Canada
At the very tip of Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula, where the Long Range Mountains dissolve into the Labrador Sea, the fishing town of St. Anthony stands as a gateway to some of North America's most dramatic coastal landscapes and one of its most remarkable humanitarian stories. This is the domain of icebergs and whales, of Viking settlements and medical missionaries, where the raw beauty of the subarctic Atlantic meets centuries of resilient human endeavor.
The town's identity is inseparable from Sir Wilfred Grenfell, the British physician who arrived on this remote coast in 1892 and spent the next four decades building hospitals, schools, and cooperatives that transformed life for the isolated fishing communities of northern Newfoundland and Labrador. The Grenfell Historic Properties preserve his legacy through a museum, his former home, and an interpretation center that tells the story of a man who became a living legend along this coast. The Grenfell Handicrafts program he established—training local women in hooked mat and embroidery techniques—continues today, producing distinctively Newfoundland textile art.
Nature, however, remains St. Anthony's greatest draw. Between May and July, massive icebergs—calved from Greenland's glaciers one to three years earlier—drift south along "Iceberg Alley" past the town's doorstep, their sculpted forms glowing in shades of white, blue, and crystalline turquoise against the dark North Atlantic. Some tower sixty meters above the waterline, cathedrals of ancient ice that dwarf the fishing boats passing in their shadows. Simultaneously, humpback whales arrive to feed in the nutrient-rich waters, breaching and fin-slapping in spectacular displays that can be witnessed from shore or by boat.
Thirty-five kilometers north of St. Anthony, L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site preserves the only authenticated Viking settlement in North America. Here, around 1000 AD, Leif Erikson and his Norse crew established a base camp of turf-walled buildings, predating Columbus by nearly five centuries. The UNESCO World Heritage Site features excavated foundations and a reconstructed Viking encampment where costumed interpreters demonstrate Norse crafts, cooking, and seamanship. Standing on this windswept headland, gazing across the same waters the Vikings navigated in their open longships, is one of Canada's most stirring historical experiences.
Cruise ships anchor in St. Anthony's harbor, with tender service to the town dock. The compact town center is walkable, though excursions to L'Anse aux Meadows require vehicle transport. June and July offer the optimal combination of iceberg viewing and whale watching, while the Viking site is accessible from June through early October. The town's remote location—a full day's drive from St. John's—means that arriving by sea feels particularly fitting, echoing the maritime approach that has defined this community for a thousand years.