by David Ward
It’s not hard to see how Doris picked up an understanding of a mainlander’s diet — loyally following her husband across the continent while he played for teams in Rochester, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Memphis, and San Diego — but it is considerate of her to take into account my cultural background. And it’s generous of Alex to open up about his childhood in Bishop’s Falls. “My four brothers and I would start the winter playing on Purchase Pond,” he says. “It was the first to ice over. A few weeks later, we’d move onto Diamond Pond. Diamond Pond was a little bigger, so it took longer to freeze. Then, when the Exploits River froze, we’d move onto that. But my father always told us that we weren’t allowed on the river until the ice was thick enough that the horses and oxen could walk across it on their way to get wood for the mill.
“And, I’ll tell you, we listened to Dad. He drove a locomotive for the CNR. Basically, he kept us in gear — a hockey stick cost $1.10 back then — and my mother kept us in grub — homemade beans and molasses buns — so we could just play hockey all winter. There were many mornings when they’d wake up and we’d already be gone, getting in some hockey before we went to school. But my parents weren’t trying to produce professional hockey players. They just believed that if we were playing hockey, we weren’t getting in trouble. Yes sir, they just believed that pond hockey was a good thing for boys to do before and after school.”
I’ve taught at several Canadian colleges and universities. The highlight of my career came when a student arrived at my office needing to speak with me. I had no idea who this learner was. I had over eight hundred students, and schools like to cram as many as they can into large lecture halls. It makes for a bad education, but it saves money, which is what schools want. Then this young man shows up needing to tell me he is a homosexual and that he lives in student residence where he fears for his safety. He was afraid some fool was going to beat him with a baseball bat. After calming him, the rest was easy — the college made sure his worries were addressed and his studies supported. Today he’s got two diplomas and a great job in Florida.
It meant the world to me that I had earned that student’s trust. It was heartening to learn that he realized his situation was safe with me, and that I would try to help him with his concerns. But that was 2001, in liberal-thinking Southern Ontario — not seventies and eighties Newfoundland, where the comic Tommy Sexton of CODCO was living in an openly gay way during a period of pathetic prejudices.
Born in St. John’s in 1957, Sexton, an honours student, quit school in grade ten to pursue an acting career. CODCO was a Newfoundland comedy company that began as live theatre called Cod on a Stick. Broadcasting on CBC from ’87 to ’92, CODCO starred Sexton, Greg Malone, Cathy Jones, Mary Walsh, and Andy Jones. The show lasted five seasons, for a total of sixty-three episodes.
In 1991, with the Mount Cashel Orphanage child-abuse scandal all over the Newfoundland news, the CBC decided not to air a CODCO sketch called “Pleasant Irish Priests in Conversation,” in which three Catholic priests discuss their sexual preferences. While CODCO continued, some Newfoundlanders considered the CBC’s decision not to air the skit a betrayal and a cowardly act that weakened the show.
Following the end of CODCO, several cast members went on to create the long-running TV comedy This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Sexton wrote a film entitled Adult Children of Alcoholic Parents: The Musical.
Adult Children of Alcoholic Parents: The Musical was in production in 1993 when the thirty-six-year-old Sexton died of AIDS-related illnesses. In 2001, Tommy’s sister, filmmaker Mary Sexton, produced an honest documentary called Tommy . . . A family portrait. The Tommy Sexton Centre — a housing complex for people living with HIV and AIDS — was opened in St. John’s in 2006.
I’ve only just discovered the talents of Tommy Sexton. Now I’m convinced that the people of this province had a creative genius living among them, but that most Newfoundlanders didn’t know this at the time. Yet, looking back at Sexton’s colleagues and some of his siblings, I have concluded that Tommy had an admirable support group surrounding him in an era when most gays did not.
Among today’s Newfoundland celebrities, Joel Thomas Hynes is my favourite. I love his novels — Down to the Dirt and Right Away Monday. I smiled when I read, in Right Away Monday, Joel’s reference to the aforementioned Fred Eaglesmith. Not only because using Fred’s remorseful music is a perfect way to set the stage for a down-and-out feller facing a grim situation, but also because you just don’t see Fred’s name referenced in a whole lot of fiction.
