♪ Lively mandolin music ♪ Lively mandolin and bass Brandy: I'm a journalist and I'm traveling across my home country: Canada.

On this journey, I'll be visiting some amazing Signature experiences.

The next stop begins in the most eastern province of Canada: Newfoundland and Labrador.

♪ rhythmic mandolin strumming I'm on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland, right behind me is Quirpon Island and there's a lighthouse there.

People come to explore, and feel what it would have been like to be a lighthouse keeper.

(motorboat engine) Ed English is my guide on Quirpon Island.

He owns the lighthouse.

Ed bought it in an auction and has been entertaining guests here since 1999.

The main Inn was built in 1922, beautiful structure.

Ed: The other house there was built in the early 60s.

The light itself - what happened in 1996 is that what they called "restaffed" it.

So they automated the light - so really they didn't need people out here anymore.

So the light is fully operational.

The light is flashing every 15 seconds, from now 'til eternity.

This is a critical lighthouse because it is the northernmost point so it kind of guides the ships that are coming from northern Europe to get around the top of Newfoundland and then head down into the Strait of Belle Isle and up the Gulf of St. Laurence.

When they first created it, of course you had a lot of mechanical stuff.

It was out oiling and fueling and redoing.

So it was a lot of work.

So it took a bunch of people.

Brandy: The lighthouse keeper and his assistant would have been kept company by the wildlife in the area.

Wow.

Just beside the boat we begin to see humpback whales all around us, feeding.

And what would they be doing at this time in this area?

Ed: They're going after some fish.

I don't know what's here right now - most likely Capelin where it just arrived.

Brandy: So when would they be leaving, what month, what time do you leave?

We leave end of September and they're still here then.

Numbers change - like they peak usually in July and then GREAT through July and August and September.

Every... another one off to the left right there.

Brandy: Wow!

Brandy: And they're here getting lots of food, getting nice and fat because after this, what happens?

They head for the Caribbean.

Brandy: Where do they give birth to their babies, though?

Ed: Down there and then they make their way back up here and the young ones gain their weight at about 150 pounds a day on mother's milk.

Wow!

Right there.

Whoa!

Ed: Now you're going to smell that one!

Smell it?

It might have been little bit ahead of us.

What?

Humpback breath?

Oh yeah, smells really fishy.

You can tell if they are feeding a lot because otherwise it's not smelly but if they are feeding - oh yeah, it's very fishy, yeah.

Bad breath of a humpback, who would've thought of that?

Oh yeah, you've gotta watch it on your camera lenses and your glasses.

(chuckles) Brandy: I decided to join the other visitors on land to watch the humpback whales from the shore.

Ha, ha!

Good catch.

Thank you very much.

♪ gentle guitar strumming The Western North Atlantic population of humpbacks is thought to be about four thousand whales.

Humpback whales are enormous animals.

They are about the size of a school bus.

And adults can measure up to nineteen meters long and weigh up to forty-five thousand kilograms.

♪ music continues The Humpback whale lives between sixty to one hundred years.

This place is so amazing, I can only imagine what the lighthouse keeper must have seen over and over again all those years humpbacks coming here feeding their mouths wide open.

It's like you just have this inside look into nature that you never have in the city.

♪ whale breaths, seagulls ♪ banjo jig A fifteen-minute drive from the town of Quirpon takes you to a magical spot that is steeped in history.

It contains the first known evidence of European presence in the Americas.

If you like your Vikings or Norse history, there's one place in Newfoundland that you have to visit and that's L'Anse aux Meadows Historic Site.

Here they have a thousand year old settlement of when they came here to explore.

I think the spirit of the Vikings is still here.

♪ jig continues Brandy: About the year 1,000 Norsemen sailed here from Greenland.

They called this place "Vinland."

They were looking to explore the land and harvest their resources to take back home.

There were several voyages over a period of about twenty-five years.

It is not known why Vinland was abandoned but the information in the Sagas say the voyages were profitable.

To get into the mood o what life would have been like, costumed Viking interpreters tell visitors tales about their lives.

Now, I'd like to talk to you.

What do you want?

I want to make a deal with you because your ship is bigger than mine.

I'd like to own your ship and you can have mine.

Male speaker: Never let the grass grow on the paths between the houses of friends.

Your friend's your friends; enemies are everywhere.

♪ Brandy: Dale Wells is my Parks Canada guide here at L'Anse aux Meadows.

Dale: Here we have one of several little outbuildings or workshops that are archeologically dug here.

Brandy: It's so interesting because you can see the depressions and it makes you think that something was actually here and you know it was.

Dale: So the houses that w unearth here are so much bigger than any house that you will find in Iceland or Greenland and the simple reason is - it's not a family home.

