Finding the truth

Finding the truth

There are spoilers for VIRAL in this blog.

One of the responses to VIRAL that thrilled me most was from a friend who said, “it’s obvious you’ve travelled the Trans-Labrador Highway.” I’ve never been there. For research I went to Google street view and followed the road from Baie Comeau to Labrador City. It was exciting to hear that my ideas of what the countryside looked like rang true.

I have been to Labrador City, Goose Bay, and the southern section of Labrador that lies on the strait of Belle Isle, so it didn’t take much imagination to describe those areas.

When the story moves across the strait, the village of Cook’s Harbour and the town of Saint Anthony feature prominently. Although I’ve lived on the island of Newfoundland for over forty years, I’ve never seen either of these places. Newfoundland is a big place, and it is a long, long drive from where we live to the northern tip of the island.

This summer we decided to visit some of the places in VIRAL that we have never been to.

Our first destination was Saint Anthony. The town is well supplied with stores, restaurants, and hotels. I was surprised by how close to the water everything is. A few hundred meters from the coast the community dissolves into wilderness.

I was pleased to see that John could have landed his kayak in the way I described. Tim Horton’s was in the right place and the hotel he stayed in, and the local hospital lined up just right.

The real fun of our visit was to stop into the Grenfell Heritage Hotel. John stayed there and I was curious to see if my description of the place was at all accurate.

As we walked up to the entrance, I could hear a beautiful woman’s voice and guitar. It sounded to me like there was a high-quality sound system inside. When we walked in, we found the receptionist sitting just outside her desk strumming and singing.

This was familiar from VIRAL, but just a little off. When John first comes to Newfoundland, he hears a waitress singing and is drawn into a takeout. I almost got it right; in the book the singer was in Cook’s Harbour.

I spoke with the singing receptionist and then the manager and told them how their hotel featured in VIRAL. They were pleased to hear that the Grenfell Heritage Hotel was the only tourist establishment to thrive during my pandemic. My only disappointment was that the hotel doesn’t have a dining room. In the book, John meets a surgeon from St. John’s while dining in the hotel.

Our next stop was Cook’s Harbour. In VIRAL John comments that Cook’s Harbour was even more desolate than southern Labrador. I got that part right. Cook’s Harbour is one of most isolated communities in Newfoundland. It’s a long, treeless drive over a gravel plain to get there. The soil is so barren that locals drive long distances to find roadside plots where they can grow potatoes.

When John lands his kayak in Cook’s Harbour, he walks up to the local takeout and meets Sandy. My first goal in the village was to find the local fish and chips emporium and perhaps even find a beautiful singing waitress.

There is a takeout in Cook’s Harbour. Kind of. The municipal building has a town office, a post office, and a small meeting room. On the door there is a sign that says when the fire department offers takeout. They were only open from four to six, three days a week. Not quite what I imagined.

The best we could do was the local convenience store. The place had everything from nails to fabric to groceries. Store owners Barb and Bill were delightful. I felt sorry for John that he didn’t get a chance to meet them when he landed in Cook’s Harbour.