Chapter 6

BONNE BAY AT A ZENITH (1900-1922)

THROUGH THE EYES OF THE CAMERA

Up the shore from the Haliburton house, poplars and balsams lined the road. The houses were handsome, well painted and contained within neat gardens with painted picket fences. The women vied with each other in growing flowers, and the pleasantest pastime of the village was to walk here to enjoy the displays of lilac, sweet william, roses and nasturtiums. Kitchen gardens grew “French rhubarb”—the kind with long green stalks full of acidy juice—carrots, parsnips, cabbage and rows of potatoes.

Word of its beauty having spread, Bonne Bay was visited by several accomplished photographers around the beginning of the twentieth century. One of these was Robert E. Holloway, who sailed in on the Home in 1901, and took several well-known pictures. He wrote “The glories of Bonne Bay are deserving of more than a passing glance from the steamer’s deck, and the view of the towering hills beneath which the steamer’s wharf nestles, is extremely beautiful. The settlement of Bonne Bay lies at the foot of a high range of bare and treeless red serpentine, whose colour suddenly changes in the lower part into the dense dark green of spruce and fir, and whose upper portion usually carries a cap of snow, which survives the heat of summer. . . . The Bay affords perfect protection to shipping, and one may constantly see both British and French men-of-war lying at anchor. . . . Bonne Bay also furnishes excellent cod fishing, and the fish may be caught by the amateur a few hundred yards from the house. . . . When the road from Deer Lake is completed and arrangements have been made for the comfort of the visitors, Bonne Bay has an assured future as a tourist resort. It is an ideal spot for organizing yachting and other trips . . . which can never prove monotonous.”

Fig. 28.Above: Bonne Bay people at play: picnic scenes at Birchy Head in 1908. Below: Southeast Arm in 1909 (Woody Point Collection).

Local people and travellers passing through took many snapshots that give us a better idea of the people, places, and buildings of Bonne Bay, though for some of the older residents life had been so hard that the old photographs brought back unhappy memories. “Burn them, take them away,” said one man from Curzon Village who remembered those times. For others, the memories were much more pleasant (Fig. 28).

In Fig. 29, taken in 1907, we see the view from Curzon Village looking east to the lighthouse point (the original Woody Point of Cook), with the newly built Methodist church standing tall in the distance on the right side of the view. The Haliburton House, built in 1900, looms dark over the other houses in Fig. 30, which looks south from near the lighthouse to Shoal Brook in the distance. The white building on the right in the distance is the Anglican Church of the Epiphany, opened in 1884. The masts and smokestack of a steamer can be seen at Hollahan’s wharf, perhaps unloading groceries and taking on board a load of the summer’s catch.

Fig. 29. Curzon Village in 1907, looking toward Woody Point (GMNP Collection)

The British chart surveyed between 1893 and 1896 shows a “conspicuous white cross” about 250 feet to the south of St. Patrick’s Church. However, in photographs of the village taken in 1900 and 1910 the cross is absent, reappearing by 1919 and continuing through the 1920s (Fig. 31), an obvious feature some thirty feet high towering over the trees, then disappearing for good by July, 1933. Few residents today, if any, remember the cross, or why it was there. Another guide for boats coming in the Bay would hardly have been needed adjacent to the high steeple of St. Patrick’s, so presumably it was erected for some religious purpose. It is strange that the 1986 edition of the Government of Canada Sailing Directions for Newfoundland states that the cross was still standing then, though it had disappeared more than half a century earlier.

A fine view of the Anchorage, taken around 1901, is seen in Fig. 32. The large white building on the right is Stephen Taylor’s store. The other large building to its left is probably what was referred to as the (Jersey) Room. Fig. 33 looks north from Shoal Brook to Woody Point in the distance. Above the road in the middle distance on the hill, the Conqueror Orange Lodge, built in 1896, can be faintly seen. Across the Bay in Norris Point, Fig. 34 shows the view from the lower slopes of Neddy Hill. The Harding house is the largest one, and on the side of the building to its left are two seal skins pinned up to dry.³¹

Fig. 30.Woody Point around 1901. Modified from a Holloway photo (MUN Geography Collection HPNL 0787).

Fig. 31. The mysterious white cross looms to the left of St. Patrick’s Church. Modified from Rowe (1988), who labels it “probably 1920 or before.”

THE ARMY, THE CLERGY, AND THE SCHOOLS

Just before the turn of the century, a new religious denomination arrived in Bonne Bay, the Salvation Army. The Army, which held its first service—“opened fire” in Army speak—in St. John’s in 1885, was first introduced to the West Coast in 1897 or 1898, when the Bonne Bay Corps was inaugurated under the charge of Lieutenant Emma Rideout. This appears to have been centred around the Shoal Brook-Birchy Head area. A second Corps was begun in Rocky Harbour a year later under Captain Elizabeth Sheppard, and another in Trout River in 1900. The Army also gained ground rapidly in Stanleyville, where by 1901, nineteen of the forty-eight residents were Salvationists. That the two Bonne Bay congregations were first headed by women was quite a departure from the usual male-dominated clergy. A church was built in Shoal Brook around 1897, near the present-day United Church, with later a school, graveyard, and barracks in the area. However, as late as 1930, the community was using the Shoal Brook Orange Hall for a special revival meeting with visiting officers. Under the headline “An isolated outpost catches fire,” the account of this visit also reported several “cottage meetings” in local homes, into one of which crowded eighty men and women. “When leaving, the people’s parting words were, ’We cannot do without the Army.’” Yet some fifteen years or so later, the congregation in Shoal Brook disappeared altogether when those remaining converted to Pentecostalism, and there is now little trace left of the Salvation Army’s presence along the South Arm. The Rocky Harbour congregation proved more faithful, meeting until near the end of the twentieth century.

Fig. 32. Looking north around 1901 across the “Anchorage”: the old name for the cove at Woody Point (modified portion of a Holloway photo in MUN Geography Collection HPNL 0788).

During the latter part of Rev. Hollands’s term, in early 1902, services were first held in the new Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd in Norris Point (Fig. 35). He was succeeded in Bonne Bay by Thomas Hiscock, who served from 1904 to 1907, during which time the Church of St. Matthew in Rocky Harbour was rebuilt, though consecrated only in 1911. By 1919, local people were claiming that this was the “best building in the mission . . . thoroughly well-finished . . . roomy, comfortable, and in every way suited to the needs” of the town. Hiscock was succeeded by Isaac Parsons (1907-1912), W. Higgitt (1912-1913), T. P. Massiah (1912), and George Maidment (1913-1928).

Fig. 33. Shoal Brook to Woody Point around 1900 (MUN Geography Collection HPNL 0794)

Fig. 34. Norris Point around 1900 (CNS 14.02.001)

Fig. 35. Church of the Good Shepherd, Norris Point, in early twentieth century (Woody Point Collection)

Fig. 36. The Birchy Head school chapel. Above: Sunday School teachers Cora Young, Mabel (Caines) Goosney, and Roland Roberts. Below: the school-chapel from the other side, during a “time” in 1908 (GMNP Collection).

Fig. 36 shows the Anglican school-chapel of Birchy Head in 1908: this may well have been the building in which the Rev. Rule held his first service in 1871. Behind it was the teacher’s house, shown in the lower photo. In the background of the upper photo is the foundation for the first church here. This later became the Church of the Resurrection, which was opened on Easter Sunday, April 12, 1914, and consecrated a year later. A new Methodist school was opened in Curzon Village in 1899, the year a start was made to put up a proper church on a site just above the earlier chapel. This was finally completed in 1906—a grand co-operative effort by the Methodist community (Fig. 37).

The various clerics in Bonne Bay continued to play an important part in the life of the communities, often serving congregations on both sides of the Bay. When in Rocky Harbour every three or four weeks in the early 1900s, the parson would stay with the Shears family. As James E. Shears later recalled, “He would sleep downstairs in father’s and mother’s bed and they would sleep upstairs. . . . We kids had to be pretty quiet when the Minister was in the house. We had to eat out in the kitchen. One Sunday while father, mother and the Minister were having dinner, I knocked down a stool in the kitchen. When the Minister was gone, father came out. ’Who did that?’ ’Jim, Sir.’ We always had to call father Sir and mother Ma’am. A clout in the side of the head and upstairs and no supper for that. That was the story for Jim.”

Fig. 37.The men who built the Methodist Church, completed in 1906 (from the original in the St. Andrew’s United Church, Woody Point)

Church of England parson George H. Maidment, a Trinity Bay man, came to the Bay in 1913 and stayed until 1928, tending his flock from Chimney Cove to St. John Island. “Get the children interested and you get all” was his slogan. Accordingly, he helped to set up a “Girls Friendly Society,” with several branches throughout his mission. Like Rev. Curling, Maidment recognized the importance of community libraries, and by 1920 had established one in the Church of the Good Shepherd in Norris Point. A keen military supporter, Maidment (see Fig. 14) took leave of absence from spring 1917 to the fall of 1918 to serve in the British Expeditionary Force in World War I. He was the last Anglican cleric to serve more than ten years in Bonne Bay. Between his leaving and the year 2000, some sixteen men had been posted to the Bay as Anglican ministers. In contrast, between 1874 and 2000 the Methodist (later United Church) “charge” of Bonne Bay was served by seventy-five different men—no women until 1999. It appears that Methodist policy was that no minister should remain in place more than three years: indeed many stayed for only one year. This rapid turnover may account for the lack of information about individual contributions to the life of Bonne Bay, with the exception being Thomas Darby, thanks to his daughter’s anonymous journal article mentioned earlier.

Most places now had schools, or at least school-chapels, though paper, pencils, and books were generally in very short supply. By 1906, there was a one-room school in Rocky Harbour where Edward Dyke was teacher. Earlier, the Western Star (May 1, 1901) described the Woody Point Church of England school-chapel where sixty-five children were taught as a “capital school,” and by 1919, there was even a high school with its own principal, Mr. Curtis. By 1914, there was a Catholic school operating in Woody Point under the guidance of Rev. George Massey. Here, twenty-nine students were taught by Jane Ryan with an average daily attendance of fifteen. At the same time in the Catholic school in Norris Point, Marguerite Penny was teaching thirty-eight students of whom about twenty were in regular attendance.

Amy Nicolle recalled that in primary grades even as late as the 1920s and 1930s, children used slates, not scribblers, bringing to school small bottles of water and cloths to clean them. Readers were taken home at night for parents to teach their children how to read: they would be tested the next day for comprehension. At recess, kids played marbles with rounded beach stones, ball with a fence paling for bat, Hide and Seek, and Hoist Your Sails and Run. On occasion, when winter ice blocked the Bay, as in 1903, schooner captains were seen to be “making good their time in attending school at Woody Point where no doubt they will benefit by the teachings of Mr. D. M. Woodman.” Discipline in schools continued to be very strict—certainly by today’s standards. Boys might be ordered by the teacher to cut a sapling to be used as a whip, perhaps on the same miscreant. The teacher had a “big long strap. If you didn’t know your lesson you got a big trimmin’,” recalled one man who remembered his school days in Curzon Village before the First World War.

