Classic Christmas Stories

by Frank Galgay

  During his years of heavy drinking, he would get hopelessly drunk at night and not care about it.

  “But next morning I’d go through hell thinking about what I was doing to my wife and family. Then I’d go out and get drunk again and try to forget about it.

  “I’d sit home for days on end and no-one would talk to me, ” he said.

  “I’d be completely alone, full of remorse and self-pity, shaking and shivering and just waiting, hoping and praying for someone to come along with the price of a bottle . . . a few drinks and I was gone again.

  “Believe me, it’s not a good feeling. You’re all alone—you feel as if no-one wants you and no-one cares about you. You lose your self-respect and you just don’t give a damn any more.”

  Phil said his drinking career included a few spells around the War Memorial on Duckworth Street, a favourite drinking territory of some of the city’s most destitute alcoholics.

  “The drinks couldn’t come fast enough for me on the monument, ” he said.

  “I had to be working because I had to have money in order to drink the way I wanted to drink. There was no way a bottle of wine in the morning would do me . . . I wanted to slash right into it. I used to spend a month or so with the boys on the street. Then I’d be lucky enough to get a job again. I’d hold on to that for a couple of months and then I‘d get fired again for drinking on the job. There was a six week waiting period for unemployment insurance, and I’d spend that time on the monument.”

  Phil found the general misery of an alcoholic’s life heightened during the Christmas season. His recollections are grim.

  “I never did have a happy Christmas, not since the time I started drinking. Up to the time I was married I never enjoyed Christmas because I was always drunk. I’d leave home probably Christmas Eve morning, and I wouldn’t get back until a couple days after Christmas Day.

  “Since I got married was the worst time for me because I put everybody through hell.”

  One year, he said, his family had nothing but mashed potatoes for dinner on Christmas Day. He had been fired from his job a few weeks before because of his drinking, and was unable to get unemployment insurance or any other type of government assistance.

  Phil related a couple of other dismal Christmas experiences from his drinking years. One Christmas Eve, the RCMP took him home to his wife and left it up to her whether he could stay home or be taken to jail. She decided to take him home.

  “There was an awful lot of Christmas mornings, ” he said, “that everything was tipped bottom up in the house.

  “The Christmas tree was tipped over, and kids’ toys were broken open, where I just went off the rocker. The killing part about it was that a lot of times I remembered nothing about it in the morning.”

  Phil says his worst Christmas was the last one when he was still drinking.

  “I got up Christmas morning, not in too bad shape, and left to go next door about 10 in the morning while the wife was making dinner. They brought me home around 3 or 4 or 5 in the evening and just dropped me at the front door, and that’s where I stayed until some time the next morning. When I came to, they told me there were people who came to the door, and they had to tell them, they couldn’t get in—I was there in the way and they couldn’t get the door open.

  “When I woke up the next morning and saw the mess I was in, and when they told me that certain friends had been there and couldn’t get in that struck home to me. I know what the kids must have thought about it when their friends couldn’t get in just because I was drunk.

  “To me, though I had hard ones before, that was about the worst Christmas. Even the time we only had mashed potatoes, at least I never had a drink—I was sober and people were free to come in.”

  Six months later, Phil’s fortunes took a significant turn for the better. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, quit drinking, and “that was my last drunk Christmas.”

  “Thank God I don’t have to go through that this Christmas, ” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter where a drunk is at Christmas. Whether he’s home or on the street, he still has that lonely, worried feeling about him, so it makes no difference. It’s still a hard Christmas for a drunk and for everyone connected with him, if he’s drinking.”

  Phil is now looking forward to Christmas which this year will include parties with other members of the organization he swears by, Alcoholics Anonymous.

  “You don’t have to go through the horrors of liquor, ” he explains. “Help is available from the A. A. This is my eighth Christmas as a member, and believe me, they’ve been happy ones compared to the ones I spent drinking. It wasn’t Christmas for my family.”

  Phil said he has gone back to drinking a few times since he gave up eight years ago.

  “And every time I go back its worse. As long as I can stay clear of the first drink, I can do pretty well. It’s no bed of roses but it’s better than when I was drinking . . . I know if I had to keep on the way I was going I’d be dead today.”

  Phil’s first break from sobriety following a five year abstinence was a two-week bender that ended with a two-week stay in the Mental Hospital.

  He realizes he still has to be careful, and is fearful that he may again turn to the bottle. In the meantime, he is looking forward to a dry, happy Christmas with his wife and eight children.

