CHAPTER TEN

That first day of class with Mrs. Beaton was a call for me to wake up and get on with being a kid. It shucked me out of my shell and into the daily routine of living and learning at my new school in Halifax. I spoke with other kids and the staff and, lots of times, I spoke first.

Two doors down from my homeroom was a class of junior kids, Grade One, I think. Having younger brothers and sisters of my own I never walked by without peeking in on the little ones. One morning, when Mrs. Beaton was home sick, I had a free period and was ambling along the hallway and doing the usual peeking-in when, suddenly, the door opened. It was Mrs. Casey, the Grade One teacher.

“Come in, come in,” she insisted, “I could use some help this morning if you’re not busy.” Help, I thought, me, help a teacher? She introduced me as “Robert, a boy from Grade Three,” like the class should be impressed and, of course, they actually were: all four of them.

For the next half hour or so I helped the teacher pass around handfuls of miniature objects. There were little telephone poles, church steeples, houses, garden tools, and more.

I could tell right away that these kids were either totally blind or at least far more visually impaired than I was. While they talked over what the objects might be, I remember thinking how great it was that they were here, learning, laughing, and having fun, not somewhere else, up close and still not seeing the blackboard.

As each object was passed around, it was carefully examined by all hands and from all sides while Mrs. Casey explained what it was. Some were easily guessed at, but most were unknown to these kids and some to me as well. It struck me that with poor eyesight, you could bump into a telephone pole all day long and never know what was at the top or how they joined up, or the way houses are aligned on a street or how a chimney could possibly sit upright on a slanted roof.

The kids asked a thousand questions: “What’s this pipe at the top of the chimney?” and questions of the like. Hearing the questions taught me to be less timid and more inquisitive about things I couldn’t see. Back home I was always embarrassed in class to ask about something everyone else could see.

Being there and helping the teacher: that was me, coming out from behind the shadows. The feeling of confidence that came with me that morning was another big piece of the puzzle, the one you don’t know is missing until you feel it.

A month or so later there was a terrible coal-mining disaster at Springhill, Nova Scotia. Seventy-five miners perished more than 4,000 feet below the surface. Of the many who were saved, some had been trapped there for as long as nine days without food or water. Thanks to my radio and thanks to my grandmother, I knew everything about the “bump,” as they called it.

There was also a song about it on the radio, which I learned with two other boys from my class. We were down in the basement rehearsing the words one day when Mr. Legge, the Principal, overheard us. “Would you boys mind singing that song for one of my teachers?” he asked. I thought for sure I’d mind and I think the other kids did, too, but this was the Principal. A boy nearby was giggling because we had to sing for a teacher.

That teacher was the same Mrs. Casey with the little telephone poles; the same Mrs. Casey who, we came to learn later on, had lost family and close friends in the mining disaster at Springhill.

She cried as we sang but she loved the song and invited us back to sing it two more times that week. I hardly ever spoke to teachers before Mrs. Beaton and Mrs. Casey, but now I was adding and subtracting sums for one and singing to another.

The time outside of school was long at first, mostly on weekends. However, Mr. Hawes did his best to fill in some of the time. He knew everything about fun and games for kids and didn’t just watch, he often pitched in, throwing the ball or running the bases. If you couldn’t see him, you could hear the keys rattling in his pocket.

He organized baseball games on the School playground, treasure hunts on a nearby hill, and games in the Gym with prizes for everyone. He’d take us to Point Pleasant Park and let us run free among the fortresses or on the beach. He even took us swimming in the freezing cold waters of the North West Arm. And as to “gold in them thar hills,” I believed every word of it, no matter how many rusty nails and bottle caps got in the way.

It was during these outings that I saw, firsthand, what kids with vision problems could do, whether baseball, soccer, bowling, skating, swimming, or just fooling around. A few rule changes, here and there, and almost any game becomes possible. From that I learned to think likewise about jobs in the workplace, when I eventually got there.

The School had no religion of its own, apart from helping us. But most of the kids did, in denominations I didn’t know existed. There were Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Somewhere in downtown Halifax there was a church to match. For me, it was St. Mary’s Basilica on Spring Garden Road.

I marched there for Mass every Sunday with a parade of other Catholics from the School, and likewise for confession every second Saturday. I tried not to sin too much so as not to get the dreaded penance of walking the Stations of the Cross instead of a few Hail Marys. But, in the end, whether a big sin or a little one, you might still get the Stations of the Cross. I never did figure it out.

We were so reliable as young parishioners that the first two rows in the Church were reserved every Sunday just for us Catholics, with boys from the School on one side and girls on the other. And there was that time when one of our kids with Tourette Syndrome stood up in the middle of the sermon and yelled the worst of profanities at the priest. Imagine the penance for that; imagine me, in charge that morning with no idea of what to do. I waited, and, soon enough, he sat quiet and the priest continued.

One of the priests from the same parish came to the School a few nights to teach what most of us already knew about the birds and the bees. One of the boys asked him, seriously, if he knew what a “cherry” was, and without a moment’s delay, he replied like he, too, was serious: “I’m sorry, but I don’t know anymore, there’s not enough cherries in St. Mary’s parish to decorate a cake.” I certainly enjoyed that one for a time.

The same priest started a Catholic prayer meeting at the School and I was told to attend. At one of these meetings, to my great surprise, we were saying prayers for my mother who was having a baby. I knew that; but I didn’t know, until the priest said so, that she was in some difficulty and needed our prayers. And that triggered a new kind of homesickness, one filled with worry. I was told the next day that all had gone well at the hospital, so back I went, from thoughts of home to life at the School.

We got nickels in pancakes on Pancake Day, cookies most nights of the week, and thanks to Chris Stark’s parents from the Valley, and other good souls as well, all the students had boxes and boxes of apples and sometimes pears to start off the year.

I got a box of goodies from home on Halloween with candy kisses, hard and soft; caps for my cap gun; and packages of little firecrackers that do their best work in ashtrays filled with beach sand. I got punished for doing that and wasn’t allowed outside for a whole week, “off bounds” they called it; but really, it wasn’t that bad: no one even thought to ask for the rest of the firecrackers.

I also got letters from Mom and my Grandmother every few weeks and never without a few dollars. I never failed to write back and say “thank you,” although hardly ever adding more words than “Hi, hope all is well, everything is fine here.” And yet, there was lots of news to tell, all the time.

The School wasn’t home, but the staff—most of them—did what they could to make it as much like home as possible. They did a lot more than I noticed or even appreciated at the time. I suppose, as kids, we took a lot for granted, not thinking that Mr. Hawes didn’t have to take us out; that Mr. Allen didn’t have to read to us at morning Assembly; or that no one had to provide cookies at night or clean tables, neatly set, for every meal in the dining room.

Of course, being young accounts for most of that, but still, I might have been more grateful if I had known then that, back in the late 1800s, the kids at the School tended a cow, grew vegetables, and raised chickens and pigs, in part to learn husbandry—and for the kitchen. In and around the same time, a young girl died of a bad flu at the school, far away from home and family. I’m glad I didn’t know that whenever I was sick or lonely. We were fortunate, all right!