Sunnyside’s Beothuk past

 

Driving in Newfoundland had been easy as there wasn’t a lot of traffic to contend with. I could have made the journey from west to east in a day if I’d pushed it but what was the rush? I stopped in Gander so that the next morning, I had time to investigate the narrow strip of land that joined Avalon Peninsula to the rest of Newfoundland.

On one side was Arnold’s Cove; on the opposite side, Sunnyside. There was a Beothuk/European memorial site where supposedly the two groups had once met peacefully.

The strange boxes outside people’s homes

I hiked the trail and crossed to the island joined by a narrow gravelly path up to the skeleton of a tepee where I could see the small town in the distance. It was a sad memory to an extinct people as well as to my Newfoundland trip.