  Acknowledgements

  I wish to thank the following for their assistance and co-operation: Arts and Culture Centre Library, Newfoundland Collection: Brenda Conway, Yvonne Sullivan, John Griffin, Debbie Maynard; Memorial University of Newfoundland, Marketing and Communications: Mandy Cook, Coordinator; Telegram, TC Media: Kerry Hann, Managing Editor; St. Mary’s University, External Affairs: Steve Proctor, Communications Manager; Memorial University Centre for Newfoundland Studies: Bert Riggs, Archivist, Paulette Noseworthy, Debbie Edgecombe, Linda White, Colleen Field, Stephanie Murray, Donna Doucette; Library and Archives Canada: Helen Gillespie, Specialist, Copyright Services; The Rooms Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador, Provincial Archives Division: Charles Young, Melanie Tucker, Sandra Ronayne, Larry Dohey; City of St. John’s Archives: Helen Miller, Neachel Keating; Anglican Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland: Peter Chalker, Archivist; Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s: Anne Walsh, Archivist; International Grenfell Association: Paul Canning, Administrator; Dr. Norman Pinder, Chairman; Newfoundland Quarterly: Joan Sullivan, Editor; Trinity Historical Society Inc.: Jim Miller, Project Coordinator; Anglican Life: Father Samuel Rose, Editor; CBC Radio One, Cross Country Checkup: Charles Shanks, Senior Producer.

  Also my thanks to: John Byrne, Halifax; John and Peg Byrne, Holyrood; Rev. Dr. Gerald and Ruth Benson; Gary and Paula Browne; Rev. Perry Cooper; Eleanor Dalton; Howard Dyer; Leslie Galway; Isabelle Goodridge; Keith Keating; Dennis Kelly; Anna McCarthy; Percy and Allison McDonald; Joan Mifflen; Stefan G. Mifflen; Gail Malone; Brenda Fogwill Power; Paul Thoms; Fr. Paul C. Thoms; Joe Walsh; Jennifer Mills; James J. Greene.

  Also my thanks go out to Bob Johnston, Maureen Harvey, Paul Johnson, Bill Callahan, Captain Joe Prim, and Dione Allen.

  A special thank you to Flanker Press: Garry Cranford, Margo Cranford, Jerry Cranford, Peter Hanes, Laura Cameron, Randy Drover, Gerard Murphy, and Bob Woodworth. My thanks also to Adam Freake for the cover design and to Matt Tames for the cover illustration.

  About the Contributors

  (VINCENT) COLIN BURKE is a native of St. Jacques, Fortune Bay, and a graduate of St. Bonaventure’s College in St. John’s, for which he had been given a Gerald S. Doyle Scholarship. He studied for the priesthood, worked at IOC for a few months, and tried teaching before obtaining a reporter’s job at the Western Star in Corner Brook by trying to sell Editor Cal Holloway a weekly column on the strength of a few essays. He retired after twenty-two years, at the age of forty-three, to write fiction and essays in Port au Port East. His only published book, apart from material for sale on the Internet, is Parricide & Other Weird Ploys: The Tales of Prester Nicol, a book of puns. He had an
article published in Catholic Insight Magazine and another in the now defunct Canadian Catholic Review.

  DR. CYRIL BYRNE (1940-2006) was born in Corner Brook and educated at St. Dunstan’s University, Prince Edward Island, the National University of Ireland, Dublin, Oxford University, and the University of Toronto. He served in the English Department of St. Mary’s University for thirty-five years. Byrne was instrumental in founding the Atlantic Studies Program and the Chair of Irish Studies. He was an outstanding scholar of Newfoundland and its connections with Ireland. Byrne contributed to numerous scholarly publications and edited the book Gentleman-bishops and Faction Fighers: The Letters of Bishops O’Donel, Lambert, Scallon and Other Irish Missionaries in 1984. He was involved in numerous organizations such as the Atlantic Canada Instituted, Canadian Association of Irish Studies, Social Studies and Humanities Research Council, and was Coordinator of Irish Studies at St. Mary’s.

  The late JOHN M. BYRNES was an expatriate Newfoundlander who originally lived in Boston and travelled to many parts of the world. He wrote a classic piece of his memories of old St. John’s during Christmas after the great fire of 1892. He is best known for publishing his book The Paths to Yesterday: Memories of Old St. John’s, Newfoundland by Meador Publishing Company in Boston in 1931.

