Bay of Hope

by David Ward

  There are women with domestic talents that border on genius. And the men are amazing at matters like boat repair, fishing, working in the woods, providing for their family, and, more than anything, bravely staring down the dangers that come with life on the sea. Where their weaknesses exist are in discussing matters of emotional importance and voicing opinions — privately facing off or publicly debating bureaucrats, biologists, and businesspeople who use words and legislation more than the mechanical and physical tools these fishing families are familiar with.

  I see how this happened. For hundreds of years, outport people have been shamed by those looking for an edge. Politicians, businessmen, mainlanders . . . they’ve all worked in one way or another to keep rural Newfoundlanders under thumb. They use the age-old trick of making others feel inferior when their language is different or they haven’t got a formal education. Townies have bullied baymen for centuries.

  One of the biggest contributors towards reducing my anger has been the death of my mom and dad. I was in Newfoundland when each took terminally ill. With Dad, who died first, I spoke with him on the phone while he lay in the hospital, but I only returned to Ontario for his funeral, to connect with my siblings. In Mom’s case I came home before she passed on, to assist with her care. After both those burials, McCallum’s residents greeted my return to Newfoundland with the same two words, “Welcome home.” A generous gift that, to this day, consistently causes me to cry.

  Caring for Mom was an ordeal. She checked herself out of palliative care, losing her placement in the process, so she could attempt to attend one party, making my anger management intentions an enormous challenge to achieve. I realize I should be compassionate (Mom fell trying to take part in that party), but I’ve always struggled with adults who make choices with no consideration for how they affect others. Especially their children. In my childhood home, it always seemed to me that, as the Ward kids came of age, we made safer day-to-day decisions than our mom and dad did.

  Sooner or later, however, we’re all forced to learn how tough it is to lose someone of such significance. Right until the end, I only wanted my parents to be pleased with me.

  Mom didn’t want a send-off. She wanted her body left to science, and she believed that if people wish to honour the dead, they don’t need a formal service to do so. Mom also felt that if she couldn’t be at the middle of a party, it didn’t matter to her whether such an event occurred or not. Yet it took until her final thirty-six hours on earth before she would provide me with that information. Mom wouldn’t discuss any aspect of her death. “Believe me,” she insisted, “when my time comes, I will go gracefully, but I’m nowhere near needing to discuss death yet.” She said this two days before she died.

  At the time of my mother’s demise, I made sure that those who mattered most to Mom knew of her passing as soon as possible. A month after that, I followed up with a short announcement in her hometown newspaper. That’s when people got grouchy, expressing grave concern that Mom wasn’t given a proper goodbye. As much as they insisted otherwise, this grumpy group was suggesting that I hadn’t honoured my mother’s final wishes.

  In defense of those who found it impossible to mind their own business, they too were hurting, filled with guilt because they didn’t have the courage to visit Mom in the hospital and scared to death regarding the lack of control they have over their own eventual loss of life. As for the timing and content of mom’s obit, my heart has no clock. I wasn’t going to be forced into following industry-imposed timelines, and I was not ready to comment publicly on my mother’s passing. Until now.

  June Irene Ward was the oldest of seven Toronto children. Left at eleven years of age in 1942 to raise her six siblings after their mother died at twenty-nine from complications associated with giving birth to her second set of twins, June did a remarkable job of overcoming circumstances that could easily have crushed her. Maybe she acquired such strength from her grandfather who died at Vimy Ridge.

  After marrying Wally and then losing her firstborn at birth, June raised a family of five children in Kitchener, Ontario. However, tragedy struck again when the Wards’ oldest daughter and her husband, both twenty-six, were killed in a car crash. In response to such heartbreak, Wally went on an angry ten-year binge, and June entered a decade of depression. “Those were dark days,” she’d said.

  Yet, through it all, June carried on. Her tolerance for pain was extraordinary, and her capacity to put one foot in front of the other in her efforts to connect with her closest friends was a characteristic she demonstrated right up until her death at eighty-three. Predeceased by four siblings, June’s cause of death came from a long list of ailments including diabetes, blood clots, heart disease, and cervical cancer. June’s earthly belongings were donated to the Salvation Army, an agency that surely aided June and her siblings when their mother prematurely passed away.

  When my mother’s mom died, the idea of anger management was thirty years away. I’m sure those kids were left to fend for themselves and that their colossal losses shaped them. Same goes for my father — an only child — who was born to parents who resented his presence. I can’t comprehend how any of them coped.

  Even at my dad’s death, his anger ruled parts of our lives. The clearest indication of this occurred when everyone realized he had cut me from his will because twenty-four years earlier I’d told him that his drunken behaviour was hurting my mom and little brother. Don’t get me wrong, what my father did with his money was his business. But twenty-four years? The last twenty of which he stayed sober, after finally moving out of the family home following a second session in rehab. Some would think twenty clear-minded years was enough time for my father to rethink his hard-headedness, but given the losses and abuses my mom and dad experienced, perhaps I should be surprised that they fared as well as they did. I feel the same way about rural Newfoundlanders — life hasn’t been easy for any of them.

