Lost In The Barrens

OK, a little about my trip north. I was asked to go to with three of my co-workers from other offices to the remotest wilds of Labrador. Ever heard of Goose Bay? Labrador City? Yeah, it's...nowhere near those. Look up, look wayyy up...

The town of Schefferville is actually on the Quebec side of the border, though our work kind of skirted the two provinces. It's largely Innu and francophone, but luckily for me, most people spoke better English that I did French; one member of our group had pretty good French skills, too. There are no roads to the town, so we were brought there by a charter flight. We had so much gear, they had to take out a seat and one of us got to sit in the co-pilot chair. We all took turns--it was awesome!

We stayed in a rented house with a bunch of drillers and an intimidating French cook lady with crazy hair. We stayed up late on the night we arrived, talking and having a few beers....only to be sternly reprimanded by the cook and again by the site foreman the next day for "partying"! Yikes!! I think the cook held a grudge against us for the rest of our stay, because she seemed far less cranky toward the drillers....

So, the work part was great. We did a little bit of boating, a little bit of fishing...neat stuff. I lucked out and was working with a great bunch of guys. The rugged terrain was amazing, and there were blueberries, partridgeberries AND wild currants all in season--yummy. There was lots of great wildlife--spruce grouse, ptarmigan...we didn't see any caribou, but there were bears in the town dump, and we had an amazing look at a lone wolf.

At the insistence of our Innu guide, we made a point of going out to the Caribou Bar. We didn't take him up on all that he offered ("You like weet? Da bartender, he sell goot weet. I ulwayss buy weet from him. You should try it. Is goot weet."), although when the generous native dude was passing his around at the end of the night, well, who were we to say no? (man, I hadn't done that since university!) One painful side effect of being in such a remote area, though, is the prices are a leeetle inflated. Our first round--two double rye&gingers and a double Scotch for the lads, and a double G&T for me--came to "cinquant dollars." I was praying that my memories of high school french were wrong, and "cinquant" meant "fifteen" and not "fifty"...sadly, I was right. Ouch! We stuck with the $6 beer after that (ugh, and NO good beers. I was stuck drinking Blue.)

Anyway, that's enough chatter for now, I'll leave you with a photo of the town's most famous landmark: Iron Man. (sigh, I can only dream that RDJ is this well-hung....)