by Robert Hunt
But, being adventurous young boys, we had come this far and didn’t want to back out now. We had no answers to our questions about Catholics and Protestants. Dickie and I choked down our fears, figuring that we might be the only Catholics in the long line of Catholicism in the history of Newfoundland ever to go inside a Protestant dwelling. This could be a first in religious history! Our answer to Father was a definite yes.
As we trotted along beside him, the man said, “By the way, guys, I’m not what you guys would call a Father, as my following call me a minister. I am a little different than a Roman Catholic priest.”
Whoa! What did he mean by that? He had a wide collar and a black suit on, so what did he mean he was not a priest? It sounded very strange to us, but we didn’t question him further. But worry we did, at least until we entered his church.
Once inside, we looked around and wondered what all the fuss was about with the Catholic and Protestant rivalry. The church looked the same as ours. It had pews and an altar with rows upon rows of seats. There were beautiful pictures of our Saviour, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and others adorning the walls with a few statues here and there. There were also stained glass windows that let in the sunlight, as did those in St. Patrick’s Church. Nothing unusual here.
Thanking the minister for his tour, we started walking toward the front entrance. As we strolled toward the exit, I looked around the church again, and it finally dawned on me what was wrong with this place. There were no confessional boxes in the back! I looked, and sure enough, there were none to be seen anywhere. Now I was totally confused. We thanked the minister again and bolted out the door and up Brazil Square to our clubhouse in Dickie’s back garden.
“Did you see what I never saw, Dickie?”
He nodded.
“No friggin’ confession boxes.” I blessed myself after I said that.
Both of us were in awe. What was going on here? Was this not a church?
Sure, as far as churches went it was a beautiful place to go, but why in God’s name did it not have a confessional? Did the worshipers there not commit sins like we did? At that moment we started questioning all religions—while still being careful not to offend God.
It was getting really frustrating as we talked about our morality. Maybe that was how they were different. We guessed that Protestants did not commit any mortal or venial sins, therefore they didn’t need a confessional and we were the only ones who did.
Dickie came up with a solution.
“Bobby, the only thing left for us to do, because we certainly can’t believe even our own when it comes to religion, is to go to another Protestant church, this time a bigger one, to see if they have confession boxes. Maybe the church on New Gower Street was too small a place to put any, or they couldn’t afford them. After all, everybody knows that Protestant churches are not as rich as the Roman Catholic churches.”
It did seem logical. Searching was the only way to get our answers. We agreed to look for another Protestant church to see if our suspicions were correct. That led us to ask George Bishop, our Protestant friend, the very next day to tell us about his church.
George and his brother Dave lived up the street from us. He told us that the St. John’s Anglican Cathedral on Church Hill was where he went to church. It had to be our next stop. Surely in there we would find the answers we were looking for, to dispel our doubts about our own religion and others. We were now the Crusaders we sang about in school, and the end of our quest was in sight.
Next stop, Saturday evening, was the Anglican Cathedral on Church Hill.
A few hours after supper, we found ourselves looking up at the massive structure. In the minds of a couple of young boys, it looked like another haunted house, and surely we were not foolish enough to venture inside to meet its demons. We’d had other encounters with ghosts in Tessier’s Lane a while before, so we needed to be careful. We walked around the perimeter of the church to find an entrance. On the lower south side of the church was an enormous wooden door with large hinges. It lay open, seemingly to invite us in. Suddenly, we weren’t terribly cheerful about going in.
We opened the door fully and entered a small hallway, into what seemed like a place where altar boys, or whatever the Protestant equivalent were called, changed for service. We walked through the interior and stopped at a set of steps that led up, it seemed, to the main floor of the church itself. We looked at one another briefly before proceeding up the stairs. What lay in front of us as we reached the top was amazing. We had never seen anything like this before in our young, confused lives. What a beautiful church we had entered! It was enormous!
Leading the way, I turned the corner of the stairway and came upon a giant altar, at which Dickie and I just stared with fascination. It was huge, certainly a lot bigger and more decorative than the altar at St. Patrick’s. It seemed as if we had been transported back in time to the era of the Crusades. The altar was so big, surely it had been created by God Himself. It was beautiful. Surely these Protestants were more in God’s favour than us Catholics. Here was evidence that He favoured them over us!
Dickie stared at me and I at him. We looked around and saw that everything inside this church was older and much nicer than anything we had ever seen. Taking it all in, we were so absorbed in it that we hadn’t noticed a lady coming up behind us.
“Hello. What are you boys doing inside the church? Do you not know that we are closed on Saturday evening? What can I do for you?”
We were both startled.
“Nothing, ma’am,” I said. “We just noticed the back door was open, and we walked in to look around.”
“Okay, but now that you have had a look, I will have to ask both of you to leave. We have a funeral service here shortly, and I have to get the altar ready.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I gushed. Heading back down the stairs, I realized we had not found the answers to our questions about God and Protestants and Catholics. I turned and looked back at the lady. She, like the minister we had met yesterday, was also clothed in black.
“Are you a minister?” I asked.
“No, son, there are no women ministers yet in this church. But hopefully there will be someday. Why do you ask?”