“Yeah, I think Fred and I are kindred spirits,” Joel says when I speak with him at his St. John’s row house. “We cross paths now and then. I have a lot of respect for his art and his work ethic, and he reads my stuff.” But I suspect it’s with our mutual admiration of Fred that the things Joel and I have in common begin to end. Because if Joel’s writing is any indication of the life he’s lived, being raised on the Irish Loop, he’s seen an entirely different world than I did growing up in White Bread, Ontario. Joel’s books are very much about the devastation to be found in some dreadfully hard homes and in bars like you find in the centre of St. John’s — homes ruled by angry parents who find it easier to beat a child than to talk to her. And bars where guys get so bent out of shape that spending a night on the street sleeping in their own urine while their old lady gets it on with her drug dealer in the alley alongside is more familiar than family.
“That’s not really what my books are about,” Joel insists. “That’s just the action — the backdrop — for those characters. Those stories are more about people looking for connection with each other and their place in society. My novels have been dismissed as grungy books, but anybody who thinks that is missing the point. That action makes for great filler, but those books are about people searching for connection.
“As for some of my writing being set in the ’hood, well, I could live somewhere else, but downtown St. John’s is the first place where I’ve ever felt genuine community, so I don’t worry about my truck or my home getting broke into. No. Not me. And while I’ve had offers to go live places where I could maybe achieve more fame and make more money, I don’t want that hollow kind of fame, and I’m not just in this for the money.
“Do I like it when my work gets a good review? Yes. And is it nice when I get a cheque in the mail? Of course it is. But if I didn’t get those things, this is still the work I’d do. Because this is what I am, and I find it easy to be an artist here. Plus, I’ve got a nine-year-old son who lives with me part-time. So St. John’s is where my priorities are, and Newfoundland is where I feel at ease.”
While watching The Man of a Thousand Songs, a documentary about Newfoundland singer-songwriter — and Joel’s uncle — Ron Hynes, I came away thinking Joel was the film’s star. While the senior Hynes is asked to provide insight into the long list of demons he deals with, it is his protégé, Joel, who actually gives viewers what they’re wanting. Ron, who has since died as a result of his addiction issues, spends much of the documentary distractingly speaking about himself in the third person. “I think this film is about Ron’s . . . dark side,” Ron says. “He’s definitely the troubled creature and he’s the most impatient creature . . . He took over completely. He took over my life, my mind, my heart, my soul, my career . . .”
So it is left to the no-nonsense Joel to courageously speak directly about not only Ron’s issues — “He got accepted into this [rehab] program” — but also his own. “Same place I eventually went myself. I ain’t no angel,” Joel confesses, before insightfully saying, “You know, it is really exhausting, the amount of energy you expend when you attempt to get someone into treatment when you don’t understand the exact nature of their addiction.”
A shaggy-haired, unshaven, chain-smoking tough guy, Joel is also an incredible communicator, sharing all kinds of heartfelt data about an uncle whom he dearly loved. Despite his rugged roots, I suspect Joel’s rebel front is an age-old effo
rt meant to keep himself safe, because in listening to him talk, you realize that Joel Thomas Hynes is not only a tremendously talented artist, but also an extremely clever man who no longer needs a thug persona to survive.
While there is a great deal more about this lovely film that intrigues me, to share such detail could spoil, for viewers, some significant content at the core of this fascinating flick. But know that after watching The Man of a Thousand Songs a thousand times — I have my own addictive qualities, truly — I get the feeling that Joel Hynes, unlike so many celebrities, would never intentionally participate in any soul-sucking, dignity-robbing event designed to catch some fan’s attention or sell a movie. It’s just not who he is or where he comes from.
Twelve
It’s been said that Flora Feaver (mother of Junior and wife of Clyde) had a minor stroke. Now what in the world is a minor stroke? There is nothing minor about the interruption of blood flow to the brain. There is nothing minor about having a stroke in an isolated outport, and there is nothing minor about putting your life in the hands of a province that can’t get their act together regarding ferry service.
