My current company, Openlane, has 13 auction sites across Canada - and one of those sites is in St Johns Newfoundland. In July, I was given the opportunity to travel to Newfoundland for a work trip and I absolutely loved this place. The week I was there happened to be the same week as Canada Day - so I had a few days outside of work to tour around. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to get to Newfoundaland - so I started a 3 leg journey on Sunday at 8a PST and finally getting into St Johns at 8p PST (3:30p local).
2025-06-30
Monday was a full work day, but I managed to walk around bit before going to work. Most of the ppl working at the site grew up in Newfoundland, so we got a geography lesson and a bit of history. St Johns is obviously a port town - that’s 90% of what it’s there for. St Johns was the first port to repond to the Titanic disaster and they were the airport where they diverted all the planes over the Atlantic on 9/11. The town itself is very pretty - in a very protected port with very rugged coastline & features. I think it would be amazing to sail back here someday.
Another unique feature of St Johns is the famous Jelly Bean houses. I was told that they are painted this way so that fisherman coming back from see can spot their house as they come into the harbor - or so that they can find their house as the stumble back home from the bar. Either way, I pretty sure that “for the fun of it” had something to do with it.
Newfoundland was historically settled by the Irish - and you can still see the Irish traits (eg red hair) in a lot of the locals. People here speak without too much of an accent, but there are some folks who speak with a bit of an Irish accent. More interestingly, they have developed some slang sayings all of their own - I asked our host to tech me some of them and here’s most of the fun ones I caputured.
- “Stays where you’re to - I comes to where your at” - I’m on my way to you. Don’t move
- “Skeet/Skeeving” - Like a sketchy person
- “Who belongs ya?” - (where are you from) I belongs to Seattle
- “Who knit ya?” (who are your parents)
- “Sin” - not good. Not necessarily bad though
- “You look boiled” - you look grumpy
- “God bless your cotton socks” - you are a good person, usually right after you messed something up.
- “I dies at ya” - you are funny
- “Now da once” - in a few min
- “Fill your boots” - take as much as you want
- “Stogged” - really fun
- “Duckish” - evening, right before dark
- “Out to lunch” - expensive. Is the hotel out to lunch?
- “Crooked” - Crabby
- “Best Kind” - Great, thanks
- “Crooked as sin” - cranky
Most of the auction folks were heading out of town for Canada Day (which is tomorrow), but our host took us out to dinner before leaving us on our own to make the most of Newfoundland on Canada Day.
2025-07-01
Two of the four of us went on a morning hike while the other two went on a road trip. The East Coast trail is 209 mi trail that goes along the east coast of Newfoundland - We decided to do a few miles of it just south of St Johns.
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The trail was beautiful - way beyond my expecations. It reminded my of the PNW with rugged steep coastlines and green. I was informed that the soil is poorer here so you get these big open areas with only low bushes/flowrs - no trees. This side of the island is completely open to the Atlantic - so I bet there are some ferocious storms that come through here in the winter, so that might have something to do with it too. The trail started off with a steep climb and then went along the top of a ridgeline for a couple miles.
The top of the ridge had some smallish trees and some beautiful lakes & streams - folowed by a descent through the woods to what looked like an old port - there was a rock dam (that looked to be man made from a long time ago) and several pieces of remenance of an old ship boiler rusting out.
This was not a loop trail, so we went back the way we came. It was just as beautiful on the way back - and a whole new perspective. I would love to come back someday and do the whole trail - but probably not a there and back… A highlight of the trip was discovered right at the very end - Tom’s rock.
We finished our hike and hopped in the car to head off for a mid-afternoon whale watching trip which our host had scheduled for us. We did see some whales, but the highlight of the trip was the birds. The set of islands (gull & green islands) had an unbelievable number of birds living on them - including the largest colony of atlantic puffins (different from the puffins we have back home). The tour guide said there were 3 times more birds on these to islands than their were people living in Newfoundland. Wow.
We did see some whales though. I spotted the first humpback, but the guide informed me that it was a gray - apparently he thought he knew better? We got closer and it proved to be a humpack. We did see a gray whale a little bit later thought - both cool.
Just to give you an idea of the number of birds on the island - here’s a video of them flocking around. The white rocks are not white - that’s all bird droppings.
The coolest part of the trip was seeing the puffin colonies. These atlantic puffins spend most of their life in the open ocean (sleeping while floating on the surface) and they only come to land for a few months of the year to breed. The nests, however, are not shared and the puffins come back to the same one every year. You can see it a little in this video, but puffins can’t take off from flat land - they need to nest on a slope so they can run down the slope to take off! To take off in the water, they beat their wings against the water to get momentum - I had no idea they were such bad fliers!
After the tour was over, we headed out to the Cape Spear lighthouse - which sort of marks the outer entrance to St Johns harbor. The lighthouse, like most, had an interesting history staring off with a seal blubber fueled lighthouse all the way to the electric of today.
We headed back into town and got dinner in the usual place - at one of the pubs on George street. Apparently, St Johns is the place to go for young people to party across the atlantic region of Canada so there was always life music and fun bars to go to. Beer (and drinking in general) is a favored activity in Newfoundland - so there are all kinds of microbrews and the like to explore.
2025-07-02
We worked again on Wednesday, but after work we went to our Screetching ceremony. I don’t know how this tradition started, but the ceremony involves drinking a Newfoundland rum (which is infamously bad) called Screetch, eating a well prepared chunk of Newfoundland spam, and kissing a codfish (which was thankfully not alive and frozen).
Our host performing the ceremony was very well spoken and seemed to enjoy his performance. Anthony Bordain had come to this bar just a few weeks before he died and had done the screetching ceremony right here.
All of the team got Screetched in and we all got a certificate to prove we were honorary Newfoundlanders.
2025-07-03
The following morning we awoke early and a bit crusty to head on a hike. This was to be our last full day in Newfoundland and I had not yet done the signal hill hike, so Mike and I headed off to knock it out before we went to work. The trail left from the south end of town, so we walked from our hotel to the trailhead and then up the mountain to have Anna pick us up at the top of the hill.
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The hike was beautiful - especially in the early morning when the sun is still rising. The trail is pretty well maintained - heading along the south side of the harbor along the cliff face, carved right into the rock in some places.
Then the trail loops around the east side of the hill and up to the top of signal hill. We had some really amazing views out into the atlantic from here.
Signal hill is a lighthouse and a fortification that was used to protect the inner harbor of St Johns. It’s just a historical site now, but the cannons are still there. They actually fired them off in the morning on Canada day - a memorial to Newfoundland Regiment’s losses at the Battle of the Somme - before going into the festivities of Canada day.
We had seen them at the harbor a few times, but St Johns is the home port for the Atlantic fleet of offshore tugs. These are truely impressive boats that are designed to go out and assist if a boat breaks down in big seas - including things like cruise ships or if an off-shore oil rig gets in trouble. Even more impressive - one of them had been fully electified. Hard to believe really - these were massive ships.
After work, we hit up Quidi Vidi - a small harbor just north of St Johns - to check out the brewery and sights. I really liked this little place.
2025-07-04
Another epic round of flights marked the end of the trip - 6a departure to Toronto, then to Victoria, then a short leg to Seattle. I landed in the early afternoon and headed straight to Derek and Diane’s house to celebrate the 4th of July!