Our trusty 60s-era Twin Otter fires up for a flight to the Torngat Mountains National Park in Northern Labrador that will feel not unlike passing through the looking glass. Azure skies and the bright red plane wing contrast a lacework of rivers, estuaries and coastal mountains below. 

Slowly, the land begins, almost rising up beneath us as we approach Canada’s tallest mountains east of the Rockies. Forests begin to disappear, revealing bald, ancient rock, craggy and striated by glaciers long gone. Icebergs appear along the shore, the size of a city block. The weather is good. So somewhere north of Nain, our pilot delivers on a promise to fly low, keeping an eye out for polar bears. And minutes later, there she is — a mother leading her cub over a rocky mound of an island that seems just afloat in the North Atlantic. Though teeming with wildlife of far-northern climes, this natural wonderland below is still nowhere near the most compelling reason to come here. In this very special episode, we find out what is.

Special thanks to James Gray for our theme song music. 

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