5th in a series about "My Newfoundland" - when a forest fire fails to dampen a dream...when a forest forest fails to dampen a dream. As sweet as it was, the old cabin had seen its best days. It was 1978 when Dad tore it down and built a post and beam modified A-frame. Three small bedrooms, open KIT/LR, and a 1st floor bathroom, but that wasn’t the only excitement that year… Having graduated college the year before, I’d been teaching music at N.D.A. in Grand Falls. In June Vin

#4 in a series of posts called "My Newfoundland". I usually visit my native province each August but this year the Canada-US border is closed. Instead of going to Newfoundland in person I'm sharing my favorite places and fondest memories. Come along! After we’d bought the little cabin, Dad towed the old Airstream over the Exploits River and a couple of hours up a dirt road. It was “up Sandy”, as they say, an area south of Grand Falls-Windsor. There’s nothing but pine forests,

Part 3 in a series about "My Newfoundland". We were happy enough camping in Catamaran Park but Dad had a vision. He was determined to find a cabin for us on one of the three inter-connected Badger Lakes. The park was situated on Joe’s Lake, or as locals refer to it, First Lake. Back then there were only a dozen cabins or so along the six miles of First Lake, and the government wasn’t making new land grants. Finding a cabin to buy was no easy feat. In the shelter of a stand o

Part 2 in a series of posts called My Newfoundland. In my first post did I mention that many of my stories are decades old? Every so often someone does something that affects generations to come. When Dad purchased an old Airstream trailer in 1969, he did such a thing. Other than an occasional fishing trip with his buddies Dad had never slept out of doors, and my mother was not the type to rough it. But that “vintage” trailer, as they’d call it today, set my family on a path

August in Newfoundland - a tradition I didn’t mean to break. In the forty-two years since I’ve lived in the U.S., Vince and I have made at least that many trips back to my native province, often with kids in tow. Come visit Grand Falls, where I grew up, nearby Badger Lake, and a few other special places along the island's craggy shores. Perhaps I’m a little like two-year-old Atlantic salmon returning from the ocean and swimming up the Exploits River to spawn where they were h