  WILLIAM J. CARROLL (1861-1940) was born in St. John’s and educated at St. Bonaventure’s College. After a career as a teacher and Superintendent of Villa Nova Orphanage, he entered the Civil Service as Registrar of Deeds in 1893 and in that same year was appointed Commissioner of Affidavits and Clerk of the Supreme Court. He was appointed Sheriff of Newfoundland in 1932 and retired in 1934. He was very active in many community groups such as the Benevolent Irish Society, Old Academia Club, and was founder of the Alumni Association of St. Bonaventure’s College. Carroll was a prolific writer, having submitted articles to the Forest and Stream Magazine in New York for over twenty-five years. He also wrote many articles for the Newfoundland Quarterly. Carroll was a member of the Nomenclature Committee and a member of the original board of movie censors for Newfoundland.

  PATRICK K. DEVINE (1859-1950), a prominent journalist and educator, was born in King’s Cove, Bonavista Bay. After serving as a teacher and principal of Harbour Grace Academy for several years, he returned to King’s Cove as a Justice of the Peace and Commissioner of Affidavits. He served for a number of years as Clerk of the House of Assembly. Devine was editor of the Trade Review, a senior reporter at the Telegram, and contributed to Canadian Fisherman. Among his several books, the best known were Ye Olde St. John’s in 1935 and Newfoundland Folklore in 1937.

  PAT DOYLE was born in St. John’s. He is the son of the late Gerald S. Doyle and Marjorie Doyle. After graduating from St. Bonaventure’s College, he edited the Gerald S. Doyle News Bulletin. Doyle spent thirty-five years with the Evening Telegram, twenty as a political reporter and fifteen as a business reporter. He covered the municipal council meetings for a short time, reporting on the late Mayor Bill Adams announcement of the building of the new city hall complex. He also interviewed the late Terry Fox and the late Mayor Dorothy Wyatt on the occasion of Terry Fox’s visit to St. John’s. Doyle did the public relations for the Come Home Year and Centennial Year Committees. He is presently retired and lives in St. John’s.

  CANON GEORGE EARLE (1914-2000) was born on Change Islands, Notre Dame Bay. He was educated at Change Islands, Fogo, Memorial University College, and the University of Durham, England. When he graduated from Queen’s College in 1938, Earle was ordained a Church of England Deacon and the following year became a priest at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in St. John’s. He spent a number of years in England in his capacity as a priest. Canon Earle returned to Newfoundland in 1957 to become Principal of Queen’s College, Memorial University. He served as Provost of Queen’s College and Anglican Chaplain on Memorial University Campus (1972-1979). He was installed as Canon of the Cathedral in St. John’s and on his retirement in 1979 was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree by Memorial University. Earle was heavily involved in many church and civic organizations. However, he was widely known as a folklorist and humorist, having written about outport life and given approximately 1,000 after-dinner speeches.

  JIM FURLONG is a writer and television journalist and commentator. He is the former Director of News and Current Affairs with NTV (Newfoundland Broadcasting) and has won a number of important awards for his work, including several Radio Television News Directors of Canada awards for editorial and feature broadcast writing. In recent years he has turned his attention to the printed word and writes regular pieces for the Newfoundland Herald.

  FRANK GALGAY is a prominent Newfoundland educator and author. He served as a teacher, principal, and Superintendent of Education until his retirement in 1997. Mr. Galgay is the author and co-author of sixteen books pertaining to Newfoundland history, education, and folklore. He is married to the former Rosemary McDonald and has four children, Colleen (Bob), Sean (Nicole), Brendan, (Krista) and Matthew (Lesley), and four grandchildren, Erin, Megan, Aidan and Madeline. Mr. Galgay resides in St. John’s and is serving a fourth term as a St. John’s City Councillor.

  JAMES J. GALWAY (1868-1936) was born in St. John’s. He was the son of prominent St. John’s businessman/tailor shop operator Denis Galway (1832-1897), who was born in Cork, Ireland, and moved to Kilkenny as a schoolteacher and then on to St. John’s. His son James would have been familiar with Lash’s, since his father’s business was a short distance away. James was well educated and came from a family where the arts and literature played an important part in their lives.