In the summer of 1919, the Anglican congregation in Rocky Harbour decided to finish their school as “a thanksgiving for the blessing of peace.” The school was “a one-room affair about 25 feet long and 16 feet wide. On one end was built a lean-to where the teacher lived. The desk for us kids to write on or to lean on was a board about 12 inches wide, and it was hung around the walls of the school . . . raised on a slant with a stick underneath to keep it up.” Occasionally a child would knock the stick so that the hinged desk would fall down and the slates would tumble onto the floor. In the first decade of the twentieth century, “there were no grades. . . . We learned our A.B.Cs, then there was a Number One Royal Reader. We learned about Tom’s dog, Mary’s Little Lamb, and there were Numbers 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6—that was as high as we could go.” Teachers then generally followed the usual curriculum, but there was some freedom in choosing what to teach. In 1914, Elizabeth Rose, a Methodist teacher from Grand Bank, added navigation to the curriculum in Woody Point. The boys were especially interested, and it may be that some of them grew up to join the ranks of skippers from Bonne Bay.

In those days, few boys finished school, for they were needed to help their parents provide a living. Many years later, Gordon Shears told an interviewer, “I never had any childhood days, because, when I was about eight years old, I had to go to work on the wharf cleaning and salting fish, and when I was eleven I went in the boat fishing, so I really had no time for sports.” When Ben Shears was removed from school in Rocky Harbour to help his father fish, his little brother Jim was heartbroken. Many years later he recalled, “I shall never forget the first day Ben went out in the boat. I watched him and screeched and bawled until he was out of sight, and I sadly and slowly sobbed my way back to school alone. My world was shattered. . . . As soon as school was out, I was down on the bank watching and waiting” until they returned. “Ben and I slept together . . . but we didn’t sleep much that night, as he had to tell me all about the day fishing. The biggest thing was that he had seen a whale; yes, a whale come right up and blowed alongside. What a thrill for us.”³²

ORANGE MEN, ODD FELLOWS, WEDDINGS, AND OTHER “TIMES”

In 1873, what may have been the area’s first social organization, the Bonne Bay British Society, was formed. Five years later, the Royal Gazette, a St. John’s newspaper, reported that a collection at its annual meeting amounted to twenty-one pounds, nineteen shillings, and nine pence. The Gazette also reported that the foundation of a spacious building had been laid and hope of completion was by the end of the summer. Rev. Curling was thanked for a “handsome donation towards the interior comfort of the Hall.” At a typical concert in the 1890s to raise money for the schools, “Songs, recitations, dialogues, darkey jokes, comedies and a cornet solo were the order of the day. . . . All did their very best (but) the proceeds amounted to a little over $6.” In June 1900, the Western Star reported that the “Bonne Bay Club” had held at the “British Hall” a social entertainment “which will be long remembered.” Perhaps it was, but the same cannot be said of the club or the hall itself, which was frequently mentioned in newspaper reports of social events and political meetings in the 1890s and early 1900s. No one I have asked knows where it was.

The British Society seems to have disappeared around this time, but now and then other social organizations made their appearance. Some were dedicated to improving economic conditions, especially in the fishery, but few, if any, gained political strength and influence, or had any lasting effect on working conditions and pay. Most provided opportunities for entertainment, and in this sense they all contributed significantly to the social side of settlement life. For a time, the sailors and officers of visiting British ships put on shows for local people. For example, at the end of August 1893, villagers in Bonne Bay were treated to a performance by the “Red Rover Negro Minstrels” from the HMS Buzzard. “Songs, sentimental and comic, were capitally rendered. . . . An impromptu dance was given, and lasses and sailors enjoyed themselves until about 11:30, so that the charge of ten cents for four hour’s amusement was a light one.”

Another social organization that started with a bang but soon fizzled out was described in a letter by Tom Wood to the Western Star on February 3, 1905. His view was that “For many years, Bonne Bay has had a name for sloth and lack of enterprise. The population has been noted for its exclusive and conservative habits, and outside lookers-on have often remarked that the cause of this spirit was lack of education, etc. . . . At last however, certain unlooked-for events are happening which will conclusively prove that underneath the quiet unobtrusive spirit peculiar to us there is a keen desire for social intercourse and betterment.” He was referring here to the establishment of the Terra Nova Club. “No gambling, swearing, or drinking of wines and spirituous liquors upon the premises” would be permitted, but “games of all descriptions (within our means) will be obtained, the best of papers will be placed upon the reading tables, and the most up-to-date subjects will be opened in debate for discussion. Lectures etc. by visitors and others will be vigorously sought after and any innovation or intercourse that will tend to uplift or ennoble will be encouraged.” The club was to be housed in new premises, and there was confidence that it would be a great success, for its first officers were among the elite of the community. Despite this grand start, the club does not appear to have lasted long.

Fig. 38. Bonne Bay Orangemen around 1908 (Woody Point Collection)

Other organizations, however, kept going for many years and are still remembered today. Prominent among these was the Loyal Orange Association, which came to Newfoundland in the 1860s. This is, or at any rate was, a worldwide Brotherhood to establish and preserve civil and religious liberty and the Protestant religion, and to maintain loyalty to the British Crown. Orangemen’s Day, July 12, was selected to “celebrate . . . freedom from the shackles of superstition and midway heathenism.” It is thought that the Orange Order, which peaked around 1920, was stronger in Newfoundland than in any other major jurisdiction in the world, but membership declined rapidly after about 1960. There were secret initiation rites, a strict code of conduct, and penalties for chewing tobacco, spitting in the lodge, riotous conduct, and marrying a Roman Catholic. As lodges were established across Newfoundland, they took on various community functions, too, such as paying funeral expenses, “mortality fees” to widows, visiting the sick, and raising funds to relieve losses from fire or other disasters.

In the words of Wilfred Grenfell, “The society does more for the people than serve to perpetuate animosity between the Catholic and Protestant. . . . It serves to unite its scattered members for mutual improvement . . . promoting unity and good fellowship.” Orange halls also served as social centres for christenings, weddings, and concerts. The first Orange hall in Bonne Bay seems to have been the Royal Black Conqueror Lodge at Shoal Brook, in existence by 1896. The original building was replaced on the same spot with a new one in 1958, but no trace of it remains today. Norris Point had the Duke of York Lodge by 1902, and a branch called the Llewellyn Lodge was formed in Rocky Harbour between 1910 and 1920. Woody Point had its own Lord Nelson Lodge, which local lore dates to 1908, though there are several references in the Western Star in 1900 and 1901 to an Orange Lodge here (Fig. 38). At any rate, for many years, the Lord Nelson Lodge was the scene of social events on the south side—weddings, fairs, suppers, and times. Tradition has it that in earlier days, people would walk from as far away as Bellburns, some thirty miles to the north, for the annual Orangeman’s time on Easter Monday. Older folks remember the lodge as the place where they had their first dance, got engaged or married, and if the night was so stormy that people couldn’t get home afterwards, they would stay until the weather had calmed.

Fig. 39.The Orangemen’s band around 1908 (Woody Point Collection)

On April 26, 1903, the Orangemen of Bonne Bay South held their annual procession, and that morning onlookers could see the ice “dotted in all directions with people wending their way to the lodge at Shoal Brook. . . . At 10 am, the procession left the hall and marched . . . up the Arm as far as Capt. Young’s house” returning to a “sumptuous feast” at the lodge. Afterwards, the march continued to Woody Point for a “very eloquent sermon” at the Church of England by Rev. Hollands. At 5:50 p.m. there was a “second feast and a concert starting with Mr. J. Tapper singing ’Newfoundland’ and Mr. D. W. Woodman ’My Old New Hampshire Home.’ . . . The dialogues were comic and greatly amused the audience. The way the National Anthem was sung at the end was inspiring, and all returned to their homes well satisfied with the day’s enjoyment.”

The Orange Lodge had its own brass band for some years (Fig. 39), but when many of the players moved away it became defunct. In the mid-1940s, Otto Tucker, an ardent Orangeman and the Salvation Army officer and teacher in Trout River, discovered the instruments in the Conqueror Lodge, none the worse for wear. He bought eight of them and took them to Trout River where he trained enough young people to play simple tunes for the Army meetings, though the brass band would “drive Dan McLean’s cows into fits.” Eventually, the instruments became damaged beyond repair, and the band faded into memory. In recent years, what was the Lord Nelson Lodge in Woody Point has been restored to near to its original form, with all mouldings, windows, and facings firmly intact. Now as the Woody Point Heritage Theatre, home to the annual Writers at Woody Point literary festival, it is recognized as a Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Structure.

In the early twentieth century in Woody Point, there was also the Excelsior Lodge, Number 126, of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization, still active in community projects elsewhere. The first Newfoundland lodge was formed in 1894 in St. John’s, and it seems that the movement spread quickly across the Island. The Bonne Bay branch was formed and a hall built around 1915-1919. This was still operating in mid-century from a hall across from today’s Martin’s Garage, but has long since been dismantled. The Order seems to have enjoyed the blessing of the Church of England, for in a group photograph of Orangemen and Oddfellows is Rev. Maidment.

The Catholic community was not without its own social outlets, chiefly the Star of the Sea Association, founded in St. John’s in 1871. The aim was to “improve the moral condition of fishermen,” part of a move by the Catholic Church to match the efforts of the Church of England’s Society of United Fishermen. It was placed under the “spiritual patronage of the Virgin Mary” (Stella Maris—Star of the Sea) and was initially restricted to Roman Catholic men, though it eventually widened its membership. Members of the Association were expected, according to its bylaws, to be sober, moral, and industrious. Not far from St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in the early twentieth century was the Star of the Sea Hall. This was erected sometime prior to 1901, and it was for many years an important part of the Bonne Bay South communities, being used for dances and other social occasions. It was dismantled after the Second World War, with some of the materials used to build a school in Winter House Brook.

For Methodists, there was the Band of Hope. Begun in 1847 in England, its aim was “to inculcate and promote the principles of Total Abstinence among children.” Membership consisted of signing the following pledge: “I agree to abstain from all intoxicating drinks as beverages.” A temperance hall existed in Birchy Head by the late 1880s, “the scene of many a pleasant gathering,” and another was operating in Woody Point in 1902, where concerts were sometimes given. At a meeting of the Band of Hope in Woody Point in 1902, the Rev. E. P. Ward was elected as Superintendent, with Mrs. J. Campbell as President, and women filling all other positions (“conductress, guide, sentinel and master of ceremonies”)—an unusual situation for those days. Parental consent was required for children under ten years of age, though one wonders how many children in the Bay were then problem drinkers.

From time to time, various organizations would spring up to assist fishermen on the economic side. For example, there was the Anglican-sponsored Society of United Fishermen begun in eastern Newfoundland in the nineteenth century. This was a mutual help organization to provide sickness and death benefits for fishermen and their families. And a number of fishing co-operatives also functioned in Bonne Bay now and then, but their story remains to be told elsewhere.

Of course, there were also social organizations, especially for women. They were always active raising money for the upkeep of church property through bake sales, community suppers, and even dances. Linked to the Church of England, there were also from time to time a Girls Friendly Society, a “Sunflower Club” for girls, and Girl Guides and Brownies. Many of these had short lives and faded out when one minister and his wife were replaced by another with different ideas.

By the early twentieth century, a few weddings in Bonne Bay were beginning to receive publicity through the pages of the Western Star. For example, on November 25, 1902, it reported that in Woody Point, “Two happy events occurred here this week when Mr. J. Bailey was joined in wedlock to Miss Fanny Matthews, and Mr. E. Humber and Miss Esther Young were also united in Hymen’s bonds.” The latter was then a common way of describing marriages, and the St. John’s Daily News often reported weddings of note under the heading “Hymeneal.”

