Tuesday August 11
We awoke to a clear blue sky, calm seas and green, green mountains glistening with silver waterfalls all around us. This truly was an unbelievable beauty and we wanted to be out in t! We packed bath gear hoping for a nice waterfall to bathe in, hiking shoes, berry pail, drinking water, a snack and of course the camera. Kato was life jacketed and leashed and into Origami we went right after a fast breakfast. First we explored up the cove from where we were anchored and found a two pretty cabins tucked into the shore. What an amazing place to live, I thought. I could live here and just write poetry and stories. Sigh.

We went around the corner and came to two separate water falls, one looking like it had good bath potential. We decided to let things warm up a bit first and go explore Morgans's Arm which boasted a 'magnificent' waterfall.

We motored along more gorgeous shorelines, Kato straddling the bow of the boat and at 11:11 an eagle flew in front of our boat as we came around a bend to the waterfall that was surging down to greet us. We stopped to take some pictures of the magnificent bird and then noticed the two power boats from McCallum had come into the fjord. After visiting the waterfall we came up along side them and said hello. They were going to anchor near where we had left Mysti-Cal.

'Lots of room' we told them. 'and great kayaking ahead in the bay, but we are going to have a bath there at the waterfall, so take your time please!"

We headed back over to the other bay past Mysti-Cal and Dave misjudged the sandbar and got origami grounded! Ouch on the motor! But we got off and as the power-boaters asked if we needed help, Dave kept trying to re-start the motor, to no avail..until he realized he had taken the key out! LOL A few dings and scratches, but Origami's motor survived and we continued on.

We came up to the waterfall and found a little spot to nap Origami, We hiked up along a moose trail and over into the first pool of the falls where we discovered warmish water, clean and clear and had a very enjoyable bat while Kato explored. We kept him leased due to eagles who may view him as a delicious snack.
It is so nice to have a bath in a waterfall. It feels so clean.

All scrubbed up we came out into the bay to see our power boaters in their dinghies heading over.
We stopped to chat and Marty and Suzanne, American, told us they were full time live-aboards who had been cruising for many years. The other boat, Bill and Lauren from Meaford Ontario were newer at this way of life. We told them we were two month at a time live-aboards. Marty's dingy was named North Star as his Grandmother was a Titanic survivor, and that was the name of the company that made it. Interesting.

We got back to Mysti-Cal and I made a picnic lunch for while we were underway and we pulled anchor and set off back down the channel, past the fish farm and back out into the rolly Atlantic. Waves were still high from yesterdays winds, but the sun was shining and it was positively summer! I even put on a summer dress and shorts! we decided Hare Bay was a 10 on our list of places to anchor. Unbelievable beauty and secure anchorage even in a storm.

Going into the waves was much easier, and it was a quick passage past more magnificent coastline into Francois, pronounced Franz-ways.

Another entrance that does not seem possible, we curve in past the considerate red buoy on our right and notice the lighthouse on the head to our left. 'The last manned lighthouse in Newfoundland' the guidebook says, but that was a few years back. You learn that somethings take a long time to change and other things change quickly here; time is different. As we came through the six and seven hundred foot cliffs towering either side of us a picture postcard opened up of colourful houses perched along a cliffside, with a waterfall running through them. Boardwalks and bridges spanned between the sixty or so homes and what looked like a community centre, labeled with a perky white church atop them all.

Dave scoped the place out and we could not see where the floating dock described in the book was. We saw one that seemed to be full up, one boat already rafted to another.
Seemed like this was to be our first rafting and as uncomfortable as I was jumping on someone's boat without permission, as Dave sidled up to the big red fishing boat I jumped between the crab traps and took a line over to the dock across it.

A young man arrived on an ATV, no cars or trucks in this town, and informed us that this boat was going out first thing in the morning. He pointed out a now obvious floating dock across the little harbour and said we could dock there easily. It looked close in to shore and I asked if it was deep enough for us. He chuckled, 'Eight fathoms there, you be fine, and don't mind the yellow buoy at the end, it was just put there for our dory races on the weekend past. It's anchored straight down and won't hurt you."

So we circled Mysti-Cal back out, narrowly squeeing by the docked fishing boats and pleasure crafts by a foot or so and Dave switched the fenders ot port side as one small boat was taking up the entire dock by tying to the middle, on the side that would have been easier to dock on.

'Well, I told Dave, a good test of your docking skills'. He had to nose her in around a moored dory, without hitting the yellow Dory race marker ahead and get in close enough for me to make the leap onto the dock, which I did. Soon we were secured.

