How does one talk to a dear friend who is half way around the world? Same way as before, you say, but we are just melting out of the first blizzard of the year while you are maybe forgetting what snow looks like. Anyhow, your letter has been read by everyone and I think a lot of thoughts are, “How does one get on with CUSO?” It sounds good and strange and fascinating, but very far away.
Your multitude of jobs sounds wonderful, the problems formidable, and I hope they will soon seem less so.24 What can I do from here? That isn’t an idle question. Can I send something? Or go agitate with some department? Let me know please. What conditions are attached to sending things? Will you be liable for duties? You see, I don’t know a thing. Perhaps I should ask at CUSO. That sounds like a practical idea. I’ll do it.
I can see you in the warm sun, getting more and more tanned and loving every minute of it. It’s a great adventure, and to be there doing what you love, what else is there to want?
So what’s new? We went back to Victoria which was mild and sunny. Then coming back we hit snow at Neepawa and fought a full scale blizzard all the way here. The city was a mess, cars stalled everywhere, the buses running late. The snow has since melted and we are having normal sunny weather. Today I raked leaves and crab apples that have fallen during the blizzard. My neighbour hasn’t put hand to rake and he hasn’t a bag of leaves on his property. The wind has brought them all to me. The scripture says that rain falls on the just and unjust alike. Trust the leaves to find the sinners.
W.E. Brown was here in Winnipeg a while ago. Muriel and I saw quite a lot of him and one evening he invited us to a dinner at the Fort Garry. W.E. has no memory for yesterday, but 1920 is a different matter, except for names. I have worked with him a long time. I’ve heard all his tales, which are worth listening to, and I was supposed to sit next to him and furnish names as required. He was in great form at dinner and told Shirlee Smith some yarns about his early days with the RCMP. I kept up pretty well, but when he talked about people who were up north when I was about five, I lost out on a few. W.E. looked at me and said, “That’s the first thing you’ll notice as you get older, your memory fails.”
There are times when he thinks I was up there in 1919. I was all of two at the time. He is right though. I find that my memory for recent events is not reliable, but I’m getting very sharp about things that happened fifty years ago. I forget school matters but remember day-to-day events in the little outport on the island where we went to school. The various steamers and schooners that came and went, I remember, and the names of kids I fished with and the ones that got into the same scrapes as I did.
Why I can remember W.E.’s names for him is because just after the war he and I and Harry Winney, one of Canada’s first bush pilots, were stuck in Churchill for twenty-two days in winter, engine trouble and weather combined. We sat in the old hotel with parkas on, and told yarns because there was nothing else to do. I heard some fascinating yarns from two great men. I wonder, what does this sound like in Vanuatu, where the sun is probably going down in a great flare minutes before the velvet tropic darkness descends. The sun goes down so fast in the south. In the Arctic, especially in spring, sunset goes on for hours. What did the man say, “The moon is up and yet it is not night, sunset divides the sky with her…” [Childe Harold, Lord Byron].
It was very true in the Arctic. I liked those words. At Wolstenholme the sun would go down, rest a little while on the rim of the hills, then slip below. In half an hour it would appear again at the head of the long narrow valley that went inland from the post. Only place I’ve ever been where you get two sunsets. The valley would darken as the sun went down behind the high hills, and suddenly flash back, full of bright sun a bit later. The wild creatures knew it. The geese in fall would stand in the semi-dusk and wait. At the first flash they’d start talking and feeding again, but as the sun went down the second time, they would settle in for the night. The hills there are so high that to see the midnight sun, one had to climb way up, but it was worth the effort. The tops of the hills and the western slopes would be sunlit while the valleys and Hudson Straits would be in darkness, not black night of course, but darker.
And in winter it was an experience to go way up the valley, ten miles or so, and look back to see that one light, and to know that for miles and miles there was not another light and not one other person. I was there nine months once, and never saw a soul. I had radio and the reception was fantastic. Stations from all over the world could be heard, and I could talk, not on voice, but with key, to Nottingham Island and to other HBC posts around the Straits and Baffin Island. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t had radio. Then I could have gone up the valley and looked back at my one small light and really felt that I was alone. In these days, there are no isolated one-man posts any more, but there are still living, some of us who have had that experience.
I wish I knew a bit more about Vanuatu. Your letter opened the door a tiny bit, and I hope that you’ll open the door further. I asked the local drugstore postmistress about postage to Vanuatu and she went into a flutter. I don’t think she ever heard of it, so I’ll go downtown to post this. Please write again soon. Never did have a correpondence with someone on the other side of the sun.
W.E. Brown has been trying to persuade me to get something published. One should know one’s limitations, but he kept at it, and I finally sent something to a small historical magazine. They have agreed to publish it in March unless a more important article becomes available. W.E. is happy that I have done it, so I’m happy too. I know the editor and perhaps that had some bearing on her accepting my attempt. In any event, don’t look for me on the best seller list yet. I enjoy the magazine it’s going into, which is called Them Days because it deals with Labrador, and I frequently see people I know or read articles about them. In fact, in an issue several years ago, there was a picture of a school class at Rigolet and who should be there in the front row with crew cut skull but yours truly.
