There was a funeral some years ago that has stayed with me more deeply than I expected.

I had been asked to preside at the funeral of a local father whose family had come from Newfoundland. Not simply from Newfoundland in the geographic sense, but from the Rock in the way Newfoundlanders often mean it — born into it, shaped by it, carrying it forever in their bones no matter how far away life eventually took them.

He had lived many years in northwestern Ontario, yet those who knew him well spoke of Newfoundland as though it still lived inside him. Again and again, members of the family returned to stories of the small coastal fishing village where he had been raised. There was a longing in him, they said, to go back home one more time. Whether he ever found that return in life I no longer remember clearly. What I do remember is recognizing that the village itself mattered deeply to understanding the man.

So, before the funeral I did something that, at the time, felt practical enough, though I now understand it differently.

I went looking for his village.

Using Google Maps and Google Earth, I searched along the rugged Newfoundland coastline until I found the tiny outport community the family had described. Then, for quite some time, I simply wandered through it virtually. I followed narrow roads toward the harbour. I looked at the weathered houses facing the sea. I studied the shoreline, the fishing stages, the hills rolling down toward the Atlantic. I tried to imagine what it might mean to grow up in a place where the sea was not scenery but livelihood, danger, companion, memory.

The more I explored, the more I began to understand that this village was not background material for the funeral. It was part of the man himself.

When the day of the funeral arrived, I found myself speaking not only about the father and husband they had loved, but also about the place that had shaped him. I tried to help those gathered imagine the smell of salt air and the sound of wind off the Atlantic. I spoke of rocky shorelines and small fishing communities where people learned resilience from both sea and weather. I wanted, somehow, to take everyone gathered in that northwestern Ontario church back to the place he still carried in his heart.

At the time I did not analyze what I was doing. I only knew it felt important.

The response afterward was quiet but unmistakable. During the luncheon and conversations that followed, people approached me not merely to say that the service had been meaningful, but to talk about Newfoundland itself. Some spoke about their own homesickness. Others about places they had left behind. A few simply said, “You made me feel like I was there.”

Only later did I fully understand what I had been trying to do in that funeral. I had not simply been gathering information about Newfoundland. I had been trying to honour the place that had shaped him. I wanted those gathered in that small northwestern Ontario church to feel, even briefly, the salt wind and rocky shoreline that still lived inside him.

Years afterward, while reading Bay of Sighs by Nora Roberts, a line stopped me cold:

“Who came before us, how they lived, what they built? It matters. We honour them by going back, by walking where they walked, living where they lived. They’re never gone if they matter, if they’re honored.” [p. 304]

I realized then that this was exactly what that funeral had been about.