by Jim Wellman
A minute later, they clambered from the little boat to safety as they grabbed their guns, gas can, paddles, turrs, and whatever they could save before the seas started battering the boat against the rocks. It was with heavy hearts as the three watched the seas pound the little boat that served them so incredibly well and brought them safely through a terrible blizzard. Before long, the boat was smashed to small pieces and strewn along the rocky shoreline.
Finding a place at the base of a high hill that was somewhat sheltered from the storm, the men managed to build a fire. They could still hear the foghorn but couldn’t see the light. Their first priority was to try and warm their bodies and thaw their frozen clothes before attempting to walk though deep snow.
Although they were on land, the men were still far from safety. The only way to get a better idea of where they were was to climb the steep hill in waist-deep snow and hope to see the lighthouse beacon. It was a struggle, but they managed to climb to the top of the hill toting their guns and a couple of other provisions, but with daylight and heavy drifting they could not see the flashing light.
“Let’s take a few minutes and catch our breath—and how about another sip of that black rum, eh?” Don said. Frank still believes the rum was helpful and is thankful to Don for bringing it, even if he wasn’t fussy about the taste.
After a short rest, the men trudged on through the deep snow toward the sound of the foghorn. In retrospect, Frank thinks they might have been going around in circles, because the sound of the horn seemed to come from different directions at various times, when they were on top of a hill or down in a valley.
Finally, by late Sunday afternoon, the men were exhausted and hungry. They agreed to stop and light another fire and Ken and Don opened their sandwiches to share with Frank, who had left home without food. Frank decided to heat his sandwich over the fire but didn’t realize it was sealed in saran wrap—it melted into his sandwich. After two days without food, Frank’s hunger was too great to worry about trivial matters like eating plastic.
“It wasn’t too bad at all,” he jokes.
During their rest, Frank noticed his feet were bleeding. He removed his boot from one foot but couldn’t get it back on because his feet had swollen and the flesh had been torn away. The rest of the journey would have to be made in stocking feet.
It was almost dark, and as badly as the men wanted to rest longer, they knew that time was running out. They had to find shelter soon. In the darkness of night they could once again see the flashing light in the distance and trudged steadily onward through the snow, too tired and numb to feel pain, even Frank with his shoeless feet. Finally, just after daylight on Monday morning, Frank climbed to the top of a small hill while Don and Ken waited to see if they were still going in the right direction.
“I wondered if I was dreaming, but just a short distance away I saw the lighthouse, and the lightkeeper was out on the platform,” says Frank. “Thank God—we made it!” Shouting first to Ken and Don to come quickly, Frank then shouted to get the lightkeeper’s attention.
“We practically slid down the hill on the ice and snow like we were on snowboards, we were so excited,” he said.
Once in the warmth and comfort of the lightkeeper’s residence, they learned they were on Exploits Island in Notre Dame Bay. The men were given dry clothes and fed warm food. The lightkeeper’s wife treated Frank’s seriously injured foot, and despite more than two days and nights of survival against unbelievably terrible conditions, all three were in relatively good condition by the end of the day on Monday.
They had been given up for dead by many, but Frank Greenham, Ken George, and Don Reid beat the odds. On Tuesday, December 14, 1965, they were reunited with their families back home in Lewisporte and Newstead–Comfort Cove.
Their final voyage would have to wait for another day.
Chapter 15
Working to Make Things Better
“I’ve gone from being Scottish to Irish.” That’s how Lisa Fitzgerald responds when asked about her name change in 2012.
Lisa has been known to almost everyone in the Nova Scotia fishing industry for many years as Lisa Anderson. Lisa laughs and jokes that when people ask her about the name change, because at forty-something, she says, they assume she got divorced. In fact, Lisa got married last year.
Lisa Anderson-Fitzgerald
However, knowing that the name change will take time to evolve for many of her clients and acquaintances, Lisa has kept her old email address—the one that has “Anderson” in it.
Lisa is the executive director of the Nova Scotia Fisheries Sector Council based in Yarmouth in southwest Nova Scotia. She’s held that position since the Council was formed, although she was actually connected even before the organization was established. She explains that the Sector Council grew out of the old Regional Industries Training Commission (RITC).
Lisa graduated with a business degree from Mount St. Vincent’s University in the 1990s and joined the RITC in 1996. A few years later, the government decided to focus less on training and, through structural changes in funding, a new body that was focused more on human resource development was formed.
The idea was to be more project-oriented, so the old RITC was transformed into a sector council. In southwest Nova Scotia, the fishing industry was high on the list of prominent industry sectors, and the Nova Scotia Fisheries Sector Council office was set up in Yarmouth.
Lisa Anderson-Fitzgerald was born and bred in Yarmouth. She says her grandparents had a restaurant located just a couple of minutes’ walk from where the council office is now located.