Which brings me to the film we saw at Pointe du Bois. On the beginning of a reel, there was a brief shot of Greg Furlong, then third mate RMS Nascopie, and again, yours truly. Gave me a little shock, as I didn’t know it existed. Greg has since passed to his reward. When I think of those days just before the war, it doesn’t seem that long ago, but it’s shoving up for the half century.
Guess I got to thinking, and I went away back to see how I remembered the men working with their hands when I was little. I have pretty clear recollection of when I was four, the year before I was sent to boarding school. And I could see James, the cooper, making barrels, and Will, the carpenter, building a house or making a komatik, and John and Peter using huge broad axes squaring logs. And it’s all still there.
James taught me to make barrels, so I know the drill, but what entrances me is that I can see his big hands, see the great knuckles and the deft way those hands worked. You know, a carpenter takes the plane to the wood usually. A cooper reverses the process; his huge jointer is permanently set bottom up, and he puts the wood on the plane. James would take a stave in his hands, one, two passes, and one end was tapered and bevelled. He’d flip it in the air to the great danger of his nose it seemed to me, catch it, and two more passes over the plane made a stave.
The big old plane was dark brown. Every so often it was oiled with a mixture of mineral oil and pine tar, a most aromatic product, in no way resembling the horrible stuff you see on the roads. After all it came from trees. Over the years, the wood of the jointer took on a polish that was as good as the ads for Mansion Floor Polish. Just thinking about it, I can smell the Stockholm tar, smell the sweet smoke of the barrels heating over the round stove before being cinched in by the Spanish windlass and having their hoops put on.
This was in Rigolet. The old buildings, their contents, and the work still went on in very much the same manner as it had been done when they were new, away back in the mid-1800s.
When I was young many things came in barrels: flour, salt, meat, fish, vegetables, apples. Chinaware, packed in straw, came from England in barrels. Soft drinks came one gross to a barrel. There is a story that Lord Nelson’s body was transported from Trafalgar to Britain in a hogshead of rum. True or not, it is not outside the bounds of possibility. If the rum was equal to the task, I am sure the hogshead was. British coopers were second to none.
James Dickers was a Hudson’s Bay Company cooper, perhaps the last. At least I haven’t heard of one that survived him. He was born in 1867, near the Moravian village of 8 on the North Labrador shore. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed as a cooper at Rigolet where he learned his trade, and in 1885 he became cooper at Davis Inlet, and serving there till 1907 when he was transferred to Rigolet. He spent the rest of his life there with HBC.
I spent so many of my days with James, or Will, or John, that I learned every detail of the way they did things.
John had only one arm, but he used an axe or a saw or a plane as well as the next. When he needed a boat, he built it. So did Will Shewak. Will was a genius in many ways. Unable to read or write, he weighed every salmon or cod that HBC purchased. He invented his own system of records. He could build a house from a plan because he knew where things went. He didn’t need to read.
He was a young man when the first simple gasoline engine arrived to go into one of the company boats. The first thing he did was to take it completely apart, and my dad, who was the manager, wondered if it would ever be put together again. It was, and Will installed it and ran it. Much later, when I was just apprenticed, we got a multi-cylinder complicated engine for the little schooner, as unlike the first simple machine as could be, but Will installed it and ran and maintained it.
He was never stumped. He always knew what to do. He was proud to be an Eskimo, and proud he could do things no white man would ever attempt. He made snowshoes, a thing few Eskimos ever needed. He got an old pair and dismantled them to find out how they were laced.
His memory was prodigious. When old Arthur Rich died, his son came to Rigolet to get Will to make a coffin, but he lost the measurements on the way, and it was a long way to go back. My dad said, “Make it good and big.” Will smiled and said he’d seen Arthur many times, and went ahead and made the coffin. I heard my dad say to the clerks that he hoped it would fit but it looked a mite tight. Young Arthur took the coffin, and next day my dad went to do the honours at old Arthur’s funeral. There was no minister or priest; the HBC man did it all. When he came back, he said that the coffin fit old Arthur like a tailored suit. Will smiled and said nothing. He knew.
The first airplane that ever landed on Labrador came to Rigolet and damaged an undercarriage on landing. The pilot, the famous Major Cotton, was in despair. No parts, no radio, no way in those days to get word out except by a long slow trip south by dog team which might take months.
Will, like the rest had never seen an airplane before, but my dad asked him to take a look. He was gone only a short time, lighted his forge and went to work. Cotton sat in the office, smoked cigars, cursed the weather and about drove my dad nuts. Will worked into the night and the next morning he brought the piece to the office. Not only was it the exact size and shape and the boltholes all in the right places, but it was painted the exact same colour as the broken piece. Cotton was completely amazed. They jacked up the plane, put the piece on, and it was exactly right. Cotton started his engines, taxied around and around, came back, shook hands with Will and the rest.
