Dublin in the dominions
St. John’s – Canada’s oldest city, the capital of its newest province, and North America’s most eastern settlement. Named when John Cabot first sailed into its harbour on the Feast of St John the Baptist in 1497, today St. John’s is associated with ‘jellybean row’, the brightly coloured hillside houses that can be seen for miles around. It’s the principal city of Newfoundland and Labrador, which has a rich history, its own time zone (three and a half hours behind GMT), and a unique reputation. Visitors know to expect a broad Cornish-Irish accent, rum-based initiation rituals, and a feeling that there is nowhere on earth quite like it. Early August brings a Civic Holiday in most of Canada, so we flew almost halfway back to London to the country’s eastern tip. (It’s sea from there to Ireland.) Our only experience of Newfoundland previously had been the hit musical Come From Away , which recounts how plane-loads of travellers were stranded and accommodated in Gander immediately afte