Just knowing that Vikings started a settlement here a thousand years ago and that the first fishermen from Europe began arriving in the 1500’s adds to a sense of history that cloaks the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s a sense that I’m acutely aware of on this sunny day in June on board the vessel, Ocean Quest, as the skipper, Bill Flaherty, navigates across Conception Bay towards Bell Island.

Many millions of years ago, a piece of a land broke away from the ancient continent, Gondwanaland, from the place we now know as Morocco, and traveled a long journey westward until it collided with the North American continent a bit to the south of Greenland. The first Europeans who visited this new world in 986 A.D. were the Icelandic Vikings under the command of Thorfinn Karlsefni, but the newcomers did not settle the area for a long time. Five hundred years later, on June, 24, 1497, eighteen British sailors on the crew ship Matthew under the command of Genoese Captain Giovanni Caboto (in English, John Cabot) made the long crossing over the Atlantic Ocean in search of a sea route to China, but landed instead on the coast of an unknown island. They raised the Union Jack—the British flag—on this island and named it New Found Land.