I walk the cobbled path along the stockade-trimmed ramparts that rim the sea. It's an uncommonly warm day for Avalon, in early autumn, although eddies of mist twist across the settlement and poke holes in the heat with chilled fingers. Despite the clink and clonk of daily routines, there is an abiding tension that seaborne trouble will visit here, yet again: the French, the Dutch are the leading aggressors. I stroll past the community herb garden where whiffs of the last vestiges of caraway, chives, columbine and catnip add a pleasant accent to the near-stagnant air. I pass the blacksmith's forge with its fire pit. Opposite, "The Pool," where fishing boats rest in the tiny, bowl-shaped harbor, seems a comforting backwater on a calm day. But the boats would be as naked as an eider among duck decoys in an attack. I pause for a moment at the corner of Lord Baltimore's mansion . . . the corner. . .

Literally. Archaeologist Jim Tuck and his crew have unearthed this intriguing piece of history and are waiting for the funding to dig it all out. The "Mansion House" was the most important dwelling in the settlement. Digging here portends some of the richest archaeology from one of the earliest European settlements in North America, where fishermen were drawn to the fledgling colony because of its proximity to the fecund waters of the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic. More than a million artifacts have been recovered already, among them utensils, jugs, bowls, and treasures such as gold rings, and a stylized cross. Artifacts from both Europe and Africa mark the site as a commercial center as well as a fishing station.

George Calvert, who was later bestowed the title Lord Baltimore, was given the Newfoundland grant in 1620 and established the colony here. However, the harsh winter climate caused him to seek a settlement further south, eventually in what was to become Maryland, but the hardy souls he left behind carried on. Today, the great challenge here, and places like it, is to keep the grant money flowing and right now there is not enough to continue the dig at the Mansion House. Given its historical significance, it is frustrating to the archaeologists, who know they are sitting atop one of the great finds on the continent.

Nonetheless visitors will find a lot to see here. You can stop in at an information center, which displays a wonderful collection of artifacts and includes a video presentation on the site. You can tour the ruins with one of the guides, then visit a gift shop where you purchase replicas of some of the pottery unearthed at the site and/or buy other crafts made in the local area.

In Newfoundland, as much as anywhere I have ever visited, a sense of place is ingrained in the region's character. It is manifest in much of the culture up here.

"Place seems to me to be one of the central concerns in just about all the writing that comes out of Newfoundland," says Michael Crummey, whose acclaimed novel, "River Thieves," is set in the earliest days of European settlement in Newfoundland. "That's partly because the physical landscape has played such a large role in the culture of the place. Until very recently, everyone in Newfoundland was directly dependant on the natural world for survival and that created a pretty elemental relationship between the people here and the sea, the woods, the weather. I've often said that the physical landscape is one of the main characters in ‘River Thieves.' At that time especially, Newfoundland was a grueling place to try to make a go of it, and I think people would have to be shaped by their experience of the physical world in some ways."

Crummey captures that physical world beautifully in his novel, which was short-listed for the prestigious Giller Prize, Canada's premier literary award for fiction. "Place, here," he continues, "is also as much about the history of the people as it is the physical landscape. And over time, those two things have become pretty intertwined. I think I've always been aware of that, growing up near Red Indian Lake, and growing up with the stories of what had happened to the Beothuk there. All over the island, I think, the landscape is like a history book for people, with the stories of communities and individuals associated with this piece of land or that group of sunkers or this lake. ‘River Thieves' was my attempt to write one chapter of that book." (For more information on "River Thieves," click: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385658176/qid=1068054597/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/102-8508113-5362544?v=glance&s=books)

The North Atlantic roils beyond the twin points at Bull Head and South Head. It is a day when a sailor yields to the persistent shouting of the sea. I recede to the safety of calmer waters just inside Bay Bulls Harbour. I am at the spot where, Captain Thomas Cleasby set afire his own ship, H.M.S. Sapphire, to keep the attacking French from capturing it and his men. It was one more of the seemingly endless battles for control of ports here, along the coast of Newfoundland, the land bases for the fisherman working the teeming waters of the fishing banks to the east.