“I used to ride my bicycle there all the time,” she says, pointing out her office window at a field across the street where that restaurant was situated.
“I was lucky to get a job back home when I finished university,” she says.
Lisa says Yarmouth was a nice place to grow up. Big enough to offer good schools and facilities, it was also small enough to have that homey environment that is lacking in large cities.
“It was a busier place when I was a kid than it is today—tourism was bigger and there were more motels and hotels than now,” she says, noting that Yarmouth has suffered financially since the US (Bar Harbor–Yarmouth) ferry ceased operations a few years ago.
Lisa is all about fisheries these days, even though she’s not from a fishing family, although she has plenty of marine connections. Her father was a marine engineer. Her grandfather and great-grandfather were all marine people who worked on ferry boats.
Sadly, her father was killed in an accident on board the Yarmouth–Bar Harbor ferry ship Bluenose in 1991.
Lisa was just twenty-one and in her third year of university at the time. She remembers the tragedy as a life-changing event for her. Safety is a very close-to-the-heart matter for Lisa today in her involvement with fishermen who work in the most dangerous occupation in the world.
“I don’t publicly go out and say that I’ve been touched personally by tragedy or whatever, but we’re all about prevention and I think it’s probably giving back, in some way, in that I don’t ever want to see anyone having to go through what I did, and I suspect there is some kind of inner push to do that because of my personal experience.”
Her first boss in the former Industries Training Commission was Denny Morrow. If that name rings a bell, it’s because he was one of the best-known people in the entire Nova Scotia fishing industry, having served for many years as director of the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association.
Lisa says having access to Denny’s vast wealth of fisheries knowledge was a tremendous asset. Denny’s office was literally next door, across the hall from Lisa’s office on John Street in Yarmouth. Denny has retired, but he still stops by for a chat now and then.
Lisa says she enjoys working with fishing people. She says fishermen are among the most direct communicators any
where and are not shy about expressing their feelings on any issue. She says she learned an important lesson in dealing with fishermen a long time ago.
“I discovered that it’s a lot easier to find out what fishermen don’t want than it is to learn what they do want.”
Like their counterparts in Newfoundland and Labrador and the rest of Atlantic Canada, fishermen are quick to tell you in no uncertain terms when they think an idea won’t work or why a government policy was ill-conceived.
“So, I discovered that working with fishermen on the negative side first makes it easier to get to why a different approach may be a better option. I say, ‘Okay, well, now that we know what you don’t want, can we explore ways to find something that will work for you?’”
In her quest to find what works for them, Lisa has earned a lot of respect from fishermen. She’s comfortable at the head table facilitating forums and meetings on a variety of issues. Seldom rattled when tempers get hot, she has a way of calming the room, keeping the meeting on an even keel, and staying with the agenda.
Having said that, Lisa chuckles when asked about what projects she’s working on these days.
“Well, professionalization is still on the table,” she says, laughing, because trying to develop a registration and professionalization program for Nova Scotia fishermen has been an ongoing effort for many years that has often been frustrating for Lisa.
She jokes that when she’s looking back over the years while giving her retirement speech decades from now, she will still be talking about professionalization.
“I’ll be saying, ‘Well, we almost got professionalization. We’re still working on it, but we’re almost there.’”
Jokes aside, professionalization and certification are taking a long time, with progress moving at a snail’s pace. Nova Scotia fishermen are not convinced that there is any benefit in the concept and they are wary of it.
However, legislation was passed in the Nova Scotia legislature last year to open the way for registration and certification of fishermen similar to legislation that has been in effect in Newfoundland and Labrador for many years.
On a personal note, Lisa and her husband enjoy outdoor activities.
“Running is my biggest hobby. I ran a half-marathon—twenty-one kilometres—last year. It was the farthest I’d ever run at one time,” she said. “Other than running, we enjoy camping and outdoor activities. My husband has a motorcycle and I enjoy that as well.”
Chapter 16
From Make and Breaks to
Engines as Big as Houses
Do you have a question about make and break engines? You need to know Max Clarke.
Max Clarke looks through some of the many documents he had kept of his travels.
Max grew up in Labrador in the 1950s and early 1960s in the era when the make and break was the king of engines in Newfoundland and Labrador. After a distinguished career as a marine engineer working on marine engines of almost every description on board vessels of all shapes and sizes, Max still has an Acadian make and break engine in his shed in Paradise, near St. John’s. He’s owned several, including one that he donated to a Newfoundland museum.
Visiting with Max in his modest bungalow just a couple minutes’ drive from St. John’s, you are regaled with fascinating stories about the various kinds of make and breaks and their significant role in the history and culture of Newfoundland and Labrador, especially in the fishing industry.
Batteau, Labrador, childhood home of Max
He says the most common names of make and break engines in this province included Atlantic, Acadian, Hubbard, and Myannis. Other brands included Palmer, Bridgeport, and Imperial, and, according to Max, the E. F. Barnes Company in St. John’s made a make and break engine they simply called “The Barnes” that became popular in the 1950s.
