We spent the day at Battle Harbor. The name really ought to be Boat Harbor, but somewhere in the dim past it ended up as Battle Harbor. Anyway, this was a really big cod fishing location for many years. It was even the de facto capital of Labrador. There are lots of buildings and the Battle Harbor Trust has been busy restoring them to make an historic site and nice lodgings. We had a great room with a nice wood stove. Unfortunately the weather was terrible, but we went to Plan B which is Plan A with rain gear.

In the morning we went on a tour of the site. It was interesting to find out how cod were caught and processed. One of the meals we had was salt cod with scrunchions (rendered salt pork) and onions. I found it pretty good. It wasn't something I would choose for lunch every day, but these people did so by necessity.

One thing I didn't know was that Robert Peary came to Battle Harbor immediately after his trip to the North Pole. The reason he chose Battle Harbor was that it was the closest Marconi station where he could get the word out to the world. After a couple weeks the place was filled with reporters who made their way there for a news conference. Today's photo is of our tour group in the exact location where Peary held his news conference in September of 1909. How cool is that?

After dinner we had a great get together with the group of us and all the residents of Battle Harbor for songs and stories and a jolly good time. We were treated with the bestowing of honorary Labrador citizenship for two of our group. I am not sure that I would relish kissing a codfish, but I would have liked the opportunity to have a couple shots of Screech.