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Some Dead Genius Kleinfeld, Lenny Year: 2012 Language: english File: AZW3 , 462 KB Your tags: 0 / 0

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Some Danger Involved Touchstone Thomas, Will Year: 2004 Language: english File: EPUB, 311 KB Your tags: 0 / 0

“If we are to achieve results never before accomplished,

we must employ methods never before attempted.”

— Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626)





Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication



Peckford, A. Brian

Some day the sun will shine and have not will be no more / Brian Peckford.



Includes bibliographical references and index.



Electronic monograph.

Issued also in print format.

ISBN 978-1-77117-025-3 (EPUB).--ISBN 978-1-77117-026-0 (Kindle).--

ISBN 978-1-77117-027-7 (PDF)



1. Peckford, A. Brian. 2. Premiers (Canada)--Newfoundland and Labrador--Biography. 3. Newfoundland and Labrador--Politics and government--1972-1989. 4. Newfoundland and Labrador--History--1949-. 5. Federal-provincial relations--Canada. 6. Canada--History--20th century. I. Title.



FC2176.1.P43A3 2012 971.8’04092 C2012-905010-5



© 2012 by Brian Peckford



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.





Cover Design: Adam Freake Edited by Erika Steeves





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TELEPHONE: (709) 739-4477 FAx: (709) 739-4420 TOLL-FREE: 1-866-739-4420

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We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities; the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $24.3 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada; the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.





I dedicate this book to all those Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who remained stea; dfast against difficult odds so that we were able to achieve our goal.





AUTHOR’S NOTE




The title is taken from a line in a speech I gave, which of course is quoted in the book. The actual wording was, “One day the sun will shine and have not will be no more.” Although this book is based on my life, a fifty-year-old memory, while good, may tend to spice a little for effect.





P R E FA C E




FOR MANY YEARS NOW I have been planning to write this book. The stories, events, and people have been rolling over in my mind on almost a daily basis.

When I began writing about my experiences as a social worker in rural parts of the province, I discovered the most unusual thing. It happened one afternoon when I had begun the exercise. I was writing away in what I thought was a third-person account of these experiences. I stopped for a moment, and when I looked at what I had written, I was shocked. I had been writing in the first-person, complete with dialogue, without my knowing it. And there were pages and pages of it. I could not believe that I had just written that material!

I am sure there are those who would say that these short stories are fodder for another book. For me, they must be in this book since it is only through such stories that I think one has the opportunity to realize why I was so passionate about our place. I was lucky to experience both the older way of the early fifties as a boy and then to see it repeated later in northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador as a university student before the roads, electricity, and jukeboxes came to be, and then to experience the transition as it began, and simultaneously to have been a part of the “new” in Lewisporte and St. John’s.

These experiences as a student have had a profound effect upon me. I remember my first political adventure, not counting high school and university. I decided to run for the presidency of the Green Bay Liberal Association at the last minute, and against the person who was being supported by Premier Smallwood, who was also in attendance at the meeting. In this, my first political speech (discounting the school and university politics), I remember using the experiences of my student days to describe my understanding of the province and hence why I was qualified to run for the office. Of course, it also signalled that from the start I was anything but an insider. And during my political career I always seemed most at home when I was in rural parts: yes, asking for a vote, but being impacted by what I saw and heard, especially the resilience and tolerance of the people. These experiences seem photographed in my mind and are an integral part of my sensibility.

It is really not the story of one person, but through one person the lives of many who thought like me and fervently desired to see a more prosperous place and our history respected.

The process by which we were able to help to effect this change was anything but smooth. Of course, there were moments of joy, but most were a struggle and often it looked impossible.

I am sure there are those who would argue that I overemphasize Newfoundland’s struggles. Well, my life seems to replicate that view, both my own early experiences and those in public life. I make no apologies.

Better times have arrived, and let us hope that we have learned from distant and recent history. I still hold out the hope that, now, through these better times, we can address our fishery, achieve more influence, and see a revitalized rural Newfoundland.





CHAPTER 1: BEGINNINGS




“Being grown up is not half as much fun as growing up.”

— Anonymous





BESSIE R LEFT BAY Bulls with a cargo of salt for Port aux Basques and intended to load a cargo of fish at the latter port. It arrived in Fermeuse on the Southern Shore on Sunday, February 17, 1918, and its master, Sandy Thistle, fully expected to harbour at Trepassey that night. However, once out and en route, the fickle forces of nature took command.

Thistle had an experienced crew; most like himself belonged to Hickman’s Harbour on Random Island: Mate Joseph T. Blundon (or Blundel) and Levi Benson. Cook John Anderson lived in British Harbour, but he later moved to Britannia on Random Island. W. J. Peddle hailed from Little Heart’s Ease and Lewis Rice from Bay Bulls. Joseph Peckford, a well-known citizen of St. John’s, was supercargo on the schooner. As supercargo he would have managed the business transactions of the Bessie R, whose main work seems to have been trading fish and supplies along the coast.

The skills of Thistle’s crew were soon to be tried, for the schooner ran headlong into a snowstorm with southeast winds. Within hours this swung around to a gale from the northwest—the worst winds for sail-driven vessels off southeastern Newfoundland. For twenty-four hours Bessie R was pushed to sea, and during the gale the jumbo boom broke off. The log—towed on its line behind the ship, which would give some indication of speed and distance—broke and Captain Thistle had no idea how far his schooner had drifted off.

Slowly he and his crew worked the vessel back to within sight of land, perhaps somewhere on the east side of St. Mary’s Bay. Thistle figured this was the general area, but Bessie R was near a rock called by local folks The Bull. Thistle didn’t recognize it at the time, but he realized he needed to keep his schooner out to sea. Despite the best intentions of his crew, contrary winds pushed Bessie R near Holyrood Arm and there was no way to swing the schooner around to get out. The vessel made its last-ditch standoff the town of Point LaHayse, or as it is known today, Point La Haye.

Meanwhile, the residents of Point La Haye had gathered on a headland and were watching the valiant efforts of the six seamen. When Bessie R sailed in, they ran to the beach to help if they could. At first it seemed as if it would ground and break up offshore. There seemed to be no recourse but disaster and death. One account of the wreck says, “The people on the shore never thought that any of the crew would reach the shore alive, and they gathered on the beach praying for their safety.”

But Captain Thistle drove Bessie R right up on the beach and the crew were able to jump off from the bowsprit to the shore, much to the amazement of Point La Haye residents. Joseph Peckford sustained the only injury. During the two or three days of fighting the storm, Peckford had taken his turn at the wheel and bent over to examine the compass. The main boom swung, hitting him in the middle of the back, and his chest struck the wheel with considerable force. One of the wheel spokes injured his chest.

Despite their close call and two or three days of exciting and anxious hardships, the crew, all but businessman Peckford, went about their life work on the sea. They found employment at Harbour Grace and went there to join the schooner Henry L. Montague for another stint on the ocean.

This was not the last word on the wreck of Bessie R. Apparently one man was so impressed with the self-rescue of the hardy seamen, he wrote an unsigned letter to the St. John’s newspaper Evening Advocate dated March 11, 1918. The heading says, “Nothing Can Daunt Our Brave Seamen.”

Dear Sir:



Please allow me space to say a few words about the loss of Bessie R at Point La Haye, St. Mary’s Bay, in one of the heaviest seas of thirty years and in the height of a winter storm. She ran ashore and everything was handled so well that every man was landed in twenty-five minutes in a way that no one but Newfoundland fishermen could do.

My pen cannot tell you what a hero Mr. Joseph Peckford is. He nobly stayed to the wheel until the vessel grounded on the beach and the first place he was up to was the middle of the storm trysail which was set. If there are any medals to be given, those men deserve them. There are brave men in all ranks, but I think seamen beat them all.

Another matter I would like to mention is that I think outport men might have a little more rum than men in the city. When you drag a man out of the surf the bottle seems mighty small nowadays. I hope we will be able to get some more.



Yours very truly,

“A Good Hand to Throw a Line”



Point La Haye, St. Mary’s



In the June 22 edition of the Trade Review, as quoted by Patrick O’Flaherty in his book The Lost Country: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland, the following article appeared:

One other development in the 1907 fishery should be noted. In June a fishing craft of “ordinary open boat style” about twenty feet keel “propelled by a 4 1/2 horse power one cylinder gas engine was in use in St. John’s. The owner of this “motor boat” was the fisherman, Joseph Peckford. The engine for those who could afford one—Peckford’s cost $350—was a major development.



In volume four of The Book of Newfoundland, one finds the following concerning Joseph Peckford:

Peckford fished from the Battery and Bay Bulls for most of his life and spent 49 years spring sealing. He was a survivor of the Greenland disaster and was once master watch of the sealing steamer Florizel. He is said to have been the first Newfoundlander to use a gas-powered engine in the shore fishery. The Knox engine had originally been used in oil exploration at Parson’s Pond and was purchased by Peckford in 1905. Crowds of people gathered around the St. John’s waterfront to watch the motorboat on its trial run. (p. 244)



This was my grandfather Peckford, who came to St. John’s from Fogo Island after jumping a sealing ship in St. John’s in the 1890s. In St. John’s he met Clara Brett, also from Fogo Island, and married. Joe fished out of St. John’s harbour for fifty years and reportedly went to the seal fishery for forty-nine years, and my grandmother kept a small store. The Peckford home that Joe built still stands; some of his wharf and rooms were at the bottom of Temperance Street, now all filled in as part of harbour enlargement and on which the Terry Fox Memorial now stands.