The chill of winter hangs at the edges of an otherwise warm, humid day. Boats are being hauled to dry dock and the fishermen are hunkering down for the cold days that lie ahead. Summer is a receding memory, when this sheltered harbor was schooled with humpbacks blowing their fishy exhalations, enticed north by the thick soup of krill and small fish unlucky enough to cross their paths. The fishermen have run with the whales since the first colonies were settled, the leviathans' return from southern climes a pleasing antecedent to the onset of warmer weather and another productive season. This has been a geography shared, as well, with seabirds, millions of them, the most visible of which are the Atlantic puffins, feasting on swarms of silvery capelin, and nesting in burrows or along the rocky points of islands near here.

I am skimming across the choppy waters out of Bay Bulls with Michael, a member of the O'Brien clan that has helped reshape business in this area. It is a raw, misty morning in early October, less than two days after Hurricane Juan made first landfall in the Canadian Maritimes. As we nose out into the Atlantic, it is still rolls of unsettled swells, a mere two meters here, as high as 10 off Nova Scotia, which bore the brunt of the storm.

Michael points out crags of some of the oldest geologic formations on earth, in well-defined slabs that look like toppling dominoes. The unrelenting sea has sculpted the coastline into coves, arches and caves receding deep into rocks. Most of the millions of seabirds that nest on Gull, Green, and Great Islands, which make up Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, have gone pelagic. The whales are en route to their calving grounds, far to the south. One day in summer, Michael counted some 50 of them between the points that define the outer limits of the harbor, not far from where Captain Cleasby scuttled the Sapphire in 1696. Outfitted in a zippered-and-velcroed survival suit, I feel prepared to take on the elements and there is something unquestionably invigorating, even inspirational about cruising along the coastline here, facing up to the waves and the chilly mists.

In 1979, Loyola O'Brien started the tourist service he calls O'Brien's Spirit of Adventure, when fishing the headlands had become so bad it was not providing much of a living for all the work involved. "I didn't want to catch small fish," he says. So, encouraged by the local university, he began taking people on birdwatching tours during the warm months. "The first year we took out about 1,000," he says, "the second year, 2,000, the third 4,000."

With the birding tour traffic increasing exponentially, he was the beneficiary of a bit of unprogramed good fortune. "On one of our trips a whale surfaced and the whole boatload got excited." Then came the floating icebergs. Add in runs along the amazing coastline, a geyser or two and O'Brien's had a full spate of attractions. With the increases in business have come additions to physical plant – a full-service restaurant – and waterborne conveyances – two 95-passenger boats, 12 zodiacs, and 10 sea kayaks.

O'Brien, who likes to add he's been doing a bit of a song-and-dance act for years, says, "people are a pleasure to deal with. I love it. I don't have a job, I have a situation."

I'm sipping Irish whiskey – first Jamieson's blend, then Bushmills single malt – with soda back, trading stories with Damian, the young man tending bar. We have Dublin in common; both having visited recently. Dublin's a lot to have in common. And the accent here is thicker than in Dublin. Everyone at the pub here speaks with that lilting accent I have felt, ever since I visited Ireland for the first time, adds the music to the language. ("The only good thing the Brits ever did to us," an Irishman once told me, "was the language.") Also, there is that Irish pub friendliness.

This is O'Reilly's Pub on George Street in downtown St. John's, Tuesday night, open mic night. Damian tells me the host supplies the guitar. Things get going around 9:30. He says it generally starts slow, but by 11 everyone at the bar is getting up there. I've told him I play, write my own songs. His look says: no excuses. I order another Bushmills.

There is a guitarist doing Irish pub songs and he keeps reminding us it's open mic night. "Have yourself a few snappers, then come on up here," he intones.

The hour draws nigh. I need to maintain a buzz that keeps me right on the edge: minimizing stage fright without denigrating manual dexterity, slurring speech.

Sign up time. Big Tom Fitzgerald of K-ROC, St. John's classic rock station, takes the stage, announcing this night is part of a 10-night competition for money and prizes. Larry Foley, leader of a local band is co-hosting, and he explains you don't need to be in the competition to participate in the open mic (momentary reprieve dissipates). Erin O'Mara, another local band member, has the sign-up sheet.

"You're on sixth," she tells me after taking my name. "Where you from?"

When I tell her New York, she gets downright exuberant.

"Hold on," I counter. "That doesn't mean I'm any good."

She ignores the comment and continues taking names. I fear the bar will be raised too high.

The five guys who precede me do nothing to lower it. They're all great. While number five begins the first of a trio of ballads, I slide away from the bar and climb the stairs to the men's room. The sign over the urinal says: "Drink one more for someone who can't." My internal hygrometer says: "Enough."