Before he left he said to my dad, “You should get that fellow an airplane. I’m sure he could fly it,” and my dad said, “He’d soon learn how.”
Will go mail this now. May 1986 give you, as the Newfies say, a fine time along, Maid.
You know, one of my most precious memories is of spring days when March has rained and snowed,25 and blowed, sorry… blown just doesn’t sound right for March, and the wind has been from the east, every draft laden with cold and everything is wet. The sheep, horses and cattle stand in corners. They like to be outside but there is no green grass. Even the goats are quiet. The chickens come out into their run then go back and cluster in the stable window just waiting.
No one is working outside. The men go down the road in oilskins and sou’westers to the net lofts and boat sheds. In there, it’s busy and warm and cheerful, but every eye goes to the window, every ear is listening for the sound of the west wind. Then one morning, it always seemed to be one morning, after milking a damp, disconsolate goat, after eating an egg laid by a bored hen, with a pale yolk because of the lack of green feed, there is a change on the way to school. At that age, you don’t connect your feelings with what you hear; the sea-booted men on the road shout to men going the other way: “Glass rising, bye.” Nothing more. Everyone knows a rising barometer will bring the west or south-west wind.
The change is instantaneous. It’s a known fact that people who live on islands do get that odd faculty to react to a change in pressure. Instead of rounders with a sodden ball on a saturated field, the boys stray to the corner of the hill to spy out the leaden gray Atlantic heaving against the shore but almost as languid as the weary cattle straggling along the lanes. Even the schoolmaster, who hardly ever comes outside at recess, strolls up the hill after the boys, stands talking to the older lads, making plans to take an afternoon off soon to clean the untidy schoolyard, mend the broken palings on the fence, maybe even paint the building some good Saturday.
The afternoon is unbearably long, but at last you are on the way home. The rain has stopped, the sky is still sullen, but the air is appreciably warmer. Along the lane, stable doors are open, boat sheds are busy, small craft are being hauled out to where the sun will reach them. They must be dry for painting. Men are saying, “The glass still up, bye, perhaps we’ll get the big voyage this year,” in the eternal human hope that comes after the long dark winter.
The goat bleats a more cheerful welcome and the muddy and frisky kids put more into their battles to beat you and your pail to more than their fair share of milk. Mathew’s placid cow, Rose, will be standing quietly outside the barn, content to wait in the warm, humid late afternoon.
No games in the lane after supper. Everyone is restless, and again we head for the hills where we can see the western skyline. Minutes before sunset, the huge red eye shows briefly on the horizon. Yes, there is a clearing, a thin band of clear sky. At dusk, on the way home, there will be men leaning on gates, smoking a last pipe, reluctant to go inside. Those who haven’t been up the hill say, “What’s she look like, bye?” You say, “A bit of clear sky wester,” and he nods his head and says around his pipe, “Aye, she’ll be here be marnin’.”
You feel you’ll never sleep this night, but boys being boys, you are no longer “stritched,” then you are asleep. Morning is here in an instant, and your first look out the window shows the sky neatly divided between laggardly cloud and clear blue sky. The sun is still behind the cloud, but seaward, long fingers of exquisite colour are probing the sides of the hills, brightening the water, making a fantastic floating castle of crystal and emerald of the lonely iceberg or two.
God help all schoolboys if this isn’t Saturday. No one could stand the books this day. The goats are milked and released. They trot briskly away followed by the kids. There are dozens of mock battles between animals that have never seen one another before. Calves bawl because for once mother does not return to a sheltered corner to stand all day patiently staring out at the rain. No, she purposely plods down the land and perforce the calf must follow the muddy road that leads to an unimagined new world.
Among the men, tweed caps and overalls are the order of the day. The sou’wester is relegated to a back pocket where it may droop, half in, half out, for a few days before being tossed to a shelf in the boat shed to languish till fall. It’s a high glass; it won’t fail, and by mid-morning the sky is clear from horizon to horizon. The air is like clear water, and the western water has a pebbled appearance, half mirage, half the distortion of the approaching wind.
Soon the first gusts arrive. Clothes that have hung forlorn on dozens of lines yawn and stretch and flap briskly. The wind swoops across the neck connecting the two islands and beats up a froth of ripples growing into frisky whitecaps. Boats and dories that have hung to their moorings, facing eastward for so long, swing around to the west and pull their tether the other way and begin nodding in the bright sunlight.
For the first hour, no one wants to go inside. Women stand in the lane holding babies, chatting in the warm sun, watching the youngsters instinctively head for the muddiest spot. The men bring their mid-morning cups of tea out into the road and collect in groups, all facing the west and the warming, drying wind.
