Man on the Ice

by Rex Saunders

  My brothers had a 45-foot boat called the Saunders Endeavor. They built her themselves next to our house. Sherwin was the skipper and master boatbuilder. He went to the College of Fisheries and studied a trade on boatbuilding. Sherwin, Herb, Wade, and Ezra completed the Saunders Endeavor. We moved the Cape Dawn to Englee and put her up on the marine counter, where the insurance adjuster reported that it would cost more to repair her than she was worth. They paid the Fisheries Loans Board the remainder owing, and gave the boat back to me to repair myself. I decided to sell her to a local man from Englee, Mr. Oliver Fillier. He rebuilt and fibreglassed her over. To this day she is still known as the Cape Dawn; however, she is now a fine 65-foot boat, skippered by Oliver’s son, Stephen, and used to fish crab and shrimp.

  Chapter Four

  Trials and Tribulations

  NOW I’M GOING TO talk a bit about religion. In 1975, I was tired of the way I was living. I was tired of the booze, the nightclubs, and I had a family to care for. The life I was living was taking me nowhere. One day our eldest son, Denley, came home from Sunday school and said, “Dad, I got saved in Sunday school today.”

  Something happened inside me and I started to cry. I said, “You did the right thing.”

  I went to my bedroom, laid across the bed, and cried like I never did before. My wife came in and we talked for a while. She always went to church, and so she said to me, “You should come to church with me tonight.”

  I said, “Maybe I will,” but I started drinking again. When it was almost time for the evening service, Irene told me that if I was going with her I shouldn’t drink anymore. And so I didn’t. I went to the Pentecostal church with her in Happy Valley, Goose Bay. She went toward the front of the church and I sat in the last seat in the back. I listened to the service and the pastor preaching. During the after-service, they started singing an old hymn: “Just as I am, without one plea / but that Thy blood was shed for me / And that Thou bidst me come to Thee / O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”

  I made my way up to the altar and knelt down. I began to pray. “Lord be merciful to me as a sinner and save me from my sins.” That was November 23, 1975. I haven’t been perfect since then, but I’ve tried to live my life for the Lord. I’ve made lots of mistakes, failed lots of times, but the Lord has been faithful and good to me.

  Monday morning came and I knew I had to face all of my woods buddies on the bus. It was a big bus, the same as a school bus, with about forty-five to fifty men heading for the woods. I was always the last to get on in the morning and the first to get off in the evening. When I boarded the bus that particular morning, someone said something that I will not repeat. I pretended not to hear, and they repeated it again, but I still didn’t answer.

  “What’s wrong with you this morning?” he asked, then someone else interrupted and said, “I think we should leave him alone. He got saved last night.”

  The other fellow agreed not to say anything else, but said I wouldn’t be saved after coming out of the woods that evening. When the day finished, and I got on the bus, the same old things were said, and I continued not to participate. Finally another co-worker said, “Okay, if you don’t show up to the club on the weekend, then I’ll know you’re really saved.”

  While working in the woods in Goose Bay, a tree fell on me and broke the lining out of my hard hat. I was taken to the hospital in Happy Valley. I was okay, with only a few bruises and a real bad headache. I spent three or four nights in hospital, then went back in the woods again.

  The following year, I was still working in the woods. I was operating a 230 timberjack one evening when, after coming home form the woods, I noticed one of my feet was very sore. The skin was starting to peel off, so I went to the hospital and the doctor determined it was eczema. They gave me something to put on it and told me to take some time off work. That was impossible to do. I had a wife and a family of five children to look after. Rent needed to be paid, a car to be paid for, with no insurance of any kind, so as long as I could walk, I had to work.