Not that the men and women who work on Newfoundland’s ferries can’t be counted on, but the governments responsible for the safe movement of McCallum residents have their own mandate — money. So when Flora concluded that she was suffering a stroke during one of the many times when McCallum’s ferry was not in good working order, she knew she was in a difficult situation.
McCallum residents know that calling in a helicopter for an emergency is really not an option they can count on. Government has never actually told us we can’t call for a copter, but we can all read between the lines. Outport people intuitively know that fast and efficient helicopter rides are only available to politicians and high-ranking hydro officials and that the loss of an outport person will actually play out well for a government that’s determined to scare people out of rural Newfoundland.
So what was Flora to do? Answer: call in the coast guard. Fortunately, the CCGS Vladykov was tied up in McCallum’s harbour. What are the chances of that? “Best kind,” Flora said. “That big boat flew across the bay. She had medical people on her who monitored my heart and measured my blood pressure. If one had to leave me alone, another would take their place. They kept me and Clyde and [my son] Riley comfortable, and they worked to keep me from feeling afraid.”
If there’s a silver lining in Flora’s suffering, it’s that her ordeal landed her fifteen minutes of fame on The Fisheries Broadcast — North America’s longest-running radio program and a lifelong favourite of Flora’s — where host Jamie Baker called her his best interview ever. Some lingering loss of feeling in her fingers, however, has interfered with Flora’s housework — a task that Clyde and Riley helped pick up the slack with until Clyde needed emergency medical attention too, after falling onboard his boat.
The seventy-eight-year-old fisherman said he heard his ribcage crack. Boats can be treacherous when spring conditions create condensation that becomes an ice rink without warning. Boom. Down Clyde went, busting three ribs when he landed on the fibreglass structure that houses his boat’s outboard motor.
Good thing the Feavers’ guardian angels were at work once again. What if Clyde had been up the bottom of Facheux Bay? As it was, ninety minutes passed between the time a helicopter was called and when it arrived to take him to the hospital. It didn’t help that our rescue mission went down in an extremely dangerous environment. The wharf we were working from had been badly beaten down by wind and ice during a recent storm. No one had talked about it, but as we came and went, we all knew our footing could have come out from under us at any time.
That was a stressful hour and a half for a lot of folks. I was impressed with the men who patiently worked with Clyde to not only comfort him, but to accept the fact that his pain was so extreme, he gave every indication he intended to never move again. I realize he was only trying to hold himself together, and he was a gentleman throughout, but Clyde was clearly not cooperating.
“You’re going to have to lay down at some point,” Clyde’s closest caregivers told him.
“No sir. Not going to happen,” he firmly replied, holding his upper body as stiff as he could. We would all laugh a nervous laugh until finally, while working to manage the risk of internal bleeding and a punctured lung, Clyde was gently forced onto his back.
A nurse in town for a funeral arrived carrying personal painkillers that Clyde quickly consumed. A short time later, our buddy’s sense of humour began to return.
“Are you cold, Clyde?”
“I’ve been colder,” said the man who has spent much of his winter life chasing caribou, hares, and ptarmigan across Newfoundland high country for weeks at a time. And when I asked Clyde — an incredible cook — who was going to feed me in the event he was laid up for a while, he politely pointed out, “I think you’re going to lose weight, my son.”
Then another amazing characteristic about outport life occurred. It was after the rescue crew stretchered Clyde into a warm building that everyone else went to work. Buns, bread, juice, jam, fruit, cookies, tea . . . everything a person could need seemed to appear out of the sky. Everything except an emergency helicopter.
Clyde’s biggest concern? “I’m not going to the hospital in my rubber boots,” he said several times, and after an hour of the rest of us ignoring his wishes, he calmly stated, with no shortage of authority, “Now either somebody is going to slip these old boots off me now and get me my good boots, or nobody is going to be lifting me onto no helicopter.” To which everyone agreed. It was time to do what we were told.