On occasion, American and Nova Scotian ships would be caught in the ice and their crews forced to spend the winter on board the vessels. As Manuel wrote, many a romance started then, and more than a few bore fruit. Indeed, not long before the Bailey and Humber marriages, the Western Star recorded that recently “a man from an American vessel married a girl of this place. After the marriage they went on board the vessel to tea, after which they walked two miles to the Salvation Army barracks. Rumour says the Captain refused to take the bride away in his vessel. We hope the bridegroom won’t forget to come or send for his other half.” If he didn’t return, it might have been, according to tradition, because the bride was unwise enough to have made her own wedding cake. If he did, perhaps it was due to her good luck in tearing her wedding veil during the ceremony or reception. And if she fell up the church steps on her way to be married, she would be sure to be the boss.

As for public celebrations, there was the Woody Point regatta. This apparently began as a two-mile boat race on Orangemen’s Day, 1900. “Our ritual was an unusual one—a race on the bay. At 3 pm, four boats lined up to the starting point and at the signal went dashing through the water. The distance was two miles, with a fair and head wind. In 16 minutes from starting, the winner dashed inside the line—and to Mr. Bancroft and crew we take off our hats.” After a meeting in the Lodge, “fireworks, powder guns, etc. brought to a close one of the most exciting days ever spent in the Bay.” Two years later, on September 10, 1902, a “Coronation Regatta” was held to mark the coronation of King Edward VIII. Seven rowing competitions were held, including one for women only, and one for the boys of Woody Point vs. Norris Point— the latter lads won. The hope was expressed that this would be the first of an annual sport, but it was not until September 1921 that the second such gala appears to have been held. The Western Star then reported in a fit of ecstasy that “True sportsmanlike feeling prevailed and not an uneasy incident disturbed the peace and enjoyment of the hundreds present. The proverbial ’marriage bell’ is cracked in comparison with the harmony that prevailed during our celebration.” With a few exceptions, the annual Woody Point Regatta has been going ever since, with its combinations of field sports and races on the Bay.

So, over the years, there were opportunities for relaxation and enjoyment. Not only were there the organized events in the lodges and church halls, such as at Christmas and New Year’s, but there were also frequent informal “times” in homes or for the men in their fish sheds. Many of these were helped along by liquid refreshments.³³

BOOZE and BACCY

Alcohol provided many a diversion from a tough life, and according to early visitors to the West Coast, a serious moral problem. Unless it was home-brewed, liquor was hard to come by, but it was certainly not unknown to the Bay. The Birds complained in 1836 of one of their dealers here, Charles Paine, being partial to liquor, and we have already seen Ephraim Tucker’s comment about the same time on the different liquids the poor and the well-to-do imbibed. Julien Thoulet was more philosophical about booze during his 1886 visit. “People never fail to ask for brandy, their universal remedy, and because nearly all the inhabitants belong to temperance societies, nowhere on the coast is it possible to obtain a bottle of wine or spirits. All told, they are no worse off for it, since drunkenness wreaks the most terrible of ravages wherever it strikes, particularly in the northern countries, where such a scourge originates from the need to warm oneself and the ease with which alcohol can be absorbed as an excellent respiratory beverage and tonic.”

There is a story that around 1900, there was a man in Woody Point who always had a bottle to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. His house was built on the side of a hill, above a little shed. One such day, after drinking a full bottle of liquor, perhaps the traditional mix of spruce beer, molasses, and rum known as callibogus, he was seen weaving his way from his shed to the house. He would stumble a few steps and then fall down the hill, get up, and do the same again. Finally, he sat on the ground saying loudly, “Holy St. Patrick, how I suffer for thee.”

There had long been moves to prohibit all forms of alcohol, and by the 1880s many Newfoundland communities had forbidden drink. In 1886, a proclamation had been issued prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors from Cape Gregory to the eastern point of Lobster Cove, including, of course, Bonne Bay. Prohibition came into force throughout the Island only at the start of 1917. As a result, the import, sale, and distribution of alcohol were banned, except for medicinal alcohol prescribed by a doctor, and sales of beer with less than 2% alcohol. Many fishermen and loggers still needed a drop of rum to do their work, so it is not surprising that there was much illegal activity: many prescriptions, home brewing, illegal stills, and smuggling. It was not until 1924 that booze became legally available again, through government-controlled outlets—not that that stopped anyone in the outports. On a visit to Bonne Bay in 1934, Sir John Hope-Simpson, one of the Commissioners, commented that “One of the troubles of that remote part is that life is monotonous and drink easily smuggled from Saint Pierre and so cheap—and both magistrate and doctor are addicted.” And there were patent medicines available, which could provide quite a buzz: one of these had a 16% alcohol content.

Even after prohibition ended, there were for many years no licensed liquor outlets on the West Coast. If a bottle of rum was wanted for a special occasion, it would have to be ordered from St. John’s. Even as late as the 1950s, one had to order food in order to get a drink in a restaurant or bar. Clarence Laing recalled that this did not stop most men and many boys from drinking. Bootleg liquor may have been a problem for some adults, but not for the youngsters, for they had no money to buy it. Clarence Laing recalled that “we were lucky to get fifty cents for the weekend, and that would give us two jugs of beer or wine. There were usually three or four outlets for that medicine in this area. Aunt Jennie and Aunt Annie would let us know when either of them had a gallon of good raspberry wine.” Laing guessed that about three-quarters of the families in Norris Point made home-brewed beer, and a few even had a homemade still to make “moonshine.”

Fig. 40. Herring schooners in the “Anchorage” at Woody Point, early 1900s (Woody Point Collection)

Though it was unusual to see a woman drink or smoke, smoking was a staple of life then, and not always tobacco. Jim Shears recalled that “we would smoke whatever we could get. . . . A lot of the old houses them times were built with the seams stuffed with moss, and we would go around and pick it out and have a good smoke. Sometimes we would swipe a bit of tea, but you had to have a pipe for tea, and we would get a lobster claw, but the claw would get hot and we would go back to moss and paper.” A few years later, Fred Rowe, walking along the Curzon Village road puffing on a cigarette, was reprimanded by Uncle Billy, who says to him, “I sees you smokes.” “Oh, excuse me. I forgot. Will you have a cigarette?” “No. If ’twas Jesus Christ instead of me here this morning would you offer him a cigarette?” “Yes I would.” “I think you’d have a job to get him to smoke one.”

By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the spiritual and social needs of Bonne Bay were being met by churches and community societies, and there were many ways to entertain oneself and others. We now return to the mainstay of the economy— fishing.³⁴

THE FISHERY: HERRING IN TROUBLE

In the very early days, fishing boats called “Jack Boats” were about thirty feet long and used sail, or were rowed when there was no wind. These gradually became dominated by the schooner. Around the turn of the century, as many as fifty of these vessels would leave Bonne Bay for the Labrador fishery. Returning home in the fall, the catch would be cured and shipped out in the big trading vessels from Maine and Nova Scotia. Frequently, fishermen would load their own vessels with fish and sail to Cape Breton or Halifax to barter for vegetables and seed potatoes. Many a West Coast fisherman knew his way around Sydney and Halifax long before he saw St. John’s. Catches and prices varied from time to time, as they still do. In 1884, the average family in Curzon Village earned $361, mainly from dry cod. This dropped by 1901 to $251, mainly from lobster and herring. The year 1911 was better, when incomes per family averaged $628, but in 1921 the average was back to $370.

It was herring that continued to lead the fishery (Fig. 40). The year 1900 was a good year on the West Coast for herring, and a letter to the Western Star on December 22 reported that frozen herring leaving Bonne Bay on three vessels had left “no less than eight thousand dollars cash with our people, besides hundreds of barrels of salted herrings. This will enable us to tide over the long and dreary winter without having to apply to the government for assistance.”

On November 5, Bonfire Night, people would sit on the beach and wait for the herring to arrive. One man observed, “I hear some bubbles. The herring are coming.” At times up to eleven American schooners could be seen in the Bay. Mrs. Belbin of Birchy Head remembered that the ice in the Bay would be black with people freezing their fish to sell to the Americans. But there were still problems. The Western Star for April 30, 1902, reported that “In the Arm of this bay frequented by herring, there are now lying at anchor 6 vessels all ready with seines to bar every fish when they rush in to spawn. . . . We cannot understand why the authorities are so apathetic to our interests. Great indignation is felt throughout Bonne Bay.” Earlier that same month, 270 people from South Arm and Norris Point signed a petition to the Minister of Marine and Fisheries in St. John’s as follows:

“Whereas in the past, the rules and regulations respecting the fisheries of Newfoundland were never enforced in this settlement, and last year [there was] the unrestrained destruction of herring caused by the illegal conduct of persons using seines imbarring large quantities of spawning herring , destroying thereby all smaller herring, polluting the waters where herring frequent, thereby threatening the future of this important branch of our fisheries. . . . The herring fishery being that from which we chiefly derive our support; last year herring were kept barred for 20 to 30 days by some seines. The principal spawning coves were completely barred and kept so until all herring were used or destroyed. Your petitioners think that the time has come in the interest of ourselves and our families that some steps must be taken to protect us and preserve to us this fishery upon which we depend now and for the future. Therefore, your petitioners ask that a rule be added to the fishery rules and regulations prohibiting the use of herring seines and herring traps in any portion of the waters of Bonne Bay.”

Shortly afterwards, a fleet of herring seiners entered the Bay, heading down East Arm, where the main spawning ground was located. When news of this spread around, a telegram was fired off to the Government. In the absence of a reply, some 200 men from different parts of the Bay headed to where the seiners were moored and told the ships’ captains that they had three hours to put up their seines or be forced to do so. One of the captains threatened with an axe to kill the first man who dared to untie his ship. Despite this threat, the local men grabbed his seine and several others and took them to Woody Point, where the gear was locked in Noel’s store.

The Western Star reported that “The anxiety that reigned in Bonne Bay for the remainder of that day can be better imagined than described: the seine holders telegraphed for the Fiona, and the mob to the government for protection.” Early the following morning, the magistrate ordered the men to assemble on Noel’s wharf and return the seines to their owners. As soon as this was done, the men assembled at the courthouse, where they were told that the Government Fishery Board had just passed a new rule preventing the seining or trapping of herring in Bonne Bay. With hearty cheers of victory, the men paraded along Water Street singing the National Anthem. The crisis was over—or was it? According to someone from Bonne Bay who signed his letter to the Western Star “Flat Foot,” once the seiners had recovered their nets, the fleet returned to the East Arm “swearing, it is said, that they would haul herring, in spite of the laws, Government, people or anything else.”

That October (1902) an American schooner out of Gloucester under Captain Edward Trevoy was seized at Woody Point for refusing to pay the levy on foreign vessels who purchased bait or processed herring. The skipper managed to get his ship away, and to evade the Fiona which was sent to bring her back. However, after unsuccessfully trying to secure a cargo elsewhere, the vessel returned to Bonne Bay where she was held until the captain settled his account. Fortunately, the conflict soon simmered down, but two years later tempers flared again. As a defiant letter to the Western Star said, “We greatly desire the good-will of everyone, but our most vital local interest must be protected at any cost. In taking up our arduous task of seizing the seines, we determined to accept all slander and abuse as complimentary, and to resent nothing short of bloodshed, in which event ’Everyman was prepared with his life to defend the chum of his boyhood days, for we’re brothers all in our common cause, the fishermen of Bonne Bay.’”