  SIR WILFRED GRENFELL (1865-1940), born in Parkgate, England, was an outstanding medical missionary and writer. He was educated at the University of London and Oxford University. He joined the London Hospital in 1883 to begin his studies in medicine. After medical school he was persuaded to join the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen dedicated to providing North Sea fishermen with medical assistance and spiritual guidance. He volunteered to go to Newfoundland in 1892 to determine the need for the Mission’s services. While there he was amazed by the poverty and disease in Labrador after travelling the coast. Grenfell began a tour of England to raise money, which resulted in his establishing hospitals and personnel. He also became involved in the educational, economic, and cultural advancement of the area. Grenfell became Superintendent of the International Grenfell Association in 1912 and toured many countries raising funds for his mission. He was a prolific writer who wrote many books and articles. Among his books: Labrador: The Country and the People; Adrift On An Ice Pan; Immortality; The Story of a Newfoundland Doctor; What Christ Means to Me; Fight for Economic Freedom; and The Romance of Labrador.

  REVEREND MOSES HARVEY (1820-1901) was born in Armagh, northern Ireland, and ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1844. After serving in England, he came to St. John’s in 1852 as minister of St. Andrew’s Free Presbyterian Church, where he had a long and distinguished career. Harvey was an essayist and naturalist and one of the most prolific writers of his time. It is said that over a period of twenty-four years he had over 900 articles published in the Montreal Gazette, many under his pen name “Delta.” Harvey was a creative and innovative person. He advocated for a cross-island railway; he was instrumental in the founding of the Evening Mercury newspaper; he was president of the St. John’s Athenaeum Society; he promoted mining in Newfoundland; he catalogued rocks, lands, and wild flowers of the island. He had a great love for Newfoundland and published the Text-Book of Newfoundland History for the Use of Schools and Academies. His best-known book was Newfoundland: The Oldest British Colony with Joseph Hatton.

  PAUL HERRIDGE was born and raised in the Burin Peninsula community of Grand Bank, Newfoundland, where the celebration of Tibb’s Eve has been a long-held tradition during the Christmas season. A son of a Fortune Bay dragger captain, he studied journalism under the tutelage of former provincial politician and newspaper editor William R. Callahan at Lawrence College in St. Joh
n’s during the late 1990s. For the past eight years, he has worked at the Southern Gazette in Marystown, where he currently serves in the role of Associate Editor.

  KEVIN JARDINE (1906-1983) was born in St. John’s and educated at Holy Cross School. He joined the firm of Bowring Brothers in 1923 and retired in 1973. The public will remember Jardine for his humorous columns “Me ’n’ Ned, ” which first appeared in the Evening Telegram in 1964.

  GARY KEAN is the senior writer at the Western Star, hired as a part-time sports reporter in December, 1995. A native of Corner Brook who has a double major arts degree in English and Philosophy from MUN, Gary covers a wide range of topics for the newspaper, including court, politics, and human interest stories from within the community. Gary was nominated for an Atlantic Journalism Award in 2002 and won Atlantic and national journalism awards from the MS Society of Canada in 2010.

  PAYSON J. KINSELLA (1884-1924) attended St. Bonaventure’s College for six years and upon leaving spent a short time as a journalist. He worked with the Newfoundland Railway before taking a position with the General Post Office in St. John’s. Kinsella wrote poetry and prose and many of his writings were found in well-known magazines and periodicals in England, the United States, and Canada. He was the author of Some Superstitions and Traditions of Newfoundland and was a frequent contributor to the local press on current issues of the day.

  REVEREND CHARLES LENCH (1859-1931) was born near Dudley, Staffordshire, England, and came to Newfoundland as a Methodist probationer in 1883. He was stationed at Flat Islands, Petites, and Carbonear before his ordination into the Methodist ministry in 1887. He served in Carbonear, Bay Roberts, St. John’s, Grand Bank, Bonavista, and Brigus. Aside from his many responsibilities, he found time to write. He chronicled the history and development of the Methodist Church in Newfoundland. He wrote a fourteen-part series entitled “The Makers of Methodism, ” which ran from November, 1899, to February, 1901. Lench published three books which documented the history of the church, in particular, areas of Newfoundland: The History of the Rise and Progress of Methodism on the Western Bay Circuit (1912), An Account of the Rise of Methodism on the Grand Bank and Fortune Circuits from 1816 to 1916 (1916) and The Story of Methodism in Bonavista and Settlements Visited by the Early Preachers (1919). He contributed a number of articles to the Newfoundland Quarterly, wrote two essays, a pamphlet relating to the Loyal Orange Association when he served as Grand Chaplain, and published two pamphlets with patriotic themes.