by David Ward
For Snook and Lucy, life on Bonne Bay isn’t what it once was. Not only have they both unexpectedly lost their mothers recently, they have not untied their boat from its mooring in more than a month. They haven’t felt motivated to get out on the water, not even for a brief boil-up — a cuppa tea, a tin of wieners, and a fistful of jam jams — much less to set a few snares, drag for scallops, and see how their cabin is holding up against winter weather.
Overnighting in that wilderness retreat is no longer as pleasurable for the Lees as it once was, and, while they aren’t always open about what they’re affected by, both know exactly why they’re finding it hard to have fun. What with the number of new aquaculture cages that have been installed alongside their little piece of paradise, it’s been difficult for them to relax. They know how the buildup of fish feces on the bottom of the bay is affecting the local lobster ecology. They see the industrial garbage increasingly collecting everywhere, the steady stream of noisy boats, and the way that their favourite trees have been cut down for firewood by aquaculture employees who do their personal work on company time — with highly effective industrial equipment — when no one is watching. Plus, the Lees heard that two months ago, one hundred thousand lice-infected, medicine-saturated salmon escaped from a nearby cage after it was damaged during an extremely violent storm. And even if that estimate is only half-right, Snook and Lucy wonder why no one has made a public announcement, given the environmental importance of such an event. “I just don’t see how aquaculture companies get away with things a fisherman don’t,” Snook says. “Queerest thing, don’t you think? If I do something to the land and sea, [the authorities will] take away my boat, my licence, my gear . . . then they give me a big fat fine and put my name in the newspaper.”
That’s the way it is for many who live on Newfoundland’s Southwest Coast. They’re miserable about something or somebody — an increase in seal population, a loss in essential services, the selfish actions of politicians like Darin King and Clyde Jackman . . . yet, there’s another side to this group. There’s a part in their heart that persistently tells them that they continue to live along a gorgeous shoreline, in a great harbour, on a beautiful bay belonging to the most wonderful island in the world. And they know that no matter what outside influences are at work to destroy their way of life, this place they call home is still worth fighting for. That’s why Snook and Lucy snuck out last Sunday to sabotage an aquaculture cage.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be. The Southwest Coast is a lot of things, including quite contemporary at times. McCallum folks really do know what needs to happen if they hope to cope. I remember one occasion when four artists paid a winter visit to this isolated outport. Travelling teachers, they were. Non-creatives have gutted the school system’s art programs so badly that the only way for a learner to get a balanced education is for the schools to ask touring artists to periodically deliver workshops. Poets, painters, dancers . . . the children love it. I do too. Especially one time, when a St. John’s troupe of four got snowed and winded in. It gave me a few additional days of culture and attention that I never would have received otherwise. It didn’t hurt that three of the stranded were women.
As the days those artists were marooned in McCallum added up, that group asked if I could get them some authentic outport grub — moose and scallops mostly. Of course, one of my food sources came through once again, and it was no surprise to me that he wouldn’t take any money in return for his product. So I took it upon myself to suggest this band of travelling teachers give him a small bag of marijuana — a gift that delighted their grocer. As an abstainer, I found this exchange funny because in the wildest corners of my imagination, the last thing I ever thought I would do in McCallum is find myself in the middle of a drug deal.
Fifteen
I’m convinced that there are no Newfoundlanders who aren’t aware of the controversial resettlement programs that governments implemented from 1954 to 1974, when thirty thousand people were forced to leave their homes. Even the smallest of schoolchildren today are taught about that time when community services were reduced and neglected — abandoned even — because governments wanted to centralize populations.
When Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, the Southwest Coast consisted of eighty outports. Nine years later, only thirty-eight remained. McCallum almost passed away as well, when a government study at the time said the outport was doomed to die in ten years and offered residents relocation money in response to this research — an offer that McCallum turned down. As a result of the community’s refusal to relocate, many being pressured to leave other outports took shelter in McCallum as the community became a safe haven for those who didn’t want to stop living the life.
Given the rural Newfoundlander’s oral tradition of sharing resettlement sorrow, knowledge regarding the trauma that resulted from such insensitive programs has been kept alive for a long time. But with ongoing urbanization, and the townies’ lack of interest in travelling outside of St. John’s, the hundreds of communities that were so hard-heartedly discarded have gradually been forgotten. Communities like Pass Island — a dark, mysterious landmark that sits only 250 metres offshore from the Hermitage Peninsula where it can easily be seen on the horizon when looking south from McCallum.
Because of its nearness to some noteworthy Fortune Bay fishing banks and its proximity to St. Pierre’s important political and navigational position, Pass Island was one of the Southwest Coast’s first settled sites. Captain Cook reported that several English fishermen used the island in the summer of 1763 and that two families spent that winter on-site.
By 1836, 56 people called Pass Island home. That citizenry grew to be 110 by 1857, and 215 by 1874, after an Anglican church was built in 1869 and a school a short time after that. With such a solid foundation in place, the next century went as planned for the people of Pass Island. Then a road was built from Seal Cove to Pass Island Tickle, and people predicted that Pass Island’s future would be brighter than ever because the community was suddenly only 250 metres offshore from an economically supportive throughway. But when their nearest neighbour, Grole, opted to relocate, isolation anxiety began to set in for the people of Pass Island. For many, this angst was too much for them to take, and Pass Island’s population shrunk to 160 by the summer of 1974.