In 1905, the Newfoundland Government of Prime Minister Bond proposed a new “Foreign Fishing Vessels” act that would withdraw licences granted in 1893 to permit foreign ships to buy bait and supplies and to hire crews. There was a huge outcry against this on the West Coast, for most of the herring caught here, mostly used for bait, was sold to American and a few Canadian vessels. At a public meeting in October in Bonne Bay, the act was roundly condemned and a committee formed to draft a cable to the Government. This read:

“We, the fishermen of Bonne Bay and vicinity, having made poor voyages, cannot support our families without selling herring as heretofore. American vessels arrived here to buy. We are prepared for the fishery and are able to support our families when allowed. But if the Government hinders our sale, and don’t give us some way out of the difficulty, we will fight the matter to the bitter end, and sell in defiance of the government. We have come to the conclusion it is better to die fighting than to starve tamely.”

The Daily News correspondent went on to venture that Bond “would, if I had the power, be brought here with a few of his nish-handed, law-making coterie and be compelled to support a family of eight for a few years on a fisherman’s changing scale of wages.” In the face of this, and opposition from Great Britain, the proposed Act was withdrawn, and the Bond Government was defeated in 1909. The trade did, however, become illegal in 1910, when an International Tribunal in the Hague resulted in an agreement between Great Britain and the US that excluded Americans from almost all of the Newfoundland seaboard, except for the West Coast where Americans were permitted to fish, subject to “reasonable” regulations. There was still, however, a prohibition on selling herring for bait to American vessels. Peter Hann and James Long of Norris Point were both charged for doing so in 1915.

There were general warnings about overfishing and the declining quality of herring products, whether stemming from Bonne Bay or other Newfoundland fisheries. And many were the contradictory and confusing statements about the state of the fisheries. “Flat Foot” wrote to the Western Star on April 17, 1901, to complain that “last season’s fisheries on our coast proved to be so unprofitable that some of our supplying merchants have decided not to take the risk of advancing supplies for the fisheries the coming season.” But another item a month later said that “codfish and herring are fairly plentiful; all the bankers are receiving their full compliment of bait.” The concentration of herring moved around the Bay from season to season. At one time, Neddy Harbour was the main spawning ground, then other parts of the Bay, according to “Aquarius,” who boasted in the same issue of the Western Star that “if the herring forsake the Bay altogether, we shall promptly follow them to the coves and bights of the outside coast with our nets, anchors, seines and boats and give them such a hot time that they will likely leave the outside coast and return to the Bay after a few years.”

Difficulties aside, the herring fishery continued and generally flourished. From 1904 to 1920, landings from the Bay of Islands and Bonne Bay accounted for 33% to 83% of the total Newfoundland production. However, one schooner captain noted in 1916 that there hadn’t been a load of herring caught in Bonne Bay in the previous five years. The fishery soon recovered, for the following year one writer warned that “There will be more people engaged in this fishery than ever before. . . . The men who are employed in the business and the Fisheries Department, which has the supervision of the export pack, should be more careful to make no mistakes and to have none but good herring packed for export. It is a good time to boom this fishery and it is feared that cupidity may do harm that will give a bad reputation to our herring.” There were problems with “dishonest packing,” too, as when a barrel, opened at its destination in New York, was found to contain cod’s heads in place of herring. Although the lobster canning factories in Woody Point had disappeared by 1921, there were thirteen still operating in Curzon Village, producing 138 cases for the market.

Despite the improvements in Bonne Bay, life around the turn of the century was still tough for many people. Mrs. Annie Walters recalled that when her family lived in Silver-ton at the end of the nineteenth century, her father, William Young, and his brothers Emmanuel and Thomas (sons of the original William Young in Silverton) had a little vessel called Sailor’s Home. Because the people they brought supplies for could not pay for these, the brothers went into debt and lost all but the family “homestead,” which they left to their grandmother “and whatever one of her sons would live with her and look after her till after her death, then he’d own the house.” Later, one man from the Bay wrote “this is a poor season. There is no herring and no work to earn a dollar. It was a poor summer for fish. When I paid my bill for the summer, I only had enough left to buy one barrel of flour and I can’t get work enough to earn more. I have nothing for the winter and don’t know where to get anything. . . . It’s something I never was used to. . . . I tell you, Miss, it looks hard to see a lot of children with nothing to give them to eat.” Nevertheless, when word of the terrible destruction and loss of life in the Halifax explosion of November 1917 reached the Bay, many people donated money (from ten cents to $5 each) to the relief effort.³⁵

Fig. 41. McKie’s sawmill at Paynes Cove, Stanleyville, in 1901 (A Holloway photograph in MUN Geography Collection HPNL 0791)

TIMBER BECOMES KING IN EASTERN ARM

In the early years, the East Arm of the Bay was unfamiliar to many residents, though, as one newspaper correspondent put it, “It is one of the magnificent stretches of salt water on the coast. . . . All the navies of Europe could anchor in it and still leave room for every fishing schooner in Newfoundland.” Most of the commercial logging in the nineteenth century was centred in the Bay of Islands, but another important timber centre for many years was the inner end of East Arm. Trees were cut inland and floated down the Lomond River in the springtime. Around the turn of the century, Silas Halfyard and Willis Clarke operated water-driven sawmills across East Arm at Mill Brook. For a time, the cove here became a hub of activity, so that by 1921 there were twenty-five residents, nearly all Reids and McKenzies. Not far from the Lomond River was a winter house used for a time by people from Rocky Harbour. Here, at Paynes Cove, a steam-powered sawmill was set up in the early 1890s by John and Scobie McKie from Nova Scotia (Fig. 41). This place was sometimes called Billy McKie’s or Billy McKitt’s Cove, but by 1900 the little settlement was known as Stanleyville. A favourite place for boat-building at the turn of the century, in 1901 there were forty-eight people in nine families living there, growing to a population of seventy-seven by 1911: children were still going to school there in 1919.

In 1916, the St. Lawrence Timber, Pulp and Steamship Company from Chesterfield, England, bought out the McKies, and acquired rights to considerable forest land. However, getting in and out of Stanleyville was made difficult by the surrounding hills, so the St. Lawrence Company began in late 1916 to develop a new sawmill site and town just to the east, at Murphy’s Cove, renamed Lomond in 1918 (Fig. 42). By June 1920, there were in Lomond a manager’s house, staff house, an office building, six cottages, a store, a cold storage plant and a stable, plus two bunk- and cookhouses for 120 men. The sawmill, built at a cost of $166,221, had a seasonal capacity of six million feet. And over the 1919-1920 season an average of 118 men were employed as loggers, cutting an average of sixty-three cords per man. Activity had now switched to the new location, though in 1935 there were still a few people living in Stanleyville, which was abandoned shortly afterwards.

Fig. 42.The St. Lawrence Company mill in Lomond around 1917 (GMNP Collection)

The General Manager of the St. Lawrence Company was George Simpson, who had come from Scotland with his wife and two daughters. He lured away from Woody Point Dr. Thomas Milton Green as company physician, John Charles Tapper (Fig. 43) as stores-man, and Duncan Kennedy Boyd, another Scot. Boyd (see Fig. 4) had arrived in Woody Point in 1916 to manage the Bank of Nova Scotia. In Lomond, he became Simpson’s “right-hand man” and more later, when he married Simpson’s daughter, Ella. By 1921, Lomond had eighty-eight residents, a school, which also served as a church, and fourteen company-owned houses, neatly painted the same buff colour and laid out in a line on one side of the road. The St. John’s-based Monroe Export Company in 1928 took over the St. Lawrence Company’s cold storage plant here and converted it to quick freezing of halibut, salmon, and lobster (see Fig. 69). This operated until the late 1930s. And beyond the town on a terrace overlooking the Bay and the Lomond River barachois stood St. Tecla, the fine house built in 1920 for George Simpson, and much later renamed Killdevil Lodge (Fig. 74).

Earlier, in 1917, while still in Stanleyville, the Company obtained a contract to ship to England a huge raft of logs to be used as pit props in the coal mines. The raft was about 250 feet long by forty-six feet wide by twenty-five feet deep and contained about a million eight-foot logs (Fig. 44). The Newfoundland Government delayed permission to export these logs until 1919. The raft was towed out of Bonne Bay that August, but ran into a storm off Cape Anguille and lost many logs. After repairs in North Sydney, the tug continued on its way, only to lose the rest of its tow at the edge of the continental shelf east of Fogo.

Fig. 43. John Charles Tapper and family in Lomond, around 1917 (Woody Point Collection)

Following the loss of the “million log raft,” the St. Lawrence Company in April 1920 signed an agreement with the Government of Newfoundland to establish one or more pulp or paper mills in the area, with operations to begin by 1924. There were rumours of 1,000 jobs or more, and that the area might come to rival Grand Falls. However, the arrangement failed, partly because the Company had overestimated the timber resources, and partly because of poor markets and labour unrest in postwar Britain. By the end of 1921, the Lomond sawmill had closed temporarily. Corner Brook turned out eventually to be a better place to locate the operation, and the dreams of a pulp and paper mill in Bonne Bay never materialized, though for many years, men from the Bay still found employment in Lomond and the woods operations round about. We will return to the Lomond story in the next chapter.³⁶

Fig. 44. Building the million log raft in 1917-1918 (GMNP Collection)

COASTAL STEAMERS AND FERRY BOATS

“Our whole lives revolve around the weather and the sea, and there is a sense of isolation. I can remember as a child of 12 when in the winter the harbour would freeze over and the sky would be grey and the steamer would break its way through the ice on its last trip and blow its whistle goodbye. I would stand on the veranda of our house and get the feeling that I was hidden from the rest of the world, that I was isolated there, and that no one would ever find me or know we were there.”

The arrival of the coastal steamer was a scene played out many times, one that is still seen today in a few outports. As the vessel enters the Bay, its whistle blows and children dash down to the wharf (Fig. 45). The older men from their perch on a barrel or upturned cart chat about earlier days, while younger men attend to the hawsers, secure the gangplank, and help to unload the supplies. Passengers continuing onward roam the village nearby, chatting with passersby, and the postmaster works to sort the mail for those lucky enough to receive a letter or, even better, a package of ordered goods. Some years, the residents of Bonne Bay went short of supplies because the coastal boats couldn’t get through the ice. On May 13, 1903, a correspondent to the Western Star reported that “The whistle of the Home was a welcome sound to us today, . . . because we will be saved from boiling our cabbage without meat and eating our bread without butter, as the winter supply of provisions in the store was getting short.”

Fig. 45. SS Fiona at Woody Point around 1920 (Woody Point Collection)

Over the years, many vessels plied the coast, carrying people, freight, mail, and news from place to place. These included the Ranger, Stella Maris, Grand Lake, Curlew, Seal (Fig. 54), Virginia Lake, and, after around 1904, the Eagle, Portia, Fiona (Fig. 45), Harlaw, Meigle, Sable Island, Ethie, Home, Volunteer, and Sagona (Fig. 46). The Ethie and the Home were two of Reid Newfoundland Company’s “Alphabet Fleet,” named from “A” onward in order. The SS Fife was another, but was wrecked on her first voyage in 1900 from St. Barbe to Bonne Bay.

Fig. 46.The SS Sagona, a visitor to Bonne Bay for many years, shown here at the seal hunt in 1922 (CNS 203-3-91-006).

Several shipping firms were involved in the early days. In 1892, and for some years afterwards, the Halifax firm of Pickford and Black ran the Harlaw about ten times during the May to December navigation season. It left Halifax every second Tuesday at noon and, after calling at ports in Cape Breton, delivered Canadian mail to Port aux Basques, and generally reached its northern terminal at Bonne Bay. North of the Bay the coast was straight, with almost no safe ports. As the captain of one steamer said, “It’s queer about the coast. You get so that some places are your friends, others your enemies. That haul from Ferolle to Lobster Head I fair despise. I wouldn’t take me eyes off it for a minute—don’t trust it. I never takes me boots off either, ’til I tie up in Bonne Bay.”

