Go To Fogo

It’s all a matter of life and death on Fogo Island. The final resting place for Arctic icebergs, this atmospheric Canadian isle has proved the end of the line for others, too. But it’s also a place of re-birth, caught in the middle of an unlikely renaissance fuelled by a most singular hotel

- Nigel Richardson

The iceberg is the shape of a saddle and about the size of one of the island’s saltbox houses. As we contemplate it slowly shredding itself against the rocks, my companion, Fergus Foley, turns to me and says: “That’s travelled from Greenland. Probably took two or three years to get here. Lost weight as he came. And that’s where he’ll die.”

It’s early summer on Fogo Island, a speck of land with a population of just 2,400, off the coast of Newfoundland. Together with the adjacent landmass of Labrador, sparsely populated Newfoundland forms the easternmost Canadian province. But strangely, to me, it feels like a breakaway piece of the northern British Isles.

That impression is partly to do with the relatively short flying time (five hours) and negligible, not to say eccentric, time difference of 3.5 hours. But the principal reason is hidden in the way Newfoundlanders speak, and it was this intriguing connection to the old country that has drawn me back to the province for a third visit in as many years.

Fogo Island, like the myriad other islands and inlets along the fretted northern coast, is iceberg Valhalla in June. While the sun shines on the inland ponds, rocky coves and traditional white saltbox houses with their margins of picket fencing, the bergs bob offshore in their infinite variety of shapes. Fergus enthuses about these big blue Arctic emissaries. “They still fascinate me and I’ve been here a lifetime,” he says. Meanwhile, I reflect ruefully that the expiring iceberg’s passage here has, no doubt, been a damned sight less troublesome than my own.