The Curse of the Labrador Duck

by Glen Chilton

  We had a bit of time to kill before our first appointment, and zigzagging among the lakes of eastern Nova Scotia, we stumbled across a golf and country club. My dress pants and shirt and gray hair must have carried a bit of weight, as we were able to waltz into the bar and were served drinks on the deck without being asked to justify ourselves. And so, with the smells of golf course fertilizer and herbicide wafting over us, I explained to Sarah why I had asked her to accompany me on duck adventures around Atlantic Canada.

  Now it was one thing to arrive in Halifax, stroll down to the harbor, and say, “Gee, so that’s where they shot a lot of innocent Labrador Ducks.” It is quite another matter to make a big deal out of it. It seemed to me that I needed to speak to the final authority about Halifax Harbour—the Harbour Master himself.

  Captain Randall Sherman had a neat gray beard and was wearing a tie with sailboats, but his shipshape office was surprisingly uncluttered by naval paraphernalia. He is a compact and engaging man, and we were welcomed warmly. Captain Sherman explained that he had been a master mariner for twenty years before moving to the post of Harbour Master. He is now responsible for safety and navigation and for things that might blow up in the middle of the night. The port is particularly sensitive about things blowing up after the ship Mont-Blanc, laden with an incredible cocktail of explosives, blew up on the morning of December 6, 1917, killing more than 1,900 people, crippling many more, and leveling great chunks of the city of Halifax. It was the largest human-created explosion before the nuclear age. Trying to keep everything in running order and avoid a repeat of the Mont-Blanc disaster, Captain Sherman and his team at the Port Authority have to keep track of some 2,400 cargo ships using the harbor each year, as well as their 15 million tons of cargo. On top of this are 3,000 yachts out of 5 clubs, 3 harbor ferries, visits by 100 to 140 cruise ships annually, and the comings and goings of the American navy. Halifax has a beautiful, wide blue harbor. It is 65 to 100 feet deep and doesn’t need dredging. It doesn’t freeze over in winter, has no currents to speak of, and has comparatively small tides. All in all, this is a great harbor, as long as you are not a migrating duck.

  I told Captain Sherman about the Labrador Ducks that had used his harbor until some 150 years ago. He explained that even at that time, my ducks would have found Halifax a busy port, although all of the vessels would have been under sail. In the era of Labrador Ducks, ships would pump greasy water out of their bilges, and toss all of their other waste into the harbor. Not so today. Spills are rare and dealt with quickly, and cruise ships have their own waste treatment plants.

  This isn’t to say that the waters of Halifax Harbour are crystal clear. There are 350,000 people in the Greater Halifax area, and 100,000 people on Halifax Peninsula proper. These people create an awful lot of waste, which is dumped untreated through 43 sewage outfalls, straight into the harbor. Some of these outfalls are in prime tourist areas. Millions of dollars have been spent studying the problem, and residents pay a surcharge on their water bills for improvements, but not a lot has been done to fix the situation. Despite this, an amazing assortment of wildlife uses the harbor, including minke and fin whales; mackerel; and blue, mako, dusky, hammerhead, and tiger sharks.

  For a man responsible for 55,000 ship movements a year, Captain Sherman proved very generous with his time. Before leaving, I cautiously asked him about his relationship with Theodore Tugboat.

  For many years, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a children’s television program by that name. For fifteen minutes each day, Theodore and his fellow tugboats pushed other ships around the “Big Harbour” while learning valuable life lessons. Each episode was narrated by the only real person on the show, the Harbour Master, played by singer-turned-actor Denny Doherty. Sherman laughed at my question and said that the show had made him, or at least his job title, famous around the world. He had even appeared with Denny Doherty on a Theodore Tugboat Christmas special. Today, a full-scale recreation of Theodore sails up and down the harbour, providing tours for children of all ages.

  As Sarah and I stepped from the Port Authority offices, Theodore chugged by. We waved at the people on board and they waved back. I contemplated a time when the harbor had been a regular stopover point for Labrador Ducks. It was a magical moment that was only slightly dampened by a smell that seemed very out of place. It took a moment to realize that it was the smell of raw human waste. We left Halifax for the two-hour shot north to Pictou and my date with the ghost of Reverend McCulloch.