Some routes were serviced by the Reid Company under an 1898 contract with the Government, and others from 1904 by Bowring Brothers. After around 1910, J.A. Farquhar and Company, also from Halifax, took over the run, continuing into the 1930s. MacLeod points out the oddity that more than half a century before Confederation, the Canadian Government was subsidizing some of these steamer services between Nova Scotia and the West Coast, as if the latter were part of the same country as Halifax.

Schedules and routes were often altered to suit local trade or because of weather conditions. When winter ice closed the normal shipping season, some vessels would be used in the seal hunt (Fig. 46). If there was a threat that steamer service would be reduced or withdrawn, everyone would be worried. A concerned resident of Bonne Bay reported at the end of May 1902 that “We are sorry to lose the Harlaw on this coast, but the greed of her owners has to be satisfied.” She returned to the run not long afterwards, but was wrecked in the Cabot Strait in 1911. Father O’Rourke in 1903 wrote that “the people of Bonne Bay are indignant over the manner in which they are treated in the matter of mails and steamship communication. The alteration of the SS Home’s route has been a calamity, for it not only deprives the people of a weekly mail service, but it also diverges trade that should go to St. John’s, to Halifax and elsewhere.” As we saw earlier, the coastal boats at first called in at Woody Point, later at Norris Point, and, in the 1920s and 1930s, at Lomond. In 1924, residents of Rocky Harbour petitioned the Government to make their community a port of call, but this was not granted.

Among the many coastal steamers plying the West Coast was the well-known Ethie, which went ashore in a winter gale off Martins Point in December 1919 with no loss of life and, despite frequent claims to the contrary, without the help of any dog. Her demise may have been just as well, for she was regarded as a “detriment and danger . . . hopelessly inadequate and utterly intolerable.” Not only was she unable to cope with the demands for freight, but accommodations were very limited, and at times there might be as many as eighty passengers with first-class tickets vying for the eight cabins available.

A few years earlier, in the severe winter of 1914, there was an international incident off Bonne Bay involving two American schooners caught in the ice off Bay of Islands. They were loaded with herring bound for Gloucester, and the Potomac, one of the largest and most powerful tugs in the US Navy, was sent to break them out. She herself soon became stuck in the ice, near the Bay of Islands, and drifted northward with her crew of thirty-six. Radio contact with her was lost, but within a few days she was sighted off Rocky Harbour. A bonfire was lit to signal the vessel, and several of the crew walked ashore to obtain assistance and provisions from the village, where they were looked after at the lighthouse. It soon became clear that the Potomac was not about to get free, so her crew abandoned ship, leaving on board for a time the engineer and a fireman. On March 5, an unsuccessful attempt was made to free the ship by dynamiting the ice encasing her. Two weeks later, she had drifted as far north as Port Saunders, still icebound. A salvage crew eventually boarded her, and managed to break her free still in working order. The Potomac reached Curling under its own steam on April 28 and Port aux Basques two days later, where the salvagers received a very handsome reward.

In 1918, the steamer service was temporarily withdrawn before the arrival of supplies for the winter months. In Lomond, one family was down to turnips and potatoes, served so often as hash that it became known as “everlasting.” Three years later, winter set in very early, and the Bay froze over so that no ships could get in. People became very uneasy that they might go hungry before the spring. Then on December 19, relief came when the large steamer Sable Island beat her way with a load of supplies through the ice as far as Taylor’s wharf in Curzon Village. The following days saw people from all over Bonne Bay on horses and oxen loading up their sleighs, happy that the threat of hunger no longer existed. That same winter, the Stella Maris became stuck in the ice in the Bay and could not get free until the spring.

Once the other communities began to expand, an obvious need was for regular transportation by water around the Bay. We saw earlier that the Kennedys had operated a small ferry boat in the late 1800s, and the service appears to have been supported by the Newfoundland Government in the early1900s. In 1913, just before the national election, the little ferry was taken off the service and replaced by a motorboat. When the election results were not pleasing to the Government, the motor service was withdrawn and the old rowboat reinstated, much to the displeasure of William Clapp, then member for St. Barbe, who wrote a sharp letter to the newspaper. In 1919, Walter Young and his son Jack took over the ferry and ran it until 1929. They would make trips twice daily from Glenburnie to Lomond, stopping all along the Bay. She had a little cabin to keep passengers out of the weather and also a wheelhouse. At one time in the 1930s, Eli Ellsworth ran a ferry service between Rocky Harbour and Lomond, charging ten cents for a one-way trip. Later, he would take people by boat to Woody Point for $5 round trip. Those who couldn’t pay he took for free.

Fig. 47. The Conqueror, built in Bonne Bay South, the Newfoundland Government in the early

Over the years, many schooners and fishing vessels were launched here, for shipbuilding was an important activity in South Arm and around Stanleyville, particularly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Table 8 lists thirty-five vessels that were built in the Bay before the Great War. Fig. 47 shows one of these, the Conqueror, built in 1903. Of about sixty ships owned in the Bay before Confederation in 1949, about a third were built elsewhere, mostly in Nova Scotia—another example of close ties between the West Coast and mainland Canada, which, as we will see later, played a part in local attitudes toward Confederation.

In 1871, the Canadian Government erected beacons at Point Riche and Cape Norman to guide shipping through the Strait of Belle Isle. However, the rest of the coast remained for years dark and dangerous to fishermen and mariners. An old man in Bonne Bay spoke of the great need for a lit beacon to warn fishermen away from the rocks, especially on the northern entrance to the Bay. “While the tears rolled off his cheeks, he recounted with a husky voice, how often he had spent sleepless nights as the wind moaned around the house, because his brave sons were on the banks, and no light to guide them home. . . . A stately old dame offered to keep the lighthouse (when erected) free of salary, and said she, ’You may be sure it will always be burning, for I have my three boys on the banks.’”

For some years local settlers donated a pint of oil each week to a local fisherman who kept a light burning in his home near Lobster Cove Head. Then, in early 1894, the people of the Bay got news that work would begin in the spring to build a beacon here, but it was not until the spring of 1898 that the first warning light shone out from the twenty-five-foot cast-iron tower, built in St. John’s and equipped with a lantern from England. The first keeper, Robert Lewis, operated the light until his death in 1902, when William Young moved over from Silverton to replace him (Fig. 48). Young’s daughter Annie (Walters) recalled that the light had to be lit every night. “Pop used to have to blow it out by his breath . . . there was no way to stop it. That got wore out, and they put in a light that used to wind up like a clock. It’d go for six hours.” Even this was an arduous task, for it was necessary to keep an eye on the light all night. When William died in 1941, his son George became the lighthouse keeper, a job that ended when the light was automated in 1970. Small lights at Gadds Point and Tuckers Head were announced in 1931. Over in Woody Point, the little lighthouse on the point was built in 1919 as a square wooden structure with sloping sides and a fixed light. The Western Star for September 17, 1919, reported that Bonne Bay now had a “Red Light” district with the new harbour light at “Curzon Head.” It was reconstructed forty years later. A prominent feature of the village today—and the subject of several storybooks for children by Noelle Hall—it still functions as an automatic beacon.

Fig. 48. William Young and his family at the Lighthouse in 1914 (GMNP Collection).William’s wife was Esther Burridge, seen as a little girl in Fig. 80.

There is at least one ghost ship story associated with Bonne Bay. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a brig was wrecked off Wild Cove, and all hands were lost. Sometime later, the crew of a Woody Point schooner heading for home across the Bay swore that they were plagued by a “token” of the wrecked vessel, which came alongside the schooner. It tried to force the boat onto the beach, and no matter how the captain turned his vessel, the “ghost brig” followed alongside, trying to drive it ashore. It followed the schooner until it reached a safe anchorage, then circled around and went out the bay again. Was it attempting to guide the schooner to safety or trying to wreak vengeance on it? And there were stories in the old days about strange lights appearing on the Bay. Sometimes these would appear before windstorms, travelling over the water or ice until they rose and disappeared over the hills. In the mid-1940s, the Miss Glenburnie, a local schooner built for the Youngs of Glenburnie, was caught in a storm off Port Saunders. As they headed for shelter, they passed the area where the Maria Margarita, skippered by Joe Dicks from Corner Brook and crewed by his two sons and another man, had disappeared in late 1943. The Youngs reported that at the height of the storm, they were startled by the Dickses’ crew of ghostly figures clambering aboard the Miss Glenburnie seeking shelter.³⁷

Fig. 49. The old Roberts House as it was before collapse in the late twentieth century (Woody Point Collection)

POSTAL SERVICES IMPROVE SLOWLY AND BANKING STARTS

As we saw in the previous chapter, a mail service had been set up in the late 1800s, with John Rowland Roberts as the first postmaster. The post office itself was at first located in the home built by John Rowland and his father, Mark, one of the original four Roberts brothers. Located next to the first Church of England school-chapel at the south end of Woody Point, on the bank close to the old cemetery, this remained in the family for several generations until, abandoned with age, it collapsed into the ground in the late twentieth century (Fig. 49). There was some criticism of local businessmen using their own homes to provide government post, telegraph, and customs services. “Rank-and-File” wrote to the Western Star on March 16, 1904, to complain, among other things, that the lack of a government building “cannot be charged to the neglect of any administration, but rather to the selfish influence of the political wire-pullers of our own bay” who collect rent for the use of their buildings.

By 1902, residents had come to expect more of the mail service than they were getting. The Western Star printed several letters from our old friend “Flat Foot.” In January, 1901, he—or perhaps she—argued that the weekly mail service from Deer Lake was not functioning, because the mail carrier was overworked and underpaid. The January 8, 1902, issue contained a letter from the same correspondent complaining that there had been no mail in November and December. The Bonne Bay post had been “disgracefully handled . . . we are paying for a 12 month’s service . . . [and nothing] should be used as a precedent for giving us a 10 months mail service. . . . We are taxed mercilessly; we receive nothing in return . . . and we should at least know what is being done with our money.”

Fig. 50. Mail arrives in Lomond by dog team in the winter of 1934-35 (DHS Album)

Part of the problem was the difficulty of the journey to Bonne Bay from the railway station in Deer Lake or by boat from the Bay of Islands. Early in 1902, the two men responsible for mail transfer from the Bay of Islands took “a whole week on the journey in a dory during which they underwent much hardship. They are not sorry the ’dory mail service’ is ended.” A few years later, another correspondent wrote that mild weather at the end of January “is giving us great satisfaction with the mails. Leaving St. John’s on Sunday we get it on Tuesday evening, which is very satisfactory. Our mail carrier is a man equal to the work, and when the mail isn’t on time you can reckon it can’t be done.” As we saw earlier, telegrams had been getting through to Woody Point for some years now. In 1911, the existing line was extended beneath the waters of the Bay to Norris Point and northward from there, but postal delivery by man and dog teams in the winter continued for many years (Fig. 50).