  My foot got worse as the weeks passed. I would get up in the morning and my wife would smother my foot with Vaseline. She would buy the big jars of that stuff, the kind that she could fit her hand right down inside. She would wrap my foot with gauze, and pull my sock over the top and stuff my foot into my hard leather workboot. It wasn’t so bad at first, heading into the woods, but it got worse as days passed. I had good men cutting for me and they really helped me out. My buddy Harold Adams and my brother Sherwin would be waiting when I backed the timberjack up to their wood, and they would grab the chokers and go. All I had to do was stay on the timberjack and winch the load of wood in to take for the landing. They made it easy for me. I didn’t have to walk on my bad foot as much as I would have if not for them.

  As time went by, my foot got worse. I would come home in the evening, where my wife was waiting with a pan of warm water to soak my foot. I would soak my foot, sock and everything, to allow the warm water to help me peel the gauze away from my skin. It bled so much that Irene made a comfortable space on our chesterfield for me to lay back and continue to soak my foot. The kids were still young and they would crawl all over me, tormenting me, and Irene had her hands full, trying to keep them from bumping into my bad foot.

  I was exhausted after working in the woods all day. They didn’t mind when I raised my voice at them. I would often say, “Irene, can you do something with them youngsters? They’ve got the guts almost kicked out of me.”

  She would then try and keep them under control. Derrick, our third-eldest, was the worst. He would run across the living room, hardly ever walking, and when he would get within four or five feet of me he would make a big jump and land right on top of me. If I was asleep, I would wake up in a hurry. After a good night’s sleep, I would get up and Irene would do the same thing all over again: her fingers down inside the Vaseline jar, giving my foot a good greasing, and then wrapping it in gauze, putting my sock over it, and stuffing my foot back into my workboot. I would wait for the bus to take me back into the woods again.

  After several days of trying to take care of my foot on my own, there was barely any skin left. I found myself in hospital again. Things got very bad. We had no money coming in, only the family allowance. We didn’t have enough money to pay the rent, or for car payments. Things were getting too tough to manage. My wife and the church community were praying for me, and I knew my mom was praying real hard.

  I remember one Friday evening I got the go-ahead from the doctor to return home for the weekend. He scheduled an appointment for me to return to the hospital on Monday morning for a follow-up. They gave me a pair of crutches and I made a phone call to Irene to come and pick me up. Just the same as the nurses at the hospital, she cleaned and dressed my foot. Gangrene began to set in and it looked very bad. At one point the doctor told me that if my foot didn’t start to heal, I could be facing amputation, and he would have to refer me to the Health Sciences Centre in St. John’s.

  The thought of having my foot cut off really scared me, but I didn’t have any pain or feeling; it just looked really bad. My toenails were falling off, the bottom of my foot was cut the full length across, and in the middle of my foot there was a hole big enough for me to put the tip my small finger right inside and touch the bone. Most of the skin from the middle of my foot to my ankle was gone, hardly any skin to be seen anywhere. My foot looked like a piece of raw meat. Irene went to church that Sunday evening and requested that the congregation pray for my foot to be healed, but nothing happened.

  I was supposed to go back to the hospital the next morning, but instead I told my wife I was going to call Pastor Perry and ask if I could come to the church to be anointed with oil, just as it reads in the book of James, Chapter 5, Verse 14: “Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Verse 15 goes on to read, “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; an
d if he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.”

  I called Pastor Perry at the parsonage and told him what I wanted. He was very glad to help me in any way he could. He said he would contact the church’s board members and get as many of them to come. It was Monday and most of them would be working, but I headed down to the church, hopeful that someone would be there. In our Pentecostal church at that time, there were seven board members, sometimes known as Church Deacons. They were elected by the church congregation and took care of the church business. I walked up to the front of the church where the pastor and three or four board members waited for me. I was on crutches and couldn’t walk very quickly. I was anointed with oil while Pastor Perry and the board members prayed for me. When the prayers were done, I walked down across the church and went home. Nothing had changed and I felt very discouraged. I wanted to get back to work in the woods operating the skidder.

  I began to question the Lord about what was happening. I didn’t think I deserved to be in this position, and as a new Christian I didn’t have much faith, but I still believed the Lord would heal my foot. I thought of the lame man in the book of Acts, Chapter 3, Verses 6-8. “Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.”

