Alex Beam, The International Hereld Tribune

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2005

ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland I came here for two reasons, both slightly off-center. First, I suspected that the Newfoundland tourist board doctored its lyrical, sun-drenched promotional photos of the fogbound Rock, as the province is called. I wanted to see if the sun ever shone.

Second, I had wanted to see the harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland's capital, ever since reading Wayne Johnston's wonderful novel "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams." The protagonists live on The Brow, a neighborhood straddling the steep slope overlooking the harbor. I still remember a dramatic scene when the hero's mother throws Judge Prowse's classic "History of Newfoundland" off her front deck and it flies hundreds of feet down the sheer incline before landing in a snowbank .

To address issue No. 1, I can testify that the sun does shine in Newfoundland; indeed, it was shining over most of the province as recently as last Sunday. Yet the tourist board does doctor its photos. Their spokeswoman Gillian Marx admitted that a particularly suspect promotional scene of a man kayaking next to an iceberg while a whale gambols in the frigid waters happened in the photo lab and not in real life. "The reason we allow that is because it is plausible" that Kayak Man, iceberg and whale might be found in close proximity, she explains.

As to issue No. 2, the St. John's harbor in no way disappoints. Indeed, my wife, my mother and I scaled Signal Hill not once but twice, to look down on the distinctive, colon-shaped inlet (all right, maybe it's more of a duodenum), protected by towering, rocky cliffs from the ferocious North Atlantic Ocean.

More generally, Newfoundland itself does not disappoint. While it is true that we arrived too late to attend the demonstration protesting the arrest of Marc Emery, Canada's "Prince of Pot" and co-founder of British Columbia's Marijuana Party - we arrived too late to see whales, icebergs and puffins, too - we did have a relaxing and informative stay.

All right, we missed seeing the world's largest ice tank at the Institute of Marine Dynamics because we didn't make a reservation. But we did take in The Rooms, the glitzy new arts and heritage museum, and, of course, visited the heartwarming downtown memorial to the Newfoundland and Labrador dog breeds. Smack in the center of town, you can read Lord Byron's famous elegy to his beloved Newfoundland, named Boatswain: "Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices" is an excerpt.

In St. John's we ate delicious cod tongues and pork scrunchions , which are like fresh-fried bacon bits without the chemicals. (In his 1999 memoir, "Baltimore's Mansion," Wayne Johnston recalls children selling sloppy pails filled with cod tongues door to door and explains that cods don't really have tongues.) And we got oot and aboot . Trinity Bay was as pretty as the prettiest place I've ever been - Kale/ Simena in Turkey - and nearby Elliston, the "root cellar capital of the world," was a worthwhile stop. There are still 135 active root cellars there, and all three of us agreed that its community center was 50 times more interesting than Prince Edward Island's Potato Museum, which we visited a few years ago. Really, there was no comparison!

It's no crime to poke a little fun at a province that even Canadians regard as bleak and slightly off-putting. But I never thought I would find myself singing "Sweet Caroline" in chorus with 100 audience members at St. John's Majestic Theater and then end the evening by standing to sing the island's beautiful anthem, "Ode to Newfoundland" ("As loved our fathers, so we love/Where once they stood, we stand. ... God guard thee, Newfoundland").

It felt wonderful, and it was the happiest I've been in a long time.