by David Ward
Carol and I were a partnership for a dozen years, most of which were wonderful. But, in the end, that train too came off the tracks, eventually freeing me up to flee Ontario. Yet again I fell hard. Five years have passed and I’m still not entirely over her. It’s been additionally difficult trying to heal in McCallum because finding this community was a result of following Carol’s roots. Carol has twelve blood relatives in this tiny town, and this building I now call home is Carol’s house too. We initially bought it as a summer residence, together. It’s still full of her stuff — belongings that I believe will never leave this community because getting Carol to McCallum always required a large physical and emotional effort from me.
Carol’s McCallum connection has only gotten harder for her. Everyone knew her and liked her here, and several occasionally miss her, enough that they often ask about her. They want to know if I think she’ll ever visit McCallum again, and I truthfully tell them that I don’t believe she will. But I always make sure they know that Carol loved McCallum.
So I’ve got no regrets regarding my relationship with Carol. Many matters do get better with age if an adult really wants them to. Some things truly improve when you learn to make smarter, kinder choices and open yourself up to new information, as I did regarding my connection with Carol. It turns out that, after admitting to a long list of personal imperfections, I am comfortable saying that I didn’t do a bad job of loving Carol.
Yet I still find the agony that comes with the ending of an intimate relationship excruciating. If I thought it would work, I’d forfeit something of tremendous value to take away the torture at the time. The best I can do is remind myself that the pain will eventually lessen. Yes, we all know those who quickly find themselves a new honey. People who, when I ask them how they’re doing — three months after splitting up — tell me that they’re over it. I know others who say the answer lies in getting drunk and laid as often as they can, but immediately jumping back into the blaze and self-medicating has never worked for me. The only thing that works for me is to soberly stare down the monster — the ogre being the anger that I’m experiencing in response to the hurt and fear I’m feeling.
Not that a person can’t heal in the company of another. Just that I need to think my sorrow through, over and over and often alone, until I recognize the source of my sadness. I have to find ways to move that circle of hurt into a more truthful, healthy place, and that process takes time. The two-year mark barely lifts a large cloud for me. I have little disposition for denial, and I hate the blaming game. Self-deception only results in further painful, brain-bound data looping farther from the truth, until I eventually have to deal with it on some heartfelt level of self-honesty if I’m to have any chance at all of moving on. Or if I’m to have any hope whatsoever of being able to answer questions like: What now, after concluding that I ache for the intimacy of another? How does that affect what my current life looks like, what with no eligible women living in McCallum? And, even if single women did visit this outport (a few do every summer), what are the odds that I could make a good connection with one of them?
Just meeting women in McCallum is a challenge. I guess I could ask Nina Crant — the missus who manages McCallum’s bed and breakfast — to let me know when an unattached woman arrives, alerting me to pay attention for such a sight and to make sure I’ve shaved and showered before leaving home. But that kind of proactive effort requires I go public in my pursuit of a partner — a concept I’m not comfortable with in a town this tiny, because a small community can be an emotionally unsafe place to explore intimacy and experience pain when everybody’s got a front row seat. Plus, planning makes me feel like I’m pushing, rather than allowing for something organic to grow. I don’t want just anyone, of course. And that bed and breakfast sees less than seventy visitors per year, with those guests mostly being couples, male hydro workers, or seniors in search of their roots. The number of available women who visit McCallum is miniscule.
I’ve also concluded that if I have any chance of making a meaningful connection of a romantic sort, that woman will likely come from Canada’s mainland because when speaking with women from away, they often say, “I can see what you like about this lifestyle.” But when a Newfoundland woman realizes McCallum is my year-round residence, she’ll most commonly inquire, “Why would you live in McCallum when you could be on a road where you can drive to a mall?”
That’s why online dating makes so much sense — it increases your chances, choices, and reach. Yet not everyone finds online dating to their liking. Many find it scary.