  I thought it would be great if that could happen to me. I was desperate, ever reminding myself that I had five children to care for, along with a mortgage and a car payment, and only the family allowances coming in. Irene and I prayed for about an hour after I got home. I was lying down on the chesterfield, with my leg up on the coffee table, and looking at my poor foot. It had only one toenail left. I said to myself that one toenail was not much good, so I took hold of it and pulled it off, tearing away the flesh along with it. It didn’t hurt or bleed. I just put the nail in some tissue and threw it into the garbage can. As I stared at my foot, I began to feel pain and I noticed it was starting to bleed.

  I yelled out to Irene, who was in the kitchen washing dishes, “I just pulled off the last toenail and now it’s starting to pain and my toe is bleeding!”

  She ran into where I was and said, “If it’s paining and bleeding, that means life is starting to come back in it. It’s getting better! The Lord is healing your foot!”

  She began to wrap tissues around my toe to stop the bleeding. We were praying and praising the Lord for what was happening. We knelt down at the chesterfield and prayed for a while, looking at my foot from time to time. Each time we checked, we could see a small difference. It looked as if it was beginning to heal. About three or four hours later, the bottom of my foot was completely healed and the hole in the middle had completely closed up. I was feeling much better by the time we went to bed. I was walking and leaping and praising my God. My foot had a new layer of skin forming and it looked very smooth and shiny. Sometimes Irene and I would find ourselves talking about it with someone and we would say it was like the big hand and little hand of a clock. You don’t see the hour hand moving, but you look away for a little while, and when you look back you can see it had moved. That was what it was like each time we looked at my foot, seeing it starting to heal. I didn’t have to go back to the hospital, but I thank them for what they did for me.

  Every summer, our church in Happy Valley would host a party for the Sunday school kids, parents, and teachers. Irene and I, along with our five children, attended and participated in the games. The men tied a rope from one tree to another, and the object of the game was to run and jump over the rope. I was able to jump as high as anyone there. That was back in July of 1976. In order to play a game of soccer, we stuck four sticks in the ground for goalposts and had someone pick teams of boys and men. I can still remember that I was so excited about the Lord healing my foot. Here I was with a pair of leather workboots on and kicking around a soccer ball while running around with the other men. I scored two or three of our goals.

  I remember Pastor Perry saying to me, “Are you sure you’re the man with the bad foot?”

  I replied, “No, I don’t have a bad foot anymore!”

  We were all very thankful to the Lord for healing my foot. The days of miracles are not over yet. The following Monday morning I was back in the woods and on the skidder, or timberjack, with my hard leather boots on, hauling chokers and cables and hooking up the wood and hauling it to the landing. I haven’t had any more problems with my foot since that day. Praise the Lord for His wonderful healing power! And I never lost a day’s work since.

  Chapter Five

  Life Goes On

  THE CODFISH SEEMED TO be getting more scarce as each year passed, and I was having trouble with my back again. I wondered if I should get another boat or give it all up. My son Denley packed up his family and moved to Brampton, Ontario. He was done with fishing and told me to do whatever I wanted to do, but he had a good job in Brampton waiting for him and wouldn’t likely be back again. My son Corrie didn’t fish much with us, as he would get very seasick during lengthy periods of time in the boat, so he moved to St. John’s where he got a job.

  Now it was just my son Derrick and me. I ended up back in hospital with more back trouble and, yet again, another back surgery. That made four, except this time I didn’t recover like I had before. I had lost half the feeling in my right leg. All the toes on my right foot were curled up, and I couldn’t keep my foot off the floor properly, due to the extensive nerve damage. That fourth surgery left me partially crippled, and I was sent to the Miller Centre in St. John’s for physiotherapy. While in hospital, the doctor told me that I would never be able to return to fishing. Devastated, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  One night my brother Sherwin came to the hospital to visit me. He had a man from the fishermen’s union with him and we discussed my physical injuries. He advised me to apply for workers’ compensation. I didn’t think I would qualify for workers’ compensation, as that program was developed for people who were hurt on the job, and besides, I didn’t think I had paid into the program. He explained how the union pays into it on behalf of the fishermen. I was optimistic until I learned that I did not qualify due to this being my fourth back surgery. The union representative pursued my claim and worked with the doctors in submitting the necessary medical reports.