  Six

  To the Dunderdale government:

  You had to have known what would happen. The Province of Newfoundland has resettled hundreds of communities, so you can’t be surprised that by increasing relocation money and insisting that folks within the communities come to a 90% agreement before accessing your offer, that you would be pitting neighbour against neighbour — even family against family.

  So now what? What’s Plan B now that we’ve determined that three out of four residents within our community wish to take advantage of your offer but that this is not acceptable for you? What now, now that we’ve concluded that you want the members of this community to continue to try to influence each other — to do your dirty work — regarding relocation?

  In the meantime, our children study and play alone, our doctor visits less often, our population ages, our weather worsens, our capacity to meet the community’s physical demands gets harder, our fish prices lower, our fishery and infrastructure weakens, our employment opportunities less sustainable, our access to employment insurance more restrictive, our ferry older, slower, and less frequent, our drinking, bathing, and washing water less acceptable, our friends fewer, our relationships more strained, and our residents more depressed.

  So we’re asking: how do you plan to support this community now that you’ve sped up the unraveling process? Please advise us of your plans as soon as possible, because things are falling apart around here.

  McCallum’s Relocation Committee

  — Letter to the editor, The Harbour Breton Coaster, October 30, 2013

  Everything isn’t all well in my world, either. Not that the challenges I’m experiencing are the same as those my McCallum friends are facing, but that I too am affected by my current circumstances; I’m lonely for a significant other. That’s why I’m ending this evening like I have so many of late — exploring intimacy online.

  I wish you could see her photo. It shows she’s fit, and it promotes her beautiful smile. So I’ll admit to being male — while perusing
online dating profiles, my initial instinct is to assess the photo. But, un-guy-like, I’ve been told, I do read entire profiles. Still, if there isn’t a photograph, I don’t even begin to investigate.

  Outside of the obvious biological forces that make me want to see an image, I get a lot of info from photos. Bookworm or fitness fanatic? Flower child or businesswoman? Not right or wrong, better or worse, or even information I can count on — just a tiny but important piece of the puzzle. Choosing not to provide a picture conveys considerable info as well. Communicating with a faceless soul makes me feel unsafe, and I find it bizarre that I have to point this out to women.

  Bride understands all this. Bride wastes no time in trusting me. Not unsafely so. She just decides my words are authentic and that, until I prove otherwise, she is going to give me the benefit of the doubt. In the meantime, we are simply trading email messages, and both of us agree that there is nothing about this exchange that needs to be seen as threatening.

  As difficult as online dating is, I don’t find the email piece overwhelming. I obviously have some writing skills. Plus, present practice suggests that men are expected to spend much time in the early stages of online dating proving that they are what they say they are — a part of the process I accept, given the high number of cowardly males who hide in their parents’ or partner’s basement pretending to be something that they’re not.

  Bride shows tremendous confidence and courage. A St. John’s mother of three, she wastes no time informing me of her parenting priorities. Yet right behind that announcement, she makes it clear that she would enjoy finding time for me when her kids are with their father, should our introductory discussions present that possibility. Then she quickly goes to work making me feel deserving of a woman’s attention, pointing out my strengths and gently supporting me through my weaknesses — a pattern I try to replicate in return.

  Rather than show and tell, Bride and I exchange stories that indirectly illustrate who and what we are and photos that present us at our best and worst. We interact — via many messages, and later on the phone — in a fashion that focuses on clear communication. Yet dialogue never leaves anyone wondering whether the connection is anything other than intimate. Not phone sex, thankfully, but adult discussion around subjects like truth and integrity, emotional and physical security, and our personal definitions of intimacy — topics I find fascinating, and guaranteed to turn me on, but not standard practice as it applies to the early stages of online dating as I’ve experienced it.

  I see it in online profiles, how people find the process so scary that they can only manage to write about who they are and what they’re after for a few frightful minutes. Imagine a short sloppy sales pitch that focuses on others’ shortcomings, because that’s what a lot of dating profiles look like — people indirectly complaining about previous partners. It’s difficult to believe that some individuals see the creating of an online dating profile as potentially the most important thing they’ll ever do. Witnessing this underestimation of the impact that a shoddy self-portrait can have on your long-term life makes me wonder what baffling behaviours I’ve learned from my culture, parents, and peers that I’m unwittingly committing.

  Current common belief is that online dating is most effective when the dater works with two sites — one well known and the other some sort of specialty market, maybe a certain philosophy or ethnic or religious group. I find, in Newfoundland, that it works best to choose one site where people have to pay to post their profile and another where such service is free. The paid site because it attracts the kind of people who take the pursuit of a partner seriously enough that they are willing to sacrifice a small fee to achieve their goal, and the free site because that’s what 99 percent of Newfoundlander daters prefer.