After the debt-ridden banks in St. John’s collapsed in 1894, Canadian institutions rushed in to replace them. The Newfoundland dollar was then set at par with the Canadian, and Canadian currency notes became legal tender. The first to open a branch on the West Coast appears to have been the Bank of Montreal. An office was set up in the Bay of Islands in 1902 to handle transactions from the southwest coast to Flower’s Cove in the north. It was not until 1914 that Bonne Bay had its first bank. This was the Bank of Nova Scotia, which from 1916 operated in a fine building along the Woody Point waterfront, with the manager’s quarters on the second floor. The bank was destroyed by the great fire six years later, but all the valuables were saved in the vault, which survived (see Fig. 57). Operations continued for another year or two, until a lack of business forced it to close. It was not until many years later that the Bank of Montreal moved into Woody Point to fill the gap.³⁸

DREAMING OF TRAINS

It was in 1868 that a route for a potential railway across the island was first surveyed, part of a proposed marine-rail link across the whole of the British Empire, from England to the Orient. More careful consideration in 1874 indicated that the cost of building and operating a rail from St. John’s to St. George’s would be too great. Moreover, the French Government’s refusal to allow a terminus on the Treaty Shore delayed things for two decades and “woefully retarded the development of the western seaboard.”

Railroad construction finally began in 1890, and after many debates and delays, the route was completed, and in June 1898 the first train from St. John’s reached Port aux Basques through Deer Lake and the Bay of Islands after a journey of twenty-eight hours. Soon the Reid Newfoundland Company, now charged with operating the railway, became “the biggest paymaster in the Island, bigger even than the government.”

Fig. 51. The changing Reid Lots around Bonne Bay, 1895-1904 (modified from Whiteway: “A manuscript map of Newfoundland showing land lots of Reid-Newfoundland Company” at CNS, and the Reid Papers at PANL).

Fig. 52. Two proposed routes for the railway to Bonne Bay. The dashed line, taken from a 1911 map of the route chosen by Reid, is superimposed on Thomson’s 1908 map for a separate route from Green Bay.

In return for building and operating the railroad, the 1890 contract awarded Reid 5,000 acres of land for every mile built. Later, more land was turned over to Reid, with company officers apparently changing their minds from time to time about which area was most desirable. Maps from the Reid Company files show that in the 1890s there were at different times claims on a huge swath of land from Martins Point north to Portland Creek, and smaller areas centred on Bonne Bay Little Pond and west of Birchy Head. It is not clear if all these were actually granted to Reid or simply included in plans for future acquisition, but by the spring of 1904, the Company had firm possession of two lots bordering on Bonne Bay, including Lot 206, which ran from South Arm to Trout River (Fig. 51). The boundaries of some of the Reid lots changed over time, and eventually most were sold or turned back to the province.

Of course, there was keen interest in Bonne Bay in the idea of a branch line from Deer Lake. One letter in the Western Star pointed out that “a railway brings immediate and lasting benefits to communities through which it passes” and asked wistfully “how much . . . has real estate in Bonne Bay increased in value owing to the railway passing within 30 or 40 miles of us?” Plans were made for a number of branch lines, including one to Bonne Bay, and contracts were issued in 1909. Earlier, a survey team had walked from Green Bay through to the East Arm of Bonne Bay, scouting out a route for a proposed railway line that would run roughly parallel to but, strangely, not connect with the main line already in place through Howley and Deer Lake (Fig. 52). The idea here was to take goods and passengers arriving from Britain by sea across to Bonne Bay, from which they would be carried westward again by ship to Canada. For some time this was the preferred rail route, for in 1912 a report of a tour along the West Coast by Premier Morris noted that “The railway will pass close to Norris Point.”

More sensible minds prevailed, and a Deer Lake-Bonne Bay South route was planned (Fig. 52). Some clearing and grading along this line was completed along the Deer Lake end, but no rails were ever laid. Hopes were briefly revived in 1913, when Prime Minister Morris announced an agreement with a company to lay a railway from Quebec City to Cape Charles on the Labrador Strait, connecting to Bonne Bay, either direct by ferry or via a branch rail line down the Newfoundland side of the Strait. This idea also came to nothing, even after a survey was run from Deer Lake to Lomond. In the end, costs and the relative proximity of the railway station in Deer Lake put an end to the dream of a rail line to Bonne Bay. All efforts turned to a road link between the Bay and the Lake.³⁹

NO ROAD YET

For many years, there had been a rough track connecting Norris Point via Wild Cove to Rocky Harbour, and this was being upgraded in 1912 when Premier Morris visited the area. On the south side there had long been a horse and cart road (see Fig. 33) from Curzon Village to Glenburnie, as shown on the British chart of 1897. This indicates that the road continued for a way past Glenburnie alongside McKenzies Brook to Deer Lake, though it was likely no more than a cart track. Between Woody Point and Trout River there wasn’t even that. As Mr. H. Y. Mott, a candidate in the 1908 election, said at a meeting in Woody Point, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have just walked from Trout River, and I really think the candidate who makes that walk deserves to be elected.” He wasn’t.

As early as 1900, the premier, Sir Robert Bond, had raised in the House of Assembly the issue of a road link to the railway at Deer Lake, sending “a ray of light and hope into the gloom that has for many years hung over the inhabitants of Bonne Bay and vicinity.” By August that year, a crew under Albert Bayley was already at work, and a note in the Western Star for December 14 reported that a fourteen-foot-wide “exceptionally smooth” road some nineteen miles long had been “cut and stumped.” In a classic overstatement, the reporter wrote “it might be said that there is no better road in the country and certainly no more picturesque drive. . . . But for the elections, which compelled the shutting down of all public works, the road would have been across to Deer Lake by this time.” That winter, George Wilton took delivery in Bonne Bay of a shipment of herring nets, perhaps the first cargo to be carried overland on what was still not much more than a winter track covering part of the distance.

“We are hoping to have a complete carriage road all the way through to the railway crossing next season,” reported the Western Star on March 6, 1901. But there were skeptics, including the anonymous “Flat Foot,” who complained that “we have not even a piece of road in the most populous part of our bay fit to drive a team on, while the government people are boasting that they have over a quarter million dollars surplus in the Treasury at the end of the fiscal year.” Others were more patient. “We hope the Government will make a good appropriation to complete the new railway connecting road between this place and Deer Lake. The opening of the road was the best thing Bonne Bay has known for many years. Our business men and the community generally want the road pushed to completion.” The member for St. Barbe, Alexander Parsons, urged the Government to give the construction of the road “their favourable consideration” both as a means of increasing revenue and to “open up a large section of the country to tourists.” But soon letters to the editor were complaining of lack of further action. Work continued into 1902, and the Western Star noted that 100 men from Bonne Bay were being sought to work on the road. But the work proved difficult: bogs had to be crossed and bridges built, especially across The Neck between Lomond and Glenburnie.

Fig. 53. The first road from Lomond to Bonne Bay Little Pond. Modified from Palmer (1928), who labels as the East River what is actually the Lomond.

By 1903, progress had slowed, and criticisms were expressed about the antiquated methods being used. In the June 29, 1904, issue of the Western Star, a letter from “Road Board” defended the roadworks, saying how hard the task was, and that Mr. Bayley and his crew were doing their best. Another letter writer commented caustically, “What a humiliating exhibition in road building, and this in Britain’s oldest colony in the 20th century, four men to a cart hauling a barrel of rocks, doing the work of a jackass.” Work on this route ceased not long afterwards, but the track remained for many years, suitable only for horse and cart, or sleigh in winter. The Western Star for April 19, 1905, noted that Bryant Harding had arrived in the Bay of Islands by dory from Bonne Bay and that Stephen Taylor had left for his home in Bonne Bay by the same means: clearly there had not been much progress.

When attention in the Bay switched to Lomond, it became clear that a road connection to Deer Lake was even more needed, and construction began in July 1921. There was reputed to be a gigantic workforce of over 2,500 men, most of whom were sent from St. John’s and Conception Bay to ease the unemployment situation threatening the survival of the Government: in actual fact the workforce that year consisted of a more modest crew of 600 men. By the end of the year, the route to Deer Lake had been cut and opened for horse and sleigh, with a base of tree trunks covered with gravel, so-called “codroy.” By 1926, cars and trucks could navigate the route, shown in part in Fig. 53, but only in summer and fall, when it was not too muddy or blocked with snow. Attempts to extend the road the twelve kilometres across The Neck and down to Glenburnie proved too hard. This would have ended at an existing 170-foot-long wooden bridge across McKenzies Brook, which was rebuilt that year. Only one of the planned eighteen bridges across The Neck was completed by the end of the 1921 season, and the route was once again abandoned. It is not hard to understand the frustration felt in Bonne Bay when neither the railway nor the road to Deer Lake materialized. It took more than two decades before the South Arm was finally connected by a satisfactory road to Deer Lake.⁴⁰

TENDING TO THE SICK AND THE HURT

As long as French-British tensions existed, there was along the West Coast little or no medical help available. The French Navy attempted to ease the situation with a 1862 decree that there should be “surgeons holding the title of doctor of medicine or health officer” assigned to each of twenty-four stations on the French Shore, including Rocky Harbour. However, it was hard to find recruits, and though there was one French doctor stationed in Port au Choix for many years until 1901, it is doubtful that one was ever based in Rocky Harbour. The best that most people could obtain was sporadic medical assistance from visiting navy and government officials, and on occasion from local clergymen. In 1869, for example, the Superintendent of Fisheries noted that the people of Bonne Bay were “suffering from measles and low fever. Gave them a small quantity of port wine and some preserved meats.”

When Julien Thoulet visited South Arm on the Clorinde in 1886, he was asked by a local woman whether there was a physician on board. There was, “and since our excellent doctor is always ready to give generously of his talents and devotion, he immediately goes to the sick person’s house. These people are familiar with the Clorinde and impatiently await its arrival each year, because they know that the ship’s doctor cures sickness and requires no payment. The illnesses result from thin blood, due to the poor diet composed solely of fish, and to the humidity and long confinement to winter. The frigate does not stay long enough in one place to treat or operate on all those who need it, so the doctor can only dispense advice concerning health and hygiene.”

Four years later, Dr. Aristide Jan, a French naval physician, expressed his concerns about the living conditions of settlers on the West Coast. He noted that women and children were particularly prone to sickness. Uterine infections after childbirth were common, and children barely reached normal stages of development. Anemia among young children was then common and, in some cases, fatal. Dr. Jan believed this was due to poor diets and malnutrition associated with the rigours of winter in confined spaces, and not to a hereditary condition, as many then thought. Tuberculosis, or “galloping consumption” was also common, and many families lost at least one member to the disease.

Help for many among the ill and injured in and around Bonne Bay came from a remarkable family, the Prebles, father and son. As we saw earlier, George Francis Preble had come to Newfoundland as a “spotter” on a trading vessel out of the USA. After several years, he bought the vessel Firefox to fish and trade in Labrador waters for himself. On his first trip in 1870, he was in a crowded harbour along the Straits of Labrador when a fisherman on a nearby ship from Bonavista blew off part of his arm with an old gun. Preble and Elizabeth Andrews, daughter of the ship’s owner, worked together over the wounded man and, with applications of sea water and remedies found in the primitive medicine chest, saved the man’s life. Preble was impressed with the young woman and wrote her that winter expressing the hope that they would meet again. This they did the next year, again in Labrador. Preble soon proposed, telling Elizabeth that he was moving to Bonne Bay where herring was king. After their marriage, they settled in the mid-1870s first in Birchy Head and then in Norris Point, moving to Woody Point after their house was burned to the ground in the early 1900s.

