The Badger Riot

by J. A. Ricketts

  “You’re right, of course. I listened to people talk on the train. They all seem to be blaming Joey Smallwood and his government. But, still and all, the name of Badger was mentioned in every conversation. I think that it’s going to end up being a black mark on us all.” She pulled her chair closer to the table and leaned forward. “Now then, Rod, if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear what on earth happened between you and our son-in-law. Richard was beside himself with remorse because he claimed that he’d accidentally hit you. Is that true?”

  Well, yes. Blood of a bitch of a townie. But I never said it out loud. Instead I told her what happened after I had put her on the train.

  I told her how the A.N.D. Company locked up their premises and the personnel left. How I was walking home and saw all the action on the road leading up to the intersection by the Pentecostal Church. I stood on the sidelines, I said, like everyone else, and watched the police force form a line, and I told her how Richard flashed through my mind. I told her of the women crowded on the snowbanks, and of young children, some of them no more than six or seven years old, running about over fences, along by the police, and mixing with loggers amassed at the intersection. As I recounted it to her, I realized that it was a hard scene to imagine if one hadn’t been there.

  Ruth said nothing as I went on to describe the formidable police unit marching up the road. When I reached the part of police among strikers, and strikers among police, she held up her hand to stop me.

  “What caused that to happen? Didn’t you say it looked non-threatening enough for kids to be playing around?”

  “Yes, my dear, it seemed that way at first. I don’t know what actually caused the clash. I was too far down the road to see and there was a big crowd of onlookers.”

  I hesitated then, unsure how to describe my meeting with Richard. “I look like a logger, Ruth, you know I do. I wear much the same clothes. This policeman mistook me for a striker and wouldn’t listen when I tried to explain. We roughed each other up a bit and he called his friend to help him get me aboard the van.” Christ, this was hard to tell. It brought the sweat out on me. “The other cop was Richard.”

  Well, I wasn’t getting any pity from Ruth. I could see that. She’s just sitting there, watching me sweat. It never occurred to me until much later that maybe she was too shocked to speak. Once again, I was too immersed in my own self.

  “Goddammit, Ruth. No one told me he was out here. Someone could’ve got word to me somehow. Richard himself should have got in contact with me. What am I, fuckin’ no one? Not worth being apprised of family happenings?”

  I jumped up from the table. Now I was angry again. I thought I had it under control, but it was there, rising above the surface.

  “Rod. Sit down. Tell me about the rest of it. Where’d Richard go from there? Did he bring you home?”

  “No, shag it, Ruth. I’ve said enough. You haven’t told me one word of what that snot-nosed townie coward told you. Come on. Out with it.”

  “There’s no ‘out with it’ to tell, Rod. Audrey and I never even knew where Richard had gone. His father wasn’t allowed to say. It never entered our minds that he was gone to Badger.”

  She stood up and grabbed my plate and cup. “Richard came home on Thursday morning,” she continued. “He told us of how you were mistaken for a logger. Yes, he admitted he hit you, by accident. But he didn’t share any details with me except to say that he was sorrier than words could ever say and would I ask you to try to forgive him. Whether he told his father more I cannot say. I had no further discussion with him. We were, all of us, confused and upset. It was too much for me, so I went into my room and closed the door. The train was going west at two o’clock that same afternoon and, after saying goodbye to Audrey and the children, I took a taxi to the railway station and boarded it. I had no further conversation with Richard.”

  Well! He never told her about leaving me, about going to the priest. Nothing. Hmmph.

  God only knows where she and I would’ve gone with our conversation after that. Perhaps God intervened, because the back door opened. It was Bill Hatcher. He’d come over every day to check on me.

  “Rod, how are you today, b’y?” He spied the wife standing by the table with the dishes in her hands. “Ruth! I didn’t know you were back. You must’ve come in last night. Rod, you never said.” He looked from me to Ruth. “Have I butted in the middle of something?”