I think internet dating is less frightening than the way adults dated over the previous fifty years, somehow depending on stumbling across compatible people in similar circumstances, in bars or at work. Online, you get a considerable-sized selection of people to pick from, all of whom, by being there, are admitting they are open to the discussion and, in many cases, have declared what they’re after — dating, a relationship, or sex. Nobody is required to provide his or her real name or actual address, and everyone is welcome to proceed at whatever pace works for them. All from the safety and comfort of their computers, a place that has the potential to open up a planet full of possibilities.
I think something that stops a lot of wannabe daters in isolated areas from online exploration is a certainty that no one wants to move to a far-off community — an opinion that I don’t share. While I may be the only mainlander who has made McCallum my home, I can’t be the only individual who might consider the idea. But because so many Newfoundlanders surrender to the city, those who remain rural expect that no one from away will ever want to share a life with them. But that’s just not true. There is a movement among many mainlanders to find a kinder, gentler way of life than the one they’ve been living. It’s obvious to these seekers of a sustainable lifestyle that today’s younger generation is the first that will not live a better quality of life than those who came before them. This junior group is no longer sucked into believing the bullshit that their parents, big business, and government give them and is looking elsewhere for answers — including rural Newfoundland.
I also think that people in isolated areas avoid internet dating because of the loss of privacy that occurs when online participants eventually hook up. Yet I don’t believe anyone in search of love should rule out exploring online. They simply need to go into such circumstances knowing that it might take considerable time, energy, and courage before connecting with someone who values them and their home. And that they might make mistakes in the meantime. But the technology is not the problem — it’s hurtful and hurt-filled people who make dating difficult, and that’s nothing new.
Three
According to the Department of Municipal Affairs, a single person owning a house in a community where 90 percent of the residents vote to move will receive $250,000; a couple with no dependents will receive $260,000 while a family of three or more will get $270,000. Of course we will respect whatever decision people in the smaller communities make if it comes down to a vote on relocation. However, it could be a good time to take the money and run, before government officials change their minds about the funding announced in the budget.
— Clayton Hunt, The Coast of Bays Coaster,
April 11, 2013
Even when you love it like I do, McCallum life isn’t easy. To know that McCallum is an isolated outport is one thing. To know that McCallum’s nearest neighbours on both sides are also isolated outports and that the closest of those is on an island twenty-two kilometres away is something else entirely. McCallum is an isolated outport among isolated outports, making it a long way away from everything.
The Newfoundland region that encompasses these remote communities is called the Southwest Coast. Few contest where the Southwest Coast begins in the west — Channel-Port aux Basques — but where to assign the Southwest’s official starting point in the east is arguable. Meteorological experts see the Southwest as beginning at
the bottom of the Burin Peninsula. Yet such separation leaves a large piece of Placentia Bay without definite identification. So I’ve concluded that the eastern locus of the Southwest Coast is Fortune Bay’s Grand le Pierre and that the Burin Peninsula is an environment all on its own.
My symbolic Southwest, however — the area that represents my Newfoundland — starts at Hermitage Cove in the east and extends to the archipelago of Burgeo in the west, a distance of 163 kilometres unless you’re actually following the ragged coastline of capes, fiords, and headlands, in which case you can quintuple the distance. This is the territory that I explore at every opportunity. This is where the boats that I access travel to — other isolated communities like Francois, Ramea, and Gaultois. And Grey River, home to 123 hardy outport people.
Grey River is often criticized and bullied from afar, by come-from-aways and locals alike. The community’s basic way of life makes them an easy target for those who need to see themselves as superior, yet I find Grey River refreshing. Despite experiencing harsh pressures — economic and otherwise — Grey River is resisting resettlement more than most.
While Grey River has several times suffered some serious heartache, its citizens seldom resent living the isolated life. That makes them a minority in this day and age, when complaining is so common. Grey River is also unusually answerable regarding their grief. Check out the monument they’ve recently plunked down in the middle of town:
In loving memory of Harriet and Caroline Young, age 12 years, died December 21, 1913, twin daughters of Frank and Annie Young, and niece Mary Lushman who died at 16 years. We shall meet again.
