Sorry to the OP for highjacking your thread but I got to thank Ken for his nice comments about Newfoundland and I'll share a little story with you as well
I remember about ten years ago we had a guy and he wife show up from Sarnia, Ontario. He's also a french Canadian that moved to Ontario from New Brunswick. He was having issues with his antique car and the trailer he was towing. He was into the Gasoline Memorabilia like I am so I told him to come on in and I'd have a look at the issues he was having. Well it took two days with his help to get everything straightened out but he was sure happy to have it all working properly again.
After that I shut the shop down for the remainder of the week and showed them around.
He returns every two years to Newfoundland and stays with us. He's like a brother to me.
We've visited them in Sarnia as well. It's strange how friendships are formed.
PS. Yes that's a 45 record player in the car
You're welcome, but it's the truth, especially about the people. I also apologize to the OP for the hijack, but since Paul gets to tell a story, so do I.
We arrived at the ferry terminal at night in our RV to catch the 17hr ferry ride from New Brunswick to Newfoundland first thing in the morning. Waking up in line the next morning, traffic was starting to load. I tried starting the RV and it just cranked and cranked and cranked. Eventually we got to the end of the engine battery so I told my wife she'd better run in and tell them we were stuck and holding up the line. I pressed the battery cross button (uses the RV's "living area" battery to give extra juice to the engine battery) and after a few more tries, I got it to fire, but it didn't want to keep running. Keeping the RPMs up, I managed to get it onto the ferry and figured if they had to push us off, at least we'd be in Newfoundland. As it turned out, it started first try at the other end.
So we get into St John's and get it to the GM dealer. A co-worker of ours gave us the name of a friend of hers, and he happened to work at that dealership. We'd never met him, but for the two days the RV was in the shop, he gave us his car to drive around and explore the area. He took us out at night and we ended up with other locals at beach parties and fantastic pubs, all things we'd have never found (or been invited to) on our own.
Over the next couple weeks we traveled around the province and met others as well. We camped beside another group of Newfoundlanders who had us over to their party before I think I shut the engine off. While we were (safely) stopped along a road looking at an iceberg, a local came over and knocked on the door to say hi. He invited us to plug into the fire hall for power, stay the night and come over for dinner. We weren't staying long so we declined, but not before having him in for a drink and chat. I could go on about stories about the people, it's just the greatest place I've ever been, and I suspect I will ever be.
Oh ya, the province is incredible on it's own for all the anti social people out there. We hiked over 100 km in some of the most spectacular scenery, saw whales from the shore and stopped at tons of interesting little places.
Oh ya, I was 8 years younger, 20lbs lighter and had no kids!