  The fifth time I injured my back was in 1984. I was cutting logs, along with my brothers Herb, Wade, Ezra, and Sherwin, to be sawed into lumber to build a fish store, a place to store and repair cod traps and gillnets, along with other things used for fishing. Herb, Sherwin, and I were taking a log off our snowmobile sleigh when I felt something snap in my back. I sat on a pile of logs for a short while, and I found I couldn’t get up. Herb suggested it was time to boil the kettle and that I should go to the brook, fill up the kettle, and light the fire in the small lunch shack we had there. I said I would try, so I grabbed the kettle and started for the brook, about fifteen to twenty feet away from where we were.

  As Herb watched, he said, “If you can’t walk any better than that, the best place for you to go is home or to the hospital.”

  So my brothers, God love ’em, carried me to my car and I headed home. When I pulled into my driveway, my wife and daughter watched as I struggled to get out. I heard Trudy squeal, “Dad, what have you got done now?”

  I explained what had happened as I crawled to the house. I couldn’t even stand up, and one of my brothers suggested that someone take me to hospital. But, as my true stubborn self, I said I was okay and that I would be feeling better in a few days. Irene and Trudy helped me into the house and onto our chesterfield. It was obvious that the pain was too much for me to handle, so off to St. Anthony we went.

  Dr. Fitzgerald asked me about my injury and I proceeded to explain to him what had happened in the woods. He included every detail in his me
dical report, and I was approved for workers’ compensation. That was good. My remaining net income wasn’t much, after I had paid my boat loan, for nets, traps, fuel, food, gas, and insurance. But little is better than none. Shortly after, I underwent my fifth back surgery, performed by Dr. Fitzgerald, and spent about a week in hospital. It was now January and I had a long winter to recover.

  After we sold the Cape Dawn to Mr. Oliver Fillier from Englee, I didn’t go back to the longliners anymore. Denley and Corrie had already gone to the mainland, leaving just Derrick and me. We bought a 26-foot fibreglass speedboat and a 75-HP Yamaha outboard motor. We put a gurdy and a small wheelhouse on the front, and we used her for sealing in the spring. Derrick and his friend Chris Earle fished together, but they took me sealing with them.

  One spring, we were about a mile or so off our hometown, St. Lunaire. It was a lovely sunny day, no wind, and the ice was all scattered apart. Just the right conditions for sealing. We were picking up a scattered seal here and there until we had eight or ten on board. We saw a longliner off in the distance coming toward us. It was the Saunders Endeavor. She came up alongside of us and we all chatted with the crew for a while. My brother Sherwin looked at me and said, “Rex, you should come aboard with us. Derrick and Chris don’t need you. They’re soon going in home now.”

  I replied in amusement, “You fellers could be gone for a week!”

  Sherwin laughed. “We need a cook!”

  “Now, b’y,” I said, “you’re making fun of me, aren’t ye?”

  Then Derrick piped in. “Dad, b’y, if you want to go with them, get aboard, and me and Chris will go on in home.”

  Still hesitant, I replied, “No, that’s all right.”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, two boys on the deck of the Saunders Endeavor grabbed me by my shoulders and the back of the coat. The next thing I knew, I was hanging over the side of the longliner. Sherwin had already opened the motor full speed ahead and took me right out of our speedboat, and the fellows lodged me right down on the deck. My brothers are good to me and always have been, but no one can trust any of them. You never know what they will do next. We just sat on the latch of the boat and had a great laugh.