Dave got out the tools and continued working on the winch and I made supper out of the bits and pieces of shrimp, scallops and small chicken breast that needed using up. I like the challenge of having random ingredients that you have to make a meal from, and the creation of 1 leek, a handful of baby carrots, the seafood and chicken with Emmental cheese was nice served with rice. A propane saving way to cook rice is to bring it to a boil earlier and turn it off and let it sit until supper, heating it back up for however long it needs after that. Uses about a third of the fuel that way. As we don't like 'instant' rice, this works for us. I took the time of Dave's distraction to bake a cake as well, although I am sure he smelled it.
I looked out to see a man standing on the dock and went out.
'He gets pretty engrossed' I said."You need to holler a hello'.
'Oh geeze' Dave said, "Sorry I never noticed you there!"

The man who turned out to be a life long resident here named George replied, "He looked busy I didn't want to interrupt him."
We chatted for a while as more people came out to the dock gathered around a skidoo that they were taking turns going out on.
There were about 70 full time residents living here, but George said that no more kids are being born and the community is dying. The way of life that built Newfoundland is over, the fishing is not good, and no one can make a living doing that anymore. He told us they used to be able to catch squid, but they stopped coming and after a while a new kind of squid showed up. He said he heard they were from the gulf of Mexico and were very different than the kind they used to catch. He expressed concern over how fast the ocean is changing. "It's not the same, something's wrong.'
George told us we just missed a kitchen party where his son was playing. Dave told him he was a musician too and the talk turned to music. He gave George one of his CDs and then his musician son came for a dockside visit too and talk went to amplifiers and guitars and how hard it is to make a living as a musician. How much more fun it was to just play with friends and make music, 'hardly worth going all over to weddings and festivals, people don't want to pay.' We watched everyone taking turns going out on the seadoo, not many nice days had occurred this year to get this toy out on the water.
George said that their community was down to 70 people now but some new people were coming in. He pointed out a house where 'people from Quebec somewheres lived, another quebec couple there, and some people from Ontario there...'

I thought about how St. Pierre is treated by France. As an outport community that has held the fishery here for centuries, forcibly moved out by the English at one point, and returning again to hold this island, France supports them. They are 'subsidized' as I hear people call it. In Canada we 'subsidize big oil,(Do you know how much of our oil is Chinese owned, as in who profits?) , mining, (Guess how much Canadians get from DeBoers? Well after they pay for the infrastructure and employment, with all the government incentives, Canadians actually get nothing. Same for the gold mines and coper mines that come in, wreck the landscape, build communities to house the workers and then leave. Taxpayers pay the clean up and the workers pay for their own relocation.)

The fishing industry was destroyed in Newfoundland by big industrial fishing boats from other countries leaving the people here devastated. France looks after it's people and it's communities, celebrating a way of life and proudly supporting it's 'outports. Canada I am ashamed to say supports big industry and lets the small communities that built this land with mining, fishing and logging die. It also does not support the First Nations here despite the promises of the treaties. Nope. Our funds go into destruction, not preservation.

Here in Francois, there is a waterfall running through the town, but a diesel generation plant is what you find, right beside the waterfall. This community could be pretty self sustaining, if that was what was important to us as a people.

"What is there for us if we relocate?' I keep hearing. "Move to a city to houses we can't afford, take on a mortgage and work at a job we hate, living a life we hate, just let our communities die."

They are dying here. These communities are what built Newfoundland, and the reward for generations of hard work is abandonment. Industrialization of farming has produced the worst environmental degradation, with pesticides, GMO's , herbicides, cow and chicken factories producing toxic environments and killing biodiversity, insects birds plants, and it has destroyed family farms, and farming communities. That is what our government has subsidized. Here it is industrial fishing that is subsidized, not the honest and far more humane line catching of the past generations. Now huge trawlers scrape up everything on the ocean floor, wiping out entire species. 

George and his son talked about the huge fish farm operations that are destroying the salmon rivers that local people had used for line catching for generations. 'They are force feeding them, keeping them contained like that. That's not natural for salmon, and the wild ones in those places are dying out. They are destroying the natural salmon runs, polluting the rivers.' Government subsidized.

I think it is up to us as people to call the shots and take over our country, Try to buy line caught fish. Perhaps we can make co-ops where groups of us buy directly from community fisheries, and keep the irresponsible and short sighted government systems out of it until we change the systems. They are not working. The communities are dying, the plants and animals are being wiped out and the weather and land and ocean environments are being destroyed. It does not work, and we need to get back to developing sustainable communities that trade with each other.