  You WILL REMEMBER McCulloch as the Presbyterian minister who is spending the better part of eternity in hell for shooting Labrador Ducks in Pictou, including the drake whose stuffed remains resided for a long spell in Halifax before coming to rest in Ottawa. I wanted to see where McCulloch had spent his predamnation days, and where he shot Labrador Ducks. And since I was going to be there anyway, I had agreed to give a Labrador Duck talk the following evening to the Pictou County Genealogical and Historical Society, with particular emphasis on McCulloch.

  Sarah had booked us into a cheery and welcoming little bed-and-breakfast operating out of a house built in 1840. The owners gave me the impression that they really wanted Sarah and me to be a married couple, given that we were sharing a room to save money, and so I didn’t hesitate to use the phrase my wife whenever I could slip it into a conversation. This probably left them wondering what a sweet young thing like Sarah would see in an ugly old geezer like me.

  With time before supper, “my wife” and I ambled through the town. We found no shortage of grand old homes with magnificent views of the harbor. Even the more modest homes had a sense of pride and maintenance. We discovered signs explaining that in Pictou the minimum fine for parking in the spot at the post office set aside for disabled drivers is $136.25, and that the fine for loitering in front of the bank after being asked to shove off is $155. We found that the official mascot of Pictou is Causeway Cory, a cormorant dressed in raincoat, rubber boots, and a sou’wester hat. At one time, Pictou had been supported by a big shipbuilding operation. Today the major sources of revenue are tourism, a facility building parts for oil tankers, and a large pulp and paper mill.

  Immediately across from our B&B, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada had erected a monument commemorating Pictou Academy, which was linked to my current duck quest. In both French and English, a plaque told me that, on the site, in 1818, Reverend Thomas McCulloch had established the first home of the academy. The institution was modeled on the universities McCulloch knew in Scotland, and emphasized “logical argument, scientific practice and equality of educational opportunity.” McCulloch was clearly an important and influential man. Even so, I would have thought that he could have come up with more practical subjects than logical argument to teach to the men and women of a small, early-nineteenth-century Canadian fishing village. Swimming for one’s life after falling into icy water from a capsized fishing boat, for instance. It took me 792 steps from the site of the old Pictou Academy to reach the house erected for McCulloch.

  That night, I was delighted to find that Sarah snored like a band saw. As an insomniac, I am always afraid that my tossing and turning will keep a roommate awake. No problem in Sarah’s case; one minute after her head hit the pillow, from across the room, the serenade began. I inserted foam rubber earplugs, and tossed and turned to my heart’s content.

  The next morning, I rose early for a walk through Pictou while Sarah had a little lie-in. I headed uphill, expecting to find less grandiose homes further from the water, but found quite the opposite. The homes were palatial, with big porches and greats chunks of well-maintained grassy property around them. I wondered how much this sort of palace with a great view and one and a half acre of land would cost in my hometown, before realizing that no such combination existed in my hometown.

  After breakfast, Sarah and I set off for the Hector Exhibition Centre, where we were greeted by St. Clair Prest, who had coordinated my talk. Prest is from Moose River Mines, which has the d
istinction of being the site of the first remote radio broadcast in the region following a mine disaster. I suspect that Prest had spent a considerable portion of his childhood explaining his given name. The original St. Clair was, in fact, a fellow who had died 1,400 years earlier, and had been designated one of seven patron saints of tailors.

  We gabbed with Prest about the Reverend McCulloch and the comings and goings of Pictou. He told us that the rink of the New Caladonian Curling Club (established in the 1850s) had three sheets of ice, but, having been built on reclaimed land, it had settled oddly, making the flight of rocks a bit tricky. He also explained that Pictou is gripped by five months of substantial snowfall each year, taking the shine off the otherwise idyllic community.