On my way back downstairs, I'm stopped by a waitress who has noted the stylized Canadian First Nations hawk's head embroidered into the back of the fleece vest I am wearing. She correctly identifies it and is telling me about the history and lore of the particular Indian nation. I am not really paying attention because . . . well, I'm up next.

"Next, we have a guest from New York," Erin O'Mara announces with a level of fanfare I'd been hoping against, while Larry Foley is fitting me with a blue Takamine guitar. "What are you doing in Newfoundland?" Erin asks, for the benefit of the audience.

I check the volume level of the microphone as I stare out at an audience that has now packed the bar and overflowed onto the dance floor immediately in front of the stage. When I answer I am writing some articles about their beautiful province, the crowd erupts into cheers. O.K. Good sign.

I have had the presence of mind to note that all my predecessors have gone with Irish pub songs, American and Canadian folk tunes and/or ballads. I opt for the more rocky-rolly entrées in my repertoire. You get to play three songs. I open with "Rear-View Mirror," an up-tempo number about a guy who can't shake a persistent road-rager – although its deeper meaning deals with an inability to get free of one's past. Screw deeper meaning; the crowd loves it. They are whooping it up during the song; cheer loudly at the end. I am really energized now and the next two songs go equally as well: "Isabel's Angel," about a man who tries unsuccessfully to find a way out for a young Costa Rican prostitute; "Sci-Fi Movie Blues," wherein the protagonist sees the world of today as a Grade B Sci-Fi Movie.

As I step down and walk from the stage, to wonderful, clearly heartfelt applause, the waitress who had admired my vest says: "Your music is awesome!"

That's pretty much a sentence I've been waiting to hear all my life.

When I see her again at the upstairs bar, I tell her I have a present for her.

"I like presents," she replies.

I begin to remove the vest.

"Oh no," she counters, her hands stiff-armed before her. "I couldn't."

"Are you going to reject my present?" I ask.

She studies my eyes, reads the sincere warmth there.

I hand her the vest.

"Are you sure you've taken everything out of the pockets?" she asks. She puts it on over her hot pink O'Reilly's shirt and zippers it up.

Your music is awesome.

Next evening. Bushmills-and-soda redux. The atmosphere is far less energetic. The barmaid at O'Reilly's is recommending seafood restaurants to a couple from out of town. But she tells them she doesn't like seafood.

"If it comes from the sea, I don't eat it. Or ponds, or lakes, or rivers or streams."

"Not even shrimp?" the gentleman asks. "Surely, you like shrimp."

"Not even shrimp," she replies.

"You live here and you don't like seafood?" the woman asks.

"Well, that's more for the rest of you," the waitress replies, sliding a dark ale over to the gentleman, then placing a cocktail down before the lady.

The waitress is a lovely, fair-skinned maid with long, light-brown hair. She is carrying a bit too much weight, but all of it in the right places.

"None of my brothers or my sisters like it either," she adds, as if to hammer home the point. "Just my parents."

Ah, the generational disconnects, how they have accelerated in the techno world. I want to recommend the couple try NaGeira's, a few blocks away, where I had a killer paella a few nights before, but to participate in this mundane exchange would dilute, may even dissolve, the magic of O'Reilly's. But it's clear, anyway, by how I've already faded into the woodwork, that magic is a function of time as well as place. A friend, back on Long Island, Martha Trachtenberg, a wonderful songwriter, sings of the experience: "The morning after, the glory always fades. Now I'm just another face at the diner, and I was a star last night."

An endless fascination with the social interactions in her province has had a powerful influence on the writing of Lisa Moore, who, like Michael Crummey, has been short-listed for the Giller Prize, in her case a collection of short stories called, "Open."

"I've lived in St. John's most of my life," Moore says, "except for stints away for university or travel. I went to Holy Heart of Mary High School, a Catholic girls' school that my mother also attended before me. Everyone knows everyone in St. John's. My best friend in high school, the filmmaker, Mary Lewis, had an aunt whom my mother had been friends with throughout her childhood. My mother and Mary's aunt had apparently stolen a family car together once, rolling it out of the driveway under cloak of darkness, with the engine off – or so the myth goes."

The need to get out there, become part of the mix, was transferred to the next generation as well.