I asked her why there were such things as Catholics and Protestants. Why did one church have confession boxes while others had none? Why could there not be one religion, and all of us have the same church?
She smiled in response and asked, “Is that why you came to this church? To find this out?”
“Yes, ma’am,” we both said together.
She must have seen us as two curious young boys and, being kind, decided to tell us what she believed in.
“Well, for young boys, you ask very good questions. I have always thought about that myself. If there is one God, as I was taught in my school days, then why are there so many religions and churches in the world?”
Dickie and I looked at each other and nodded toward her. More religions? How many were there, anyway? Now we were starting to get confused again. We always thought that there were only two: Catholic and Protestant.
“You mean there are more than two religions in the world, ma’am?” I asked.
She asked us to sit in a pew while she explained.
“Yes, there are. The world is made up of millions of people, and with so many people in so many different countries in this world, there are many different kinds of religions, too. People in this world serve only one God, but many believe that He is a different person in their eyes. But supposedly we all should believe in the same God, although many do not. I know this is confusing to you now, but when you get older, you will understand this more. As for confession boxes in our church, we pray to God and tell Him our sins. We don’t tell them to a minister like some do a priest in a confessional.”
Whoa! Millions of people besides us. This idea was way out
in left field, but somehow it seemed to make a bit of sense to us. We thanked the lady and left the church in awe of what she had just said. I wished I had asked her name. When I gave it more consideration much later, I thought that maybe she was that angel in St. Patrick’s Church, who was sent by the Man Above to set two wayward boys on the right path.
That was the way it was in those days. Religion was one of the dominant things that ruled us, and we listened to it out of fear that we would be subject to its wrath, or the fear of a God that we did not know or fully understand. We went to church because we were taught to go. We said the rosary every night in May because we were taught to do so, and we said our prayers every night because, again, we were told to do so by our parents and our teachers.
I still believe there is a God and that He will one day see us all as we leave this earth. But many of the beliefs that I was told to understand have gone by the wayside as being too unrealistic. I may be proven wrong in some things when I do meet the Man Himself one day.
N. J. Downey: Store Owner and Champion Prize Fighter
In our ramblings as young boys in downtown St. John’s, Dickie and I got to know a gentleman who operated a store on New Gower Street called N. J. Downey’s. It was next door to the old Gosse’s Tavern and across the street from where the St. John’s City Hall now stands. To say the area was lively in its day would be an understatement. Mr. Downey’s store and Lar’s Fruit Store, just west of his establishment, were the mainstays of the downtown era of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
Norman Downey was born in Scilly Cove, now known as Winterton, Trinity Bay, on August 5, 1910. At the age of seventeen, he moved to Kitchener, Ontario, to find work. He found it at a BF Goodridge Tire manufacture plant. In 1930, while living there he was discovered by a boxing promoter who happened to be at a bar where Downey and his friends were having a few sociables after work. A fight broke out, and Norman found himself in the middle of it, when some guy decided that a Newfoundlander would be easy pickings. In the ensuing scuffle, Norman Downey proved him wrong. A reporter who happened to be in the bar at the time described it like this: “When Downey was struck by a punch he retaliated with a blow that sent his opponent to the floor.”
The promoter approached Downey and suggested he try his natural ability at a local gym and give boxing a try. At first he ignored the man and said he had no desire to learn how to box, but he decided to go and watch a few rounds at ringside in the local gym. As time went on, his visits to the gym grew more and more frequent, and he decided to enter the ring himself in a few promotional rounds. He won all of them. Later, after some convincing, Norm Downey agreed to train hard to enter the fighting ring as a pro.
During his stint in Ontario, he impressed the trainers with his speed and agility, and before long they were looking for opponents. After a few victorious fights, he was ready to fight for the Ontario championships. In the title bout, Downey took on the hometown boy, and while most believed the “come from away” from Newfoundland should have won the fight, he took the loss. Everyone in the gym, and everyone listening on the radio, was surprised by the judge’s decision. The local newspapers next day screamed, “What must an outsider do to win a fight in Ontario?” To them, Downey had won it, hands down, with a decisive victory.
He fought forty-seven fights in Ontario and parts of the United States and lost only three. By this time, Norman and his wife, Lillian (Piercey), had two children, and they decided to move back to Newfoundland, where he continued his fighting career. He lost an opportunity to fight on the much bigger circuit in Ontario, but the decision had been made. Norm, his wife, and children came back home to his beloved province.
In the latter part of 1931, Lillian Downey and her children moved back to Winterton, and Norm went to St. John’s to find a job and a place to live. He stayed and trained with a pair of local wrestlers, “Cowboy” Len Hughes and Ching Lee, and the trio worked together at a local gym. Norm began picking up offensive and defensive fighting styles from the wrestlers. Later, he found work as a painter with a George Pye who lived on Hamilton Avenue. Every morning, he would jog from his home on Water Street to his employer in Bowring Park, then back home again after he had finished work. He would gather his paint, his brushes, and ladder and walk through the city to paint anything the job demanded. After he finished the day’s painting, he would go and train more at the gym with his wrestler friends before beginning his long jog home again.
