The road to Cabot Tower
An early rise
It was a slow going to Cabot Tower and I don't just mean that about the climb.
I had slept in that morning, hitting the all too familiar 'snooze' function on my phone. Jess lay unmoving beside me.
We were going to be late.
We'd meticulously planned our morning trip the night before, field marshals planning an ill-fated raid over the top, or in this case, up the hill.
We'd be in Newfoundland barely two weeks and were eager to explore. I'd been to Signal Hill before, and so had Jess, but it'd been some time. The forecast predicted a stunning, warm sunrise; an opportunity to explore.
We'll wake early, we'd said, and capture Cabot Tower in the majesty of morning. Our faithful camera was laid out for the morning's shooting, coffee grinds prepared, metal thermos' a battalion in waiting.
A dawn dash up Signal Hill.
Take no (tourist) prisoners.
However, we were all but doomed from the beginning: sunrise was exceptionally early.
I stirred again in the darkness, my alarm roaring back to life, and discovered we'd missed sunrise by 10 minutes.
I asked Jess if she still wanted to go. Not even a heartbeat came from her.
I quickly made the decision to make the journey solo.
Dress, out the door and into the car.
Driving into St. John's that bright morning, everything seemed surreal.
I was half-awake, my car seemingly pulled by those yellow lines along the highway, a single soul. I was downtown before I knew it.
Floating along Harbour Drive, I decided to jump out of my car and snap a picture.
I may have missed sunrise but the sun seemed as sluggish as me, softly ascending to its rightful place in the order of sky and earth and ocean.
I got back in my car, the engine kicking into high gear as I climbed the cracked roads up towards the tower.
Driving up, I couldn't help gawk at Cabot Tower atop its perch. There's a history to the tower and all its gaudy rock.
For centuries, Signal Hill had served as a lookout, a lone sentinel casting an eye out towards the ocean and another towards the harbour.
I'd read about how the French had invaded, marching overland in 1696 from Placentia. St. John's was attacked again and again, the last time being in 1762.
In the morning light I fancied Gallic ghosts roaming the hills, foraging for extra musket balls.
And then the empire building.
The methodical construction of fortifications as the centuries passed. Newfoundland watched the Napoleonic and Civil Wars come and go but still the island loaded up on guns.
The Queen's Battery. Wallace's Battery. The Duke of York's Battery.
The British tradition of cannon collecting. For decades, sentries stood guard watching the ocean. Occasionally, they'd fire a gun to let the townspeople know what time it was.
Somehow, Cabot Tower itself didn't appear until 1900. It was constructed to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Cabot's voyage to North America and is perhaps one of the most iconic symbols of St. John's.
1901 saw Guglielmo Marconi receive the first ever transatlantic wireless signal from the hill.
World War One.
World War Two.
The boom and bust of the fisheries.
Sunsets and sunrises, my car following the path up the hill like countless before me.
I parked my car and stepped out into the morning light, camera cradled in my hands, ready to shoot like a nervous sentry.
I was ready to capture all that, without reflection, the eye could not see.
There's a history there and it was long, and slow going to Cabot Tower.
Go find out for yourselves.