At this point, politicians stepped up resettlement pressure. So when nearby Hermitage built a new fish-processing plant, and modern longliners provided fishermen the opportunity to travel to and from familiar waters, the forces to relocate got to be too great, and Pass Island became the last community to fall to that era’s resettlement program, like the last soldier to die in a dubious war. Yet the pride of some Pass Island people was so powerful that, for twenty years afterward, they continued to maintain the town’s wharves. If only those Pass Islanders could have held on for one more summer, they would probably still be there, because if the community had survived, a causeway would surely have been built across that 250-metre passage today, and that extended road access would have guaranteed survival of some sort.
I hope to visit Pass Island one day, just to look around. Perhaps I’ll search out their cemetery, try to determine where the old buildings sat, and imagine the lives of those who called that community home. Maybe one of my McCallum buddies will run us across on a calm day. I’ll offer to pay for fuel, at least. In the meantime, for me and many other McCallum residents, Pass Island will simply remain a monument to some of the sadness that resulted from resettlement.
Of course, many left their outport without a push or a penny. Men like Alex King, who was born in Bradley’s Cove in 1922 but died in Erin Mills, Ontario, in 2011, at the age of eighty-eight. While no one remembers exactly when the young Alex left Newfoundland, they know that after he did, he seldom returned. Not that he didn’t wish to revisit his childhood home, but he had responsibilities in Ontario, including raising — along with Olive Peddle of Bristol’s Hope — seven children.
“He only went back to visit three times over sixty years,” his son Dwight tells me when I catch up with him at his Kitchener home. “But my dad had fond memories of Newfoundland. He especially enjoyed building Gander Airport before, and during, World War Two. At one point, my dad wanted to move home to Newfoundland. But my mom didn’t. And by the time she died, he believed he was too old to go home. He was afraid rural Newfoundland might be too isolated for an aging person. Plus, everybody was here by then, including great-grandchildren.”
Alex’s most productive employment came from Canada Packers — today Maple Leaf Foods — in Toronto. “By a Newfoundlander’s way of thinking, my dad had the perfect job for a father of seven, given the large amount of food he had access to,” Dwight tells me, clearly feeling nostalgic to be talking about his father this way. “Employees got some good discounted cost benefits. You name it, my dad brought it home. Half a pig even. Pay was decent as well, and the guy worked a lot of overtime, shipping stuff to Japan and Europe. I remember him working Saturdays and often more. He worked like crazy, all the time. Obviously, providing for the rest of us was his number one priority. Even when he was slowed by physical ailments — stomach ulcers, prostate cancer, hernias — none of it stopped him from being a worker and a provider.”
I ask Dwight what he thinks of his own Newfoundland bloodline. “No doubt I feel some pride around it,” he says. “I mean, it’s a great province. You can feel the history when you visit it. Especially since [wife] Cathy and I retraced a lot of it when we visited three years ago. While it’s all different now, I still felt what it might have been like when my dad was young. His brother Lloyd is still there. He’s the last of the brothers still alive. He drove a road grader. And Ralph was a builder — houses, boats — and he fished. I say this because my dad and his brothers were all part of that family’s strong work ethic. Even their father — my grandfather John — worked in what they called the Boston States for a while. So I suspect my dad’s dad planted a seed in such a way that my father grew up knowing he might have to travel a long way for work.”
I’m miles from McCallum. I couldn’t be much further and still be in Canada. I’m writing from the road — Jewel Lake, to be exact, an expired gold-mining town in British Columbia’s Kootenay mountain range, where I’m visiting with old-time Toronto Maple Leaf Jim Harrison, whom I’ve also written a book about. The good news is that this is the last stop on my cross-country trip, a journey that began six weeks ago when I boarded the Marine Voyageur in McCallum and travelled to Burgeo — a tour that took me to the isolated outports of Francois, Grey River, and Ramea before I proceeded by bus to Deer Lake and then on to Ontario by airplane.
I went to Kitchener to take care of my sister’s dogs while she travelled China. From B.C. I’ll head east again. I’m going back to Kitchener-Waterloo to tie up some loose ends with friends, but after a brief time in the twin cities, I’ll be making my way back to McCallum, the place that I’m presently missing most. That’s the mess I’m in — when I’m in Newfoundland I long for my Ontario family and friends, and when in Ontario, I miss McCallum.
Not that my westward push hasn’t been pleasurable — quite the opposite actually. I’ve spent quality time with a lot of good people. It feels right to support my youngest nephew in his pursuit of employment with the Royal Canadian Navy, and it brings me great pleasure to play with my little nieces, ages five and nine. It’s also wonderful to celebrate my birthday with people with whom I haven’t done so in fourteen years, and it is fun to attend a Blue Jays game.