  I often opt to hide my profile, making it available only to those who I contact, because generally, what I’m after is not in Newfoundland. Especially when working with databanks made up of less than a dozen daters. Size matters. Not that what I want is entirely absent. Just that what I require — a woman with an ample imagination who understands why I’m here — is not in Newfoundland in any kind of quantity. So it takes considerable cross-Canada searching for me to find someone who might wish to connect with me. And those women on the mainland who might find me a good fit are not searching Newfoundland profiles. So I file my account in an area that can only be accessed by people I initiate contact with and then I take responsibility for reaching out.

  Only occasionally will I put my profile out to the general public. I’ll test the waters. Especially if my confidence is low, if I’m having no luck connecting with those who I find intriguing. That’s when Bride found me — when I briefly went public at a paid online location.

  She calls me her delicious secret. She doesn’t tell a soul. Nor do I. Not that there are ever any secrets in an outport. Just that, if I want to, I can keep people from knowing where I’m going when I leave. I just lie to them. Telling untruths is only one painful practice you have to work with when your neighbours want to know what you’re up to and you don’t wish to share.

  Getting out of an isolated outport is difficult in other ways as well. Weather must be watched until the day you depart. You never know until the boat shows up if your journey is going to happen, and such unknowns can result in considerable anxiety for even the most seasoned seaman. Some days you can’t be sure which form of transportation you’ll take — ferry or helicopter — with your choice affecting the amount of baggage you’re allowed to bring along.

  This trip I travel by helicopter because our ferry has been asked to assist elsewhere — an occurrence I’m grateful for. To look directly down at an incredibly dramatic landscape from twelve hundred feet is an extraordinary experience. It’s only from the air that I can see what a large amount of freshwater there is in Newfoundland — at every elevation — because this island’s granite underlay refuses to allow rain and runoff to percolate through soil the way less rocky environments do.

  Our copter puts down in the Hermitage Lions Club parking lot. I’m ready to roll. I am not immune to cabin fever, and even though my date is days away, I’m overflowing with anticipation. After sharing a few words with the family that permits me to park my car on their property at that end of the ferry line, I hit the road. Not the best of roads, mind you — not as nice as our federal member of parliament’s road — but the only route we have.

  Three hours’ drive to the Trans-Canada Highway and another five from my ultimate destination, I try to make these trips a good time. Today I travel farther north than normal, to Lumsden, to explore a Newfoundland rarity — a sandy beach. But that outing isn’t as much fun as I’d hoped for. Lumsden’s beach is littered with noisy toys in various states of disrepair and demolition. Dirt bikes, ATVs, and side-by-sides. Seeing so many motorized vehicles and the children who abuse them reminds me how some parents believe it’s okay to simply throw your kids the keys and kick them out the door.

  Disappointed that Newfoundland beach life isn’t better, I head for the Burin Peninsula, hoping to hop a boat ride to South East Bight, another isolated outport. This outing astounds me when I discover that one third of the population — thirty-four people — in South East Bight have the same last name as I do. We even look similar. It’s fun to imagine our English ancestors leaving the same location, with this hardy South East Bight bunch settling on Placentia Bay, while my forefathers and mothers sailed up the St. Lawrence Seaway, just because my gang might have had a couple more quid. It’s also a treat to take this trip aboard McCallum’s regular runner, the Terra Nova, because South East Bight is where she and my friends who work on her have been loaned to while the South East Bight boat is in for refit.

  Next stop is Cape St. Mary’s Bird Sanctuary, where I see thousands of breeding black-legged kittiwake, northern gannet, common and thick-billed murre, razorbill, black guillemot, double-crested and great cormorant, and northern fulmar. Then I move on to the i
sland’s east coast for an anticipated sighting of a rare bird of a different breed — a wide-smiled, slim-bodied beauty.

  What do you need to know, dear reader? That Bride is another knockout? Ontario-born and raised to Newfoundland parents, she returned to “The Rock” as a teen, quickly establishing herself as an academic, extracurricular, and work-related success. Cheerful, motivated, and emotionally healthy, Bride welcomes me into her handsome St. John’s home like a friend from afar, and a long-lost lover.

  The food that fills her fridge is reminiscent of the culture I come from, making the culinary experience she treats me to an infrequent delight. The talented and thoughtful way in which she prepares and presents it all makes me feel special for three highly memorable days.

  In noting her attention to detail and eavesdropping on the occasional call from her kids, it’s easy to see Bride is an amazing mom. Yet, once she realizes all is well in their world, she quickly returns to showering attention on the two of us. Except for one quick walk around Mundy Pond, we don’t go outside the entire time. We simply experience three days of adult indulgence. Yet I don’t leave wanting more. I don’t mean that my visit wasn’t pleasurable (it was) or that parting was easy (it wasn’t). We talked extensively about my exit, none of which came without pain. It’s just that — and this is where it gets dangerous, speaking for someone else — I believe we decided we didn’t want a long-term relationship. Yet I should stop talking for another and focus on my own feelings. I can say whatever I want about how I wish to share this journey, but when someone really special ends up in my arms, I don’t always entirely engage. This is not the first time that I’ve experienced this pattern, and I can’t keep blaming it on the other — Bride was beautiful, warm, and welcoming.