In 2009 I visited Fogo Island to further investigate the birthplaces of these two grandparents: Locke’s Cove and Lion’s Den. Walking a wonderful new walking trail on a glorious August day, I visited Lion’s Den and Locke’s Cove. It was only then that I realized that Joe and Clara had likely known one another before their St. John’s days, as the distance between both places was not great. Who knows? They might have been earlier lovers and Joe’s jumping ship was to find his lost love. Curiously, no headstone remains of the Peckfords on Fogo Island. After some crawling around in one of three cemeteries, I found a fallen headstone of my great-grandfather Jonathan Brett, Clara’s father, who it is reported was a shipbuilder.

My maternal grandparents were Hiram Young and Queen Victoria Ross. Great-grandfather Young moved from Greenspond, his birthplace, when my grandfather was a young boy. Queen Victoria was born on the Ross farm, now Pleasantville. The Rosses were originally from Margaree Valley, Cape Breton Island. My grandmother, who kept a diary, recorded the following:

I was born on March 23, 1885, in St. John’s, Newfoundland. As far as I know I was born in an old farm house called Grove Farm, Quidi Vidi Road, North Side. At that time I had seven sisters, six of whom were born in Margaree, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The Ross name is a well-known name in the Margaree area seeing five different families of Rosses immigrating there from Scotland in the 1700s, each claiming they were unrelated to the other.



Great-grandfather Ross owned 100 acres of what is now Pleasantville, formerly Fort Pepperell, and farmed there, supplying St. John’s with vegetables, milk, and cream, including the General Hospital and the Governor’s House. He operated a store on Water Street at one time, imported cattle from the Maritimes, and raised thoroughbred horses. Grandmother Ross actually taught weavery at Mount Cashel orphanage at one time. An enterprising lot!

Of course this enterprise came naturally, if one studies this Ross family. My great-great-great-grandfather David Ross was brother to James Ross, the first of his clan to settle in Margaree and third husband to Henriette LaJeune. She fought with the French (coming from France herself) at Louisbourg when it fell to the English. She had a medical background and became famous in Cape Breton for nursing, administering the smallpox vaccine that she had brought from France. She became affectionately known to all as Granny Ross and lived to the age of 117. At St. Patrick’s Church in northeast Margaree, there is a cedar sign which reads:

Welcome to St. Patrick’s Church

Built in 1871 on land granted

To James Ross, English Pioneer

For fighting at Louisbourgh in 1758.

Buried in this graveyard is his wife

‘The Little Woman’

Who fought for the French.



A memorial (although there is now some dispute over the veracity of her age) on the south side of the church reads:

In Memory of

The Little Woman

Henriette LeJeune

Wife of

James L. Ross, pioneer

The first white woman to settle

In North East Margaree

Born in France 1743

Died in Margaree in 1860



Fought with the French in the

Second Siege of Louisbourgh 1758

Administered smallpox vaccine

Brought with her from France

To the settlers of this valley

Benefactress of both white

And Indian.



Erected by her Great Grandson

Thomas E. Ross



I WAS BORN IN Whitbourne, a small railway town just sixty miles from St. John’s, one of a handful of communities in Newfoundland that was not next to the ocean. Although both my parents were St. John’s people, my father’s position with the Newfoundland Ranger Force necessitated that he be stationed at the force’s training facility in Whitbourne. I remember the train passing through the town and how we kids would play close to the moving train, almost daring it to touch us. I remember taking it to St. John’s with my mother, and riding the streetcar in bustling St. John’s. Years later as a university student I would take the train home for Christmas to Lewisporte, and even later I was to take the train in an unsuccessful attempt to save it.

My first three years of school were in Whitbourne, the Anglican School; the Catholic one was just across the road, just close enough so that we could throw snowballs at one another in winter. You did not have to attend church to know that there were major separations in the community. You knew through school. And it was weird since it was the same God, same Jesus, and same book. But little was said other than you were United, Salvation Army, or Anglican, or that real strange one, Catholic. And that is the way it was. But fate was soon to bring me closer to that strange denomination, only we called them religions then.

In December, 1951, when I was the age of nine, the family moved to Marystown, my father having changed from being a law enforcement officer and small business owner to a social worker. After his social worker training he was posted to Marystown, a small, undeveloped community over 200 miles from St. John’s on the Burin Peninsula. It was more isolated than Whitbourne and without electricity; farther along the peninsula were the more developed towns of Burin, Grand Bank, and Fortune, all economically active with fish plants serviced by offshore trawlers.

It’s a bit of family lore as to how the family arrived in Marystown. Father had gone to Marystown a few weeks earlier in December to finalize arrangements for a house and to meet with the outgoing social worker and other such matters. Mother and her brood of five were to follow later. There was a ninety-nine-mile drive from the Goobies railway station to Marystown, and we were to travel there by train from St. John’s, a further 100 miles. Father would pick us up there in a rented vehicle and drive all the family to our new community, to our new home. Ah! The best-laid plans . . .

To Goobies we arrived—in a snowstorm—and Father was somewhere on the ninety-nine-mile gravel highway, stuck in snow. So here we were—no doubt a forlorn-looking group. Someone at the railway station who knew of a boarding house nearby took pity on us and we were brought there to reside overnight. The next day we learned that it would be impossible for Father to meet us—the road was blocked. In those days, without the mechanical machinery of today, it would be blocked for quite some time. Father would go back to Marystown. A new plan had to be devised. Back to St. John’s we were to go, and to take a train as soon as we could (a half-day journey) to the port of Argentia, where we could catch a coastal passenger freight boat, which plied Placentia Bay communities including Marystown.

By the time this was arranged and executed, Christmas was upon us—well, just about—and we took the coastal boat, Bar Haven, at Argentia in a hell of a snowstorm on Christmas Eve morning and, like everyone else on board, the whole family was sick as dogs. I almost get sick today thinking of that experience, more than fifty years later. I don’t know if we thought we would ever make it or not. We did not know enough to be afraid—that was left to Mother as she tried to care for five vomiting youngsters in a cramped cabin in the bowels of a rolling ship. It was six or seven o’clock in the evening when we were told that the rolling would subside a bit since we were coming into Marystown Harbour. Once the Bar Haven tied to the wharf, this distraught family clambered to the deck, and with snow and wind still bellowing all around, we stumbled off the gangplank, seeing through the blur, at long last, our Father! We were to walk with him up over a hill and pasture in two or three feet of snow to our new house. We were all carrying something and struggling as we trekked, making a path as we went. Finally, we arrived and burst into the house. What a treat! It was all ablaze with a Christmas tree and decorations that Father had prepared!

We were one of the few Protestant families in Marystown and the only non-Catholic children attending the convent school operated by the Sisters of Mercy. I remember one incident at lunchtime when I was engaged in a snowball fight with one of my classmates. After a bull’s-eye throw by me I heard the recipient cry out, “You black Protestant!” One of the kids told the Sisters and there was heavy punishment dispensed to the foul-mouthed student. In five years this was the only incident of this kind that I remember.

There were many prayers and such at school and our parents said that we should just participate—the Sisters had made arrangements for us to leave the classroom during such religious events. However, obeying our parents, we stayed and it wasn’t long before we had memorized all the prayers and did the “Stations of the Cross” at the church nearby. We enjoyed it all, and hence what potentially could have been difficult years for my brothers, sister, and I turned out to be a very positive experience. And I attribute a lot of my personal good habits to the Sisters of Mercy, who were relentless but fair in dispensing “education” to us all. It was not all book work: the music and concerts displayed the Sisters’ love of culture and brought to these activities a discipline and joy that has never left me. There were no school buses or central heating or cafeterias—each student took turns bringing “splits” to start the fire in the pot-bellied stove—yet there was something special; everyone had to help out to make it all work. This produced a unity and spirit that was as “hard as a rock.” These were formative years, and I learned a lot about punctuality, discipline, and getting by with whatever one had at the time. There was no whining or excuses, at home or in school.

Many years later, one of my ministers would have occasion during an election to solicit support from a convent in St. John’s that hitherto was somewhat unfriendly to the Conservatives. He was to discover that there were a number of Sisters who had been part of the Marystown convent during our family’s years in Marystown, and who were eager to lend their support. I remember a final rally in St. John’s, during my first election as premier in 1979, and in referencing the Sisters’ role in my education I was quickly informed that there were some in the audience.

My father’s work took him to visit many communities in Placentia Bay, many of them islands. I was interested in going with my father on these jaunts, and I well remember a particular trip by a small boat owned by a gentleman in Baine Harbour.

Leaving Baine Harbour one morning, we were quickly surrounded by fog, and with only a compass to go by, it was for me a harrowing experience, and judging by the expressions on the faces of my father and our operator, it was not fun for them either. But our skipper knew the bay well. Our destination was Oderin Island. So the skipper simply said, “Okay, we have to steam so many minutes in a certain direction using the compass, then so many minutes in a slightly different direction using the compass.” And so this was done. After some anxious moments—presto, we see through the dispersing fog land on both sides of us—we were smack dab in the centre of Oderin Island harbour! There are some on the water who say they can smell the land in the fog. I was to remember this incident many years later when I travelled Green Bay, White Bay, and the Labrador Coast in small boat. Anyway, here we were in Oderin harbour.

Father had to visit some clients—widows and disabled people who qualified for government assistance. After a quick lunch that day, Father had to travel to the other side of the island, walking along a small pathway. Noticing my boredom, he invited me along. Along the way, Father informed me that there were but a few families on the other side and that he had only one visit to make. However, in mentioning this, he went on to describe to me a mysterious tale that was told on the island. He said that we would soon arrive at a small gully or pond near the beach on the back side of the island, not far from the ocean. It was said that the famous pirate Peter Easton had frequented these parts, and being chased by his enemies he had actually buried a treasure at the bottom of the pond. The tale relates that the pirate drained the pond, being of higher elevation than the beach, placed the treasure in the bottom of the waterless pit, cut a number of trees, and after removing branches placed the “longers” across the bottom of the pond, and then the natural spring of the pond filled it up. A real place of safekeeping!