“Yes, my dear. But there is more to those deaths than what you see on that gravestone,” a delicate Sarah Rose, age eighty-one, tells me after I am introduced to her by the kind young couple who manage Grey River’s general store.
“But if you want more,” Sarah insists, gently touching my arm, “you will need to come to my house where I have a picture of those three little darlings before they died.” So it’s off to Sarah’s home I go.
“Tom Young sent this picture to my [late] husband, Victor, because poor old Victor’s mother died when he was only eleven months. He didn’t know what she looked like,” Sarah says, pointing to a young girl in a surprisingly high-quality photograph of a large group of Grey River children, circa 1913. “Eleven months is not a long time to have your mother’s love,” she adds. “Today they might know what Victor’s mother died from [mastitis, maybe], but back then they didn’t.
“And here,” Sarah notes, circling three more lovely female faces, “are Mary, Caroline, and Harriet — the little girls who died when their house burned down. Nobody knows how the fire started, but the girls’ mother was a midwife who had gone to help another daughter [also named Annie] have a baby. The girls’ father was up the bay. So the only one at home with the girls was a teacher who was boarding, and he jumped out the window when he saw the house was on fire.
“A week later, the daughter that the mother was helping have a baby, and the baby, died [of childbirth complications, apparently, both of them]. So the older Annie lost three daughters, a niece she raised as one of her own, and a grandchild, all in one week. The poor old woman was never the same. She didn’t know what she was at. She’d put out plates on the table and sing out, ‘Caroline, Mary, Harriet — come for dinner.’ Of course they never come. Poor thing just got out of it. Can hardly blame her,” says Sarah, a mother of ten, clearly touched by her own storytelling.
“So their people bought them that gravestone and put it where their house was at. But that’s all I know,” she concludes, trying to bring closure to what was clearly a tough story to tell. “But maybe I’m wrong, because I wasn’t born in 1913. So if you need more, you will want to get it from somebody else. You see, what I tell you, I got from my mother, but she’s been dead thirty-six years. Maybe my mother was wrong, but I don’t think so — Mother had too good a memory to make mistakes on things like that. No, my dear, my mother had too good a memory to make mistakes about one of the Sou’west’s saddest stories. I think if somebody has made mistakes here, it’s me.”
If I had to move from McCallum, it would be to Grey River. I respect their resilience.
Writers Claire and Farley Mowat lived a large part of the 1960s on Newfoundland’s Southwest Coast. Sailing their thirty-six-foot sloop, Happy Adventure, from Hermitage Bay to Burgeo, the Mowats identified earlier than anyone the eventual death of the outports. Documenting their observations in books like Bay of Spirits, This Rock within the Sea, and The Outport People, this adventurous couple provided an up-close look at what life was like alongside Newfoundland’s granite wall after the island’s 1949 commitment to Canada.
Bay of Spirits is a love story. Experiencing small but once relevant communities that have since resettled, the Mowats ponder a time when the two of them explored every cleft and cranny of not only each other, but the far-reaching fiord that locals call Bay Despair — “Bay Despair” being a bastardization of the cartographically correct name, Bay d’Espoir, which ironically means Bay of Hope. (But it bears noting that, long before either name came across the pond, natives called this incredible inlet Bay of Spirits; Farley was the first to foster this fact.)
With This Rock within the Sea, Farley recorded what he knew was a vanishing way of life. And, while many believe Claire’s Outport People to be a journal of her and Farley’s five years in Burgeo, I see it as more of a description of the island’s internal conflict and contrasting customs — documentation I dearly need when I have difficulty understanding the differences between where I come from and where I am today.
