by David Ward
Junior is not surprised. He’s knows a lot about life on the sea, and me. He knows I’m not normally so slow, nor is it my style to sit down so much. Junior figured out what was going on long before I did. “I wouldn’t normally start in this area,” he says as he expertly guides our craft into a large section of marauding water. “But they’re calling for twelve- to fifteen-knot easterlies, so I want to pull these pots before things get too rough for you.”
So that’s what we do — we attend to the business at hand — but I must say that I’m not myself. The conversation I have in my head helps a little. This is all part of what you came to McCallum for — in for a penny, in for a pound, I remind myself. That puffiness around your eyes, the tightening of the muscles in your neck, and the terrible taste you sense in your throat every time you catch a whiff of the bait box? Forget about it. As for those huge gaping holes in the sea that open up every time the undertow sucks us towards sawtoothed rocks? Stop staring into them. Which I did. Until I couldn’t anymore.
Vomiting is a violent event. The way the egg, toast, and oatmeal I had for breakfast come back up is not only scary, it’s abusive to my body. It doesn’t matter how often I’ve vomited, I still resist the next time, even when experience tells me that if I just allow myself to offload what’s inside my stomach, I’ll feel much better afterwards.
At least Junior finds it funny. “Don’t vomit on our extra lifejackets, Dave, when you crawl into the fetal position and start crying up under the bow,” he says. “And don’t think I’m taking you back in, you scurvy dog — I’ve used enough gas bringing your big body out here. There’s no way I’m hauling you all the way back to McCallum without a full day’s catch on board. And that’s going to be hard to get, because the way you’re throwing your breakfast overboard, those lobsters are not going to be bothering with our bait.”
Vomit, spew, puke, gag, retch, hurl, or heave. Call it what you want. Only six more hours on increasingly rough seas, old man. But less time than that before some rotten fishermen we crossed paths with midmorning lets all of McCallum know that I barfed my breakfast overboard.
I call Claire Mowat at her Port Hope, Ontario, home. I ask what she’s been up to. She informs me that she’s been busy working with her accountant as they sort through everything that was, and still is, Farley Mowat Inc.
Claire and I have continued to occasionally correspond by snail mail — I send her postcards showing the Southwest at its best, and she writes me on an old-time typewriter. When Farley was still alive she told me that the two of them were reliving their Newfoundland lives vicariously through me. That was kind of her to say.
Claire’s incredible. I still have a strong desire to connect with her, to share in our common Southwest Coast experience. I update her on the changing landscape called my love life, and I tell her that I think of this book that you’re reading as a modern-day Farley Mowat. Then I suddenly feel insecure — there’s been only one Farley — and I tell her so. She says, “There is nothing wrong with describing your book that way — you’re saying it is an adventure story, a certain kind of genre, about a distinct way of life that my late husband played a big role in pioneering. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Claire also answers my questions about Farley’s passing. “Life certainly is different, learning to live alone after all these years,” she says, “but I feel blessed that I had him for as long as I did. He was almost ninety-three, and he’d had a heart condition for fifteen years.”
Aware of the Southwest’s resettlement sadness, Claire offers up a desire of her own. “I hope Francois doesn’t go,” she states, and I know why. Aesthetically speaking, Francois is picture-perfect. “As for your book, I’ll be the first to buy it,” she adds. What a thrill that is for me to hear. When Farley Mowat’s widow — a fine author in her own right — states that she intends to be my book’s first buyer, I tell myself that I’d better help to make that happen.
Claire’s parents had a cottage in Fenelon Falls in the forties and fifties. “There was no one around at that time,” she tells me. “They had miles of shoreline along the Burnt River all to themselves.”
Claire remembers Fenelon Falls fondly. When I tell her that I am struggling with the idea of living there — of returning to a place I swore I never would — she once again shows me what a caring, calming influence she can be. “There is nothing like a small town,” she reminds me. Then, when it comes time to sign off, she insists that I “enjoy Fenelon Falls,” in a way that tells me I need to get on with whatever’s ahead. In a world where I am often asked to help others sort through their thoughts and dreams, it’s sweet how generously Claire performs this act for me.
Twenty-four
Hennessey is not hopeful the town will ever get the required 90 per cent, but says she will continue to fight for relocation for as long as she can.
— Laura Howells, CBC News, June 8, 2015
I think that freedom — the ability to act as one wants — whether you measure it with time, money, talent, flexibility, or other forms of currency, can only be fully realized by leveraging that liberty. All the money in the world, for example, is worthless if you don’t use it in ways that work. Not that I don’t recognize the comfort that comes with having a reservoir of resources. Just that I think that dying with a lot of money (or unused flexibility, or unrealized talent, or . . .) in the bank would be, for me, a disastrous way to go out. So after sitting, single, for five years in an isolated outport, with an excess of freedom at my fingertips, I believe that I should know by now what I’m willing to spend it on, and I do. I’m ready to leverage it on Liz.
