Sidewalking St. John's Newfoundland!
I guess like most people would, I arrived in St. John’s with a preconception of what it would be like. It turns out that it was a misconception instead, because Canada’s most easternmost capital is far more urban and vibrant than I was expecting. This is the second article about my recent trip to Newfoundland. You can read the first article here.
I am not going to write in detail about all of the things that we did in St. John’s because that would likely be longer than everything I have already written on Newfoundland so far. There was so much to do in St. John’s and in the few days we had in the city we did a lot! As I said, I had some pretty unclear ideas of what St. John’s would be like. I had seen pictures, but pictures I have realised, do not always give you a true sense of a place. I also knew that the metro population of the city was just over 200k, so a little bit more than half the population of Victoria’s metropolitan area. Like Victoria, it is a capital city and a port city. Given that it was smaller than Victoria, I was really surprised to find that it was much more dynamic, fast-paced and dense than I expected. Since this is Sidewalking Victoria, I wanted to talk about St. John’s in a way that would make the most sense for this site. I will talk a little bit about the transportation infrastructure that I found interesting; give a sense of some of the interesting aspects of the city’s housing; and I will also talk about a few of the great spots to see in the St. John’s.
There is no subway or LRT in St. John’s (though it seemed to have a fairly extensive bus transit network) and overall, a pretty limited amount bike lanes around the city as well. That said, there are a couple of interesting things going on when it comes to mobility. The first is the pedestrianised Water Street.
Water Street is similar to Government Street in a lot of ways. It is not right on the water, but it is still the main tourist street in St. John’s. It has a mix of restaurants, shops for locals and tourist shops, and the city has for the last three years, though with less controversy than Victoria, made it a pedestrian street. What St. John’s did is a little different than Victoria though, they have made it a pedestrian street 24 hours a day versus our 10 hours a day. Water Street is time limited, with it being run from June to October each year, versus our plan to maintain the Government Street pedestrian space indefinitely. When I walked through it was early, still a little quiet and the shops were just opening. Delivery trucks are still allowed down the street in the morning to drop things off at the stores, which I think is fine, and they have city staff at every intersection letting the trucks through the various barriers. There are a couple of big outdoor restaurant patios that have been built on the sidewalks like we have on Government Street and scattered about are some brightly painted picnic tables. I couldn’t find too much public concern about the street being closed off and I also heard from locals some pride about the implementation. I wish I could have seen it at a busier time of the day, but it still had a significant amount of people wandering its length as we were.
The second mobility topic I wanted to talk about was the sidewalks. I knew that St. John’s was built on a slope down to the harbour, you can see it in all the pictures of the city. I suppose I didn’t realise just how a steep a grade it was in some places as you moved from the harbour to the streets above. To work around this and still have sidewalks that people could get up, you see stairs everywhere. Sometimes the sidewalk will just change into stairs part way up as it gets steep. Sometimes you see this narrow alleyways that really just contain a staircase up to the next street. The first thing that occurred to me is that this would be a significantly difficult city to get around in a wheelchair. We had a stroller with us and there were a couple of spots where we had to get our little guy out to go down the stairs safely. I am sure that there are ways to navigate around these challenging spots, but I would expect it involves significant detours. Still, outside of the clear accessibility challenge, they were a pretty unique and adaptive piece of pedestrian infrastructure. It was really cool to see how in certain spots the staircases were turned into little plazas and focal points. The downtown overall is very walkable and I really enjoyed a lot of the twisty streets with unique little shops. I could have spent many more days just wandering about.
As you walk around St. John’s one thing that really stands out to you, at least compared to Victoria, is the type of housing near downtown. St. John’s is well known for its colourful jellybean rowhouses, but I guess I kind of thought it was just limited to a certain street or neighbourhood. Instead you find that these houses are literally everywhere once you get a couple blocks above the harbour. If you get past the vibrant colours and consider the type of housing, as well as the real density it represents, it’s pretty impressive. I suppose it isn’t too different (just more colourful) than the row housing you see in so much of eastern North America. I really love row housing, it is such a great form of building density. It is really too bad that we never had it in Victoria or really anywhere on the west coast. Beyond the row housing, there are a lot of beautiful heritage houses. I think a miss for me, was not going on an architectural tour of some sort and I will definitely plan to do that next time.
As for sightseeing in St. John’s, there is a truly impressive array of places to visit. Near downtown are the tourist sights of the harbour, Signal Hill, Water Street, and The Rooms. These are the top tourist draws and you can clearly see why. All of them are very impressive and I really enjoyed seeing each of them. I also stepped inside both the Catholic and Anglican cathedrals, both are named after St. John the Baptist (of course, though it honestly took me a day to figure it out). While I know that visiting cathedrals is not on everyone’s list, they are both grand and daunting structures inside and out. Near the bottom of Signal Hill is the Johnson Geo Centre, which is a geology forward science centre. We went for a visit on the one morning it actually rained on our trip, it was a great place to bring our 3 year old, and I enjoyed it a lot too. Just north of downtown is the very scenic and slightly touristy fishing harbour of Quidi Vidi. There is a great brewery here, an art collective and a couple of very nice looking restaurants. The port itself is extremely picturesque, with some of the boat docks and buildings built right onto the side of a cliff. Every time I looked out to the harbour while I was there it gave me another reason to take a picture. The Quidi Vidi Brewery has a large deck that hangs out over the water and if you sit out there, you get to see all the comings and goings while also getting to sample the amazing assortment of ales.
In the area around St. John’s, there is also seemingly a never-ending amount of things to do. I wish that I could have visited one of the many ponds (what we would call a lake) that surround the city or maybe taken the ferry over to Bell Island. That said, the two places I did go to were both quite amazing. To the east of the city I would definitely recommend driving out to Cape Spear. In a very small area are two spectacular lighthouses; the most eastern point in North America; and an extensive bunker and cannon system very similar to what we had at Fort Rodd Hill in Victoria. You can go into the older of the two lighthouses and I would definitely recommend that as it is quite an impressive set-up in there. There is also an art gallery, a cafe and a visitors centre all located here.
The second place, which is actually not really that far from Cape Spear, is the absolutely stunning fishing village of Petty Harbour. There is a great pub called Chafe’s Landing at the western end of the harbour that has a large assortment of both pub food regulars and traditional Newfoundland food. I got to try both fish and brewis and cod tongues here. After we filled up at the pub we wandered along the docks amongst the lobster traps and old fishing nets. There is a small aquarium here to visit, however we didn’t go in. Really just taking in the beauty of the place is enough. There is apparently a very popular hike leading north from here that is part of the East Coast Trail.
As one of the oldest colonial cities in North America, St. John’s has so much history and like all of Newfoundland, amazingly friendly and caring people. I am looking forward to learning more about Newfoundland over the next couple of years before we go back, because we will definitely be going back. If you have been to St. John’s and there is a specific place that you love that I didn’t mention, please leave a comment below.