It was the provocative pictures of a spectacular fair-haired Claire taken almost fifty years ago that the couple included in Bay of Spirits that prompted me to phone Mrs. Mowat — prior to her husband’s passing — at their home in River Bourgeois, Cape Breton. I said I wanted to speak with the author about her book, but I really wished for some kind of connection with a come-from-away woman who had also experienced this lovely locale. Which Claire was pleased to provide. “I’m thrilled to hear that people are still in places like McCallum,” she said. “I mean, Farley and I were worried for them when their cod fishery collapsed [in 1992]. We were genuinely concerned that that would be it for the outport way of life. So to hear from you that there are still communities holding on along that lovely seacoast and among those beautiful mountains is great news.
“Newfoundland was such a special place for me to begin my life with Farley. It was amazing to live somewhere that was so much more sound and sane than what I’d grown up with in Toronto, where there is such a pressure to prove yourself as better than others. Not that Newfoundland didn’t have some of that too, but most of the outport people didn’t feel they had to flaunt it, to humiliate others. All this was, for me, a wonderful window on human nature.
“So to hear from you that their lives are more comfortable than they were when Farley and I were there, that they’ve acquired more of life’s conveniences, like a daily ferry and regular visits from nurses and doctors, is good news. Farley and I are glad for them for that. But mostly, after all these years, we’re pleased to hear that there are still people on Newfoundland’s Sou’west Coast who are still living remarkable lives.”
Burgeo is not as kind as Claire. Burgeo residents insist on finding fault with Farley. Few have read his work, and none admit to having a problem with him personally, yet they all say they know someone who does. So let’s set something straight — I’m a fan of both parties, and while I’ve got buddies in Burgeo, I never met or spoke with Mr. Mowat. I have always liked Farley’s literary efforts, and I especially enjoy his Newfoundland narratives. Farley loved Newfoundlanders. And because I also admire folks who for hundreds of years stared down danger, I respect Burgeo’s past. But these two strong-willed seafarers have not been friends since 1967, when Farley reported to the world an incident in which Burgeo residents mercilessly killed a land
locked whale.
So where do I stand regarding Burgeo and Farley’s fifty-year fight? I believe both participants were right, and wrong. I trust Mowat reported what he witnessed, and that what he witnessed was ugly. But Burgeo residents didn’t want to hear about it, nor did they want anyone else to be aware of their embarrassing behaviour. To which I say, too bad — adults are accountable for their actions.
I also believe that outport people of that era had a relationship with nature that was more instinctive than caring. More like a domestic cat that’s uncaringly cornered a mouse in the kitchen. I forgive them for that — a possibility that Farley could have considered. Plus, I wonder what would have happened to that whale had it been allowed to live in such a contained environment — something that balanced reporting could have helped to conclude.
But Burgeo residents had nearly five decades to grow up regarding their grudges. And for that entire time, they failed to act in a mature way. I think the people of Burgeo should have shown the nonagenarian Mowat that they meant him no harm. Because, in Bay of Spirits, Farley said some insensitive things about my McCallum. Yet when I let go of my own irritation regarding Farley’s callous analysis and I read between the lines, I begin to believe that he trusted some selfish, insecure sources and that he also gave an accurate assessment of a community experiencing suffocating control at the hands of an influential merchant — a trader who had the power to set a low price for outgoing fish products and charge a high cost for incoming goods.
I’ve concluded that, despite Farley’s rudeness regarding McCallum people and the state of their homes in the sixties, McCallum residents value him for what he was — a courageous communicator who came to comment on the Southwest Coast when most Canadians couldn’t have cared less. “Farley said our homes looked slovenly,” McCallum’s proudest fisherman, Tim Fudge, says, “and I don’t doubt they did.” So I think it’s a shame that Burgeo wasted all those years when they could have wished Farley safe sailing. Yet it’s revealing to see that, despite screwing up so badly regarding that innocent whale and bringing so much negative attention to Newfoundland’s Southwest Coast, Burgeo has, for fifty years, clung to their anger like it’s a lifesaver, rather than the killer it actually is.