There are other fine men in McCallum, but Clyde might be the best. Clyde is a sweet blend of hard work, high integrity, abundant skill, and a strong code of admirable behaviour, a difficult standard for his four sons — John, Junior, Glen, and Riley, all of whom remain in McCallum — to measure up to, but a way of living that they’ve all met head on. More than anything, perhaps, that’s what McCallum life has done for me — it has required that I get close to some amazing males, men unlike any I’ve previously met. Men like Lloyd Durnford — the luthier.
Lloyd looks away when I call him a luthier. A luthier is someone who repairs and builds stringed instruments — guitars, mandolins, violins. A modest man, Lloyd certainly hasn’t tagged himself with that title. After a lifetime of working as a commercial fisherman, I’m sure it isn’t easy for Lloyd to say he is something else. Yet, in his new career as a guitar repair person, Lloyd is quickly approaching Malcolm Gladwell’s ten-thousand-hour mark — the milestone the best-selling author suggests is a requirement for success, the idea being that people need to practice a task for ten thousand hours if they intend to master it.
These days, becoming a luthier requires learners serve an apprenticeship or study at school, unless, like Lloyd, they live in an isolated outport, where trial and error and searching out information on the internet become their main methods of learning.
Lloyd is always reading about stringed instruments, or talking about them with those who value music as much as he does. A brief chat with Lloyd’s supportive woman, Linda, will tell you how many hours he spends surfing, searching the planet for inexpensive parts and damaged instruments. One night, I carried my accordion over to Lloyd and Linda’s home in hope of playing the song “Saltwater Joys” with him, only to find that Lloyd’s favourite guitar was out of order. After years of wear, it was warping. Then, out of their backroom came a beautiful black six-string that Lloyd had bought online for one dollar because it had a big hole in its body and a damaged internal infrastructure. No way can he fix that, I thought to myself. So imagine my surprise when that guitar suddenly appeared repaired. “It’s got a real sharp sound,” Lloyd said, as he picked away at “The Star-Spangled Banner” in an effort to emphasize each note. Now he’s constructing an entire guitar from scratch.
Lloyd sees stringed instruments as pieces
of art. He really can’t stop creating; he constructs necks, applies polymerized products, even improvises, carving a saddle and nut — the parts that support the strings at each end of the instrument — out of moose antler. It looks as attractive as African ivory, but is as Newfoundland as codfish and capelin.
So unless there is a buyer in McCallum, I imagine it is just a matter of time before Lloyd’s restored guitar is back online with a fair-market markup because mainlanders and Newfoundlanders alike are increasingly buying Lloyd’s reconditioned instruments. I respect all who can navigate a career change, but anyone short of retirement age who can reinvent themselves in an isolated outport I hold in especially high esteem.
Another man worth watching is Lloyd’s good buddy Russ Fudge. I’m not particularly close to Russ myself, but it’s easy to see how much he means to the other men in this community — a highly discriminating crowd that will humble you in a heartbeat if you’re not acting in the best interest of the whole. Very much a man’s man, Russ shows up for darts clean-cut, with a closely cropped beard. Wearing a rugged, full-bodied, green checkered shirt and casual black desert boots against grey jeans and sporting a handsome little pocket-watch, Russ presents an appealing profile. Even the darts he flashes showcase complementary colours. But when I tell him how much I enjoy his fashion sense, he looks at me like I have two heads and firmly informs me that his wife, Sheila, dresses him. At least I think that’s what he said. Because, with my grip on the Newfoundland accent so sketchy, I find Russ’s Muddy Hole dialect the most difficult to decipher.
Russ is interesting to talk about books with. “I’m not a good reader. I never learned how. But I do like books about the Wild West. Me and the boys on the boat will pass around westerns,” the Grand Banks trawler employee explains. “Yes sir, we love our westerns.” It’s this attraction to all things country and western that intrigues me — how a man living on a part of the continent that couldn’t be farther away from where the stories of the Wild West come from could fall in love with the genre.