"After school, Mary and I would go downtown to shop and hang around," Moore continues. "The streets were often full of sailors from Russia or Japan or Cuba. The sailors would wander around together, sometimes under guard, unable to speak English, looking in the bargain bins at the arcade for discount bras they might bring home to their girlfriends."

Walking the streets on late October afternoons, when it got dark early and the cold weather was starting to make itself felt, Moore would stop at gathering places like the Duckworth Lunch, a café where everyone talked about the arts.

"There was also the alternative theatre called the LSPU Hall," she says. "The Hall was on Victoria Street, and had belonged to the Long Shoremen's Protective Union. Some actors had gotten together to buy the building. I got a summer job there when I was 16 and worked as a ticket seller, floor washer, set painter and actress in training. A lot of original theatre was written and performed at the LSPU Hall. The Mummers got their start at the Hall, as did Codco, two very politically informed and wickedly funny theatre troupes who became well known internationally."

As is often the case, culture at street level drove an institutionalization at the academic level.

"There was a revival of interest in Newfoundland Culture in the mid-‘70s that continued into the late '80," Moore continues. "A Folklore department had opened at Memorial University. People gathered fairy stories, and traditional dances and other bits of oral culture. The Celtic rock band Figgy Duff (named after a local dessert) had begun to collect very old folk songs, sometimes 400 years old, that had come over from England and Ireland, and had been passed down from generation to generation. There was the Newfoundland dictionary, a magnificent work of scholarship that salvaged words and phrases particular to Newfoundland that were no longer used as commonly as they once had been."

These encounters in this uncommonly inspiring city set Moore on a course that would place her work among Canada's most acclaimed.

"I met a lot of talented people at the Hall, the summer I worked there, who had decided to be artists and actors and writers. I don't know if they decided, or if they just were. After that summer at the Hall I knew I wanted to be a writer and I have been writing ever since. It had seemed a very romantic life to me then. It still does."

(For more on Moore's work, click: http://www.anansi.ca/authors.cfm?author_id=80)

The airport is the scene of hundreds milling about. A fuel stop, a way station on the Aeroflot flight from Havana to Sofia. Men, women, children, Bulgarians returning from vacation, all looking somewhat confused, but nonetheless steadfast in their determination. They are not getting back on the plane. Political refugees asking asylum in this northeastern most place, an area colonized, for centuries, by the hardiest of the hardy, now a place of resettlement for émigrés as a consequence of airline scheduling. A place where those without a place to go are welcomed. More than 2,000 Bulgarians choose not to get back on the Russian flights headed for Eastern Europe. They hole up in hotels, guest houses and wherever there is room, while they wait for official status in Canada. While many are members of the intelligentsia at home, they have to settle for menial employment in St. John's, while they integrate into the culture here. But, many are impressed with the sense of friendliness in Newfoundland. Lasting friendships begin to develop. One of the most fulfilling is between Luben Boykov and John Evans.

Trained in the classical methods of bronze sculpture, Luben (whose single moniker has the recognition of a Madonna just about anywhere you go in St. John's) needed to flex his creative muscles unimpeded, within an environment that would allow him to do so. John Evans was a successful scientist, having written more than a dozen scholarly papers on a borer clam. When he sought to impress the woman who would become his wife by spreading the clam theses before her, she answered in two words: "Who cares?" So Evans left his work with boring clams for a life of environmental activism.

"I'd realized the dire predictions I'd made about the health of the planet were coming true 20 years sooner than I'd predicted," he says. But activism has its consequences. "The grant money started drying up," he adds as he takes me on a tour of his latest project: the sculpture garden outside the structure that used to serve as his greenhouse. Used to. Now, it is an innovative foundry where Luben's bronzes are cast, along with those of students.

Evans walks me through the process. First a small wax rendering of the subject, called a macquette, then a three-dimensional scaling-up process, the creation of a rubber mold, that in turn encased in a plaster-and-sand mold, the removal of all water and the pouring of the bronze. He shows me one of Luben's most recent pieces called "The Embrace," two stylized gannets, their beaks pointing upwards, their bodies entwined. It represents the safe haven Newfoundlanders provided thousands of airline passengers stranded at Gander when their aircraft were forbidden to land in the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Outside, Evans gestures at the representations of animals and freeform sculptures in bronze or pieces of scrap metal. There is a magnificent horse's head, by Luben, but not much else by him in the garden. "I'd intended to make this a showcase for Luben's work," he says, "but he started getting too many commissions." The Embrace, a variation on the theme.