Soon there is a burst of activity. I remember it as immediate, but it must have been days. There are nets and gear hung out to dry, sweet wood smoke from a dozen fires under bark pots full of nets, the strange mysterious smell of cutch boiling in the pots, cutch from the forests of South America. Paint brushes, hammers, saws, oars, bait pots, lobster traps, all the thousand and one things necessary for the fishery are everywhere. A clang as a dozen trawl grap-nets are flung outside to dry in the sun like so many rusty octopus, punt sails standing by the sheds flapping madly, peeled poles ready to repair the flakes. Smells of oakum, tar, the bitter coal tar odour and the fragrant scent of pine tar, paint, linseed oil, rope and spun yarn. Sounds of saws and hammers, coughs and sulky barks of motors long idle being tested. Men and boys everywhere with pieces of engines, batteries, coils, switches. Shouts and chatter as boat after boat slides down the rollers, immaculate in new paint, clean and dry, ready for the new season.
In no time, there is grass to be seen around fence posts and the cattle prospect the lanes finding the fresh green shoots. Soon they ignore the dry hay in the stables and come home to be milked and are immediately gone again. The calves and kids grow apace, become shy of people and more independent, the chickens luxuriate in the dry dust, and one after the other, “steal their nests” in some dry corner and try to incubate a clutch of eggs, protesting long and vigorously when they are discovered and moved to a safer spot where the weasel or half-wild cat won’t find their brood.
And we bedlammer boys spent all our hours around the boats and schooners that were outfitting for the Labrador fishery. All the time, that is, that we could beg or steal from our regular chores, fetching wood and coal, feeding the animals and chickens, errands to the store a mile away, in addition to school. The big piles of manure had to be carried to the meadows and spread, not a job anyone looked forward to. Some of us were smart enough to spread it regularly all winter, and the reward was sweet when we only had a load or two to wheel, while those who spent their time otherwise in winter had to slave in the warm spring sun while the more prudent or fortunate were away almost with the dawn to the trout pools.
And as spring drew on and school was a positive imposition, the mornings became sweeter and more delightful. The sun would come bursting out of the ocean before five. One would awake and hear the cattle moving around, the robins and blackbirds bickering over nesting sites. The screams from the ever hungry herring gulls on the reefs in the harbour, the dignified call of the great saddleback gull, and the limpid double note of the raven that never ceased to charm with its clear bell-like sound.
I couldn’t stay in bed after the sun was up. The fishermen of course, would have been long up, preparing for another day at the trawls, nets or traps. Our house was practically over the water. It stood on long stilts, shores we called them. A medium height person could walk in under the front and follow the slope of the shore almost to the back. In the fall, when the great orange moon was full, the tides would silently run under our living room floor and we could hear the water chuckling among the stones. I could look out of my window on the second floor and see water all around and up to the second and third step of the front door. I used to tie my boat up at the front steps, not on the neap tides, but on the full moon. The fact that water ran under the house gave me a wonderful feeling, one that has never left me.
There was a big unused wharf in front of our house, built many years before, when the house was owned by a schooner captain who tied his vessel there, right under my eye. It was a great place to observe the goings on all around the harbour. I’d get up early, tend to my chores, and long before anyone in the house was awake, I’d be sitting on the edge of the wharf watching the sculpins and flounders, rock cod and capelin going about their business. Once or twice I saw a seal ghosting along underwater, looking strangely snake-like compared to his chunky appearance on land. There were always a few ducks and guillemots swimming around, and in the clear water, I could see them using their wings to fly underwater while their ridiculous red feet paddled frantically to keep up.
The wharf was a great place to see and hear the harbour wake up. I’d see a man leave his house across the harbour and make several steps before the slam of the door came to me. He’d walk to the head of his wharf and stop to enjoy the morning and the clump of his sea boots would reach me after he had stopped. I’d hear chains rattling as trap boats were freed from their moorings, the thump of bait tubs on gang boards, the splash of water being bailed out of a boat, the rattle of oars, voices, all the magic noises of preparation.
Then the first motor would start. These were not multi-cylindered machines. They were one-lung, two-cycle workhorses, make-and-break ignition, fuel efficient, heavy, dependable. They lasted forever. It was common for a man to own and operate his grandfather’s old Meanus or Lalthrope.
It seemed that the first bark was the signal for engines to start up in every corner. They all headed down the harbour past our dock and took one of three entrances, tickles, they were called, because the bottom tickled the bottom of a boat perhaps. In an instant, from dead silence, the amphitheatre of the harbour would be a cacophony of sound.
No two engines made the same noise. We knew them all in the dark as well as in the daylight. Mr. Ackroyd away up in the upper harbour had a big old Meanus, and it would go bellowing ill-temperedly out the Wester tickle. Caves’ eight Acadia, with its slow tiny bark, would go straight out the middle tickle; Taylor’s Hubbard had a wheezy note. It seemed that the man and his engine bore one another a resemblance. Cheerful Mr. Walbourne and his chuckling Adams were nearly always first away.
Coffin had a quiet little Perfection, perfectly matched to its owner. He fished alone. He didn’t talk much, but every morning he’d cut close to the wharf, standing up with the tiller between his knees. He’d take the pipe out of his mouth and give me a wink. If my mother wanted a fish for supper, I’d stand on the wharf in the afternoon and Coffin would throw a fat cod or a small salmon deftly at my feet. The little Perfection seemed to slide that boat along by magic. There was almost no bow wave, no wake, but it was one of the fastest boats in the harbour.