Father said that we should check this tale out by taking off our boots and socks and walking out in the water of the pond to see if we could feel something like a floor. This we did. It was eerie—we could feel that there was something like a floor! A mystery to this day!

Socks and boots back on, we proceeded to a large two-storey house on the far side of the beach to Father’s lone client here. On approaching the house, I noticed that a curtain in an upstairs window parted slightly. Upon entering, we were warmly greeted by a middle-aged woman, and Father proceeded to complete some necessary forms. In the course of the conversation the woman mentioned that her young daughter had become frightened, since visitors were few, and we being total strangers, she ran to an upstairs room to hide.

In the 1980s I was relating my early experiences on a local CBC radio show, and one of the stories I described was this one about Oderin Island, the treasure, the walk in the pond, and the visit to the house of the lady and her daughter. In just minutes, a lady called the radio station to inform us that she was that little girl who had run upstairs and nervously parted the curtain to glimpse the approaching strangers.

So my time in Marystown from age nine to age fourteen was a pleasant one, filled with childhood memories: of homework by Aladdin lamp, snow sledding in the winter, bike riding, and swimming in local ponds in the summer, and our share of beachcombing, digging for “cocks and hens,” and smoking cigarettes made from stolen tea, and cigarette papers purchased from older friends. A few crabapple trees were also the victims of wayward childhood ways and saw on one occasion some serious reprimand by my parents.

I think I travelled to St. John’s once during that time. I was told that I had large tonsils and that they were to be removed. Really, it was a sinus problem, I was to discover years later. But the medical fad then was that if a child suffered from a cold and cough, it had to be those darn tonsils and adenoids. So at a convenient time when a friend of the family was travelling by car to St. John’s, I travelled with my mother to the big city. Well that was some ride. I never thought that we would get there. What I remember most about that visit is not the city, large and different as it was, or the time at the hospital, frightening and unusual as it was, but rather seeing TV for the first time. I think I was twelve. I sat in my grandmother’s room too dumbfounded to speak— there was a game show and then some ads about buying some type of food. I would not see TV again for another two years.

It was in Marystown where I gained an appreciation for baseball. Yes, baseball. There was no baseball in Marystown, of course, but across Placentia Bay from Marystown was the American Naval Base at Argentia. It was easy to pick up the Armed Forces radio on our battery-operated radio (a much-used instrument in our family), and in the evenings of spring, summer, and fall there were many baseball games broadcast. It was from the radio I learned the names and the rules of baseball, and my favourite player was Willie Mays. A young boy’s imagination fuelled by the noise of the game and the descriptive play-by play-of the announcers brought me into the wonderful world of baseball.

In 1954 my father had to take a trip to visit his counterpart in Grand Bank, and of course I tagged along for the ride. After entering the house I was immediately struck by the sight of a small magazine on baseball (it was The Baseball Digest, still publishing today) lying on a chair in the kitchen. My focus was so fixed on this magazine that my father’s friend took notice and suggested that I pick it up and read it while my father and he conducted their business in an adjoining room. Excited beyond words, I was eager to see the two adults depart to the other room so that I could hold this magazine. On the cover was my baseball hero, Willie Mays. I had never seen his picture before, and now here he was featured on the front page of this important magazine. I devoured the article and was still busily engrossed when the adults returned. Feeling a little embarrassed, I put the magazine down and got up to leave. And then my father’s friend uttered the words, “You really seem to like that magazine. You can have it!” Months after, I was still rereading the articles and studying the statistics. And now the radio broadcasts were even better.

There was one really magical part of our family lives. Each birthday we would receive a card and money from our Aunt Bessie in faraway Boston. There was a time before Confederation in 1949 when Newfoundlanders gravitated to the “Boston States” for employment. My aunt was one of them. She travelled to Boston in her early twenties, enrolled in nursing courses, and graduated with an RN from Leonard Morse Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1926. She never forgot anyone in the family. She was affectionately known as Auntie Bett to all the people connected to my father’s side of the family. And at Christmas you could be as sure that snow would fall that a large parcel would arrive before Christmas (never late) from this great lady. And what a parcel it would be—from clothes for all of us, to books and other practical and needed things; we were, each season, aghast at the quantity and quality of what she would send. My brothers and I would have modern clothes to wear to school each new year right from America’s fashion houses. So we grew up with our own fairy godmother. In Whitbourne, on my seventh birthday, this shiny blue Buick pulled up to our door that afternoon, and on top of the car was an unusual thing. Once the car stopped, out stepped Auntie Bett; she fiddled with the thing on top with my father’s help, removed it from the car, and placed it on the ground: a birthday present—my first bike! Our house was full of magazines, compliments of you-know-who.

As I grew up I became fascinated with Auntie Bett: her stories of nursing terminally ill wealthy people in the Boston area, receiving postcards from her from other continents as she travelled with her employers around the world, to coming home each year to see her mother, this lady led an interesting and productive life. Her generosity was exceptional, and her commitment to family unlimited. When she was much younger, she had told her mother that if the day ever came when she, her mother, could not look after herself, she would come home and care for her. And she did. The last two years of my grandmother’s life saw Auntie Bett leaving Boston to care for her mother in St. John’s until her passing.

My aunt was always interested in seeing her nephews and nieces succeed. And if they showed they were willing to work and commit, she was always there to help. On entering university I was to receive from Auntie Bett annual complimentary tickets to all the happenings at the local Arts and Culture Centre. When I travelled to remote rural parts in the summertime as a temporary social worker, I was sure to receive a parcel of recent magazines and newspapers from Boston or St. John’s.

No one knew her politics. But one evening, after inviting me to her favourite St. John’s Chinese restaurant, she did confide to me that she was a financial contributor to the Republican Party and was therefore invited to many of their political dinners and events. I got up enough courage to ask her why she was a Republican.

Her answer was simple: “I believe in hard work,” she said. “Everyone must earn their keep, if they are able.”

My aunt was eighty-five when she died in St. John’s; and in death as in life, she ensured that all the immediate family received a generous part of her estate.

My father was transferred to Lewisporte in 1956, a far more “advanced” town in northeast Newfoundland. It was quite a change. Here were hotels and the shunting of trains and a bustle and activity not present in the more isolated Marystown. And now, instead of being in a largely Catholic town, we were in a predominantly Protestant town, with a large United Church of Canada congregation as well as a viable Salvation Army church, a small Anglican church, and a quickly growing Pentecostal group. There were shops and restaurants, more than one doctor (which had been the case in Marystown), and even a dentist. Lewisporte owed some of this activity to the fact that it was the terminus for a number of CN coastal boats. It was strategically located to serve the transportation and passenger needs of northeastern and northern Newfoundland and Labrador. A railway spur line of nine miles joined the town to the railway’s main line at Notre Dame Junction. So there was a large workforce at the dock, loading and unloading freight from railcars, and the processing of passengers. The people of the town were entrepreneurial and independent. I completed my high school education there. This was a much larger school, and it did not have the rigour and discipline that we experienced in Marystown. This was a shock at first. Of course, like most kids of my age, it did not take long to get used to it.

There was one shining exception to this, and that was our main grade eleven teacher. I say main in the sense of a homeroom teacher who also taught us a number of subjects. His name was Mr. Paddock (Brose); he later moved on to teach at Memorial University and become Dean of the Faculty of Education. We were a lucky forty-two students to have him as our teacher. For the first time (outside of Father’s admonitions) I was encouraged to think about things, not to accept things at face value, that reason was a very valuable commodity, and that dogma and entrenched positions often retarded advancement. This was all new to me but very exciting. I had been so involved in sports and friends and all the normal adolescent things that this was the first time I had been forced to stop and consider the larger world.

The culmination of this new thinking occurred one day when Mr. Paddock asked me to stay for a few minutes after school. After school! This was unusual, and I didn’t know what to expect. Sitting in the back of the room, I had become a bit of a distraction for the teacher, and while I was doing well in most of my subjects, I think Mr. Paddock felt I was unfocused and just a little too carefree as a high school senior. He approached my desk and abruptly asked, “Brian, what do you intend to do with your life?”

I stuttered something stupid in reply. And then it was over. Mr. Paddock turned and left the room. I struggled to my feet and left the room and school, pondering that simple but provocative question. I knew this was an attempt to shock me to my senses, and it worked. I had given little thought to my future, and it was time. Within several months, high school would be over, and what then?

I enjoyed my Lewisporte years and became heavily involved in sports, especially baseball and hockey. Now, we had few facilities at the school or in the town generally. Across from the school was an outdoor rink, and just “up the road” from the school was a level ground that was supposed to be the sports field. We made the best of it, and in my last year we had organized games on that rink and actually played hockey with other teams in nearby towns of Botwood and Gander. There were a couple of really cold winters when we actually skated and played hockey on the harbour. Our out-of-town games were a real treat since we would be playing indoors. In Botwood it was in an old World War II undersized building, with real ice but of course no snow clearing, while in Gander it was a regulation-sized artificial ice surface in an arena. We really had no coaches, but I recall on our out-of-town excursions our vice-principal acted as such, and I can remember him urging us in the car on our way to our game to “shoot when we got in over the blue line.” I don’t think we won any of those out-of-town games! Similarly, we had a few teams organized and played baseball on a makeshift diamond on the nearby field. I liked hockey, but I loved baseball. There seemed to be more strategy and planning, and I enjoyed how quickly explosive it could become.

And then there was my paper route. I delivered the weekly Grand Falls Advertiser every Saturday along the main street, from the United Church building almost to the end of Lewisporte West. I came to like this weekly ritual on my bike. It was the people once met who I remember most. There was an elderly Mr. Lacey who still kept his little grocery shop open, although few now frequented such an outdated place. Bigger stores had sprung up, and the little guy was soon to be no more. But it gave people like Mr. Lacey a reason to get up in the morning and a chance to chat, even to a boy like me. He was not well, and often when I would inquire about his health he would exclaim that he was “wonderful sick.” One got the pulse of this part of town, from Mr. Lacey, to young adults with a second-hand motorcycle under constant repair in the yard, to the elderly lady whose generous tip at Christmas was always exhilarating, to Vatcher’s auto mechanic shop, where there always seemed to be someone in the pit fixated on looking up at the underbelly of a decrepit Chevy, Ford, or Chrysler.

