Over the edge

During the summer, four of Cathy's friends from her time in Rankin Inlet came to St. John's for our wedding. Which I thought was enormous cool. Granted, they didn't come all the way from Rankin. They were already down south visiting family. But the fact they had known Cathy for less than a year and wanted to come to the wedding I thought was great. And they're very nice people to boot.

After the wedding was over and we could breathe a bit, we took them around to do some sight seeing. That included, of course, Cape Spear. You can't come to St. John's without venturing to the furthest point east in North America (screw what the Greenlanders say).

While we were there they noticed all the signs saying stay behind the fence and don't go out on the rocks. We told them that every few years someone doesn't pay attention, goes out on the rocks and a wave will hit them and that's all she wrote. If the family of that person is lucky they'll find the body before it reaches Ireland. The currents off Cape Spear are vicious, never mind the fact that it's the North Atlantic and the water temperature is a couple of degrees above freezing at this time of the year.

I'm not sure they entirely believed me, perhaps thinking I was pulling their leg a bit, or throwing a few scares their way. Alas, I wasn't.

The signs are there for a reason. Perhaps Parks Canada might want to consider putting up a sign listing the names of all the people who have died going on those rocks in the past 50 years. Might work as a better deterent.

Oh, one last thing. The headline going with the VOCM story is "Tragedy at Cape Spear." I appreciate this sounds a bit cruel, but it's not a tragedy if you're too stunned to pay attention to the signs and go out on the rocks anyway, knowing you could die. But I guess "Needlessly stupid death at Cape Spear" is a bit too wordy.