The Labrador incident was the start of Preble’s long medical career, the first “doctor” resident in the Bay. He travelled to New York to buy medical equipment and books to guide his work, which soon came to be widely called upon. Until his death in 1903, he ministered to the needs of the people around him, attending to many births and deaths. Not that everyone approved, for in January 1889, “A Resident” of Bonne Bay urged the government to appoint a “medical practitioner,” and “I do not mean a quack, in whose hands the characters and lives of his deluded dupes are not for a moment safe.” Four years later, the Newfoundland Government passed a law to “regulate the practice of medicine in this colony.” Part of this law stated that anyone who had practised medicine for at least five consecutive years in one place would get a medical licence to practise under this act. One of ten such men was “Dr.” Preble, who at last became officially recognized. As a youngster, his son William, born in 1874, helped his father, watching him treat various diseases and operate on acute cases. When the Magistrate’s daughter fell from a ladder and broke her leg, Dr. Preble, being ill, was carried on a stretcher to the Magistrate’s house, where he instructed William to set the broken limb: this he did to perfection. After his father’s death, William continued his work as far as he could, helping the sick until a doctor came by. Many times he skilfully mended damaged fingers, arms, and legs of injured neighbours, but he never applied for a medical licence and was therefore not recognized officially, which meant that he could not charge fees.

The year before Dr. Preble died, the first properly qualified medical doctor, Alexander Campbell from Souris, PEI, a graduate of McGill University, arrived in Bonne Bay where he spent the next two years here, going on to become embroiled in political scandal in St. John’s. By 1905, people were coming from as far as St. Genevieve Bay to seek medical attention in Bonne Bay. Dr. Franklin Fisher, based in Corner Brook after 1906, would be called in by steamer to deal with difficult cases. But despite the occasional presence of trained physicians like Campbell, and Dr. H. M. Mosdell, who was based in Bonne Bay around 1910 to 1913, people still relied for medical help before the War from knowledgeable local men and women, such as William Preble and Sally Raike from down Glenburnie way. According to a 1921 article on “outport nursing” by Lady Harris, the Bay had then been without a proper doctor or a nurse for some time.

There had been several epidemics in the Bay, though little record remains of the earlier ones. The ship’s doctor on HMS Woodlark reported in 1874 that in Bonne Bay whooping cough was epidemic. Between September 30 and December 5, 1894, thirteen babies and children died of this disease, mostly in Bonne Bay South, and two years later there was a serious outbreak of diphtheria, commonly called then “sore throat.” Many died, especially children, including two of J. Bancroft and two of the Burden family living in Seal Cove. Then, in 1897, an outbreak of scarlet fever took the lives of at least twelve children in the Bay. On November 17, 1902, the Western Star reported that a new case of typhoid fever had been discovered, and that it seemed “to be hanging around the bay.” The 1906 flu episode was mentioned earlier, and around 1910, there was an outbreak of smallpox, which took a heavy toll on the coast.

By far the most serious epidemic was that of the Spanish flu of 1918. That year a virulent wave of influenza swept around the globe. It was first recorded on the Northern Peninsula in June and July, but the main wave hit between September and the following June. Many people died from the disease and associated pneumonia. From St. Barbe District, there were six deaths in the first wave and thirty-nine in the second, most in the Bonne Bay region. The flu was probably spread by boat and train travel, and it might have been worse had not the coastal steamer the SS Ethie remained in Bay of Islands for several weeks until all its sick crew members had recovered and its northern route could again be followed. In Bonne Bay, the story goes that a three-masted Danish sailing ship docked in mid-November, 1918, at Taylor’s wharf in Curzon Village with a load of salt (Fig. 54). Nobody knew that some of her crew were very ill, and the skipper tried to unload the salt and reload with dried fish before anyone found out. Some of the local men who worked aboard caught the disease, and it spread from there. Jim Taylor was on board and was the first casualty in Woody Point, though there had already been three deaths in Birchy Head. In the thirty days after November 10, there were sixteen deaths from Curzon Village to Birchy Head—six children, six men and four women, of whom eight died in a five-day period. And six deaths each were recorded in Norris Point and Trout River.

Fig. 54. Next to the SS Seal at Taylor’s wharf is the Danish schooner believed to have brought the Spanish flu to Woody Point in 1918 (GMNP Collection)

Local people banded together to tend the sick. One would stand on the hill and scan the village to spot houses with no smoke coming from their chimneys. To these they would bring porridge and soup. William Preble and his wife attended eighty-five men in their cookhouse, making soup for them in three gallon pots and feeding them continually. All of these patients survived, but others were not so lucky. It was a terrible period for the Bay. One older resident of Woody Point interviewed in 2006 recalled “The flu? Why yes, my son, I remember the flu. That’s why everybody here is related the way they are. When my grandmother died from it, my grandfather had to marry [another woman whose] husband died of it. They needed to remarry right away with winter coming on and all, because your family wouldn’t make it otherwise.” In 1921, there was a smallpox epidemic on the coast, and though there was then a vaccine available, people were reluctant to submit to the needle until one local smallpox victim volunteered to sit in his window to frighten passersby, who would then scurry off to the doctor.

In the early days, folk remedies were common, some handed down from Mi’kmaq people. Some people held that when salted herring were sprinkled with black pepper and put in one’s slippers, they could draw out fever, and some people placed them around their necks when plagued with sore throats. Eliza Cullihall was once cured of snow blindness with the old remedy of a drop of molasses in each eye. Mothers used charms from the Bible to stop the bleeding from cuts and nosebleeds, and to ease pain from toothaches. A woman had to be taught to charm by a man and vice versa: two women or two men couldn’t learn from each other. Men would gather medicinal materials from the woods, and the women would make up the curative mixtures. Absalom Payne of Rocky Harbour claimed years later that “folk medicine is a darned sight better than drugs from the hospital. Home remedies are just as good or better than the hospital with its needles.” But for them to work, the patient had to believe in them.

Births were usually attended by women—all married, of course—who had acquired skills in midwifery. In Bonne Bay South, these included Minnie Allen and Amy Half-yard from Woody Point, Lydia Fogarty of St. Josephs Cove, Nell Caines, Minnie Kennedy, Nell Laing, Kate Bugden, and Sarah Reid from Norris Point, Lizzie Anderson of Shoal Brook, and Leah Payne, Elisabeth Dodd, Sarah Wight, and Lavinia Decker of Rocky Harbour. But there were problems. Few families escaped the sorrow of losing an infant to sickness. After giving birth to her third child around 1900, a woman from Winter House Brook suffered greatly from what was known as “breast fever,” then a common postnatal sickness. She threatened to end her life, and her husband had to keep close watch on her. One morning he awoke to find his wife and the baby gone from the house. A search of the area turned up her body face down in the brook where she had thrown herself. Then among the flowers and fruit trees, a little cry was heard, and the infant was found where her mother had placed her, wrapped warmly in a blanket. She became known as Daisy, the little girl found in the flower garden. Many years later, Dr. Noel Murphy claimed that a midwife during the minimal training available even at mid-twentieth century “did no more than stand in a corner, watch a few deliveries, and sort out the laundry. She would then return to her community thinking that nature would do everything for a patient, and that the outcome of each case would be a happy ending,” which it sometimes wasn’t. This led him to insist that most deliveries should be in hospital, as indeed in Bonne Bay they came to be.

Of course, there were circumstances in which even the best medical help at the time was insufficient. Fifteen-year-old Amanda Christiana Howell did not get along with her strict parents in Hell Cove. One afternoon in late September 1911, she left home without a word to walk to Trout River where her brother and sister lived. At the far end of the Gulch she strayed off the path to the village and onto another that took her down Wallace Brook. As darkness fell, she knew she was lost. A search was made for her that evening, and the next day this spread out along the way to Trout River. Days passed, and hope of finding her alive was fading. But on the eleventh day someone dreamed that she was out near the ocean. Sure enough, she was discovered near the beach at Green Gardens. She told her rescuers that she had spent the first few nights in rough camps along the way. She told of walking along the shore, how the sea washed her off the beach and brought her back again, and how she tried to climb up onto the terrace above, but fell backwards with big rocks following her. She finally got to the top and went up a brook where she stayed all that night. It was then that she saw the lights of the coastal steamer Portia and the lighthouse in Rocky Harbour. She said her long-dead mother covered her up each night. However, Amanda suffered terrible wounds to her feet and legs, and gangrene had already set in. Though the doctor was unable to save her legs, she did recover, only to die a few years later.⁴¹

BONNE BAY GOES TO WAR

The people of Bonne Bay were well aware of world events beyond their shores and soon came to participate in them in a way they could not have imagined. Those who read the Western Star, which then carried far more international news than today, would have been able to follow important events around the world. Even as early as 1900, there was a wild celebration in Woody Point on hearing of the relief of Ladysmith during the Boer War. “Merchants distributed candles, powder and tar-barrels freely, and a wonderful demonstration was held. All the houses at central Bonne Bay were grandly illuminated, and even women and children shared the joys of the event and sang the ’National Anthem’ as never before. Ladies will have finished collecting for the Patriotic Fund today, and the handsome figure of $300 will be reached.” In 1902, there was joy again in Woody Point at news that a peace treaty had been signed in South Africa to end the Boer War. There is no record of any local men having taken part in that conflict, but it was not many years before Bonne Bay was called upon to send its men to war.

When the First World War was declared in 1914, recruitment was on a voluntary basis. For the first two years of the War, there were few volunteers from the West Coast, perhaps in part because people here were more used to fighting against the French, now Britain’s ally, than with them. However, nineteen-year-old Charles Augustus Read, the son of Charlie Read the telegraph operator, did his best to enlist. In 1915, he walked to Deer Lake, only to be rejected because he was four pounds too light. His second attempt failed as, apparently, did his third attempt in May 1917 when he travelled to St. John’s to join up. On February 17 that year, the Western Star reported that there had been practically no enlistments north of Bonne Bay, where twenty men had already joined up. George Wilton was of the opinion that “voluntary enlistment does not and will not touch those who do not intend to do their part, and anyone following the list of those volunteering can see that a great many are those who already have brothers or friends now serving or have already laid down their lives in this struggle.” Perhaps his letter encouraging conscription was a factor why, by the spring of 1918, around sixty men from the Bay had volunteered and been accepted. For some, there may have been the attraction of earning military pay: even though this was measly, at least there was free “room and board.”

About sixty-five men from the Bay went to war (Table 9). Some were little more than boys—the regulation age was nineteen—hoping to join in what was then regarded as a big adventure. The 1916 slaughter at Beaumont-Hamel didn’t seem to change their minds, for many joined up later, especially in the Navy. Look at the faces in Fig. 55, probably taken that year. Meshach Stickland from Birchy Head was only thirteen or fourteen when the War began, and Leslie Payne and Joseph (Job) Gilley, both sixteen, lied about their age to enlist. Some could neither read nor write and signed their volunteer form with an “X.”

Many of these survived the War, but thirteen did not (Fig. 56). John R. W. Hollands, whose early years had been spent in Woody Point, where his father was the Anglican minister, was studying in Montreal when War was declared. He immediately joined the Royal Canadian Highlanders and died in the second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. What was then seen as the glory of war was expressed well in his obituary. Hollands “had the honour of being the first Newfoundlander killed in action . . . [and] . . . died as a British gentleman—playing the game.”