Sheppherd was nearly always last to get going. He had a compulsion to be one of the first out past the harbour islands but he hardly ever made it. He had one of the most modern engines on the whole island. Maybe too modern, it was a six-H.P. Acadia. Unlike all the other dependable old Acadia make-and-breaks, Sheppherd’s was a jump-start affair. Though faster than the other types, it was affected by dampness. The trembler coil and sparkplug would be wet with condensation every morning and the high tension spark would short out in all directions.
I’d hear Sheppherd cranking his engine. He lived only a few doors down the harbour. Crank, prime, crank, prime, curse, crank, until finally it would emit one sulky bang and die. By now Sheppherd was frantic. Half the boats had already started, more priming and more cranking and much swearing. It would catch, run a few revolutions, and relapse into silence, but each time it got a bit warmer, a bit drier, until finally it would keep going. Belching out smoke and misfiring, it would go out the harbour making a prodigious fuss until the plug and wiring would dry from the heat and Sheppherd’s six would settle down to an even beat and behave all day.
At one time or another, every hotshot engineer in the bay would try his hand on Sheppherd’s six. They all failed. There was only one way to start it. Sheppherd’s way. As the sound of the six died away down the Easter tickle, I could fancy that I heard an exhalation of breath all around the harbour from those fortunates who didn’t have to get up just yet, but who held their breath till Sheppherd got going. He could easily have changed his engine for a make-and-break. He never did. It was his conversation piece and many were the wondrous tales he had to tell about its performance.
They were great old machines, all gone now in favour of the querulous outboard with its whine, and discontented ways. Fishermen have to carry specialized tools to fix them. The old two-cycles needed little in the way of equipment. Long, gloomy John Payne was asked what tools he had to keep his Atlantic in such perfect condition. He said, “My son, all’s I got is a zaw voile (saw file) and a haxe (axe) and I hardly ever uses the voile neider.” Not all that far fetched.
When, after years of service, one of the engines required journal bearings, it would be hoisted on the wharf, turned over and the base detached. Then with a bar of hard soap, a lump of babbit and a round wooden dowel that came with the engine, the owner would run a new set of bearings and be away on time the next morning. There wasn’t much to know about them. We kids knew it all by the time we were as tall as the flywheel.
And so it went, delicious morning after delicious morning. We were bathed in sensations. Yes, there were rainy days but who minds a rainy day in summer? The fishing went on just the same, warm water never hurt anyone. I only remember the odd rainy day when something out of the ordinary happened. Nothing much ever did. Only one experience so vivid I still feel almost the same fear as the day it happened half a century ago.
The bishop26 had arrived in a nice little cabin boat, a beautiful thing, built especially to transport his Lordship. It had nice cabins, a galley, chart room, all the best, and the dining area was right under a large skylight. One could look down if the skylight were open and see the prelate at his meal. We were all interested in the lovely craft, and it happened one day we were around the wharf at noon and the smells coming up though the skylight indicated that the bishop was about to have a fine meal. Of course, we wouldn’t have dared peek under the skylight. Bishops have a way of turning bad kids into buck goats. But an unbeliever from the other end of the island decided to worm his way along the deckhouse just to get a good look into the cabin, and he did just that. Edgar Oake, who is now probably a senior citizen and a pillar of the community, was seized with an impulse, and he grabbed poor Tom by the ankles and elevated them as high as he could. Tom, not expecting such treachery, was taken unawares and his head and shoulders slipped under the skylight. Edgar saw the danger and hove back right heartily, too heartily, because Tom’s loose-fitting rubber boots came off in Edgar’s hands, and Tom went crashing down onto the bishop’s table.
Has your heart ever stopped in mid-beat? Have you ever suddenly become absolutely unable to move? As if it were only days ago, I can still feel the taste of blood in my mouth. Fear, absolute terror. There was a dead silence, and as far as we were concerned, in all probability a dead Tom. Edgar was the guilty one, but we knew that our various punishments would equal or surpass his. The local doctor happened to be dining with the bishop. He knew us all; there was no escape. Every second we expected to see the bishop’s head come out of the companionway and hear the awful words of the prayer for turning kids into goats.
Edgar was standing over the skylight with Tom’s boots in his hands. We expected to see him blasted into a human torch and he expected worse. He recovered first. With a howl, a scream that could have been heard ten miles offshore, an unforgettable expression of a monstrous terror, he flung the boots into the cabin after their owner, and tore up the gangway headed literally for the hills, and we tore after him.
There was a place, way up on the North side hill, almost a cave. Some instinct, perhaps that of a hunted animal, directed our feet there. I know it was no conscious effort of mine. My feet weighed a ton each, and while my breath was coming short and my heart was bursting, I was moving at a turtle’s pace. After agonizing ages, we got to the cave. There we could look down and see the yacht.