There was a touch of the political at this stage of my life. I remember an incident involving the then-Premier, Mr. Smallwood, who on a visit to Lewisporte sought out my father, then a social worker for the area. Apparently there had been some representation made by a local citizen who had questioned through the premier a decision Father had made concerning the citizen’s eligibility for assistance. The premier took the opportunity of the visit to see my father about it. From overhearing a conversation with my mother later, Father was obviously very upset by the public nature of the visit and the fact that he was bring pressured to provide assistance where the rules prevented it. Father told the premier that he would have to set up an appointment if he wished to pursue the matter. I also remember a political rally in the local theatre for a Conservative candidate in an upcoming federal election. The candidate was Ambrose Peddle, who went on to win the riding and later become the province’s ombudsman. And perhaps most importantly, I remember that at our high school a number of us got together and, in talks with the principal, set up the first student council for the school, of which I became the first president. It was also during this time that I began working during the summer holidays and at Christmastime. I remember working at a clothing store one Christmas.

But my most interesting memories are of travelling to St. John’s to work with the provincial government. My first summer was working as a filing clerk at the Department of Health and Welfare in a wooden building situated near the old Newfoundland Hotel. This was a great experience that gave me exposure to the capital city. I stayed with my grandparents on Carpasian Road overlooking St. Patrick’s ballpark where regular baseball games were played. Given my interest in baseball, this was a dream come true, and I spent many an evening and weekend down at the ballpark learning the finer points of the game as I tried to get near the players and coaches.

My grandfather would usually stay home and watch the games from his back garden, still using cricket terms to describe the game. I saw pictures of him in his youth as part of a cricket team in St. John’s. My grandparents Young were wonderful people. My grandmother was a Ross (originally from Margaree Valley, Cape Breton). These were the grandparents who owned a lot of land in what is now Pleasantville where, they operated a farm, supplied the hospitals with milk, and sold vegetables to customers door-to-door. My grandfather was originally from Greenspond, but his parents moved to St. John’s when he was a young lad. He worked for fifty years with the department store named the Royal Stores, rising to become the manager of the wallpaper department. He was a hard worker and had a great memory. I remember his many recitations of poetry, including “Horatius at the Gate” by Lord Macaulay.

Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the Gate:

“To every man upon this earth,

Death cometh soon or late;

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his Gods.



I remember well his geography. The largest island in Newfoundland, meaning insular Newfoundland, was Glover Island in Grand Lake, and the largest island in all of Newfoundland was Fogo Island—ninety-two square miles—with Random Island close behind at ninety square miles, and the pear-shaped island was Ceylon.

My grandmother was a great gardener and spent endless hours nurturing her flowers and raspberries. Although small in frame, she had an indomitable spirit, and travelling the stairs to the basement many times a day, feeding the coal-fired furnace, and practising her Scottish orderliness gave testament to her hardiness.

I spent one more summer in St. John’s working for the same department. Being a little older, I was no longer a clerk but had been asked to act as a welfare officer at the city office in downtown St. John’s. This seemed a formidable task, since it meant learning quickly a maze of regulations since I was to interview and apply these regulations to clients (all of whom would be older than I) to see whether they qualified for assistance.

I called my parents concerning this, since I felt overwhelmed by all this responsibility. My father assured me that I could do it, and so I conquered my fear and had a very busy summer learning a lot about people whose means and/or mental or physical condition saw them as clients of the department. Surprisingly, I was even allocated to be responsible for “unmarried mothers” for a while, since there was a sudden vacancy in that area. Today, of course, without a degree or two and some experience, such work by a high school student would be viewed as shocking and possibly illegal.

I interviewed a young unmarried mother who lived in squalid conditions and needed a mattress. After a full investigation, her request was found to be a valid one, whereupon I had a mattress ordered and delivered to her residence. Elated with this new addition, she called me and offered me the first night on the mattress. In appropriate bureaucratic language, I declined the offer. An increase in the unmarried caseload was a common occurrence nine months following the Portuguese fleet, which frequented St. John’s harbour for supplies, or to avert nasty storms in the North Atlantic.

The year 1959–60 marked a significant departure from the normal progression of our family evolution. The provincial government had begun a program for social workers whereby they could apply and, if accepted, attend university for educational upgrading. The successful applicant would be paid the same salary for that time as if they were working their normal job, and tuition would also be paid. The Department of Welfare had developed a relationship with the School of Social Work at the University of Toronto. My father applied and was successful, and so my four brothers and my sister and my parents moved in the summer of 1958 to Toronto, a new large urban landscape, so different and puzzling, an abrupt change from our tranquil rural background.

It was a hot summer and we were not used to these high temperatures, but it was the humidity that was really unbearable, and living in a small apartment at Metcalf and Parliament in the middle of the city compounded matters. It was a modest apartment, and many immigrants were taking up residence nearby. My father obtained a temporary job at the Canadian National Exhibition while waiting for classes to begin; he worked in the music area, given his piano prowess and interest in music. We all settled in as best we could and became familiar with the neighbourhood. My older brother succeeded in getting a job with CPR and attended night school at IBM, which had recently established an office in the city. The remaining five children were school-bound, three in primary, and my brother and I were off to high school—Jarvis Collegiate.

Toronto was a big adjustment for the whole family. Except for Father, it was the first time off the island for all of us (other than my brief stint to Nova Scotia at an air cadet camp). The humid weather, the busy streets, the streetcar, subway, skyscrapers, and the impersonal nature of the place made us feel like we were in an alien land. We were saved somewhat by a nearby park and the Riverdale Zoo, which proved a welcome escape from the noise and din of urban life.

Nothing prepared my brother and me for our high school experience. Coming from a rural town in Newfoundland of 2,000 with a one-storey high school, 200 students from grade seven to eleven, to a downtown four-storey brick building of 1,400 from grade ten to thirteen, was a real culture shock. I am not sure if I had seen a basketball before this, and certainly not a school library, gym, pool, or those high and low bars. Add to this that we spoke differently than almost everyone at the school and that most of the students did not know where Newfoundland was, and those who had some notion thought we lived in igloos. We were classic outsiders. My only friend at the school was a boy who had just moved from the Ukraine. Nevertheless, we tried to fit in and abide by the rules and regulations of this complicated, confusing place. But for me it seemed the odds were stacked against me.

I played hockey, and although I was unused to artificial ice and arenas, I decided to try out for the school team. Miraculously, I made it. That meant extensive practices at Leaside Gardens. To get there you took a streetcar, subway, and bus to the arena. Of course, that meant early mornings since these practices were all on weekdays and I had to be back to school by 9: 00 a.m. On one of these practice sessions the traffic back from the arena was exceptionally heavy and I arrived back to school late, by ten or fifteen minutes. Well, this automatically meant a trip to the vice-principal’s office. I explained what happened, but I was subjected to what I thought was an unnecessary interrogation.

“Young man, have you ever been in trouble before?” began the vice-principal. This I automatically took to mean whether I had broken the law, that I was being treated like some common criminal.

“I do not think that unusually heavy traffic on my return from practice justifies such a question,” I answered.

Wow! That went over like a lead balloon, and I was suspended from school that day. My father was contacted, and upon being questioned by the vice-principal, he more or less took my position. His son had never been in trouble before, and being late through no fault of his own did not seem to be sufficient reason for such an approach.

I now had a record!

Sometime later, two incidents in English class further soured my time at the school.

The first concerned an essay I had written. We had been asked to put ourselves in a journalist’s position and compose a newspaper report on a recent incident or issue. This was during the time when, then white South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was embroiled in controversy over his government’s apartheid policy. So I composed an article concerning the issue as if I were a journalist in Johannesburg. The day the corrected papers were passed back to the students by the English teacher, Mr. McKenzie, he refrained from passing back mine. I raised my hand and asked about the whereabouts of my paper.

“Where did you get this? You did not write this,” Mr. McKenzie responded.

I explained that I had constructed this myself and that none of the writing was copied. Sadly, he did not believe me and I received no mark for my work.

Then there was the poetry incident. Mr. McKenzie was introducing a new poem and he was eager for us to understand the literary term allusion. In the poem there was a biblical allusion and he asked whether anyone knew from what book in the Bible this allusion was taken. Several hands were raised, including mine. He acknowledged all the raised hands but mine. All the answers given had been incorrect. My arm, still partly raised, was the lone arm visible, yet he was about to proceed when one of the more inquisitive and courageous students, obviously perplexed by the teacher’s lack of recognition of me, spoke up.

“Sir, Brian has his hand up!”

“Oh, yes, yes,” sputtered an embarrassed Mr. McKenzie. “Yes, okay. Brian, what do you say?”

“It is from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament,” I confidently explained.

“My, my, well, Brian, that’s the best you have done all year—this is incredible,” exclaimed Mr. McKenzie.

“Well, sir,” I retorted, “if you had asked me on those many other occasions I had my hand up, I am sure I would have been able to give other correct answers.”

That was it! “To the vice-principal’s office,” I was so ordered by an irate English teacher.

A brief incident with the French teacher continued my unfortunate run-ins with the teachers. We were all misbehaving, according to the teacher, and for this group indiscretion we were all to remain in our places when the final bell of the day rang. We were to place our hands on our desks and remain motionless. Sitting upright at our desks, we strived valiantly not to move and not to make a whisper. Well, there are moments like this that will test a person’s soul. Suddenly, one of the students lost it and burst out laughing, whereupon the teacher rushed to the student’s desk, whipped his arm around, and struck the student solidly and viciously across the face. He was about to administer an additional blow when—totally shocked by this—I called out: “Stop, you can’t do this!” In a rage, the teacher ordered me out of the room and to another visit to the office.

