Burin Peninsula Road Trip with Mom & Dad B. - September 2024

After a hearty breakfast of sausages and eggs at our AirBnB in Big Salmonier, we set out at 9:18AM to start a long day of driving - basically to circumvent the “bottom of the boot” and then head for home.  The expanse of the peninsula left us agog most of the way, as did the stunning beauty.  We ducked into St. Lawrence, Lawn, Fortune, Grand Bank, Frenchman’s Cove Provincial Park and Boat Harbour for a bit of exploration, as well as another picnic lunch in Marystown. We arrived back home, at Clarke’s Beach, at 5:30PM.  The trip took exactly 32 hours, and we covered a total of 753 km.  Wonderful scenery, a real trip down memory lane for my parents, and a great time together! The driving plan for the day.  A view of St. Lawrence, where the main industry for much of the 20th century was the mining of fluorspar. The St. Lawrence Miner's Museum closed on September 1st.  So we were limited to seeing the huge miner's hard-hat on the roof, and some spruced up minin...

In June 1959, my dad was ordained by the Newfoundland Conference of the United Church of Canada, at a service held in Grand Bank, NL.  While there, he learned he was being assigned to Burin Pastoral Charge as his first post-ordination charge, with a start date of July 1st.  During the summers of his time at Pine Hill Divinity Hall in Halifax (now Atlantic School of Theology), he was sent to summer postings on the prairies.  In summer 1958, while leading a youth camp at Carlyle Lake in Saskatchewan, he chased a little Scotch Terrier down the beach to retrieve it for the woman who owned it.  In the process, he literally bumped into my mom, who was staying at the lake with her aunt.  The ensuing story is too long for a blog entry about the Burin Peninsula, but suffice it to say, the subject of marriage was quickly introduced by the 18-year old who was in a pre-med program at the university of Saskatchewan.  That wedding took place in Carnduff, Saskatchewan on ...