There wasn’t a soul to be seen. Tom’s headless body didn’t hang in the rigging, fire and brimstone weren’t pouring along the wharf. In fact, it was a very pleasant scene in all. We waited and we watched. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. We came to the inescapable conclusion that our human bullet had killed the bishop and his guest, and a final ricochet had killed the cook. What other explanation could there be?
One by one, we took our ways home, expecting dire retribution the moment we opened the door, but there was nothing. No one said a word. We knew the blow would fall, that we were living on borrowed time. Suppertime came and we were fed as usual, no bread and water.
The blow fell after supper. Everyone was to get ready to go to the church to witness a confirmation service. Everyone meant every one. There was no avoiding it, not crippling illness, nothing short of death, so we made our last toilet, and started out. Edgar came out of his gate with his parents as we passed. We joined forces. He had no more information than we did. The church was more than a mile away, but never did a road slip under my feet faster. We were there before my heart beat more than twice; in fact, I don’t think it had made two normal beats since Tom disappeared.
At the church, the usual crowd, the usual greetings and finally the bell started to ring. Toll, I should say. Permission to go inside with Edgar was sternly refused. Too many times we had been caught skylarking during the sermon.
The church was quiet and serene. No candles, no gold and purple, lots of pure white. The minister was standing in his usual place, looking preoccupied. I guess the bishop weighed him down a little. No sign of the latter, no bank of flowers, no coffin. All those to be confirmed sitting quietly and a bit smugly up front.
The bell stopped ringing, the organ started, and through the vestry door came the bishop, alive, very much so, not even damaged as far as we could see. We felt relief of course, but a horrible frustration too. The service passed in a daze. When it was over and we walked with all decorum to the door where the minister and the bishop waited, we expected to be struck dead or turned into pillars of salt. All we got was an absentminded pat on the head and an admonition to be good and study the catechism, and we were free, free to race home to discuss these things that had come to pass.
By the little corner store, who should we meet but Tom, in his ill-fitting boots, alive and hearty, with his jaw bulging with the largest bulls-eyes that the store boasted. Tom, the ever-broke, feeding on the fat, sugar anyway, of the land!
The story came out. As he started his slide into eternal damnation, he managed to grab a heavy curtain rigged off of the table to protect the bishop from the draft down the companionway. He came upright and hung there like a monkey while his boots clattered down, landing on the table, which fortunately, hadn’t been set. Poor Tom, he thought the end of the world had come. He was speechless as the doctor lifted him down and detached his frozen fingers from the curtain.
He was from the other religious camp across the island, a fact that was apparent to the bishop the minute he opened his mouth. That kindly man had no intention of scaring the child any further, and with the help of the doctor, succeeding in convincing him that Protestant bishops don’t eat Catholic kids, nor even turn them into goats. The story came out, probably complete with names, and the bishop realized that Tom was more sinned against than sinning. The cook was called, a plate set out, and Tom, the renegade from the opposite parish, sat with the doctor and the bishop and made his meal. As he left, he was presented with a whole dollar, an unheard of sum to us all, even more so to Tom, who was one of a large family where dollars were rare indeed.
Nothing more happened. The bishop soon sailed away to visit the rest of his mission. I’ll confess that I felt relief when that little ship left. I never did end up in front of that or any other bishop for confirmation. Maybe my experiences had something to do with that, I don’t know. All I do know is I’ve never been comfortable with bishops, any sort.
Bishops or no, I wish there was a way to go back to the place as it was, to the boy that I was. It won’t be, can’t be, but if I had to give a precious gift to a child, I’d give a springtime in an outport exactly as we had them sixty years ago.
I am writing something up about outports, but it made me want to tell you about it first. It’s about when I was ten and in awe of ships, and anything to do with the sea. Once I was on the deck of a little schooner and her owner wanted to replace a flag halliard. He threw one end to me and said, “You’m big enough, go aloft now and reeve he in the main pole for me.”
I took the end and, hardly breathing, fear and pride mixed, I climbed into the backstays. There were no ratlines, just two wires angling toward the masthead. I twisted one leg into each stay and started to pull myself aloft. I had been at the cross-trees before, just gone up, stayed a while and slid back down, but never with a flag line tied to my overalls.
I had to scramble up to the masthead, climb over the cross-trees, which I had never tried before, stand on the narrow strips, shimmy up the topmast and reeve the flagline. I was scared, but I wanted to go.
Reaching the cross-trees was easy. As long as I didn’t look down, I was okay. Standing there with shaking knees on the cross-trees I embraced the topmast, and if ever I prayed, and I never did, I prayed that I could climb the twenty feet of smooth pole. I was standing on twenty feet of thin air with twenty feet to go. I wrapped arms and legs around the spar and started up. The small gold-painted ball at the top looked miles away. I did look down, and saw that the captain seemed unconcerned, chatting away to another man.