  McCulloch House, maintained as an historic site, was closed for renovation and restoration when we visited. Ever willing to please, Prest opened it and showed us around. He indicated that the second floor had been added since McCulloch’s time. In its earlier form, it had just one floor with four great rooms, with a sleeping loft above. There were about a dozen stuffed birds on display from McCulloch’s collection. There was also a beautiful painting of a “Labrador Falcon, Falco Labradoria” on display. It measures 58 by 86 cm and has a dedication in the lower left corner, which reads: “Presented to Thomas McCulloch Esq. by J. J. Audubon.” It was truly beautiful with exquisite detail that I could appreciate fully only with a magnifying lens. I fear for this work, because the roof of McCulloch House has leaked at least twice in the past. The picture isn’t in pristine condition, with little creases and some small staining from damp, but it will take only one really good leak to wreck it beyond repair. I suspect it is of tremendous historical value.

  That evening, Sarah and I arrived at the Hector Exhibition Centre half an hour early for my talk about Labrador Ducks. I became a little bit edgy when we found only one car in the parking lot. It was Prest’s. I started to worry that I might be talking to a rather teeny audience. At least the “Open/Closed” sign was turned the right way around. Prest had found a slide projector in a back cupboard and hoped that it worked. Luckily it projected an image, even if it rattled like an old Triumph TR3.

  I needn’t have worried about the turnout in Pictou; the evening drew more people than my talk the month before in Dublin. It was quite a social occasion, and ladies brought in coffee and tea and trays of sandwiches with their crusts cut off. The audience was enthusiastic about my talk, so I was wildly enthusiastic in return. I used funny voices and told funny stories and jumped around like a lunatic. An impressive string of questions and comments followed. Leaving the Hector Centre, Sarah and I retired to a bar with a deck for a drink to unwind. I had two large beers, and Sarah had half of a small one, which, she said, made her lips numb.

  We had been given every indication that the unrelenting winter weather keeps Pictou from being completely idyllic. When the snow arrives, it shoulders its way in like a drunken sailor and is reluctant to leave without a fistfight. Sitting on the deck of the bar, drinking my beer, I discovered a second small flaw in paradise. Our world is addicted to paper, and when you live in a country that makes a sizable portion of its revenue from cutting down trees, you can expect that some folks are going to make their living by converting wood into paper. Hence the small flaw. Pulp-and-paper mills stink. Pictou has a mill. It isn’t a stuff-a-skunk-up-each-nostril kind of smell, but it isn’t an orchid-corsage-on-the-dress-of-the-prom-queen odor either. Sort of acrid, sort of sweet, sort of like syrup and pork fat, it made me wonder how people working at the mill manage to deal with it.

  THE NATURALIST Charles Darwin will always be best known for his ideas on natural selection as the driving force behind evolutionary change. He published these ideas in a book whose rather ponderous twenty-one-word title is usually abbreviated to On the Origin of Species. He is considerably less well known for having written on a number of other topics, such as corals, carnivorous plants, and earthworms. The work that concerns us here is a two-volume doorstop entitled The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication.

  I would be lying if I said that I have read the whole thing, but it would be only a fib to say that I have read chapter eight in volume one, which considers geese, peacocks, turkeys, guinea-fowl, canaries, goldfishes, bees, silk moths, and domestic ducks. In this chapter, Darwin explained that, in the nineteenth century, “Labrador Duck” was a name given to a breed of domestic duck, which was also known as the Canadian Duck, the Buenos Ayres Duck, and the East Indian Duck. Darwin kept Labrador Ducks at his home in Kent. It seemed pretty obvious that if I were ever going to see a live Labrador Duck, it would have to be the domestic version, most commonly known today as the Black East Indies.

  It had not been easy finding a breeder of Black East Indies. They may have been popular at one time, and goodness knows there are a lot of domestic-duck enthusiasts in the world, but not a lot of them breed Black East Indies. In the end I found a breeder, Margot Morris, hiding away in the vanishingly small community of Riverside-Albert in New Brunswick. Morris came out to greet us as we pulled up her drive. She must be a septuagenarian, but she had the sort of sparkle in her eyes that I normally associate with glass lenses inserted as part of a cataract operation. She was demonstrative and laughed easily and was genuinely happy to see us. We met her donkey and her horse, who both looked thoroughly pleased with themselves. Welcoming us into her home, Morris introduced us to her blue heeler, Shadow, who was very keen to thrust a wet chew toy into the lap of my white trousers. Morris’ budgie, Maxie, remained politely in his cage, keeping all of his toys to himself.

