, we called it good. Next thing we knew, we were back on the ferry and headed out of Ramea!

If you are wondering how taking one of the longest and most solitary roads that leads to a dead end stop in Burgeo was going to help us in our loop aspirations, you probably figured out there would be ferries involved. From Burgeo, we would head west on the ferries back to Port aux Basques, then catch the big ferry back to Nova Scotia.

Outport Communities

We went from the small town of Burgeo (pop. 2000) to the smaller town of Ramea (pop. 462) to the even smaller town of Grand Bruit (pop. 14). This is one of the many outport, roadless communities along the coast of Newfoundland that has slowly been dying out. Confederation into Canada in 1949 brought the promise from premier Joey Smallwood that the old way of life would no longer be necessary. "Burn your boats!" he told people in his effort to modernize and urbanize Newfoundland. Newfoundland is moving this direction—mainly because the government outlawed codfishing—but slowly and not without a fight.

Grand Bruit is a perfect case study of this phenomenon. It has gone through fluctuations in population over the last several decades, and the most recent sign still lists its population at somewhere around 50. But according to one of the local inhabitants who invited us in for breakfast, there are only 12-14 year round residents. The school is closed down now, and some residents are talking about resettlement.

Like we mentioned before, resettlement is a Canadian program to eliminate these small outport communities. Overt efforts to push this program have been abandoned, but some communities are still considering it on the their own. If 100% of the residents agree to relocate, they get a lump sum of money to buy themselves a new house somewhere else. Grand Bruit is one of these communities.

We arrived on the Tuesday ferry from Burgeo, planning to lay over for the night and take the ferry that goes west from there, which only runs one day a week (Wednesday morning). We were greeted with a charming little town that seems quite a bit larger than 12-14. There are 50 or so houses here, and as we should have known, the population is significantly larger during the summer. But the town is still unique. There are no cars there, and all of the "roads," which they recently got paved, are about the 4 feet wide. Big enough for a 4-wheeler, which many people have, though we never saw one in use.

We got to asking some of the locals about the resettlement controversy. It turns out that part of the movement to resettle is being pushed by erstwhile residents who, having heard they could make a buck through the resettlement program, changed their addresses back to Grand Bruit, even though they don't actually live there anymore. The property value for these houses is pretty low--nice 2 or 3 bedroom houses go for 10 or 15 K or less, and if a resettlement deal is struck, residents will be rewarded with 80 K (to buy a new house). The true full-time residents are mostly sticking to their guns, though a few favor resettlement, and most of the summer time residents aren't interested in selling either. It's a magical place, and they'd rather have it than the 80 K.

For our part, we were enchanted. Though we could see little more than 50 feet in the thick fog, we had a wonderful stroll down every last street in town. We played with a lovely black dog (one of many beautiful free roaming dogs who act as if they own the place). He was quite the fetcher, selecting the largest stick around and bringing it over to Dominic.

Then we swam in the lovely pond located just above the source of the 'grand bruit' (French for 'great sound'), the awesome waterfall which cascades through the center of town. We set up camp right down on the harbor, where they have a public bathroom and a little storage house. After a genuine pressure cooker feast we were informed by a nice local ('nice' is relatively meaningless modifier, considering all the locals here were very much so), that we could stay in the storage house if we wanted and no one would care. The thought of dry, packed tents in the morning sounded lovely since the boat would leave at 8:10 am (not at 8:45, as all the schedules claimed, including the one posted in the harbor itself).

We were still a bit apprehensive about sleeping right on the harbor, but who was there to hassle us? As we contemplated this, who should pull in but the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or "mounties," as they are called, even though they are no longer mounted on horses). It was a curious sight, to see this huge boat in such a small town, and we wondered what they were after. The locals did too; they had not seen the likes of such a thing in the previous decade. As such, their explanations bordered on extragavant, some of them involving smuggling and preparing for a raid on the high seas.

Things in Canada are much more relaxed, however, and we have found their police are too. So much so that they all jumped off the boat and left it docked right there, apparently abandoned. We stood next to the boat and observed it from the dock. It was a pretty thing and we joked about commandeering it, only to find a few minutes later that there were a few officers still aboard. Oops.

In any event, they were not after us, and we went to sleep hassle-free in the storage building on the dock of Grand Bruit. Sleep brought dreams of the morrow—an easy camp breakdown and more time on the open water.