As I reached the top, I was conscious of a bursting feeling in my head and lungs. I must have still been holding my breath. I had a bad moment when I saw that the line had been caught around a ring bolt in the deck, and when the captain shouted, “You gonna come down boy, or we goin’ to have to paint you up thar?” I tried to say casually as possible that I’d be down as soon as he cleared out his end of the line. Back down on the deck, he sent me back up, but only to the cross-trees, to do something else. He simply gave me orders as he would to any other seaman. I thought that day that I had taken the first step to becoming a fisherman, and was highly proud of that, and proud later to tell someone when asked where I had been, that I had rove a couple of halliards for Skipper Doyle. He knew how scared I’d been though, had seen that I needed a bit more confidence, and had let me build it up.
Some years later he and I suffered through a brutal day that saw one boat wrecked and several others saved by our united efforts, and I treasure the memory of him saying to me, “Damn good man in a boat.” I can only give credit to him and to my father, both good men in a boat, and both very patient.
In Fogo, the schooners would be brought in close to the wharves and were hove down by the mast heads (turned on their sides), in pirate fashion, to have their bottoms scraped of barnacles and their seams recaulked. There it would be, the great ship lying on her beams end, her masts parallel to the water while the men swarmed over the exposed part of the bottom. How it felt to walk up to a set of cross-trees about a foot off the wharf that had formerly been sixty feet over my head. To remember the thrill of touching the same cross-trees after a heart-constricting climb from the deck just last fall. To stand there and remember the feeling of looking from that height to the deck, to see the actual shape of the vessel that was not possible from anywhere else. And to walk along a keel that had travelled trackless miles of the deep Atlantic. There is no way to express the way a boy will feel standing on the side of a ship’s keel, a heart swelling experience.
And all I can do is put it all on paper, and try as I will, the words can’t express the sights, sounds and smells of that time on Fogo.
How does one respond to thirty-one pages of adventures written with a magic touch that makes them real and reminds one of the days when Peter Pan and his alligators and pirates were so easy to comprehend and envy. Well, I am in that position. I have read your letter over and over, and of course, it is always new, and only you could have written it. I told Carol Preston about it and said pretty soon I’d have a book, and she said, “Why not? Call it Letters From Vanuatu.” Or maybe when you come back, you will write your own book. And on that point, when are you coming back?
I sense your commitment and I know it will be a wrench to come away. I wish we could have a face-to-face talk. That may not be easy. I’d love to go and there is little in the way except Muriel’s health. Right now she could never do it. Travelling and eating strange foods and drinking different water would be impossible for her. If she improves, we may visit her family in BC. I’d love to go on from Vancouver to Vanuatu myself, but I know she’d feel badly as she’d love to go. So unless there is a change, the project will have to go on hold.
At night now, just lying here, little windows open, I am back watching a happening that has not been in my mind for years. Suddenly it’s there, bright and clear. A clear warm spring day. Kutjucak and I were sitting in the bright sun just looking at the hundreds of birds sitting on and hovering above a large open water area. We had all the game we needed and we were not hunting. Suddenly twenty or thirty feet away, an old monster of a walrus broke the surface of the water. Somewhere he had lost one tusk and he had a queer lopsided look, but the expression on his wrinkled face and in his red eyes was so astonished to see us there, that we shouted with laughter, whereupon he spit out a mouthful of clams that he had intended to eat and floundered away, apparently indignant.
But what I remember isn’t the walrus so much. It’s the warm sun on my face, the wonderful clear light over the land and the ice, and the good feeling of just being alive at that time and place. One memory among hundreds. I am lucky that I did and saw those things, so many and so varied.
You know I could have worked as an accountant or something just as dull. Thank God I didn’t. People who work indoors all their life should get extra pension benefits to compensate for the things they never enjoy. And I feel that every kid who reaches eighteen should be sent into the North for a period, every one, just so they get to see what we have up there and how precious it is, feel the peace that is there. You know parts of it aren’t that far away,
I recently found an old book, published in 1907, written by a priest that describes Labrador more fully than anything I have ever seen, particularly the scenery. The fiords north of Hamilton Inlet, the wild life, the ice, yes the ice, the bergs are always fantastic, but the drift ice too has incredible shapes and colours.
The original J.B. Williams, the shaving soap man, visited North Labrador for thirty seasons, because, as he said, it wasn’t tamed. There were serene days of sailing along the coast in his little yacht, Nimrod. There were blustery days when perhaps the survival of his ship and crew were in doubt, but there was always a cove or a harbour where he could shelter. For thirty years he came, and he never tired of it. Best of all he told my dad, no one knew or cared if he was Williams or just another person. He paid for what he could and accepted the kindness and friendship of the people because there was no way he could pay for that.
Their complete indifference to who he was amused him. He called to see one old settler year after year and picked up a few smoked salmon. Austen never knew, never asked, his name, couldn’t read so didn’t know the name of the yacht. He always referred to Williams as “that old man with the black yacht, wi’ two topmasts.” Williams was a very old man when I last saw him in Hebron. He said that nine months of city life was only bearable because he could look forward to three on Labrador. Said he’d looked the world over for a place to spend his quiet weeks and Labrador had what he needed. He used a tiny portion of what we have.