Table 9. Men from Bonne Bay who fought in WWI

Newfoundland
Royal Naval Reserve

John Brake, NP

John C. Butt, RH

Peter Butt, RH

William J. Gillam, BB

Alfred Halfyard, BB

George Halfyard, BB

James William Hiscock, NP

George E. Noel, BB

Samuel F. Parsons, BB

Benjamin Pittman, BB

Silas Pittman, RH

William Prosper, BB

Hedley V. Roberts, CV

Phillip Tucker, RH

Edward Young, SLV

Canadian
Expeditionary Force

John R.W. Hollands

Daniel Wilton

Royal Newfoundland
Regiment

George Edward Brake

Garfield Caines, BB

Nathaniel Caravan, BB

Jesse Critch, NP

Andrew Ellsworth, RH

John Ellsworth, RH

Job Gilley, SV

James Goosney, BH

John W. Halfyard, BH

Nicholas Halfyard, SB

Wallace Halfyard, CV

Briggs A. Hann, BB

George Harding, NP

William S. Hutchings, BB

Michael Keough, BB

James Kennedy, NP

Rev. G. Maidment, NP

John Major, NP

Royal Newfoundland
Regiment

Nathaniel Martin, BB

John Maynard, NP

William Minar, NP

Lawrence Mitchell, NP

Jonathan Moores, WP

John Moxley, NP

Abner Oates, NP

William Parsons, BB

John Payne, BB

Leslie Payne, BB

Wilson Payne, BB

Frank Pittman, NP

Hayward Prosper, BB

John Prosper, BB

Arthur Reid, NP

Rendell Roberts, BB

Ezekiel Rumbolt Jr. and Sr., NP

Lemiel Rumbolt, NP

Reuben Sams, NP

William Sams, NP

Edward Seaward, BB

Matthew Smith, NP

Walter E. Squires, NP

Ephraim Stickland, SP

Ingram Stickland SP

Meshach Stickland, SP

Peter Stickland, SP

Richard Walsh, NP

Arthur Wight, BB

Royal Air Force

James Caines NP

BB – Bonne Bay

BH – Birchy Head

CV – Curzon Village

NP – Norris Point

RH – Rocky Harbour

SV – Stanleyville

SLV – Silverton

SP – Silver Point

An earlier fatality, though not on the battlefield, was Edward Young of Silverton, who died in February 1915, while serving in the Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve. Arthur Wight (or White) was killed at Beaumont-Hamel in June 1916, and two months later Edward Seaward from Curzon Village lost his life. Job Gilley, a young logger in Stanleyville, died in a German prison camp in 1917 at the age of seventeen. George Edward Brake, who lived with his adoptive mother in Bonne Bay, died in 1917, as did Daniel Wilton, who was in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. In 1918 alone, five young men from the Bay lost their lives: William (Stanley) Hutchings and Ingram Stickland both died in April. John Thomas Major, the only fatality from Norris Point—there were no casualties from Rocky Harbour—died in June. Wallace (Walstey) Halfyard was killed in action in October, and William Parsons died that year in St. John’s of TB. Briggs Ambrose (Brigham) Hann died of wounds in September, as did John Wilbert Halfyard a month later. Gilley, Hann, Major, and Wallace Halfyard were just lads when they lost their lives. The emotional—and economic— burden to all the families can only be imagined.

The women of the Bay were also involved in the war effort, knitting and sewing clothes, preparing bandages for the wounded, and raising money for materials. One of them was Jemima Wilton, the wife of Magistrate George Wilton. As President of the Women’s Patriotic Association in Bonne Bay, she was awarded an MBE in 1918. After the War there were plans for a monument to those who died in the War. This was to be in Woody Point and a fund was set up with A. W. Amberman, the manager of the Bank of Nova Scotia, as Treasurer. However, the effort faded away, especially after the 1922 fire destroyed the Bank. Years later, Mrs. J. R. Hollahan (Mary Elizabeth Butt) took it upon herself to reactivate the idea, for many of the boys who lost their lives she knew and were on her mind. Eventually enough money was raised, and the memorial was unveiled in September 1937, as reported in the Western Star (February 9, 1938) “in memory of our boys who voluntarily made the great sacrifice. Let us remember that at the call of King and Empire our boys did not hesitate, but were ready to give their all.” The names of three from beyond the Bay were also included: Thomas Crocker and Robert Hann, both from Trout River, and William Knott from Sally’s Cove. A plaque honouring the veterans of World War II was later added to the Woody Point monument. This is one of the few monuments on the West Coast to those who died on active service.⁴²

Fig. 55. Bonne Bay men to the Great War (from GMNP and Woody Point collections)

L-R: Arthur Reid, Wilson Payne, Bryant Crocker, Zeke Rumbolt, Reg Skanes, Leslie Payne

Fig. 56. Four who did not return. Clockwise from upper left: John W. Hayward, Arthur Wight, John R. W. Hollands, Edward Seaward (from Woody Point Collection, Jack Parsons, and NQ (v15, No.2, 1915)

THE NORTH-WEST COAST REFORM MOVEMENT

Just after the War ended, in the winter of 1918-1919, the coastal steamer service was once more curtailed. On January 29, a large crowd gathered at the Orange Hall in Woody Point to protest. The Chairman, George Wilton, allowed that he had never seen a more angry crowd in the Bay—which was saying something given the 1902 “riot” over herring seiners. But this time “the people of St. John’s would be compelled to see that it would not pay to neglect them any longer. They were ready . . . to fight for their rights, not with their fists, but with their tongues on the platform.” One can only wonder how that would have tasted.

A man called Henry spoke at length about the “premature withdrawal of the Eagle and the Portia from the west coast services,” due to the refusal of the Government to compensate shipping companies when their vessels were trapped by ice. He then suggested that the widespread electoral district of St. Barbe be split in two, since “it is a physical impossibility for any one man to represent the district as it should be.” Warming to the crowd, Henry spoke in favour of extending the railway to Bonne Bay, upgrading the road (now “merely a goat track”), the need for a government ferry like the one approved for the Bay of Islands, and the “unanswerable case for a hospital” in the Bay. After turning briefly to the potential for mining and agriculture and to other topics of local interest, Henry “urged the people of Bonne Bay to keep alive the splendid public spirit displayed at the meeting, which promised to start a new era in local public life, and to exert a most beneficial influence on the people who had grievances at other less important outports along the coast.”

In response, and emphasizing that “he had nothing whatever to do with politics,” Rev. Maidment congratulated the crowd for their enthusiasm and ventured that “no government would dare to refuse their public appeals for better treatment.” The upshot of the meeting was that a committee was formed to present a “solid and united front to the different parties, whenever they made appeals for the remedying of their grievances and the betterment of the conditions under which they lived and worked on that great stretch of neglected coast line.” George Wilton was appointed Chairman and William Preble as Secretary. There were members—all male, of course—from Curzon Village, Woody Point, Winter House Brook, South Arm, Norris Point, and Stanleyville. This “Bonne Bay Public Welfare Committee” was directed to issue a public statement urging that the Eagle and the Portia finish their trips to Bonne Bay. This gathering may have been the start of what was called the “North-West Coast Reform Movement,” which soon spread to Rocky Harbour where “the hope has been expressed that the agitation started at Bonne Bay will grow until it become general right along the coast.” How long the movement lasted and how successful it was in pressing for better services on the West Coast is not clear. Within a few years a much more significant event took place, one that changed the regional importance of Woody Point and Bonne Bay.⁴³

THE GREAT FIRE

Fire is an ever-present threat where forests are dry and houses built of wood. In 1885, Lt. Koenig, aboard the Clorinde in the Bay, noted the “spectacle splendide” of a forest fire to the north, from which the crackling sound of the burning trees could be clearly heard. He opined that “spontaneous” fires were common in Newfoundland. The Bonne Bay fire burned for a fortnight before going out, presumably of its own accord. Then, on the Norris Point waterfront in 1898, a man named Tucker was boiling pitch to put on his boat when the contents of the tin caught on fire and set the boat ablaze. The flankers (flying embers) from the fire spread to nearby trees and soon the whole hill was on fire, throwing a scare into the town. Fortunately the fire burnt itself out before any buildings were destroyed. Ever since, many call what is officially known as Neddy Hill, Burnt Hill: indeed, well into the 1930s, it had still not recovered its vegetation (see Figs. 2 and 61).

In early February 1908, a fire started in the middle of the night at the store of J.C. Seeley in Woody Point. The fire spread quickly to the premises of J.C. Roberts, and both were burnt to the ground. Only quick action by the townspeople, who “soon formed themselves into a bucket brigade, conveying water from the Arm close by, in buckets, coal scuttles, slop pails, and every kind of vessel that could contain water,” saved neighbouring stores, and prevented the flames from destroying many residences. This was but a rehearsal for the destruction caused by the great conflagration that later levelled much of the Woody Point waterfront.

Fig. 57. The Woody Point waterfront destroyed by fire in 1922 (Woody Point Collection). A: looking southward. B: looking northward. C: the bank vault - a lone sentinel.

At 6:15 in the evening of June 1, 1922, a spark pitched on the roof of Haliburton’s store in the centre of the business district, along the shore road in Woody Point. The wind blowing a gale from the southwest quickly spread the flames, and within an hour every building within about 500 yards was destroyed, and with so much gasoline in barrels it seemed that the water was afire. The flames leaped into the air, and flankers were carried as far as Norris Point and beyond, but the efforts of local residents there prevented the village from suffering a similar fate. People rushed in from down the Arm, and even from Norris Point, to help fight the fire. Women formed bucket brigades, so that the fire was brought under control within a few hours. One lady was so overwhelmed that she came running with her chamber pot to help.

The razed area extended from Taylor’s store in the south to Parsons’s store in the north. Some fifty-eight buildings, wharves, dwellings, and other structures along the waterfront were destroyed (Fig. 57). Burnt to the ground were a coal store and small house of Stephen Taylor, the shop and home of David Coen, the shop and store belonging to Thomas Garcin, the Butt Brothers’ shop and three stores, the Haliburtons’ shop and five stores, three stores, two dwellings, and a new shop belonging to John Hollahan, a shop and store belonging to Thomas Rose, the Prebles’ dwelling and four stores, a store belonging to Ed Roberts, one store each owned by John Roberts and William Wheeler, the government warehouse, the Customs House, and the telegraph office and post office. Telegraph operator Read lost all his personal belongings but managed to save the telegraph instruments. The only structure left standing was the Bank of Nova Scotia vault, the contents of which survived the fire.

Fig. 57b.The Woody Point fire

Fig. 57c.The Woody Point fire

John Peebles Haliburton’s son, John Plant, was then running the family business, but according to his great-nephew Gordon Haliburton, he was so heartbroken by the fire and the collapse of his business that he walked out of the empty family home leaving the “grand piano in the drawing room and the silver in the sideboard” and never returned. Perhaps so, but in the new Anglican cemetery in Woody Point are the graves of both John Peebles (1926) and John Plant (1953).

One estimate put the total loss at about $150,000, of which about 80% was covered by insurance. The fire made news across Newfoundland, and raised concern within the Government. Prime Minister Squires wired to William Preble, then chairman of the Bonne Bay Public Welfare Committee, as follows: “Suggest your committee get in touch with the magistrate and telegraph me fully as to what assistance if any you need in this emergency, and details of any program of relief in cases of extreme destitution, if any, resulting from the disaster. . . . I am concerned also for the fishery throughout the section supplied from Bonne Bay.” No doubt this disaster did help to make the Government in St. John’s aware of the problems facing the Bay, but it was not smooth sailing even then. Though some businesses never recovered, others did, and the waterfront was soon rebuilt. Some people even today regard the fire as causing a severe decline in the regional importance of Woody Point, but as we shall see in the next chapter, it remained for many years a significant administrative centre.⁴⁴