  “No, no, Bill. That’s okay,” I said. To tell the truth, I was kind of glad he had butted in.

  “There are a lot of our men down to the A.N.D. Company office, Rod. They want to go back to work. You knows that Joey said they have to join his union first?”

  “Yeah, I heard that. Perhaps you and me should go down and see what’s goin’ on with them.” Yes, I thought, anything to get away from Ruth right now.

  So we mucked off down the road to the office. Let Ruth stew all afternoon. I was too crooked to care.

  There were twenty-five of my crew waiting to see me. They all said they were joining Joey’s union. But none of them had any smiles on their faces as they said it. They would sign anything, do anything to have their old jobs back. I pitied them, I did. All they had fought for . . . gone down the drain. So I signed them all up and then I went over to Alf’s telegraph office and wired for the rest.

  The A.N.D. Company had sent men up to my camp last month, to clean up. Most everything had to be hauled out and burned. Before then, the Company manager had called me into his office after the men trashed the camp and after Joey had made his surprise speech on the radio, condemning the IWA. This manager wasn’t as gimlet-eyed as old Hughie Cole was, but he was no pussycat either. I suppose the managers had to be tough. They had bosses too, higher up.

  “Well, Rod, there’s a fine mess up in your camp. A few of us went up and looked at it the other day. Do you have plans to go back there?”

  “I’ll go back there, sir, if you guys will clean it up.”

  “Why us, pray tell me?” He had very high thoughts of himself as he stood there by the window in his gleaming oxblood leather boots, one foot cocked on the radiator, smoking his cigarette in a holder. I bet the foolish arsehole practiced that pose in front of his mirror at home.

  And I was no pussycat either. No siree. So I kept my face carefully bland as I answered. “If I may say so, sir, this was your strike; it was your scab labour. You can find no fault of mine in any of this.”

  He drew deep on his cigarette holder, sucking the smoke into his lungs. “Yes, I suppose we agree with you on that. Anyway, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to make an example of your camp. To show that we keep our camps in good condition, we’ll do it up a bit. When she’s ready to go, we’ll get someone from the Grand Falls Advertiser to come up and take some pictures. That’s the idea that the Company has. What do you think?”

  “Yes b’y, if it’s no expense to me. When are you going to start?”

  “Right away. The IWA might call them scabs, but we have a hundred men up in the woods right now with not much to do. They’ll start cleaning it out tomorrow.”

  So the Company had the camp cleaned out, made a mountain of the stuff and set fire to it. Then they put Tentest over the log walls, with some insulation stuffed between. We got an oil stove in the bunkhouse, new mattresses and cots. The cookhouse got a new stove as well. They installed a generator that gave us electricity and a hot water boiler so the men could wash in warm water. It wasn’t much, but it was a long way from the old camp, I can tell you that. Then they had someone from the Advertiser snap a few pictures.

  When I signed up my twenty-five men, I told them to go on up in the camp and make themselves at home. Bill Hatcher would oversee things for me. I had to get back to Ruth and make peace with her.

  Well sir, she had some supper cooked for me. Chicken and gravy, salt meat, cabbage, pease puddin’ . . . all the vegetables. She’d even made a figgy duff.

  When I went in the door, I didn’t know if it was best t
o speak or not. So I went and washed up. When I came out to sit down, she came over and put her arms around me. I put my arms around her too, glad to have harmony restored to my house.

  We had a little cuddle for a few minutes. She murmured, “Oh, Rod. We can’t be mad with each other. We have to stick together.”

  Well, it was time for me to climb down off my high horse. Twenty-five years of marriage to Ruth was too important to throw away.

  “Yes, my dear. I’m sorry I bawled at you this morning. I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. Maid, we’re going to have to go in to St. John’s and work things out.”

  Ruth kissed me again. “I was hoping you’d say that, my dear. Come on and have your supper before it gets cold.”

  The last two weeks of March brought about a change in the residents of the town.

