How the Resilient Cloudberry Connects to Joy and our Heritage
- Loredana Cunti
- Aug 19
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 25
Finding Gold in the Fog
From Newfoundland to my parents’ Italian village, I’ve learned that the rare, humble Cloudberry can help find us find joy and a connection to heritage.
Every year, I take the family to the East Coast for our “Canada Day Canada Days.” They’re a chance to see different parts of our own country, breathe in the maritime air, and simply slow down. The best part? My annual seafood diet: when I see food, I eat it. (The joke never gets old.) While you don't go to the East Coast for the weather, each province has its own twist on lobster rolls or cod cheeks, and every stop offers something memorable: whales breaching at Newfoundland’s Bonavista Point, the sculpted tides of New Brunswick’s Hopewell Rocks, immigrant heritage stories at Nova Scotia’s Pier 21, or the thrill of leaping off Prince Edward Island’s Basin Head Bridge.
The Call of the Rock
But it’s Newfoundland, the giant rock in the middle of the Atlantic, that always calls me back. In my video sales days, lugging VHS cassettes each month from Ottawa out to the coast, I felt instantly at home here. I loved the lobster bibs tucked into collars, the people brimming with stories, and the folk songs—as poignant as Neapolitan ballads—that carried history through generations.
My first visit to St. John’s left me charmed with the painted houses and steep streets. Being an unapologetic Italian food snob by birthright, I would not have called Newfoundland a gourmand’s paradise. I believed that fish deserved only olive oil, salt, oregano, and lemon. But now, decades later, I see clearly that I wasn’t ready to accept the gifts. It was 1993, not even a year into the cod moratorium. Livelihoods were lost overnight and yet stories and laughter still flowed. The fish may have changed, but the heavy batter and the lighthearted spirit remained. And just as Italians elevate figs—sweet in desserts or savory in dishes—Newfoundlanders treasure their own fruity jewels: the partridgeberry and the elusive cloudberry.
The Gold of the Arctic
Beyond its charismatic name, this subarctic, golden berry is a reminder of resilience and the importance of savoring life’s fleeting gifts. Picture it: you wander Newfoundland’s rugged edges, scanning what looks like barren land. At first glance...nothing. Just scrub, moss, and low clouds swallowing the horizon. And then, suddenly, there it is! Joy where you least expect it. A burst of gold, the cloudberry survives where most of it's fruit cousins would perish. Locals call it the bakeapple, perhaps coming from the early French foragers who asked, “la baie qu’appelle?” or “what berry is this?”. Rare and fleeting, sweet and tart, they ripen at the nein August, and glowing like the sun, they’ve earned the title gold of the Arctic. I’ve only picked them once, on a late summer trip to Fogo Island, but that was enough to know their magic.
Roots Across the Ocean
It was that first trip to Fogo that sealed my love for the berry and for this life-affirming place. I stayed one night at the world-famous Fogo Island Inn, but it was Mrs. Dot’s kitchen in Tilting that stole my heart. With a low door that I had to duck under, the home was tiny but overflowing with warmth, history, and the smell of fresh cod frying on the stove.
My talented musician friend Joe, a Tilting native, was playing at the Brimstone Head Folk Festival with his lively, aptly named band "A Piece of the Rock". He took me to a friend’s “boil-up”—salted meats simmered with onion and carrot and the entire experience reminded me of stepping into my parents’ Italian village of Baia e Latina as a young adult. In that first-generation Canadian awakening, I become fully ware of the humble beginnings I came from. How could this tiny settlement stir such memory when I had never been there before? And yet, it did. Even in fog so thick you couldn’t see the sea from the shore, I could feel the roots and resilience all around me. I picked the cloudberries in earnest, having a new appreciation for the times my relatives pulled over in the car, knife and bag at the ready, to pick the wild dandelion leaves—cicorie—for the winter pickling and preserving. For foragers of old, cloudberries and cicorie weren’t just a treat—they were survival. For me, they mark the close of summer.
Preserving the Joy
On other trips—to Gros Morne, where Vikings landed, or to Trinity, home of Canada’s first court—I’ve savoured bakeapple preserved in jams, compotes, and even chocolates filled with golden pulp. Spooning bakeapple compote on ice cream (or on its protein-packed subarctic cousin, Icelandic Skyr) feels like summer’s perfect encore.
Perhaps the forager with only two feet of visibility knows best: keep looking closely, because sweetness often hides in unexpected places. Maybe that’s why the cloudberry feels so symbolic. Life can feel like a landscape of fog and rock, yet still, there it is: a glimmer of gold waiting to be noticed.
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