In 1936, Norman decide to enter the ring to see what he had lost—or gained—while not honing his boxing skills. In that year, he re-entered the ring and won the featherweight championship of Newfoundland over a fighter named Nat Janes. The Evening Telegram wrote the story of the fight like this:
Downey had a comfortable lead on points up to the end of the second round. Besides having three knockdowns to his credit, Janes was fighting gamely at the opening of the third round when Downey nailed him with a right jab that sent him down to the mat for a count of six. Scarcely had he gained his feet when Downey hit him with another blow that sent him down again for the final count.
Two weeks after his win, he moved up in his weight class to the lightweight division. Soon he was squaring off with another tough fighter, Edward Learning, for the right to hold the Earl Haig Belt of boxing supremacy in that weight division in Newfoundland. It was donated to the Newfoundland Amateur Boxing Association by Earl Haig of England. The belt was named after the first Earl Haig, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, of England, for “the title of the peerage of the United Kingdom” in 1919. It was quite an honour to receive this award as a fighter. The belt was valued at fifty pounds, or seventy-six Canadian dollars. There was an ivory carving of two boxers in the middle of the belt, with three pieces of gold, on each side of the fighters, linked together with two gold chains.
Downey defeated Learning in a close bout that went the full five rounds. The Evening Telegram read:
The first bout was equal. Downey won the second, third, and fourth by a shade. When they came out for the final round, Learning, who was behind by eight points, lashed out at Downey with a sharp right that sent his opponent to the floor. Learning meted out further punishment, and once again Downey was dropped. Gaining his feet, he traded punch for punch with Learning until the final bell. The result was a win for Downey by a total of 181-1/2 points to 178 for his opponent. Norm Downey has won the Earl Haig Belt for boxing supremacy for Newfoundland!
After winning the title, Norm had to post a $1,000 bond to be able to take his prized possession to his hometown of Winterton to show his family and friends. The belt was displayed at E. J. Green’s local grocery store in Winterton. While most of his fights were in St. John’s, Downey did fight in Winterton, against Leo Hayward, also of St. John’s. It was fought at the Orangemen’s Lodge, and the house was packed. There were 250 people present, and when it was over, Downey had won. His cousin Ambrose Downey saw most of Norm’s fights.
“Every time he fought, he had a ticket for me,” Ambrose said. “He had a wonderful left hook. If he got his fist under the opponent’s ribs, that’s where he would win. That’s the way he beat most of his challengers. He was a live wire and used to hold the ropes a lot, and he would use that to his advantage. He also carried the fight no matter who he was fighting against. He used to go after the guy at the start of the first round and every other round. He always went straight ahead. That’s the only way he knew how to fight. In the ring he was a smart cookie.”
World War II broke out a few years after his victory over Ed Learning. During this time, his championship belt was stored in a velvet case at the local law offices of Stirling and Higgins for safekeeping. In the basement of the lawyers’ offices was a gym where Downey sometimes trained. Somehow, the belt was misplaced and never seen again. Norm Downey was the only fighter to ever have his name appear on it. He fought more than 147 fights in his career. Many of those took place at the old Prince’s Rink, right behind the ori
ginal Hotel Newfoundland in St. John’s. He was also friends with another fighter from St. John’s, Tom “Pussyfoot” Benson, who was an instructor with us at the Catholic Boys Club in our teenage years.
In 1939, his wife joined him in St. John’s, and the following year he opened a successful grocery store, N. J. Downey’s on New Gower Street. He ran the store with his family for forty years, until he and his wife retired in 1981. Both Norman and Lillian passed away the following year. He was inducted into the Baccalieu Trail Chamber of Commerce on August 27, 1996.
To us, as kids, Norm Downey was a very nice man. Dickie and I would go in his store all the time to buy treats when we made a few dollars running errands on Water or New Gower streets. Of course, we didn’t know that he was such a renowned fighter. We just knew him as Mr. Downey and, in later years as we got older, as Norm. But you could tell that you didn’t take liberties with this man. Though soft-spoken and kind to his customers, he seemed like a person who was not to be pushed around. When Dickie and I knew him, Norm Downey was short and stocky, solidly built, weighing in at about 180 pounds.
In 1955 or 1956, we started going to Mr. Downey’s or to Lar’s Fruit Store (operated by Lar Crocker and his wife, Winnie), on the corner of Queen’s Street, to buy treats and fruit. Both stores had some of the best selections in St. John’s. Lar’s was known for its amazing custard cones in the 1960s. I would bring Mom fresh fruit from both stores when I worked for F. W. Woolworth’s, or I’d just drop in to get a Graham Sandwich, my favourite candy bar. The stores were just around the corner from Woolworth’s on Water Street.
I was working late one evening at Woolworth’s and on my way home when I decided make a detour to Downey’s store to get some fresh fruit for Mom as a surprise. When I walked in, two guys were getting out of hand with Mr. Downey and his wife. One guy was shouting at Lillian and another girl who worked there, while the other was leaning on the counter, laughing at the old guy and taking it all in. The tall one was singing out that he was being ripped off. I had seen it before in our neighbourhood: two young punks trying to be heroes going up again “the old guy.”