Luben's bronzes pop up on you all around St. John's: Newfoundland and Labrador retrievers by the harbor, a schoolgirl near a school opposite my B&B. But, the art scene in and around St. John's is not just Luben. A tour of a half-dozen galleries around town mitigates against chauvinism about larger cities in North America or Europe.

Emma Butler takes me on a tour of an exhibition of the works of Jean-Claude Roy at her gallery on George Street. The paintings are a dazzling array of scenes from the province, displaying influences of Cézanne, Matisse and Van Gogh.

What makes an artist stand out, I enquire of her.

"It's the guts," she replies.

I admit that Roy's work slaps you up side the head.

"Yes," she answers. "On the other hand the artist is not here from January through March, so there is no angst in his work."

Angel Antle a gifted local artist, who also hosts a culturally oriented show for CBC Radio in St. John's, says her art is "in a way an homage to the people who went before. Like most fishing families, mine had nothing to pass on to future generations. My work is a celebration of this place and a recognition of the sacrifices made by my ancestors. In Turk's Cove, Trinity Bay, where my father's people fished and lived from the 1700s, there is no cemetery. My family members were buried and their names scratched on shale, makeshift grave stones that have long since disintegrated. That's what came to mind when I thought about why I make art. It is an expression of my thoughts and dreams, but it is also a way to make a mark, something that will last and contribute to the culture that has sustained us here."

Angst during bitter cold winters, I'm sure, is unavoidable. Perhaps a good deal of idle time on one's hands goes a ways toward explaining the creative outpouring you find here, in and around the Newfoundland capital, in literature, music, painting and sculpture, even the brightly colored exteriors of the buildings they call "painted ladies."

"I'm starting to feel my age," says Lisa Moore's protagonist in her story, "If You're There." "A nostalgia for things that haven't happened yet. Or they've happened at such a velocity that I'm left behind, still waiting for them."

How appropriate an evaluation of time in her homeland, probably best described as a place where past and future conflate into an astonishing present, captured forever, for me, within the powerful grip these gifted artists.

»If You Go: Newfoundland
	St. John’s is well-served by a range of accommodations. Among them are wonderful Bed & Breakfasts. I stayed at Banberry House, where proprietor Elizabeth Sheppard has put together a cozy, beautifully refurnished town house, among the “painted ladies” that go on for rows in the capital city, not far from the harbor and the heart of downtown. Rooms are beautifully furnished with antiques and other appointments. The breakfasts Annie Riche cooks up are worth booking here. One morning, I had French toast with delectable local syrups: partridge berry and bakeapple; another I had parsley eggs on a bun with tomato; on a third day a wonderful fisherman’s brew: salt fish, crab cake, fish cake, fried bread, baked beans and bread pudding with blue berries and partridge berries. banberry.house@nf.sympatico.ca Lunch at Velma’s Place, on Water Street just up from the harbor, is a must stop. Try the cod tongues (really) cooked with scrunchies (pork fat). Then fish and chips. Another good spot for lunch or dinner is Finnigan’s Wake on Duckworth Street, part of the downtown area. Again, I’d recommend the fish and chips. For Dinner, NaGeira’s is top notch. It sits directly below Finnigan’s Wake. I had seared scallops in a bacon and Roquefort cream, garnished with an apple spring roll for an appetizer; then the paella with shellfish, chorizo sausage, chicken and red peppers in a saffron seasoned rice pilaf, which was as good as I’d had in any of the Hispanic countries I’ve visited. For the best Irish pub outside of the mother country, visit O’Reilly’s Irish Newfoundland Pub, any night of the week, but especially on Tuesday. If you have the courage and some element of musical talent, sign up and have your moment in the stage light. www.oreillyspub.com Art Galleries: Emma Butler Gallery, www.emmabutler.com; The Leyton Gallery of Fine Art, www.theleytongallery.com; Christina Parker Gallery, www.christinaparkergallery.com; Luben Boykov, sculptor, www.sculpturebyluben.com The Colony of Avalon archaeological dig: www.heritage.nf.ca/avalon. Air Canada provides the most extensive, efficient, award-winning connecting service to and from St. John’s from gateways throughout North America and the rest of the world. For more information, visit on the Web at: aircanada.com For more information, contact the Tourism Newfoundland and Labrador on the Web at: www.gov.nf.ca/tourism

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