20 August
St John’s Newfoundland is the windiest, wettest, foggiest,
snowiest major Canadian city. Don’t ask
me what constitutes a “major city”, since St John’s population is 101,000
people. Regardless, after a pleasant
afternoon yesterday, a front came in last night and today was a cold (for
August) dreary day with a high of 55. We
tried to go to The Rooms, but it didn’t open until 10. So instead we decided to go up Signal Hill
where Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal in
December 1901. What was extremely
interesting to us was the fact that Marconi used a kite with 150ft of wire as
his antenna and that he was unaware of the use of the ionosphere to bounce
radio signals in the frequency that he was receiving. The use of the ionosphere was not understood
and defined scientifically until 1923.
In other words, Marconi was lucky.
Since the day was such an indoors day, we also went to the
Johnson Geo Centre. This is an
earth/space science center and considering the size of St John’s was well
done. We watched a 3D movie on the
Monarch butterfly’s migration and the historical discovery that it takes three
generations to migrate from Mexico to Canada, but only one super Monarch to
make the return trip. We had also seen a
special on National Geographic channel reporting on the same things, but the
fact that this one Canadian couple did research for 40 years (although tagging
was only over 20 years) and happened to come across a labeled butterfly that
was tagged in Toronto in Mexico made the film fascinating. The couple used supermarket price tags to tag
butterflies and citizen scientists to report to them the tag numbers and
location. Citizen scientists also wrote
to report if they found any tagged butterflies.
This started in the 1960s and I think the discovery of the Mexico site
was in the late 70s early 80s. The
Centre also has a section dedicated to the Titanic. We caught a short talk about the mistakes
made by the Titantic, including not having enough lifeboats, not having the
radio room manned 24/7, and the resulting changes implemented by the cruise
lines as a result of the accident. Each
person going through that section of the Centre received a piece of paper with
a name and history. I got Mrs Anna
Hogeboom, age 51, from NYC, who was traveling in first class and returning from
travelling in France and Italy since November 1911. She survived.
Roger got Svend Jenson, age 19, from Odense Denmark, who was traveling
in third class and going to meet family in Oregon who had already
emigrated. His family were farmers who
were going to the USA for better opportunities.
He did not survive. 60% of people
traveling in first class survived, only 25% of those traveling in third class
survived.
After we left Signal Hill we decided to go to take a ferry
to Bell Island and tour the Bell Island Mine #2. The ferry ride was rather choppy due to the
wind, but at least it wasn't dreary.
Bell Island Mine #2 was an iron
mine that operated from 1902 until the mid 60s.
Ed was our tour guide and he really enjoyed talking about the mine as
his father was a miner. The miners
worked in teams of two and had a daily shift quota of 20 carts, with each cart
holding a little less than a ton. The
miners shoveled the iron and horses brought the carts back to the mouth of the
mine. As the mine got deeper, stables
were built for the horses, who could spend up to three months underground. They would start deep and work their way back
up to the mouth. When their rotation was
up, before they left the mine they were blindfolded to protect their eyes. The horses spent a month in the pastures
before entering the mine again. A good
horse could last 20 years in the mines and then they were retired to permanent
green pasture. The men worked 10 hour
daily shifts, Monday- Saturday and started working around age 10. The job the men did depended upon their age,
skill level and time in the mine. The
mine went deep and underneath the seabed of Conception Bay. After the tour we headed back to the ferry
and landed back on Newfoundland Island.
From Portugal Cove we drove back by St Johns and headed south to Bauline
East and a campground on the Atlantic.
Tomorrow we’ll head to Argentia, which is where we’ll ride
the ferry back to Nova Scotia on Thursday evening/Friday morning (14 hours
trip.)
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