2017 – it is an extraordinary year. Ice pans and icebergs litter the huge and small bays and harbours of Newfoundland and Labrador into the summer. The flotilla wanders day in, day out at the whims of the wind and currents. The harbour is completely packed one evening and empty the next. Icebergs the size of skyscrapers move at speeds of motorboats, or lodge on underwater shoals and stubbornly stay for months.
Mostly, the ice pans pack the bays. They pack enough and they are substantial enough to STOP the fishery entirely. The emergency rescue services simply cannot get to where they need to when fishermen come to peril in the mine fields of wandering ice.
It is a very mixed blessing to behold the breathtaking beauty of the ice pans as they circle Old Perlican Island, at the mouth of the harbour. How can a Newfoundlander deny this incomprehensible level beauty? How can a Newfoundlander deny the peril of both the moment and of the much larger issue of the future, as they witness global warming changing the face of the Arctic, of Newfoundland and of the world. Everything is at stake.