  The three churches had prayer services as the young constable lay in Grand Falls Hospital and, then, on March 12, when he passed away, there were more prayers. I thought to myself that the Badger people were carrying the burden of guilt for what had happened, although surely everyone knew they were in no way responsible.

  I watched on my little black and white television as the Smallwood Government, which was responsible, treated his death like a circus as they paraded the coffin across the province by train, stopping in each community. Then, when they reached St. John’s, the procession went through the streets. It seemed to me as though the government was trying to hide its guilt behind an ostentatious display of false grief.

  I wrote to Jonathan and mailed it. I also posted one to the Pentecostal Assembly office, asking to be relieved of my post for a period of time. I cited that I didn’t feel able to perform my job at the moment because of what I had witnessed. I told them I knew it would take time to bring in a replacement and I was willing to wait it out until the new pastor arrived.

  March 13, 1959

  Jonathan, my friend

  I received your letter three days ago, on what I have to say was the most awful, traumatic day of my life.

  Oh Jonathan, I witnessed a riot and a killing! I know you can hardly believe what you are reading, and I can hardly credit that I am telling it.

  Since I last wrote you, this community has become embroiled in a loggers’ strike, officially called on December 31, 1958. It isn’t just Badger, but almost the whole province. Newfoundlanders can be passionate people.

  Our provincial government actually intervened, and decertified the union. Over a short period of recent days, loggers amassed here, because of Badger’s geographic location, which is the centre of the A.N.D. Company woods operations. Police were imported into the town as well. We are so small that we do not have a local detachment in Badger. Outside God’s and my church, roads converge. It was here that the loggers made their last stand.

  I watched from my church window as police and loggers came together. My mind reeled in shock. I cried, I tore my hair. It was dreadful!

  Then, even through the windowpane, I heard a crack that I’ll never forget. A police officer was struck in the skull and went down. As I watched in horror, the blood seeped from his head onto the snow.

  I am sure that God put wings to my feet at that moment as I fled to my house, grabbed towels and ran around the corner of the church to the scene. I knew my life had been leading up to that moment. Jesus had been preparing me since I was born. I was put there to offer aid to an injured man.

  I have to believe that God has a bigger plan for all this. I am praying and hope to receive answers – for the community and for myself.

  I think I might apply for a sabbatical. I need to go away and meditate. Right now I feel that I cannot stay here. The spot out by the church where it happened seems to still hold the horror. At first the police said that I would have to testify in court. They tried to get me to name the striker who struck the policeman. I said that I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I was, perhaps I wasn’t. Anyway, it was a moot point in the end. I couldn’t give evidence because I had viewed the incident through a windowpane. You know I was relieved.

  One more thing. After these happenings, subsequent events saw me hiding fugitive strikers in my attic as the police tore apart the town, searching. I am a disgrace to my profession. I cannot write any more.

  Please forgive me for pouring out my grief to you. I have no one here that I can confide in.

  Yours, always.

  Damian

  My friendship with Virtue had remained the same, as I took no steps to take it further. I wondered if I should do that and ask her to be my wife after my leave was over. I was unable to contemplate any kind of future. I longed to hear from Jonathan.

  By April, the IWA Strike and the Badger Riot was old news and had disappeared entirely from the newspapers. I continued with my duties for the church, but my heart wasn’t into it. My prayers felt hollow and useless. I felt as though I had aged ten years.

  Constable Moss died. Now it was murder.

  My God, Madeline and I, and my brothers, David and Thomas, are only kids, and all of us had seen a murder! We’ve been whispering among ourselves. A man from over Bonne Bay way was arrested. We’re well aware that we must keep quiet to outsiders. We’re scared. The town’s turned inward on itself. People are careful of what they say. The reporter from the Toronto Star stayed around for awhile, but no one would tell him anything. He was at the scene of the riot. Perhaps he saw for himself. Perhaps not.