It was designed to house the crew of a ship as opposed to a family.

So these are really big houses that are here.

Brandy: Beautiful.

Brandy: I decided to dive deeper into the history here and check out the Visitor Center, which showcases artifacts found by archaeologists.

Eight excavations from 1961 to 1968 uncovered the ruins of eight buildings.

The park reconstructed four of them, which include a house, two workshops and the Smithy.

L'Anse aux Meadows has been recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

When the Norse made contact with Indigenous peoples somewhere in the land that they called Vinland it represents the completion of the encirclement of the Earth by humanity.

traffic and ♪ guitar Brandy: I traveled five hours south along the coast of Western Newfoundland to my next adventure in Grose Morne National Park.

Cedric D'Avignon is my Parks Canada guide here.

Brandy, I'm taking you on a journey.

We're visiting Tablelands which are an incredible feature of this park.

Big reason why this is a national park, why this is also a UNESCO site this big mountain called The Tableland is actually a section of the Earth's mantle.

Wow, what does that mean "mantle?"

Mantle is actually that section which is made out of magma which is way down below the crust, a section on which we usually never, ever walk.

But here, it's been exposed by continental collision and it's possible to go and explore this mantle.

Wow.

Let's do it!

This is wild.

(laughs) It's just starting.

(Brandy chuckles) ♪ mysterious banjo and flute Cedric: Right Brandy, let's step off the trail a bit.

When you look at the main rock that forms the mountain it's that big orange rock but you know, it looks orange, but it's not.

Flip it around and look.

So the real color of that rock is a dark green almost black and the orange color is only a very thin, superficiall layer on the outside.

What's happening here?

Rusting, oxidation... so these rocks are extremely rich in heavy metals, mostly iron, magnesium... but there's nickel, copper, chromium, cobalt, zinc in very high density.

So much that the rocks are rusting on their own and so much that's pretty much toxic rock because mantle comes from so deep, is so dense, is so rich in these heavy metals that rocks are rusting, vegetation is having a hard time, it's uh... just the reality of the earth's mantle.

Cedric: If you're a plant it's not an easy place to live.

Toxic soil, so a lot of heavy metal in the rocks, open landscape.

So, you need to have strategies and adaptation and that's a plant right here, that's a deciduous tree, a tree with leaves.

That's Dwarf Birch and you can see the trees get twisted and the branches and the root system is horizontal.

The Tablelands is like an open air art museum.

Look at that you can barely walk twenty, thirty meters you'll see a masterpiece like this big boulder for sometime it's rocks sometimes it's plants wherever you walk you'll see this beautiful garden paired with these masterpieces and it's beautiful and it's also so unique, being the earth's Mantle.

Brandy: Wow.

♪ music continues Brandy: This is beautiful.

Amazing.

I told you.

It reminds me of being on Mars or something.

Yeah, and actually, in some ways you are.

Why?

This place is studied as a Mars analog site.

What does that mean?

Cedric: It means that there's phenomenen and processes that are happening here on the Tablelands that are also happening on Mars.

♪ and water rushing OK Brandy, so in this very specific pool for a few years the CSA, the Canadian Space Agency and the NASA, both agencies work together measuring one little capsule - they were measuring the production of methane gas.

So why is this connected to Mars though?

It's believed that there might have been life actually in these places down on Mars that were very similar mineralogically than the Tablelands - so similar type of rocks, similar type of processes are also on Mars and by studying these places basically we're kind of preparing the field work here on Tablelands and eventually trying it out on Mars.

♪ Wow, that's beautiful.

Yep, we're right here at the end of the Tablelands Trail facing this majestic Canyon.

Just been walking on the Earth's mantle, one of the few places on Earth where you can do that.

So, important as a National Park, important as a UNESCO site, but Grose Morne has so much more, there's so many interesting corners in the north you have a glacier carved valley, you go by boat and see stunning cliffs.

I wish you can explore as much as you can while you are in this very special corner of Canada.

Thank you so much Cedric.

I love your enthusiasm!

Enjoy your adventure!

Thank you for sharing Canada with us.

Brandy: To fully experience Grose Morne National Park, I travel to Western Brook Pond to take a boat cruise to the famous fjord which was formed by glaciers.

Oscar Hatcher is a local skipper giving me a tour of the area.

Oscar, what are we looking at?

Right now, Brandy, we're looking at, it's a ten mile, sixteen kilometer, freshwater fjord, the deepest part of the water as we get in through between the cliffs over here, is around 575 feet and the mountains range from 1900 feet on the outside to 2200 feet as we get back into the, into the fjord.

In order to be classified as a true fjord, it's supposed to be filled with salt water.

It's supposed to be an inlet from the saltwater.

As the glaciers passed out through millions of years ago the ice gauged out those big valleys and took it right to the sea.

