A few weeks ago, Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism sent me this to my inbox:

Of all the things that make Newfoundland and Labrador one of a kind, the way we speak stands out the most. After centuries of living far off the beaten path, preserving our eclectic heritage and culture, we have more varieties of English spoken here than anywhere else in the world.

Which leads us to Western Brook Pond, the jewel of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, a major reason why UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site almost forty years ago. A trip across this pond is featured in Parks Canada’s collection of Canadian Signature Experiences. A pond? How could a pond be so special?

If you speak Newfinese, you know why.

To us in the rest of Canada, a pond is a small body of still water. Shallow, maybe a few swimming ducks.  Synonymous with slough (pronounced “slu”) but with less grass around it.

But in the Newfoundland Dictionary, a pond is defined as ”a natural body of still water of any size.” (Our emphasis.)

“We tend to roll our eyes when other places call a small body of water a lake!” says Wendy MacWhirter, who was born in Newfoundland and lives in Calgary, where we met decades ago. “That is considered to be putting on airs!”

The Newfoundland definition of pond assumes more authority when they say the word, elongating and uplifting it to “paaunnnd.”

On Western Brook Pond in late May, Magellan and I took the two-hour boat tour that operates from that time to early October. Lingering snow made it impossible to hike in the area.

But here’s the iconic photo of this pond had we been able to see it from the trail.

But hey, only 25,000 to 10,000 years ago, minutes in geological time, this place was cold all the time—it was covered ice. Signage at the wharf explains what happened when the glaciers receded:

The great weight of the glaciers depressed the land, pushing the lowlands below sea level. When the ice melted, sea water flooded the U-shaped valley and Western Brook Pond became a fjord. Relieved of the weight of the ice, the land rose. The emerging coastal lowland cut Western Brook fjord off from the sea. Fresh water flushed out brine, and the fjord became a spectacular 165-metre-deep lake.

The ice age here is recent, but the uplifted 700-metre cliffs rising above the pond are billions of years old. Although the Long Range Mountains, the northernmost section of the Appalachians, created when continents collided 400 million years ago, are younger.

Newfoundland geologist David Baird was so captivated by Western Brook Pond that he lobbied Premier Joey Smallwood to protect it. Successfully. It became part of Gros Morne National Park in 1973. The area’s contribution to the understanding of plate tectonics influenced UNESCO to select Gros Morne as one of its sites in 1987.

On our tour, Captain Reg pointed out the cascading waterfalls, their names expressing Newfoundland wit, like Pissing Mare Falls and Blue Denim Falls.

He also told us that the water is extremely pure—it won’t conduct electricity!

We enjoyed going across the pond, a term I remember hearing as a kid, maybe when Grandpa MacLeod went to Scotland in the 1960s.

The term originated in England. In 1612 Bishop Joseph Hall called the collective oceans of the world ‘the great pond’ in his religious text Contemplations. Another seventeenth century reference to the Atlantic Ocean as a pond is in the pamphlet Time’s Alterations from 1642:

Well met, my Lord It seems that you have taken flight over the great Pond, pray what newes in England?

The Herring Pond was what John Dunton called the Atlantic Ocean in Letters from New England in 1686:

Tomorrow if a gale presents we saile on for a new-world (for soe they call America): at my first arrival I’le send an account of the wonders I met on the Great Herring-Pond.

Over time, the Great Herring Pond was shortened to the Great Pond and later simply the Pond. The first use of the Pond was found in the Royal Gazette, a pro-British newspaper printed in New York by James Rivington in 1780:

Then Jack was sent across the Pond To take her in the rear, Sir.

On the trip back across Western Brook Pond, the crew brought out their instruments and regaled us with Newfoundland songs.

If you get the chance, we highly recommend you go across this pond—we promise “you’ll have a time.”

Navigation

Across the pond is one of the phrases discussed on the UK website Phrase Finder.org.

Here’s a link to Parks Canada’s list of Canadian Signature Experiences.

Western Brook Pond Tours Bon Tours is the company who operates tours of the pond.