  I’ve been feeling sick ever since the riot. My parents said it was the trauma of the event. Dad told me that I could stay home from school, but I had to go. I might have missed something if I stayed home.

  One week later, I awoke one morning with a sticky, itchy feeling between my legs. I threw back the covers and saw the sheet stained with blood. Instantly my mind had a flashback to the last blood I had seen, around the policeman’s head. I screamed as loud as I could. “Mom!” She came running up the stairs. I started to cry. “Mom, I think I’m starting to menstruate.”

  Some time later, when life was calmer, Mom and I had a talk about womanhood, periods and stuff. It was hard for us to get time alone in our house with my needy brothers underfoot all the time, but we managed it one day when she was doing her ironing and the baby was asleep. My mother had been preparing me since I was twelve, so I knew most things. However, Mom’s thoughts on why it had happened at this particular time summed it up for me.

  Looking at me with her steady grey eyes, she said, “When you think of this, years from now, you’ll realize that the shock of what you saw at the Badger Riot, the killing of a policeman, the blood on the snow, was what hastened you on your way to womanhood.”

  She finished ironing the last shirt and started to put away her flatiron. “Amanda, my child, you’ll never forget this. None of us ever will.”

  Epilogue

  I sat in the confessional box. The church was empty, but my parishioners knew I was there, as I was every Saturday evening, should they need to talk to their priest.

  The conflict was over. Most of the loggers had joined up with Joey Smallwood’s union, the Newfoundland Brotherhood of Wood Workers, and had gone back into the woods camps for the haul-off. Others had escaped back to their outport homes. Badger looked wartorn. There was a sense of unease in the air. The residents were still in shock. People talked to each other in low tones.

  The door on the other side of the partition squeaked open. I heard someone kneel down. The box was dark. I slid open the grill between the penitent and myself.

  “Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” the voice rasped in the darkness. I knew most of my parishioners’ voices, but not this one. Someone in disguise, or a stranger?

  “What is your sin, my child?” I asked.

  “Father, I . . . I . . . killed that police feller. I bashed his head in with me stick. I hit him three or four times, Father. It wudn’t no accident. I did it on purpose. They should have left us alone. We was only loggers tryin’ to make a decent living.” The gruff voice broke, seeming to sob.

&n
bsp; Before I could gather myself to speak, I heard the confessional door bang open. Running footsteps echoed down through the church, and the person was gone.

  Afterword

  When the A.N.D. Company and the IWA had not worked out a collective agreement in 1958, the IWA requested that the Smallwood Government convene a conciliation board. The board recommended a reduction in work hours, improved camp conditions, and a wage increase of $1.22 per hour.

  These recommendations were accepted by the IWA but turned down by the A.N.D. Company. In response, loggers took to the picket lines.

  Smallwood decertified the IWA and formed a government union to represent the loggers.

  Two days after the Badger Riot, the A.N.D. Company signed an agreement with Smallwood’s Newfoundland Brotherhood of Wood Workers – giving the loggers improved living conditions and a wage of $1.22 per hour.

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of the following people.

  My dear mother, Lucy Day, who at the age of eighty-seven delved into her wonderful memory, and made two trips to Badger with me opening doors into her generation – a generation who were young adults during the IWA conflict. Her love and her faith in me was a well of strength that I drew upon.

  My brother H. Scott Day, a writer himself, who led me through his boyhood in Badger and explained technical things like tractors and undercarriages of cars. Scott, your patience with me was phenomenal.

  My family: Carol and Bridget, my daughters, and Brian, my son, and their three spouses, who were rooting for me all the way. My grandchildren Katlynn Ballam, Brianna Ricketts, and Andrew Ballam, who knew their “Mugga” would someday write a book.

  My daughter Bridget Ricketts started me on my writing journey with a gift certificate for my birthday to Gordon Rodgers’s writing class at Memorial University. Bridget prodded me along with suggestions, profiles, timelines, and edits. Finally I was able to wing it on my own and she let me fly.