Wildland Tours is all about sharing with you your own unique, hands-on, life experience in Newfoundland and Labrador. As you breathe in the fresh salt air, we hope you will also breathe in our culture and traditions.
We have been told we are a hospitable, colourful, and humble people; something we describe as ‘salt of the earth’. Be prepared to hear phrases like: “Whaddya at” (What are you doing?), “How’s ye getting’ on?” (How are you today?), “Best Kind” (Just fine.) Anyone that does not live here and visits from somewhere else is fondly referred to as a “CFA” (Come From Away).
Located on the edge of the New World jutting out into the cold North Atlantic and being one of the first and oldest English colony, our cultural history runs deep. Today, Newfoundland and Labrador mixes cutting edge technology with old character nuances. We implore you to come along with Wildland Tours to discover a wild land... a diamond in the rough!
The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place
Rachel Carson
Cuisine
The traditional meals of Newfoundland and Labrador revolve around the ocean and subarctic landscapes. For 9,000 years, cod and seal were the staples for the locals. Still today, the summer and autumn’s berry crops which bloom in profusion around the province, including dewberries, bakeapples, blueberries, partridgeberries, and crowberries, add unique flavours to the seal meat, fresh or salted cod, salmon, halibut, lobster, crab, shrimp, squid, capelin, caribou, moose, bear, snowshoe hare, and more.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians maintain this interest in wild foods as we continue to probably eat more fish, game, and wild fruit than any other culture in North America. While guests are invited to eat almost whatever they wish on our holidays, we do highly recommend trying the local foods. The Wildland’s Team will do its very best to accommodate dietary preferences and restrictions. Different destinations around the province offer up different and exciting culinary experiences. You could find yourself eating with knives and spoons when on your Viking Trail Experience; the Norse did not have forks. The local, slow growing, cold-water shrimp have a remarkable flavour all their own. Fresh scallops, mussels, and cod tongues…. yes… cod tongues, that are so delicious that once you acquire a taste for them, life will never be the same! You will rave about our traditional home-made style breads, jams, jellies, desserts, and traditional meal selections that are served up in our local restaurants.
If this doesn’t catch your fancy… then fancy it is. Restaurants in and surrounding urban centres, and many speckled throughout the province, have been making headlines lately for their part in our explosion of food culture. World class chefs are creating artistic and mouth-watering creations to impress any palate. While on most of Wildland’s holidays, your breakfasts and lunches are all inclusive, leaving you to select your favourite supper meal experience. Unique restaurants in both remote locations and urban centers are becoming more popular in the province; we are happy to identify any that may be available enroute in our itinerary.
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Thank you for your great flexibility. The way you took us off the beaten path to see whales and that iceberg was fun. It was like we were on a great adventure every day.
Bob R., Guest from Montana, USA
Drink
In more recent years, Newfoundland and Labrador has become world renowned not only for its fine dining cuisine, but its organic fruit wines and spirits, and unique crafted beers as well. Distilleries and microbreweries are cropping up everywhere. Ironically, this reputation is nothing new but is steeped in history. Savour beers and spirits infused with water from 10,000 year old ice bergs!
From 1679 to 1996, St. John’s became the aging location of the delectable Newman’s Celebrated Port wines of England. A Portuguese vessel enroute to London found itself evading privateers in pursuit and severe Atlantic storms. It eventually found its way into the St. John’s port. Here, it stashed its wine safely in the Southside Hills. Following its arduous journey back to England in the Spring, the wine was determined to have taken on a unique smoothness and bouquet. St. John’s became the ‘port for Ports’! If you are visiting St. John’s anytime between mid-May and October, you may wish to take in the Newman Wine Vault Provincial Historic Site experience. While your Wildland Tour’s holiday will certainly introduce you to and integrate where possible ‘a drop of the pure’, opportunities abound in our lively local pubs, taverns, and restaurants when you are out exploring on your own.
