St. John’s to Ottawa
A midwinter journey leaves four rail-hunting Europeans soggy in St. John’s, Newfoundland, but they find redemption in the frozen streets of the Canadian capitol of Ottawa, Ontario. Pirates adrift in eastern Canada.
The landscape in St. John’s, Newfoundland looks like the backdrop to Wes Anderson’s 2012 movie Moonrise Kingdom; the one starring Edward Norton and Bill Murray in which an adolescent boy scout runs away with his girlfriend in a chain of foggy islands. In the provincial capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, the houses on the waterfront are colorfully painted, and a few of their inhabitants still fish for a living. First visited by Europeans in 1494 and permanently settled in 1630, it’s considered the oldest city in North America, and it feels like it. By the bay, time seems to have stopped…