No, I don’t want to see huge money-making resorts. I’d like to see little coves where people can come to rest and feel the warmth of the spring sun, experience the absolute serenity and perhaps know the bite of the fall gales and see the Atlantic on the rampage in fall. They would see the great seas assault the land as they have done for centuries, and perhaps know the insignificance of man as frost overcomes the sea and the ice forms a highway across the fiords. The snow mantles the land so that the hills stand out clean and white against the incredible blue of the sky. If a person’s soul cannot be healed there, then there is no hope.
Once I stood on the top of Cape Mugford at midnight, bathed in and surrounded by the aurora. I and my dogs had climbed a mountain, entered a valley through a pass at the very top. The aurora flashed like a silent explosion right into the valley. For a moment there were no separate colours. The light was white, much like a modern florescent, and there was a clearly visible corona above. The dogs stopped and we stood transfixed.
In a few seconds, a lovely warm rose tone spread through the white, almost a blush, incredibly delicate. The light seemed to be about fifty feet up and concentrated between the rocky sides of the pass. Suddenly the corona appeared to oscillate and all the normal tones of the aurora were visible. They seemed to interweave. A beautiful green would shimmer in and its vertical or lateral movement would be matched by a rose or purple and the colours would coruscate together, then blend into one another.
Then I noticed that the light body was dropping, almost imperceptibly. Where, at first I could see a clear horizon all around under the lights, I could now see colours between me and the surrounding cliffs. The dogs became quite uneasy. Normally during a stop after a climb, they would attend to various personal matters, then lie in the snow and rest. Now, against all training, they came back to me and clustered around. They were not afraid, but they seemed to realize this was something far out of the ordinary. They stood, heads erect, and tails, in the Eskimo dog fashion, tightly curled over their backs.
The lights continued to drop and the intensity of their colours increased. The little valley became a bowl of shimmering skeins of fragile light rapidly changing in a bewildering kaleidoscope of coloured motion.
Then I noticed they were touching the dogs’ fur. Now the dogs’ hackles were raised and their manes erect. The lights played along their backs delicately, not touching the heavy underfur at all, just fingering the raised guard hairs. Each dog was outlined in colour, haloed. The dogs were not aware of it. The colours would fade to one colour or to nothing, then ignite again.
I was wearing a caribou fur kuletak and I saw that the lights were playing along the sleeves. I had caribou mittens, and if I touched them, fingertip to fingertip, the lights would pass from one mitten to the other, continuously changing in colour and position. I removed the mittens and the colour would not touch my bare flesh. I could see them around the fur on my hood.
There was no sound. I’ve heard of the whispering of the northern lights, but they were silent. I could hear the breathing of the dogs and my own, and the little crunchings of the snow as the dogs moved, but no other sound.
The dogs were becoming physically agitated, so I stood up and gave them the word to go. They started down the valley toward the sea, and for a while, I was too busy with the komatik to look back. At the first level place, I stopped the team and turned to look. I could see the pass we had come through hung with iridescent curtains and that the sky for miles was brilliant with the aurora. Even the Bishop’s Mitre on the top of Cape Mugford was crested with a more beautiful crown than any pope ever wore, at least on earth.
There wasn’t a soul for heaven knows how many miles. The only visible living creatures the dogs and myself. It was a moving experience that I’ll never forget.
That land is empty now, abandoned, and the original people have been moved south where they live in settlements with the whites and travel by snarling ski-doos across the snow that is torn and disfigured by more and more mechanical toys, and where the dog team is only a memory. These days the kids have never experienced a day behind a team over a pure surface where the track of a fox or ptarmigan is the only sign that other life exists. They grow up not knowing that the quest for meat to survive is a contest, not butchery from a fast-moving and tireless motor toboggan.
Am I saying that I’d like to be thirteen again? Well, those years were so good. There was nothing in the world that one wanted outside of what we had. Who knows, memory being what it is, perhaps I enjoy it more now, but at least I had the sense at the time to hope that things would never change, and they didn’t really. I grew up, went North to a different land, but the things I’d learnt were still valid and I was supremely happy. People talk about the terrible loneliness of the Arctic. I never experienced it. I didn’t know how to be lonely. Nine months absolutely alone at Wolstenholme is still a wonderful memory.
24 With CUSO in Vanuatu, I trained pre-school teachers at the Port Vila campus of the University of the South Pacific (Univesiti Blong Saot Pasifik), main campus Fiji. The Vanuatu campus is on the main Island of Efate, one of over 80 islands. Thanks to the Canadian High Commission in Australia, I travelled by small planes, aluminum runabouts and dugout canoes to visit the students, their families, villages and schools on their own islands.
25 This is a memory from one year on Fogo Island, during his father’s furlough. He was about ten or eleven.
26 This was most likely William Charles White (August 31, 1865–June 14, 1943) who was the fifth Anglican bishop of Newfoundland, 1918–1942. He was the first native-born Newfoundlander to become bishop.