And then there’s the Coaker. Some people argue that there was no Coaker make and break engine as such. However, William Coaker, founder of the Fishermen’s Protective Union (FPU), ordered a large number of engines from an established manufacturing company to distribute to union members (fishermen), and because the order was so significant, the company honoured Coaker by naming those engines after him. However, there is another argument that claims Coaker demanded changes or modifications to the company’s standard make and break engine. They say the company agreed to the union leader’s request, thereby making the Coaker a unique engine.
Max says the make and break was built so simply that foundries and engine companies just about everywhere were making them. In some cases the make and break gave a solid start to companies that grew to become some of the most prominent in the engine business to this day.
But there is much more to Max Clarke than his knowledge of make and break engines. He is also passionate about his Labrador heritage. An orphan, Max spent winters inland in Porcupine Bay and summers in Batteau, on the southern Labrador Coast. He went to elementary school in Cartwright and attended high school in St. Anthony on the island.
Chat for a few minutes with Max and you will soon realize that one of his pet peeves is how few people in Newfoundland know anything about Batteau and its significance to coastal Labrador.
“They don’t even know where it is,” he says emphatically. “When Karl Wells was weatherman on CBC TV, every night for twenty years or so he would give the forecast ‘from Batteau to L’Anse au Clair,’ and yet people say they’ve never heard of Batteau. Unbelievable!”
It’s easy to understand why Max is perturbed by that ignorance. Batteau was one of the best fishing areas in the province, not to mention a great harbour where hundreds of (island) Newfoundland fishing crews congregated every summer for most of the twentieth century.
At the end of his high school year in 1965, Max was impatient to get started on his chosen vocation of marine engineering. He applied to take a marine diesel course at the College of Trades and Technology in St. John’s, but because mail service was just once a month on the Labrador Coast, Max was afraid his notification would come too late, so he decided to quit fishing early and, with $68 in his pocket, Max headed for St. John’s on a government-run coastal boat that carried both freight and passengers.
One of the make and break engines owned by Max
Max encountered the first of several challenges that summer when, a few days into the voyage, he was told the ship would not be going to St. John’s because longshoremen had gone on strike there, so he would have to get off in Lewisporte. As daunting as that was for a teenager who had never travelled much, Max made it to St. John’s by train and found his way to the College, only to discover that his application had been refused because it arrived too late. However, the man in charge listened to Max’s story and, “out of pity,” according to Max, found a way to get around the issue and set the wheels in motion to have the young Labradorian enrolled at the College that is now known as the College of the North Atlantic.
“His name was Mr. Fiander and he asked me if I had enough money to live on while in St. John’s. When I said I had about $50, Mr. Fiander said that wouldn’t last long because room and board was expensive in the city,” Max said.
“He sent me to Confederation Building, where I saw a couple of people, including one who arranged to have some money for me to get a bit of clothes. I guess I wasn’t dressed too well.’”
He also discovered at Confederation Building that, because he was an orphan, he qualified for a larger monthly allowance than most students. Suddenly, between the jigs and the reels, things were starting to look up. Meanwhile, to come up with initial funding for his stay in the city, Max remembered that he had brought three seal skins with him from Labrador.
“There were three companies who bought seal skins in St. John’s and I went to all three and then sold to the highest bidder, who offered me $20 each. So I had a few dollars in my pocket then,” he laughs.
&nbs
p; Completing the marine diesel course in St. John’s was the beginning of a long and very successful career that led to many other courses to complete, until Max was qualified to be chief engineer on large oceangoing ships. In fact, Max’s first job was on board the Coast Guard ship John Cabot, which was engaged in cable-laying duties between Europe and North America. Like most beginners, he started out as an oiler on the Cabot, but it wasn’t long before he was moving up the ladder.
Max’s career took him on a journey that saw him as engineer on cargo vessels, tankers, Coast Guard ships, private company vessels, and the famous Lake Boats on the Great Lakes. Those jobs took him to dozens of countries in Europe and Asia as well as North and South America.
Now in his sixties, Max is semi-retired and working a gig that most of us would consider a dream job. About fourteen years ago, Captain Lloyd Bugden from Newfoundland sold the ship Duke of Topsail to a company in the Bahamas to work as a local freighter. The Bahamian owners soon realized that while local engineers were competent to operate the engines on the Duke, maintenance and upgrading was outside their qualifications. The company approached Max and, after striking a deal, he started going south for several months a year and did maintenance work while the ship was still working. These days, he and his wife, Sandra (aka “Sugar”), still leave Newfoundland for the Bahamas in February for a couple of months and live on the ship while Max prepares the engines for another year.
“And you know what?” Max asks with a wry grin. “That ship has not missed a scheduled sailing in all those years due to mechanical trouble.”