This was a true fjord up to about eight thousand years ago.

That's when, as the ice melted, the land rebounded and came back up and it actually cut Western Brook Pond off from the sea.

So right now this is what we call a freshwater fjord.

OK.

I was a little bit confused when I first heard about this place because it's called a pond and this looks a little bit bigger than ponds that I'm used to.

Oscar: Yes... For the most part, people say it came from our English ancestry.

All right, so pretty much everything in England was freshwater, was referred to as a pond and they brought that over to Newfoundland, right?

So pretty much everything in Newfoundland - freshwater, is referred to as "a pond."

Brandy: Each year, over 39,000 people take the two-hour boat tour here.

There is also an option to hike to the top of Western Brook Pond Gorge with a professional guide.

Oscar: This is what we call Blue Denim waterfall.

And it gets its name - sometimes throughout the day you watch as the sun leaves its cast, you'll see all blue cast on the bottom of the waterfall.

This is one of the highlights of the tour.

You want to jump in and just wash your hair.

But it's fairly cold.

The surface temperature today is maybe eleven, twelve degrees.

It's fairly chilly.

So don't jump in?

Don't jump in.

See the colours?

Oh, yeah...

Right at the bottom I want to draw your attention to the opposite side of the fjord over there.

This is what we call a hanging valley.

That was developed by a small glacier, a tributary glacier that came down through and joined into the main Western Brook glacier that passed through and it carved out this big valley.

It looks like it's hanging in mid air above the valley.

And this gives us a very good indication of what this fjord would actually look like with no water.

You'll notice the steep sides, the vertical the deep basin and the steep mountains.

You know that will give us something to compare to.

Right?

Beautiful.

♪ acoustic guitar Brandy: Today, boat trips like this one and tourism are filling a huge void in the economy.

Cod fishing used to employ 30,000 people in rural Newfoundland until 1992, when the Canadian government shut down the fisheries in order for the cod stocks to rebuild.

Today the travel tourism industry is worth a billion dollars.

About half of the spending is from people outside of the province.

Many people like Oscar depend on it to sustain them.

Oscar: It's just like, to remind everybody that if you ever get a chance to come to Newfoundland that you should come to the western side of the island to visit Gros Morne National Park.

We do have some awesome bays, inlets, fjords, if you get a chance, come and have a look; you'll see some absolutely fabulous scenery and you'll meet some nice people.

Brandy: Oscar's right.

Newfoundland and Labrador have so much to offer.

My next journey takes me west across the country.

And up north, to the Northwest Territories.

♪ gentle drone, flute and First Nations' chanting ♪ I'm here at Blachford Lake Lodge in the Northwest Territories.

This remote fly-in lodge is about 95 kilometers from the capital, Yellowknife - and here you can come and explore and try a sample of the magnificent wilderness all around us.

♪ continues Blachford Lake Lodge is one of the most eco-friendly lodges in the Northwest Territories.

Fifty percent of its visitors come because they want to learn how the resort is run with such a small environmental impact.

The lodge uses four sets of solar panels and one wind turbine to produce its power.

It has composting toilets, purifies its drinking water from the lake, grows vegetables in greenhouses and relies heavily on recycling.

The lodge is so remote it has to fly its garbage out.

Here in the Northwest Territories, the main indigenous group is the Dene.

And I have my Dene guide here, Randy and he is going to take me around the area.

And do you find that a lot of people are interested in learning about indigenous culture?

Well they mostly ask about where I'm from, they ask about like how you catch a fish.

Or like do you go hunting?

Those kind of simple questions.

OK, well you are going to have to show me how to catch a fish.

Okay, let's do it, Randy.

OK!

(laughing) Brandy: The Northwest Territories is famous for its untamed wilderness.

It's more than two and a half times larger than California.

Visitors can explore its river valleys, quiet streams, and hundreds of lakes with and without names.

Where are we now?

We're at the Narrows right now.

Sometimes we can catch some trout or some pike around here.

This is your backyard.

I guess so, yeah.

Nice backyard.

It is...

So what kind of animals might we see here?

You know I might see a loon or a couple of eagles around.

You never know, you might see a moose.

A moose?

Yeah, there's moose around here.

Will they swim in the lake?

Yeah they will swim in the lake around the grass area.

Always go around 'em.

They're around.

Having a Dene guide here adds to my experience.

I feel fortunate to be able to see a glimpse into Randy's life.

♪ meditative harp and oboe Randy: You put your one finger in the string and lift that middle part up.

OK And once you got to flick it away from the boat.

Yes.

You got to flick it away from the boat.

Yes and then, when do I stop it?

Oh come on... it keeps going and going.

Keep going, keep goin, keep going..

Okay and you put that middle thing down.

