Boats and lobster traps lie beached at St. George's Bay, Port au Port Peninsula, in south-western Newfoundland. Newfoundlanders are never far from the sea or from their fishing gear. Skills carefully honed by centuries of struggle and hardship remain strong and vital.

 
 
 

The rugged sea-smashed coastline is dotted with fishing villages. Isolation nurtures the telling of stories and the singing of sea-shanties. Now, people are moving towards centres like St. John's where fishing vessels have anchored for half a millennium. The colours of the frame houses seem to say that summer is short, but it is here; winter is hard, but it will end; so tell us a story, sing us a song.

 

Harp seals winter off Newfoundland, where the pups are born on the ice floes. Pure white at birth, they undergo a series of colour changes, becoming for a time a mottled dark grey. When fully adult a harp- or horseshoe-shaped band will appear on their backs. Labrador, two-thirds of the total land area of Newfoundland, is almost uninhabited -- a white paradise for Arctic wildlife. Ice floes and icebergs sometimes threaten the North Atlantic shipping lanes. Recent oil exploration off the coasts is dangerous work, made much more perilous here by these enormous and unpredictable masses of ice.
 

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