And then there is the final “in-class” experience concerning the geography teacher. One afternoon the teacher was talking about meteorology, and the discussion led to annual precipitation and snowfalls across the nation. Of course, the nation stopped at Nova Scotia. A sharp student pointed out (before I had time) that Newfoundland had been omitted, and she wondered what the annual snowfall would be there. The teacher responded that the amounts would be similar to Toronto—no big deal. I spoke up to indicate that I was from Newfoundland and that I was pretty sure that annual snowfall in Newfoundland would be much higher than in the Toronto area. The teacher disagreed. Amazingly, that very evening a TV weather reporter was doing the same exercise on snowfall that we had done that day in school. Of course, the snowfall in Newfoundland was indeed higher than Toronto’s. The next day that sharp student raised her hand (for once I was not going to say anything) and informed the teacher of the previous night’s program and that the reporter had verified that what Brian had said was indeed correct. Silence enveloped the room—and then the teacher led the class into the next lesson as if nothing had happened.

But the worst was yet to come! We had a tough, cranky ex-military man as our physical education instructor. I managed to get through the swimming (before this, my only experience with swimming had been in a pond) without any problem, and his assistants did most of the gym and basketball work. Although I was new to these activities, I adapted quickly and performed adequately.

With the coming of spring, we were to go outside and do our track and field activities. I was pretty good at track and field, and at a summer air cadet camp the year before I had won a number of events including the 100-yard dash. There were certain benchmarks set for our grade/age group so that any average student could meet them.

On the day of our 100-yard dash, the cantankerous instructor was absent and one of his younger assistants replaced him. We were to line up in small groups of four and run the 100-yard dash to a previously marked area. The assistant had a stopwatch and called from the finish line for us to start. I won my race against the other three but was not told my time or that of the others. On the next day of physical education we were again outside to complete the other track and field tests in high jump, broad jump, and so on. Our cranky main instructor was back in action, and we were lined up in military formation in our shorts and T-shirts. We were lectured about our appearance and punctuality, and then he looked down at his clipboard to review the results from the previous day. A few moments passed, and then he scowled.

“Peckford!”

“Yes, sir,” I responded.

“What do I have here? You did the 100-yard dash in eleven seconds? You can’t do that! Our top football star can barely do that! Did you do this?”

“Yes, sir,” I responded respectfully. “Your assistant supervised the race.”

“Yes, yes, I know that,” he shouted, “but I just can’t believe it. You will have to do it again!”

I protested: “Sir, if the times of everyone else are good, why isn’t mine? And running by myself, without competition, is much more difficult.”

“Get up there, now,” he shouted.

So I proceeded to the starting line. The assistant had a starter gun and the instructor was at the finish line with the stopwatch.

Bang!

I never ran so hard in all my life. Across the finish line the stopwatch clicked—eleven seconds!

An unamused instructor passed the clipboard and stopwatch to his assistant and shouted to us all, “Let’s get on to the high jump.”

Although school was not going as well as it should have, I had to be mindful that I was expected to work after school and generate revenue for home. My father was working hard at the university and spent caseload time at different social services offices across Toronto, and my older brother was working for CPR in the daytime and going to school at night at IBM. My mother was managing the small apartment for the other seven: meals, clothes, groceries. She was doing the work of two or three people. I was the only other person in the family old enough to get a job, though part-time it would be. It was not easy getting a job. There were a fair number of Italian and Greek immigrants in the area and they were competing for any employment. And, of course, the hours I could work were restricted by my school time. I got a job at a nearby corner store for a few hours after school, but this was not enough.

I went to the Power Supermarket, several blocks down Parliament Street from where we lived. This was a fairly large supermarket that employed a lot of temporary workers. I completed an application form and was queried by the assistant manager, Mr. Pettis—a short, rotund, bald-headed man who looked like this is where he belonged—and the manager, a Mr. Mueller, well-dressed, tall, and businesslike.

I believed they could tell where I was from by my accent, but they asked anyway. I found out later that there was already a Newfoundlander working there who after six months was still only making his starting wage. They told me that there was no opening right now but that if a vacancy arose they would contact me. I told them that I really needed a job and I would work for nothing for a week just to show them that I could work hard. Pettis looked at Mueller, and Mueller at Pettis.

Pettis said, “We have never had anyone make that proposal before. I guess that if you want to work for nothing, we could put you on the soap aisle.”

And so, unknown to anyone else, I worked for nothing for a week: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, 4: 00 p.m. to midnight, and on Saturday and Sunday from 8: 00 a.m. to midnight. I worked like a dog and sweated my heart out. The next week Mr. Pettis called and told my mother that I had a job and I could come to work on Wednesday. Wow—was I proud—forty-five cents an hour!

Late Sunday evening, before we went home, the workers would pick up their cheques at the office. Mr. Pettis called out to me while I was mopping up the floor.

“Come to the office, Brian.” He passed me an envelope. “Open it,” he said.

I tore open the envelope and looked at the cheque. “Mr. Pettis, you have made a mistake—this looks like it is too much,” I exclaimed.

“My boy,” said Pettis, “you sure can work, and we have decided to break our deal. We want to pay you for last week.”

I was shocked—it had never entered my mind, I was so consumed with trying to get that job.

“Thank you, Mr. Pettis,” I said.

“Back to the floor,” Pettis responded.

In four weeks I was the highest-paid temporary worker in the store. And my countryman was still at the bottom of the pay scale.

Much later, when I became a teacher, I would tell this story to my students many, many times. And it remains one of my most precious memories. There is no replacement for hard work.

Of course, this lower area of Parliament Street had its own problems, like many inner-city areas. I experienced this first-hand. I almost lost one of my first paycheques.

Walking home on Parliament Street after twelve one night, I encountered a surprise attack from three boys around my own age. Two of them jumped out from an alleyway and threw me to the ground, savagely kicking me in the groin. Somehow I got to my feet and struck one of them to the ground and began to hit the second one. A third boy sprang from the alleyway, and I caught him leaping and struck at him. He staggered backwards—the first boy was still on the ground, being helped by the second—and as quick as the incident started, the boys fled. They were good with their feet, and as I stumbled home I felt the pain from my waist to my knees. I was at home a few days to recuperate, but I was content that the scoundrels did not get my cheque.

The months passed, the family adjusted as best it could, Father was doing well, my older brother was relatively happy at his work and night school, the younger siblings were happy, and Mother shouldered her responsibilities with stoic determination. But I think we were all relieved when the time came to return home. I had to stay on a little while longer to do my school exams.

So I was back in Lewisporte, Newfoundland, for the summer of 1960. I needed a job before school began in the fall, but few were available. I managed to get a few weeks at the new vocational school that had just been constructed. Some students were needed to check inventory on the new equipment that was arriving. But this only got me to the end of July. I then parked myself at a plumbing and heating store that was also involved in subcontracting, installing plumbing and heating in new buildings. I would get up early in the morning and go to the premises before it opened so that I would create the right impression—that I had no problem getting up in the morning and that I was really serious about getting a job. The first few mornings the answer was no, we have no opportunities right now. I kept going each morning. I knew the owner of the business; his son was a friend of mine. A few mornings later, the company won a contract to install the plumbing in a new school that was being constructed in a nearby town. I was there early in the morning when the chief plumber was talking to the owner about the contract. He suggested to the owner that he would need a helper for the job. Given that I was the only person who had presented himself each morning, and here I was again, the job was mine. The days were sunny and warm that August, and my boss (Mr. Val Tucker) was an excellent worker and teacher. I learned a lot from him in just thirty days. It’s funny that I clearly remember this brief thirty-day job forty-nine years later. I remember mentioning this man’s name at a political rally in Lewisporte over twenty-five years later—I was quickly told from the floor that he was in the audience.

The school system in Toronto went to grade thirteen. In Newfoundland it went to grade eleven. So there were many courses that I took in Toronto that did not qualify for high school graduation (junior matriculation) in Newfoundland. Hence, I was back in school in the fall. That year spun by and I tried hard to concentrate and pursue my studies, which were made more enjoyable by our main teacher, Mr. Paddock.

One of the courses, taught by another teacher, was Algebra. During these years mathematics was split among the three components of Algebra, Trigonometry, and Geometry. The class was having great difficulty understanding this subject and following the teacher’s lessons. At Christmas, I think only three out of forty-two passed the exam. After the break at Christmas, a number of students approached the teacher and explained the dilemma, which of course should have been clear to him, yet he seemed oblivious to our plight and was just soldiering on as if all was well with the Algebra world. Things still did not improve, and given that he was also the principal of the school, there was little else we thought we could do. Luckily for me, my parents had just completed a room “upstairs” in our one-storey house. This became my place for study, and I would spend hours there pouring over the Algebra book trying to understand the material. I still remember the names of the authors written on the cover of that infamous book—Hall and Knight—and they were not my favourite people. Sometime during that period from January to June, I figured it out and understood enough to pass the province-wide exams. I passed the other subjects and now had to decide—where do I go from here?

I remember that my father had mentioned university, and Mr. Paddock had also mentioned it. There were not many from my class interested, and I didn’t know how interested I really was. The thing was, I really was not mechanical at all, and just getting involved in the jobs like I had in the summertime would be low-paying and uninteresting as careers. And I still remembered Mr. Paddock’s question—what are you going to do with the rest of your life? And of course I had heard that a brand new campus was about to open and that there was money available if you were studying to be a teacher.

Well, I applied and was accepted. Off to St. John’s and a boarding house.

Mr. Paddock passed away a few years ago. When his family informed me of this, I wrote his son the following:

Thank you for calling me and informing me of the passing of your father. I was unaware of his illness and, of course, like you, the news came as a shock.

