Writing is not necessarily a lonely occupation. As Writers in Residence at Memorial University, Kevin Major and Marilyn Bowering read early drafts of this work and provided helpful insight. I also thank members of the Newfoundland Writers’ Guild, Gordon Rodger’s Work-in-Progress workshop at the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador AGM in 1994, and Carmelita McGrath’s Advanced Fiction Writing course offered by Continuing Studies at Memorial University—especially Gordon, Carmelita, Libby Creelman, and Shree Ghatage. I also thank Peter Carver for his editorial skill.
The Federal-Provincial Cooperation Agreement on Cultural Industries gave me a grant to visit Toronto in 1995. During that time and after, I received valuable assistance from staff at the City of Toronto Archives, the Metro Toronto Central Reference Library, the Metro Urban Affairs Library, the Deer Park Public Library, the Toronto Harbour Commission Archives, and the Ontario Jewish Archives. Thanks especially to Michele Dale and Dr. Stephen Speisman from those last two respectively. Closer to home, I must thank the Folklore and Language Archive, Memorial University of Newfoundland and the Centre for Newfoundland Studies—especially its wonderful director, Anne Hart, who also read a draft of the novel and provided factual help and kind support. A conversation with Ken Oppel on the state of YA literature inadvertently led me to the title of this book.
My mother’s extended family shared their memories with me for most of my childhood, and in a more formal way in 1977, when I interviewed them about coming to Canada. My mother Isabel McNaughton, her sisters Jean Shepherd, Barbara McCormack, and Janet Young, and her brother Joe McIvor, all helped me more than I can say. All but my mother have died since then. I hope this book would have pleased them.
“My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose” is by Robert Burns. “She’s Like a Swallow” is a Newfoundland folksong, collected by Maud Karples in 1929. The lyrics reproduced here are from the author’s memory. The poem, “The Sick Rose,” by William Blake, is from Songs of Experience. I first read the folktale about the jar of tears in Canadians of Old by Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, translated by Charles G.D. Roberts. The story of the domestic who shot her employer and was acquitted was taken from Genevieve Leslie’s “Domestic Service in Canada, 1880-1920,” in Women at Work, 1850-1930. Also useful were Ruth Frager’s Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity and Gender in the Jewish Labour Movement of Toronto, 1900-1939, Stephen Speisman’s The Jews of Toronto: A History to 1937, and Ronald Noseworthy’s 1971 unpublished MA thesis, “A Dialect Survey of Grand Bank, Newfoundland.”
Finally, I thank my husband Michael because he never reads a word I write and is (almost) always on my side.