Yep... Yep, leave it down.

You're there, okay.

You're trolling!

I'm trolling, (I'm trolling).

This is trolling.

So basically what's happening is very simple.

I just have the line and the hook and the boat is just moving.

And I'm waiting for the trout to bite.

How long is this gonna take?

Depends if you get a bite - you'll feel a bite.

You'll feel it.

So Randy, tell me what it's like to be Dene here in Northwest Territories?

It's great to be aboriginal.

It feels awesome and I've been growing up here for a long time and all my life.

And what sort of things do you have the opportunity to learn about from say, the elders and that kind of stuff?

Randy: When I first shot my first caribou before.

When I was like maybe nine years old.

And I was out there in the Bear Lands and we shot, we shot ten caribou.

Brandy: Wow...

So my grandpa said, my grandpa said, “Don't skin it," he said.

He said, “Just watch me, watch me five times.

If you watch me five times you can skin the other five.” That's what he said to me.

I looked at him, how he did it, how he cut it.

How he cut the caribou and I would look at him like what to do, what not to do.

So, I've been watching him.

You watched him five times?

Yeah, so I watched him five times.

So then it was my turn.

He gave me his knife and he said, “Here, it's your turn," he said.

So I tried it.

And how did you do?

I did pretty well, the first one was really bad and he laughed at me and he said, “It's alright, nothing's not perfect,” he said.

“So try another one.” Another one I did and it was alright, like pretty good, the third one is really good, when I got to my fourth one like it was spectacular, fifth one went really, really well.

And he said, “Now you know how to skin now."

He said.

“I taught you how.” Five times?

Watch it five times and then do it.

Randy: I travel a lot around my time, around the community and around the whole NWT and stuff like that.

So, you get to see a lot of the region?

Oh yeah.

Yeah, see all the different communities and everybody's differet and how their culture s and how's mine.

Sometimes I teach them, sometimes they teach me some things that I don't know and everybody is always happy, happy.

Happy is like a medicine every time you feel negative or you feel sad you make a person smile it's like a medicine.

Smile is like a medicine.

So that's how I like to travel and meet new people and just smile and never be shy because if you be shy you be wasting time.

Yeah.

"Smiling is like a medicine."

Oh yeah.

Randy: So no bite yet, eh?

Brandy: No bite yet.

C'mon fishy fishy fishy fishy fishy.

So's there a technique to this or I just... let it go and be patient?

Be patient - like if you go like this, like this, ...like me.

Crank it up and like, make the hook go back and forth and the fish will see it.

Tease 'em a bit.

Tease them a little bit, yeah.

Yeah, tease 'em!

How many fish have you caught in one day?

What was the most?

My most time maybe like...

I'll say... ten.

Ten fish!

Yeah... Wow...

Most at a time I've ever got.

Were they big?

Oh yeah.

So if you've caught ten I'd like to just catch one.

(Laughs) Yeah, just one.

I'll put my fishing rod here; make my arm relax for a bit.

(chuckles) I think he's cheating.

Brandy: You got something?

Randy: Nope.

What do I have?

Yeah!

Seaweed, (sarcastically) how wonderful!

I'm feeling optimistic.

I've been patient.

But now I'm using the power of positive thinking.

Right?

I'm smiling like you told me - I have to smile.

I'm smiling.

(laughs) Brandy: Just when I thought I'd never catch a fish.

Ooh, I got a bite.

I got a bite!

I got a bite!!

You got a bite?

I'm tellin' you, I got a bite.

(splashing) Randy: Easy... What is this?

A shark!?

Easy.

What is this thing?

It's a big, big pike.

Randy: Easy!

Easy!

Stop.

Brandy: (breathes) Wow...

Brandy, you got scared.

(chuckling) Brandy: Whoa, whoa!

It's so enormous!

It's like a sea monster!

(with trepidation) It's a sea monster.

Okay... (laughing) Thank you!

Thank you for making this happen for me.

It's absolutely huge and scary and it has teeth and I don't wanna eat it.

I think we're just gonna put it back and let him have a nice life.

Look at this beautiful creature.

Thank you so much Randy, for making this happen.

(splash) Brandy: Woahhhh...

He's alive .

OK good!

Catch and release, catch and release.

That was an experience.

That thing was a sea monster .

(drumming and footsteps) Brandy: Randy's people, the Dene Nation have existed for over 30,000 years.

They have always been sustained by the land.

They are related to the Den'a in Alaska and the Navajo and Apache wh live in the American Southwest.

Randy is carrying on with tradition.

He plays drums for local ceremonies and travels all around the world teaching people about his culture.

Experiencing the Northwest Territories with Randy helps me feel more connected to Canada and its indigenous history.

♪ drumming and chanting