I feel obligated to write this note to you because your father was a very special person in my life.

In everyone’s life there are many people who influence you. And in my case that is also true. But two people tower over the rest. One is my father and the other is your father.

Your father taught me in high school in Lewisporte in the early sixties. He instilled in us the necessity to think and to think logically and more importantly to think critically—and to assemble the facts before forming an opinion. These lessons were the most important I have ever learned and were and are of immeasurable value to me. There was another great idea that I learned from him that has guided almost everything I do and that is fairness. I saw this in how he treated others and in how he taught. It was wonderful to behold. In one subtle move on his part when I was in grade 11 (I told him about this later and he said he didn’t remember—I doubt that) he changed the course of my life, forcing me to reflect on who I was and what, if anything, I should be doing with my life.

You may know that I had cause to call on him when I was premier. And his help and counsel were invaluable to me—from fisheries matters to the Constitution. It was so good to know that I could call on someone like him at that time.

Shelley said of Wordsworth and I say of Brose Paddock:

“Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood

Above the blind and battling multitude.”





CHAPTER 2: A “HIGHER” EDUCATION




“A university should be a place of light, of liberty and of learning.”

— Benjamin Disraeli





IT WAS ALL A new experience. Exciting and sometimes puzzling. Everyone was swept up in the new campus celebrations. The opening of the new modern Memorial University campus, replacing an old and worn-out campus on Parade Street, took place in October, 1961.

Mr. Smallwood, the premier, had all these famous people visit, and I remember being part of the parade celebration, marching with hundreds of others along Elizabeth Avenue parallel to the new campus. There were bands and marching groups, schools and various organizations, and people representing electoral districts from all over the province. There was the prime minister of Canada, Mr. Diefenbaker, the new Chancellor Lord Thomson, and the distinguished American, Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was a glorious time for the province, and it launched me and many others on our educational and life careers.

There was lots to learn and courses to choose from and my first exposure to lineups. Just registering at the university meant a lineup, and choosing subjects and books all involved lineups. Being a bayman, this did not come easy. We quickly became aware that this new place was very much a townie place, and we baymen were the outsiders. It was changing with the large influx of baymen registered in the Education faculty, but there was still a big swagger to those townies that did not sit well with many of us. This became even more grating when one of our own numbers tried to act like a townie.

However, perhaps the most surprising early experience of the bayman’s place was a particular policy at the university. We were informed that we would all have to take a speech test. And if we did not speak “properly,” we would have to take special speech lessons. Wow! This was a bit of a shocker. And so we were all given times when we would have to appear before two professors in a room and read a prose passage, the reading of which would determine whether we would have to take the special speech course or be exempted. This was perhaps the first time since my experiences in high school in Toronto that I felt I was being hard done by, as we say.

So I was ready with my own approach to the situation. On entering the room I was asked to sit, which I refused, interrupting the two professors to propose that I remain standing and recite a piece of work that I had chosen. Somewhat taken aback, the professors agreed, and I proceeded to recite from Tennyson’s Ulysses: “It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, match’d with an aged wife . . .”

I don’t remember the exact number of lines I recited, but it was not many before I was interrupted by one of the professors and told that that was just fine—there would be no need to recite more, and I could go.

There was no speech class for me.

But the whole thing was disgraceful. This procedure did not last for many years, thankfully. Ironically, it wasn’t long before there was a Folklore Department and valiant efforts made to preserve the many dialects (that we were encouraged to “eliminate”) throughout the province. There was this attitude throughout the land that we had to modernize, as exemplified by the new campus, and that meant for some strange reason that our language and customs would have to undergo major surgery. I was later to realize that this was largely the Smallwood prescription for a “better” province.

Perhaps equally memorable was the initiative by the Smallwood government to provide generous assistance to us students in the form of grants and salaries. This was announced with great fanfare by Premier Smallwood with his full Cabinet in tow at a special assembly held in the Physical Education Building. There was great jubilation among the students and it seemed to be received positively by the population at large. However, a number of us thought that these measures were going too far. Personally, I felt that the present $600 per year grant to Education students, which would be forgiven with two years teaching in the province, was adequate and that we needed to get more qualified teachers in the classroom as quickly as possible. And even this should have a sunset provision at some point. Further, I felt that loans rather than grants would be the better approach to take and that salaries were just too much of a good thing. I began to recognize the politics of it all and was somewhat affronted as I watched the premier and his Cabinet so lavishly dispense with money that I was sure could be used for more worthy things.

These were negative experiences that have stayed with me, but there were many more numerous positive experiences.

I took to the university right away, notwithstanding the long walks to and from my boarding houses in rain and snow. It was exhilarating rubbing shoulders with all these bright people and listening to the more senior students discuss and debate the great ideas of the world. I was captured by it all and spent an inordinate amount of time in the Arts Building common room engaged in debate that seemed at the time more important than classes, or anything else that was happening around me.

The university faculty and administration were conservative and still maintained some sort of dress code. I remember being called to the dean’s office one day to be questioned about an alleged infraction, from some days before, of the dress rules. It was all news to me and I said so to the Dean. He was a little taken back by my mildly aggressive response and confessed to me that someone connected with the Education Society had reported me and that he didn’t know the facts of the matter. This was one of my first encounters with raw politics and ego-dominated organizations. At the time a number of us Education students were agitating for a more open and aggressive Education Society. The leaders were well-entrenched and seemed to want a closed shop and maintenance of the status quo. Being one of the ringleaders of the dissenting group, I guess, I was singled out to be reported to the administration.

This new, more aggressive temperament among the Education students was really a new phenomenon, as they had been known in the past as a passive lot who did not rock the establishment boat. But a new day was beginning to dawn, and even this stodgy bunch was awakening from a long slumber. Perhaps this best manifested itself in a major undertaking by a number of us concerning teacher salaries. Looking to our eventual graduation, we began to investigate the level of remuneration that we would receive on becoming a teacher. We were astounded to find that the wages of teachers then were much lower than what graduates from other faculties would receive in their chosen fields.

So we began to make noise about this—appearing on the local TV newscast evening news (with Don Jamieson, who would later be my adversary in my first election as premier) and finally presenting a brief to the government. This proved to be a little difficult at the time, so a number of us went to the premier’s office at the Confederation Building to give our brief to the premier’s parliamentary assistant, Mr. Edward Roberts, who would be an Opposition Member/Leader in the legislature during my time and, later, become an effective lieutenant-governor.

The university introduced me to ideas and the necessity to think analytically. It introduced me to poetry, history, and philosophy—and most importantly I was introduced to Wordsworth and Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, and Tennyson, and a real library. I remember one day Professor Pitt revealing that if he had to live on a desolate island for the rest of his life and could take only one book with him, it would be Wordsworth’s Prelude.

The breadth and depth of Shakespeare’s understanding of human nature was so remarkable that it was difficult to credit that all the plays and sonnets were all composed by the same person. While the early comedies delight, the later ones had real characters like Malvolio and Shylock, and the histories brought into focus power and intrigue and introduced that over-the-top fellow, Falstaff. The tragedies are explorations of man’s highs and lows. One can often hear the echo of Wordsworth’s phrase “the still sad music of humanity” as one reads them. No other English writer surpasses Shakespeare. I was later to be introduced to American literature: Whitman, Frost, Hawthorne, Faulkner, Wolf, and America’s greatest poet, Emily Dickinson.

I remember Professor Schwartz in History class making the case for the large part economics played in man’s development. I had never thought about this before, so used to viewing history as an isolated list of events and personages was I. The broad sweep of discoveries and inventions through the Renaissance and Reformation—art and music opened up a world for a lifetime of reading and appreciation. I still have the wonderful book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by R. H. Tawney and David Thomson’s Europe Since Napoleon. I remember Professor Bruce and his review of Greek and Roman history. He urged me to do a paper on the influence of the Athenian navy upon the success of the Athenian state, which I did. Professor David Freemen led us through the metaphysical poets of Donne, Herrick, Herbert, and Marvell, and who can forget Milton? Sister Nolasco gave the course in Philosophy for Education students, and this was my first brush with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, with St. Augustine, Aquinas, Bacon, Voltaire, and Chardin. Unfortunately, it was the only stimulating course offered by the Faculty of Education.

In my third or fourth year I got involved in running for student council. I am unsure, now, how this came about, but I think it had to do with my continuous debates and discussions in the common room and my involvement in the Debating Society and a fraternity called Mu Upsilon Nu. However, I was not well-known outside of these groups, and hence seeking a seat on the council was really a bit of a long shot. Well, a small group of students—probably fired up more by the high risks and my bayman roots than anything else—swept into action to assist me and, from posters to candidate debates, we made a positive impression. To our surprise, I polled third in the balloting and took a position on the council for that year. I was responsible to council for overseeing the various clubs and societies on campus. Rex Murphy headed the polls and became president. I remember one of the first speeches he gave to some organization in the city. He contacted me for assistance, and I remember one night sweating with him over the text of the speech he should give. The council was a real debating society then, with all of the members taking many a long while to say very little. It was the nature of young, naive politicians to be so wordy, I suppose, yet I have learned that even more mature politicians don’t seem to be much better.

I was drawn to the Debating Society, a fledgling organization at the time. A number of debates were sponsored by the society and I willingly participated. One I clearly remember was a debate over the statement: “Labrador belongs to Quebec.” I was on the negative team with Bob (Robert) Crocker, and I remember Rex Murphy was on the affirmative team. It was memorable because of the topic (one sure way to get a Newfoundlander’s dander up) and also because Rex, in an effort no doubt to intimidate his opposition and perhaps try and impress the judges, entered the theatre in dramatic fashion after everyone was seated, burdened down by a pile of books which he placed next to his lectern on the stage. Notwithstanding the flourish, Bob and I won the debate.

