Have cat, will travel: Brian Lynch and his pet visited nearly 800 Newfoundland and Labrador communities in 84 days

Brian Lynch sits at his dining room looking over a map of Newfoundland and Labrador with black marker carefully traced all over. The occasional sound of paws on a chair’s fabric can be heard from a five-year-old calico cat named Edie, who is relaxing nearby.

As Lynch moves his hand over the map, he speaks about how he worked in the freight department of the Newfoundland railway for 32 years.

“We would get freight coming into our shed going outward for every community in Newfoundland,” he said. “I can remember Mammy’s Bakery on Alexander Street. Five, six truckloads of bread a day coming down from Mammy’s Bakery and they’d be going to every community in Newfoundland.”

This year, unable to spend his winter in Florida as usual, he bought a 30-year-old motorhome, grabbed his cat Edie and hit the roads of the province.

Over an 84-day journey, Lynch and Edie visited 758 Newfoundland communities and 27 more in Labrador. He travelled 16,584 kilometers, using the parking lots of a McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s to sleep and to avails of the free Wi-Fi to update his friends and family on his adventure.

Lynch wrote everything down — how much he spent in gas, repairs, food, ferry charges, propane and the cost of accommodations for the two nights he didn’t spend in his motorhome.

"When I started out, I had no idea what it was going to cost, but I was not going to stop.” — Brian Lynch

Why did he choose to document his journey so extensively?

“That’s me, that’s just the way I am,” he said. “I did say to myself afterward that if I do complete this, well, you know what, it’s good information to have. When I started out, I had no idea what it was going to cost, but I was not going to stop.”

To travel all of Newfoundland and most of Labrador cost Lynch just under $10,000, or $116.86 a night.

The documentation of the trip wasn't only financial; Lynch also chronicled his journey in a series of Facebook posts.

And it wasn’t just the tallying of numbers Lynch was concerned with as his motorhome moved down the highway, his cat sitting on a milkcrate with a blanket over it in the passenger seat by his side.

The tall tale of poor old John Croke

As he drove around St. Brendan’s, a small town on Cottel Island only accessible by ferry, he saw a closed business called John Croke Ltd. General Store.

“Really dilapidated, but the sign was still up,” he said.

Lynch started weaving a fictional tale about trying to find poor old John Croke, who had lost his store when his boat ran ashore while he was unloading supplies.

“The expense of it all, he went bankrupt,” he said. “If I had known, I would have started a GoFundMe. I’ll see if I can find him.”

On Change Islands, Lynch said he was told Croke was living in one of the root cellars, but a note on the door said he was out.

And in Pound Cove, he said the local bartender told him Croke used to be the lead guitarist in a band called Ed, Ned, Fred and the Heartbeats.

“I got a weird sense of humour,” Lynch said.

Michelle Hicks is Lynch’s daughter. She says she was really excited when her father told her what that he was finally going to travel the province.

“He’s been mentioning for a couple years that this is something that he wanted to do,” she said. “Dad always like to travel. … He wanted to go different places, to explore different places. He used to do that when we were kids.”

When he was working with the railway, Lynch and the kids would pack up and jump in the car so he could check on a few stations across the province.

“He’d have me take note of the different places as we went along the way,” she said. “We’d take the scenic route, you know?”

Though she’s not a big social media user, following along with her father’s posts was quite remarkable, she said.

And his penchant for tall tales might be genetic, she said.

“You never knew if my grandfather Lynch was telling the truth or not,” she said.

Laughing with the locals

Driving into each town, Lynch would speak with the locals, often breaking the ice by making a joke.

While exiting the small ferry on the southwest coast in the small town of La Poile, Lynch spotted a group of men sitting at a picnic table.

“Excuse me guys, the Holiday Inn, where is it?” he asked. “(A man) turned and said, ‘Right there.’”

He was pointing at a small shed with a concrete floor.

“That’s where I set my tent up,” he said.

Through his conversations with locals, he’d often hear a similar sentiment.

“Everybody says the same thing, ‘How amazing, I’d love to do that,’” he said.

Twitter: @AndrewLWaterman

Andrew Waterman reports on East Coast culture.