The province boasts it’s having one of the continent’s best assortment of wines and spirits. It’s closeness to the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon for access to the best of French wines and its long-time, historical relationship of trading Jamaican rum for salt fish, that we now bottle locally and so dearly call ‘Newfoundland Screech Rum’, provides a colourful history to recount over a drink. Today, Newfoundland and Labrador is a wine sommelier’s, beer cicerone’s, and spirits connoisseur’s heaven!
Locals
The food, drink, wildlife, and rocky wonders are all unforgettable parts of your vacation with Wildland Tours. An equally impressive part of the experience is the local folks you will meet during your travel with us; creating authentic cultural adventures. This is a land of fisher persons and loggers; prospectors and treasure hunters; pirates and sailors; hunters and gatherers; master crafts persons, artists and musicians; and more recently food and drink connoisseurs. Our holiday leaders are privileged to introduce you to our many knowledgeable local hosts who are just waiting to share their native history and folklore with you. They will make sure you see the sights, taste the flavours, and smell the crisp clean sea air that has sustained folks here for almost a hundred centuries.
The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are intricately connected to the land and the sea that sustains them. This relationship has created some of the world’s best storytellers. Humour, fun, and laughter are a major part of our provincial character; you are sure to hear the latest jokes while on your trip.
Arts
The crafts, arts, and music of the Newfoundland and Labrador people are also entwined in their natural, cultural, and geological histories. Innu teadolls, a craft our native peoples adopted from visiting Moravian missionaries and now prized around the world, became an innovative receptacle. When the Innu of Labrador migrated to their summer hunting grounds, the teadolls were stuffed with tea so that even the children could help carry provisions. Handknit fair isle pattern sweaters, three fingered ‘trigger’ mitts, hand stitched quilts, hand hooked rugs, and hand-crafted rustic furniture are but a few of the incredible examples integrating vernacular art into the traditional lifestyle of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
Photo by Candace
Photo by Candace Kennedy
Some of Canada’s most evocative music and images comes from artisans who find roots in the sea and the small communities that dot the coast. The nighttime songs of millions of nocturnal seabirds and the underwater moans of whales add ghostly sounds to the warmest of nights. They also become the inspiration for vibrant ballads, melodic poetry, world class theatre, movie sets, and television shows! Traditions and ghost stories, dating back to medieval Europe, hang on in this ‘wonderful, terrible place’. Foghorns, lighthouses, and mesmerizing dramatic seascapes create inspirational and unforgettable interactions. The isolation associated with the Island of Newfoundland and the remote Labrador coast has preserved accents that are more Irish than that of Ireland and preserved Celtic musical traditions long ago lost on the British Isles. Linguists from around the world arrive here to study the purest form of Elizabethan English… “Are ye going to the dance?”
Join us to experience the world’s largest gathering of acrobatic humpback whales and a fabulous diversity of marine wildlife!
The haunting and melodic songs of the male humpback will always stay with you!
Over 20 species of whales and dolphins share the waters of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Learning Holidays
All our holidays can be considered ‘learning vacations’ since our tour leaders can spin magic with their broad general knowledge of the province and their fun and charismatic personalities. We also encourage travel with ‘outside’ organizations such as International Wildlife Adventures, Smithsonian Institute, or an Audubon Group.
Host to four UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the province holds no bounds to geological, natural, and cultural wonders. Explore some of the planet’s oldest rocks from land and sea, some of the oldest fossils of complex multi-cellular organisms, ancient volcanoes, soapstone outcrops, recent glaciers, and sites of visiting icebergs... not to mention the sites of visiting Vikings and Basque Whalers!
Newfoundland and Labrador is a treasure trove for inquisitive minds and experiential learning. Venture into hands-on archaeological dig sites and venture onto the ocean to study the world’s largest population of feeding Humpback whales plus over twenty other species of whale and dolphins!
We have much to learn by studying nature and taking time to tease out its secrets