After my first year at university, I spent a year teaching grade six at Lewisporte Central School. It was a funny arrangement. Central school meant from grade seven to eleven in those days. But apparently there was some problem with housing the grade sixes at the elementary schools in town, and so grade six (all eighty-five of them) ended up in a section/extension of the central school with its own entrance/ exit, thereby, I suppose, still keeping within the silly guidelines of maintaining the central school idea. I think my reasoning at this stage for taking a year from university was to see whether I liked teaching, since I was having some ideas about switching to law at that time.

This was a wonderful experience and solidified my original decision to go into teaching, although originally it was as much financial as it was a career choice. The provincial government at the time was offering a $600 grant for first-year Education students. The only incentive was that you had to commit to teach for two years in the province. In any case, this one year teaching was very rewarding, notwithstanding the crammed quarters and two large classes of forty and forty-two, respectively. There were two of us teachers—Jack Bussey and myself—and we had six courses: I taught three and Jack, of course, taught the other three, switching classes as appropriate.

Grade six is a great grade—the students no longer need personal help and are inquisitive without the teenage issues. We had a large number of very bright students, which in itself was a challenge, but it also presented the larger challenge of ensuring that the average student and those with difficulties were not ignored. The existing English course seemed inadequate, and so I received grudging permission to replace some of the program with materials that I had discovered from the United States. This would be a direct cost to the parents, so I wrote all the parents and received overwhelming support from them to get the new materials and bill them. This proved to be very successful and of significant benefit to students who were having some difficulty in reading and comprehension.

As I said, I enjoyed the classes immensely—they were lively and often spontaneous. After we got used to one another and a few ground rules were established, it was surprising how cohesive the classes became. Each morning there was a short period of fifteen minutes where there would be general discussion, usually about the hockey games of the day or weekend before. I remember one occasion when we were discussing a certain local hockey game in which I had played; it became obvious that I had incurred an injury above my eye—it required stitches and I was wearing a patch. The kids were eager to know what had happened. So an animated discussion ensued as to whether the opposing team was to blame, if it was an accident, or whether in fact I was a little too aggressive. In the midst of this serious debate, Wayne, eager to speak, interjected and exclaimed that he knew exactly what had happened. The other students questioned him, and with a sly grin he evaded a direct answer.

I stepped in and said: “Wayne, you owe it to the class to provide the answer. You said you really knew what happened to my eye—so stand in your place and tell the class.”

Wayne slowly got to his feet and, still with that impish grin, declared, “She kisses too high.”

It was this same Wayne who, in a discussion of where the moon gets its light, declared in dramatic fashion after first being reluctant to provide an answer: “Ah, it’s the man in the moon with a flashlight.”

Then there was Aubrey, a fifteen-year-old who for many reasons (home issues and falling through the cracks in the formal school setting) was a student in our grade six class. He was almost as tall as me, and having no other way to get attention, the first day school opened he began bullying a lot of the male students and making an overall disruptive scene. Of course, having only one year of training (I doubt whether more of the kind I got would have helped anyway), I quickly resorted to some basic common sense. First, I had to see to it that I was in total control of the class. That meant, one day after some serious disruption, taking Aubrey by the scruff of the neck and leading him out of the classroom. He quickly saw that while he was almost as tall as me he was not yet as strong, as I quickly rendered him physically helpless. However, I realized that this was just a temporary measure and that I could not do this every week and hope for a permanent fix.

I had been planning to try and get an empty classroom in the main part of the school on Friday afternoons to do some physical exercise with the students. And sure enough, I was able to get an hour that afternoon, and with the principal’s permission I was about to implement it. Additionally, I had secured a basketball that we could throw around and do some basic dribbling. Of course, then students would have to wear, when possible, sneakers or other appropriate footwear. I had told the class to expect an exciting announcement. So I was before the class announcing this addition to their school activity when it suddenly dawned on me that here was my chance to reach Aubrey, and so in the course of my announcement I said that I was going to need someone to help me on Friday afternoons, looking after the basketballs, getting everyone over to the other classroom and lined up, and that I had appointed Aubrey to do this work with me. The class was happy with the announcement, of course, and when I further said that I was sure everyone would get along and co-operate with Aubrey, there was some hesitation, but then just about everyone agreed with the appointment. You could see among some of them that they knew what I was up to, and they nodded with a flash of understanding.

Not only was this afternoon activity a great boon to class cohesion, but Aubrey became a new person. We were all surprised—from the first Friday when Aubrey asked for permission to exit the class five minutes early to get ready for the new activity, to his organizing the students, looking after the balls and footwear—this was a new day for us all. Aubrey suddenly got interested in his other school work, began passing his tests, and behaved in class. I have often wondered whatever happened to Aubrey—at any rate, he passed grade six and was a well-adjusted young man the last time I saw him.

It was incidents like this that left no room for choosing another profession. In addition to the new stimulating environment of the university, I was blessed beyond measure to have had the good fortune during these years to work in some of the more remote parts of the province.

I already had experience working for the Department of Public Welfare. It seemed natural for me to see if I could get another job with them. There was a need for students in the summer months to relieve the permanent welfare officers around the province. So I visited the department, picked up an application form, completed it, and submitted it to the department. No answer. I went to the department and was able to set up a meeting a few days hence with the Director of Field Services, a Mr. Hollett. (As I write, I have been informed that he passed away at the age of eighty-five.) He explained to me the role of temporary welfare officers: they were to conduct the basics while the permanent officer was on holidays, and mainly do the annual reviews of those people who were on some kind of permanent assistance. In the larger centres there would not be a problem since there would be other permanent officers in those offices to guide the temporary people, but for those temporaries going to the more remote regions it would be a little more difficult, so there would be a couple of days training (reviewing The Welfare Act and Regulations), and off you went. Sometimes, if you were lucky, you would get a few days with the permanent officer before they left.

One surviving letter of the department’s acceptance of me for one of these temporary jobs is still in my possession.

Department of Public Welfare

St. John’s, Nfld



April 16, 1964



Mr. Brian Peckford

Lewisporte, Nfld



Dear Mr. Peckford:



I am pleased to advise you that your application for temporary employment with this Department has been approved.

Your salary, during your period of employment with us, will be at the rate of $200.00 per month. In addition, the Department will accept responsibility for your board and lodging up to the amount of $60.00 per month providing you are not posted to an area where it will be possible to reside in your own home. Any charge in excess of $60.00 per month, however, will be your own responsibility.

This Department gives no undertaking to employ you for any specific period of time. However, if there is no reason to feel dissatisfied with your performance it is anticipated your service will be required until late August next.

Will you please arrange to report to the undersigned at the Confederation Building on Monday, May 4, 1964, at 9: 00 a.m.



Yours truly,



C. S. Knight

Director of Field Services





“BUT, M R. PECKFORD, I am sorry that there are no openings in the larger centres,” announced Mr. Hollett.

“You mean there isn’t a job available?” I hesitantly replied.

“No, I’m sorry. You’re a little late applying and all the openings in the major centres are taken.”

“Well, perhaps I could go to one of the other places,” I muttered.

A surprised expression crossed Mr. Hollett’s face. “You mean, you would go to a smaller place, perhaps an isolated place?”

“Yes,” I said, not really fully comprehending the implications.

“Well, you’re a little young and you have no experience managing an office by yourself in an isolated area. We usually persuade some older students who have had a year in a larger centre to go to one of the smaller remote offices,” Mr. Hollett explained. “But we are having trouble this year, so perhaps something might become available. I will let you know if we have an opening in one of the smaller offices, and if you’re still interested we’ll see what we can do.”

I left the office a little dejected but with a glimmer of hope that I would get a call telling me of a vacancy. Meanwhile, I began thinking about my answer. Did I really want to take a job that saw me in some isolated place for the whole summer? I needed the money so I could go back to university in the fall, and there was this tinge of adventure about the idea. So I let my proposal stand.

Luck was with me. A call came from Mr. Hollett to come and see him.

“We have an opening at La Scie,” he said. “It is on the northeast coast—no doubt you have heard of it. It is isolated but not real small; there is a fish plant and a road to a couple of communities, although they are not linked to the main road system. The welfare officer will be there when you arrive and you’ll have a few days with him before you’re left on your own. Most of the communities in that welfare district you will have to visit by boat.”

It was March and final exams were around the corner. Now that I had secured a job I could concentrate on some of the study I had failed to do for most of the year. I got through the next few weeks thinking about the summer and trying to concentrate on final exams. It wasn’t easy and my exams were all packed together in a couple of days. This was still the time when the final exam was worth 100% of the final mark—so if you blew it in those three hours, that was that.

I struggled through—studying in some cases through the night— and then went straight to the exam room. I was afraid someone was going to speak to me along the way or just outside the door to the exam room, because I felt so mentally full that if I responded, everything I had stuffed in my head the night before would suddenly spill out and leave me empty of any knowledge to answer the questions on the exam.

With exams out of the way, I contacted Mr. Hollett and began a two-day orientation, learning about the legislation and various programs and how to complete the various forms.

“There’s a coastal boat leaving next week,” Mr. Hollett informed me, “and we would like you to be on it to La Scie. We have secured a boarding house for you and the welfare officer will be there for a week or so to help you adjust.”

Just like that, I was off the next week on the Northern Ranger to La Scie.





CHAPTER 3: A PRACTICAL EDUCATION




“I am a part of all that I have met.”

— Tennyson





IT WAS LATE APRIL and almost miraculously the ice along the east and northeast coast had stayed several miles offshore, making possible a very early start to the coastal boat season to northern Newfoundland and Labrador. And so, unlike the harrowing experiences of my mother and her five children crossing Placentia Bay in a snowstorm in 1951, I had a relatively easy time as the boat made its way along the east coast of the island, stopping first at Twillingate and then on to La Scie.