  This menagerie was all well and good, but there wasn’t a duck to be seen. I had been led to believe that something like ninety ducks, geese, and swans had been sharing Morris’ life. It seemed that Morris was ready to call it a day after fifteen cold, wet winters in New Brunswick, the most recent of which had been an absolute nightmare, with one great dump of snow after another, temperatures that turned her house into an icebox, and a winter virus that had been unwilling to turn tail. She was going to move to Ontario to be closer to her family. She had sold off her waterfowl in preparation for the move. Hence, there were no Labrador Ducks/Black East Indies for me to see.

  We did have a lovely hour-long chat about waterfowl in general, and Black East Indies ducks in particular. Morris explained that as newly hatched chicks, Black East Indies are black all over, except for a few white feathers on the breast. They develop a green sheen as they age. She said that “the little devils run fast.” Morris claimed that she was not particularly fond of ducks, and then chuckled when she realized how strange that sounded, given her hobby. She said that ducks, unlike geese and swans, are flighty and nervous. “You can argue with a goose,” she said. “You might not win, but at least you can argue with them.” The same is not true for a duck. She explained that duck flesh tasted bad because of their diet, which included just about anything they could catch, and gave the example of Jim Blewett, a singer-songwriter, who had been picking one hundred slugs a day out of his garden. After purchasing a couple of ducks from Morris, his slug problem disappeared. As a result, he was working on a folk song about ducks and slugs. Something along the lines of “You can have slugs, or you can have ducks, but you can’t have both.”

  In my email messages many months before, I had asked Morris to set aside a particularly valuable prize. Domestic ducks were derived from Mallards through selective breeding. That is why Darwin was interested in them. Thinking that the DNA extracted from a Black East Indies duck might give me some insight into the eggs analyzed by Sorenson, I had asked Morris to set aside some eggshell fragments when her ducks bred in the spring. Morris had done much better than that. Before selling off her menagerie, she had set aside three intact duck eggs. They had been sitting in her kitchen beside the stove in a Tupperware container for two months since she collected them. As we spoke, Morris worked her way through a pack of Black Cat cigarettes, while the eggs stared at me from the container on the kitchen table. The
y bobbed slightly in half an inch of evil green ooze. Despite the best intentions of the engineers at Tupperware International to keep freshness locked in, the container was emitting the unmistakable odor of horribly rotten eggs. Perhaps after years of chain-smoking, Morris had completely lost her sense of smell. I felt really badly for poor Shadow.

  At the end of an hour, we thanked Morris, wished her the best of luck in selling her home and with her move to Ontario, and drove off with our little Tupperware prize. It was all Sarah and I could do to keep our breakfast in place. Even though it was raining, we drove with the car windows wide open. We had to do something quickly. In the most remote corner of a parking lot, I pried open the container’s lid and started to heave. Imagine hiking through a sulfurous swamp for a week. At the end of your trek, take off your hiking socks, and fill them with Parmesan cheese and vinegar. Then have a baby puke on them. That is the smell of two-month-old Black East Indies duck eggs. I decanted the ooze, swirled the eggs in some fresh water, and decanted again. I resealed the container, wrapped it in a plastic bag, and put it back in the car’s trunk to simmer.

  We drove on to Saint John, the second-largest city in New Brunswick, and all too frequently confused with St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador. Our hotel gave us a dripping faucet. Rather than let all of that fresh water go to waste, I turned on the bathroom fan, opened the egg container, and placed it under the drip, allowing the water to carry some of the stench down the drain. We abandoned our room and found a very nice Mexican restaurant with a flamenco guitarist.

  Too afraid of the smell to return to the hotel room, we allowed ourselves to be drawn to the waterfront by the sound of music coming from that evening’s incarnation of the Saint John Festival Summer Stage. In a waterfront bar patio, with the delicate scent of the evening sea washing over us, I ordered a beer and Sarah ordered a tonic water. The beer’s plastic cup, the umbrella above us, the music stage, and two giant inflated beer cans were all courtesy of Alpine Bière Lager Beer, maritime brewed (Brassée dans les Maritimes) by Moosehead Breweries.