I enjoy shopping in stores unlike any in Newfoundland. And it is always a treat to spend time with a couple in Kelowna for whom I was best man in 1987. Yet I miss my McCallum friends. I miss the way they sound — the way they smile, laugh, and truly talk differently than the rest of Canada. I miss their kindness. I miss Reg Fudge and am saddened that I will not be there for his eightieth birthday.
I miss Feaver food, Fudge love, Crant and Carter charisma, boardwalk talk with the Wellmans, lovely Durnford deeds, Simms synergy, Skinner skills, sweet Poole and Piercey people, rowdy Riggs, Chapman chatter, and MacDonalds of all kinds — the people, not the restaurant. I even long for Guy Nash’s nagging about his horrible hockey team. I miss all the camaraderie and support I receive from the seamen who serve on the ferries. I miss sunrise boat rides and crazy times at the community centre. I crave mussels and moose, and I miss the million-dollar view from my home-office window.
Yet when anyone returns to McCallum after a lengthy time away, they know that there might be an unpleasant surprise waiting for them. House upkeep can be hard. I’ve seen how salt water and wind can destroy a new doorknob in less than a year. And pipes can be problematic. This is especially true in winter when plumbing you thought you drained freezes solid, because a granite underlay doesn’t allow for public water systems to be sunk in soil.
Winds are the worst around here. I’ve had them twist my entire torso against my will, and that’s not a safe feeling. I walk a stretch of boardwalk where there are no lights, so sometimes it’s dark. Really dark. “I’m fine,” I tell myself, as I scurry towards my house. There are evenings where I wonder, if this blow throws me overboard, how long will I lay on those rocks before someone notices I’m gone, or the tide comes in and takes me away? It isn’t that I can’t manage. I’m a heavy, strong guy, reasonably steady on my feet anywhere but landwash or on the gunnels of a boat. It’s just that some days, the winds are exceptionally threatening.
That’s what everyone in McCallum was talking about when Carol and I first asked what winter was like on the Southwest Coast. “The wind . . .” they would say, shaking their head and trying to stifle a nervous smile as they delivered the news. “Oh, my dear, the wind is fierce.” But until I experienced it, I really couldn’t imagine what it was like. It’s hard to comprehend how you could send ten men with heavy sledgehammers under your home, and they couldn’t do more than shake your floor for a few minutes, but the almighty wind can torque your entire house every twenty seconds or so, for thirty-six hours straight. That’s the part — the duration of the pounding — that wears me out.
I came here for adventure, so I’m mostly practical when a storm arrives. Is everything tied down? Do I have enough firewood to last a couple of days? Because when the wind comes, it comes and comes and comes. It sounds like I am living on the tarmac at Pearson International. The second night is often worse than the first. Even after the storm subsides, conditions are still wild. Everything just seems better because the thumping isn’t as sizeable as it has been.
Days later I still feel beat down from it all. Not that it isn’t wonderful to witness — to help pull boats ashore in advance of a storm, to feel the anticipation in the air, to see, through salt-encrusted windows, whitecaps roar in to shore in a sheltered harbour, and to hear seasoned seamen say that with every passing decade, wind speed is clearly increasing. And, son of a gun, they say it — over and over and over. The wind is the most talked about subject in all the outports.
When I first moved to McCallum, the ultrahigh humidity caught me by surprise. I find that if you drain an Ontario pipe at the end of August and leave it exposed to open air, you can assume that whatever water you’ve left lying in low areas will evaporate before real cold arrives. This is not so in an area as moisture-rich as coastal Newfoundland, where I’m convinced that if you walk away from a drop of water on your kitchen counter at bedtime, that bead will be bigger by morning, after damp air collects in the cool night. Even blasting air pressure through my pipes before leaving town doesn’t entirely clear them, given the inefficiencies and inadequacies of do-it-yourself plumbing processes. So the first thing I attempt to do upon returning home after a winter absence is open the tap that brings town water into my house. I say I attempt to turn that tap because for more than half a year, it’s not uncommon to find my faucet frozen, at which point I plug in some strategically placed heat tape and wait for the technology to take. That�
�s the easy part. It’s when that water main is clear that the real work begins — it’s not until there is a steady flow of fluid that I notice which pipe connections have been pushed apart by expanding ice.
Only after all plumbing is repaired can I put my life in order after what has always been several days of travel. Not that I ever face these household maintenance challenges alone. My McCallum friends are always there to offer temporary housing and anything else I need. But while I’m grateful for my neighbours’ goodness, there is something about stubborn human pride that pushes me to do all the work I can by myself with a goal, at the end of the day crawling into my own bed knowing that I’ve got my immediate concerns under control. Yet, that’s often when the biggest surprise arrives. One time, two minutes after thinking I had everything in order, I heard a loud sound and soon realized my hot-water tank had sprung a large leak. And that no matter how quickly my Hermitage hardware store got me a new tank, stormy seas would delay the ferry from delivering it.
At no point, however, do I wonder if I’ve got a knowledgeable person to help with tank installation tasks. Any unknowns about assistance become crystal clear when I arrive home to find Lloyd Durnford waiting with a sled to help pull my bags across snowy boardwalks. He has also preheated my house, and his wife, Linda, has seen to it that a pot of moose soup is simmering on my stove.