La Scie was the easternmost point of land on the Baie Verte Peninsula, nestled under Cape John with a U-shaped harbour, and every inch a fishing community. This was the proud home of trap fishing crews and a large fish plant. The news here was all to do with fishing, the wind, the ice in the spring, and the price of fish. Sammy Thoms’s general store was where the old fellers hung out, and if you wanted to get a real quick lesson of trap fishing on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, this was the place to visit. Not that it all came easy when you entered the place; it was a bustle, and after a hardy welcome from Sammy, who was otherwise too busy to talk to you, you settled on a box or barrel and waited for the conversation to slowly evolve. However, change was in the air—a contractor (friendly to Premier Smallwood’s party) was busy digging and blasting as they were installing a water and sewer system in the community (completely financed by the provincial government), and the first highway to the town was under construction by another company friendly to Smallwood. There was already a crude road system from La Scie to a number of nearby communities, including the mining town of Tilt Cove. These communities all formed a part of the welfare district I was to administer—the rest of the district would be communities on the north side of Green Bay, southwest of La Scie and accessible only by boat.

The permanent welfare officer was with me for a week or so and we took one quick visit by boat to Snook’s Arm and Round Harbour to give me a taste of what was in store. Well, of course, the actual experience of being on your own is always quite a shock, notwithstanding the advice given to you and the things you read. New, unique, and strange experiences await and test your youth and inexperience.

The office was a one-room (plus a small waiting room), standalone building with a desk, a couple of chairs, a small oil heater, a typewriter, and a filing cabinet. My being new and young, it was natural that my first week or so was to field a large influx of potential clients who wished to test my mettle. This was truly a baptism by fire, and though I began to get my footing, there were a number of incidents which, during my stay there, reflect what today would be complex social and emotional problems.

The first to arise concerned a family in Harbour Round, a nearby community accessible by road. One of the children of a family there had a serious and, as yet, undetected disease. The local nurse and doctor who visited from Baie Verte recommended that the child go to St. John’s for further diagnosis and assessment. The family could not afford to pay for such a trip and I was brought into the situation by the father visiting my office to ask for help. After examining the man’s circumstance, it was obvious that the department would have to pay for this matter. In the subsequent days I contacted the nurse, and arrangements were made for the child to be seen by a specialist at a hospital in St. John’s. The appointment date was set for a few weeks hence, and I began the transportation and accommodation planning.

I remember reading a play in high school that told of the chief character having scrupulously planned a crime scene, but one variable was still in play and thwarted the master plan, to which he exclaimed, “I did not foresee it.”

Such was the case with me when the father appeared at my office very early one morning, distraught and frightened.

“Mr. Peckford, sir, you never told me,” the father stuttered.

“Told you what?” I queried.

“That you or the nurse will not be taking my daughter to St. John’s to the hospital. I don’t understand,” the nervous father replied.

“Oh, sorry, I just assumed you would know that the family would have to take her. You see, you and your wife are available. You’re not working, and while your wife is working at home, if she goes, you can look after the other children.”

The man broke down. “We can’t go. We have never been anywhere . . .”

I will never forget the look of fright on that man’s face. He was truly afraid and became almost incomprehensible.

An hour or more passed, and although the father had come early, it was now after nine o’clock and other people were in the little waiting room, no doubt able to hear scraps of the conversation coming from the office.

“Listen,” I whispered, “there are others outside there now. I don’t want them to hear our talk. Tell you what I will do. I will come to Harbour Round tomorrow and visit with you and your wife. We’ll have a good chat about this. Don’t worry, we will solve this.”

Slowly, the father gathered his composure as I continued to reassure him that everything would work out. I hurriedly escorted him from the office and past the growing number of people in the waiting room and those waiting outside the building.

The next morning I rented a car from a local merchant and travelled the ten miles to Harbour Round, which, like La Scie, was at first a French fishing station since it formed part of what was known as the French Shore. There were then a couple hundred people living there. I found the house, parked the car nearby, and walked up to the front door. Although it was around 11: 00 a.m. the community was quiet—no doubt aware of my arrival.

It was a one-storey clapboard house of moderate size for the time. I knocked on the porch door and was greeted by the mother. She was of medium height, with reddish hair, and a round reddish face. I introduced myself and was led into the kitchen where the father was sitting at the chrome kitchen table. I sat next to him, and the mother across from me.

“Now, a nice cup of tea would be all right,” I said, as I looked at a steaming teapot on the wood stove.

A nervous smile emerged on the mother’s face as she got up to fetch the tea.

“And how are you this morning?” I inquired of the father.

“Not good, sir, I hardly slept last night.”

“And I, too,” exclaimed the missus.

“Let’s get right down to it, then,” I replied.

I went on to explain that it just would not be possible for the nurse or myself to accompany the child to St. John’s, that we were needed here to help other people who had problems just as big as this one, and that there would be people to assist them along the way. I indicated that the route was to take the coastal boat from La Scie to Lewisporte; he could stay in a hotel there and then take the train to St. John’s. I also made it clear that their child desperately needed to be examined by a specialist and that not to do so could endanger the child’s long-term health.

The mother spoke up. “We have never even travelled on the coastal boat; we have never seen a train or been in a hospital. We are scared.”

The father added, “What is it like to ride a train? Are there elevators in the hospital?”

I realized I had a lot of explaining to do, so I began by describing the coastal boat trip, where they would stay in Lewisporte, the hotel there, the train ride, and the arrangements in St. John’s. I said we would make extra arrangements so that there would be someone to meet them on every step of the journey, and explained all the other details to try to increase their confidence. But the questions kept coming from the very frightened couple, so much so that I decided further conversations were needed. I met with the father and mother a few more times, involved other people, and finally, about a week later, the father agreed.

The day for the father and daughter to leave on the coastal boat finally arrived, and with the help of the mother a fond farewell ensued. We watched as the boat pulled away from the government wharf and then as it navigated between the headlands that helped form the harbour. I was relieved; the mother, however, was in tears, comforted by family and friends.

I went to the office early one morning three or four weeks later, and who should be waiting for me but the father. As I unlocked the door to the office, he rushed in, all smiles, as he hurriedly began describing his unbelievable experiences, from the screeching wheels of the trains, to his absolute certainty that as the train came to a curve it would jump the tracks, to the big hospital with its elevator that he learned to use, to the wonderful doctors and nurses that attended to him, and most particularly to his daughter.

“She is going to be all right,” he exclaimed. “The doctors said she had a rare disease but it could be treated.”

“And you and your wife will be all right now too,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “we will be all right now. We want to thank you . . . for making us see.”

That was a very pleasant experience. There were others not so pleasant. For example, one time I went to one of the isolated communities on my regular visit. My main function was to fill in for the permanent welfare office, and that was supposed to mean travelling to the various communities and updating information for those who were permanent clients of the department, such as widows, widowers, disabled, and elderly people. Of course, things are never as they seem. There were things that just happened. At this community a number of men came seeking temporary assistance. I was new and the test was on. I had discovered some days before that many men in the community had been working on a government project near the community. And the money was pretty good. When I arrived at the wharf there were several men already waiting to see me. Jack Budgell, the owner and operator of the boat I had hired, was a little nervous.

As we were tying up he said to me, “You know, these fellows seem a little nervous.”

“Nervous about what?” I questioned.

“I don’t know, me son, but they are acting strange to me.” Jack was not new to the area and so when he gave an opinion about the area you’d better listen.

Anyway, I asked Jack to tell the men that I would see them individually in my little room in the stern of the boat. This is where I slept—it had a couple of bunks, a small wooden table a foot or so off the floor, and a tiny wood stove. There was really only room for two persons. And so the procession commenced as the men, one by one, came down, sought assistance, were refused, and, mumbling their dissatisfaction, left the boat and wharf.

“Do you mean to tell me you turned them all down?” Jack exclaimed.

“Yes,” I said. “They were the fellows who were working on the government project for the last few months and do not qualify for assistance. I’d say that was why they seemed to act strange to you. They really knew that this was wrong, what they were going to do.”

Of course, the word got around the harbour that this new, young relieving officer had turned down all the men. It wasn’t long before there appeared on the wharf one very angry woman. Dashing up to the edge of the wharf she shouted out, “Jack, Jack, where are you?”

Jack appeared from the wheelhouse. “Yes, my dear, this is Jack!”

“Jack, where is that young relieving officer? I got to see him right away.”

Jack moved swiftly to the stern of the boat, opened the doors to the stern section, and began whispering. “We’ve got a pretty mad woman who wants to see you right now. Man is she mad.”

I climbed up the few stairs to Jack. “What—an angry woman?”

And before Jack could speak, there she was. “Are you the relieving officer?” she growled, looking at me.

“Yes, ma’am. I am.”

As she pointed her finger and came toward me, she shouted, “I have to talk to you right now!”

“All right, come on down and we can have a private conversation.”

She stumbled down the few stairs, fuming under her breath, and finally settled across from me on one of the bunks. In retrospect, I became a little too official, taking out my daily worksheet on which I recorded time and date and name of all who came to see me.

“Your name, please?”

“My name, my name!” she shouted. “Listen, I’m the wife of George who came to see you a couple of hours ago. You turned him down! You wouldn’t give him a food order.”

I lowered my head to write the date on the worksheet, my eye no longer on my client. In an instant she swooped, grabbed a large piece of firewood from the bucket by the stove, and leaning across the small expanse between us, clobbered me over the head!

I fell back on the other bunk, surprised and more than a little dazed. Seconds later, when I came to my senses, she was up over the stairs on the deck of the boat, cursing as she made her way to the wharf.

Jack thought he heard a commotion and came out of the wheelhouse in time to see the woman scampering up to the wharf deck and then on to shore.

I was climbing the stairs when Jack met me. “What happened?”

“I was knocked out by a very angry woman. She picked up a junk of wood in the bucket and let me h