tripatlas.com

The Stanley Cup visits Harbour Grace, Newfoundland

Danny Cleary, wasn’t the first Detroiter to draw a big crowd to the quaint Newfoundland fishing port of Harbour Grace. In fact, Close to 30,000 Newfoundlanders poured into this town of 3,000, despite the pouring rain on Canada Day, to watch local boy, Red Wing star Danny Cleary, bring the Stanley Cup home for a visit.

Read on to find out more about Harbour Grace’s claims to fame in the past, the part that it’s played in Canadian history – and what you can experience and expect today when you visit Harbour Grace, Newfoundland on Canada‘s east coast.

Find Buried Pirate Treasure in Harbour Grace

Jamestown, Virginia is the oldest English settlement in the New World, established in 1607. Cupids, close to Harbour Grace, is the second oldest at 1610.

There have been interesting characters living along this rugged, ragged coast since 1610. One of them was Peter Easton, one of the most fierce and successful pirates of the 17th century. He built a fort at Harbour Grace and battled against French, British, Spanish and local ships up and down the Bay and as far south as the Caribbean.

Easton, a former ranking officer in the British Navy turned to piracy after being dillusioned by the treatment of his crew by the Navy brass.

It was a good move. He retired from piracy as a very wealthy man, moved to France and bought himself a title – Marquis of Savoy.

Iceberg found in NewfoundlandExperience the Harbour Grace of Old Today

Rumors still run ramped along this coast of pirates’ buried treasures. What you’ll find along this coast today is similar interesting characters retired from the whaling ships, from seal hunts on the ice, from fierce storms and fishing in the North Atlantic.

They live in such community’s as Dildo, Heart’s Delight, Heart’s Content, Heart’s Desire, and of course Harbour Grace. Each outport has a local museum where many of these characters volunteer.

Some still go out on the water to fire canons each day, but that’s only at the passing icebergs. They knock off chunks of ice 10,000 years old and sell them to local entrepreneurs who bottle it as fresh, clean water, or to Quidi Vidi Brewery to make its Iceburg Beer. Don’t miss out on this if you visit Harbour Grace, Newfoundland!

Fishing Harbour in NewfoundlandA Town with the Warmest Welcome and Best Fishing Grounds in the World

It was a clear summer day 81 years earlier when the “Pride of Detroit” arrived in Harbour Grace. The Stinson Detroiter airplane touched down here on Aug. 27, 1927 to prepare for its most treacherous stretch in a bid to be the first airplane to fly around the world.

Pilot William S. Brock and passenger Edward Schlee immediately experienced what makes this rock protruding into the North Atlantic world renown – the natives offer the warmest welcome you’ll find anywhere on the globe.

Yes, it has breath-taking scenery. Yes, it sits amidst one of the world’s greatest fishing grounds. Yes, the locals speak with such a unique dialogue you’re best to take along a Newfie-English dictionary. But the thing you’ll remember most from a trip to a Newfoundland outport such as Harbour Grace is the genuine, down-home warmth of its people.

CowFred Koehler Makes History in Harbour Grace

That’s why Detroit businessman Fred Koehler found his way to this fishing port out on the Avalon Peninsula on Conception Bay in 1927. He was looking for the most eastern piece of flat land in North America.

Koehler, an executive with Detroit’s Stinson Aircraft Company, needed a landing strip for his firm’s M-2 Detroiter airplane to land before tackling the dangerous cross-Atlantic flight to Ireland.

The 900-foot-long grass strip he created in Harbour Grace is merely a cow pasture today, but in the 1920s and 30s it was one of the world’s most vital airstrips. Dozens of aeronautical adventurers were thrilled to see Harbour Grace during their daring, early flights east and west over the Atlantic.


Amelia Earhart, the First Women to Fly Across the Atlantic

One of those daring aviators was Amelia Earhart. She flew off the grass at Harbour Grace on May 20, 1932 to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and only the third pilot to do so. She lifted off at 7:30 p.m. and had spent the day resting at Archibald’s Hotel, now called Hotel Harbour Grace, where Rose Archibald sent her off into history with a thermos of her homemade soup. The soup kept her going through a very tough night of thunderstorms, equipment failure and fatigue and it kept her alive to receive the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor.

A statue of Amelia Earhart now stands by the shore of Conception Bay, but she is soon to move closer into town near a street that has been renamed Danny Cleary Avenue. Currently she looks out on the old coastal freighter S.S. Kyle, which was run aground in 1965 by huge waves pushed into Conception Bay by a mean Nor’easter. The 220-foot-long ship hasn’t moved from the middle of the bay since that day, but she gets a fresh coat of paint ever few years and this spring she wore a 72-foot-long banner on her hull reading “Go Red Wings Go.”

Today's Top Articles:

Scroll to Top