I feel like I’ve spent my entire adult life preparing for what is, admittedly, an unsettling circumstance — I’m considering giving my heart to one seriously messed up mother of two with a scary past and a dangerously dysfunctional day-to-day — and that if I’m not emotionally strong enough to work with Liz’s pain by now, I never will be. I still have a lot of personal issues of my own, but I’m convinced that I’m in a capable place when it comes to controlling them. So if I find that I’m overwhelmed with the seriousness of Liz’s situation — she’s full of fear, and her primary coping mechanism is denial — I’ve got no one to blame but myself. In the meantime, Liz looks like my adventure of a lifetime.
So I lean a broom against the door to my little McCallum house. A broom across your door, in McCallum, is a way of telling others that no one is home. That broom says, “If you’re needing something inside, you’ll have to help yourself.” Then I slide down the stairs that Lloyd Durnford built for me after my old ones rotted away.
My walk to the wharf is not a private one. Everybody sees me leaving and asks where I’m going. The funniest part of this pattern is almost everyone knows my answers in advance. Word of mouth in McCallum moves more quickly than any of us let on. I’m not complaining. A lot of people are only wanting to make small talk. Asking where you’re going, and for how long, is not a lot different than conversing about the weather. Or it was before resettlement money was offered. Now the thought of someone leaving strikes deep at the core of our basic fear that we may end up alone and lonely.
I’m not only talking about the people who want to leave McCallum but feel they can’t. The gang that votes to stay also doesn’t want anyone to leave. They might pretend that they’ve been too busy to think about such thoughts, but the most common dream that most outport people wish for is the one where things go back to the way they were when they were young. And that fantasy works best when everyone is present.
This feeling of dread regarding utter abandonment is not unique to outports, of course. It’s just more obvious in this fishbowl environment, how we struggle with change. In McCallum, this dilemma is in your face every day when people’s eyes well up with tears at talk of days gone by.
I remember when a National Geographic photographer from France visited McCallum. I showed him Farley Mowat’s old book, This Rock wit
hin the Sea, which contains photographs of outport people in the sixties, living their lives along the Southwest Coast. Those photographs, taken by John de Visser of Cobourg, Ontario, show outport people inside their homes, partying, praying, posing . . . There is even a series of photos taken at a funeral, something I would never attempt to do today for fear of offending.
My new National Geographic photographer friend and I tried to figure out why it is that de Visser, who only visited the region for a brief time, had so much more freedom to document outport people living their private lives than photographers do today. I said it was because those with the pluck to pose for a photo have moved onto the likes of Ontario, Boston, or Alberta. There are personal reasons that a particular profile of person remains in McCallum — they’re genuinely private, and often shy.
My friend thought that when de Visser snapped his photographs, people were not as aware of the way that images can be used abusively — that there weren’t as many photos travelling the world for the sole purpose of humiliating those pictured in them. I think that when Farley Mowat brought international attention to Burgeo’s cringeworthy whale killing, the Southwest Coast got its first taste of this public shaming way of life, and that everyone today is extremely aware of how technology has increased the potential for big-time embarrassment.
There also aren’t as many people living on the Southwest Coast as there were when Mowat and de Visser visited. There aren’t even as many as there were when I arrived. Where my McCallum home sits today stand three empty houses that only five years ago contained a total of ten residents. The house closest to that cluster is also no longer occupied, since McCallum’s oldest person passed away.
Reginald James Fudge was a sweetheart. He was always friendly to my out-of-province visitors. Perhaps his experiences on Halifax fishing boats helped him adjust to the idea of interacting with outsiders. But whatever his motivation, Reg always found time to say hello or talk hockey with my company as they came and went.
Reg watched a lot of hockey. More than five hundred games per year, what with today’s satellite access. It’s no wonder Reg did so well in McCallum’s weekly hockey pool. “The night after the Leafs made their trades, I watched to see how the new players was doing,” he once told me. “I watched the Calgary game first, and then I watched the Anaheim game [an 11:30 p.m. start in Newfoundland]. The guys the Leafs got did good, but the guys they traded did not . . . No, my son, the boys who went to Calgary didn’t do so good.”
Reg found hockey to be “a good way to pass the time,” and with his home sitting at the bottom of a steep granite cliff that blocked sunlight from reaching him for six months of the year, passing time was no small consideration. “I’d like to be outside, chopping wood, or helping my sons, but I can’t no more,” he’d say, in reference to his declining body. “So I watch a lot of hockey.”
Reg and I would occasionally talk about a time when McCallum had no televisions. “I remember when Canada beat Russia — the game when Henderson scored in the last minute,” he’d say. “We took a radio on the boat so we could listen while we pulled in nets.
“And I remember listening to a game between Montreal and Boston — Boston was winning 6–1, but Montreal won the game.” While Reg’s recollection of that contest was fun to hear, it’s the hearty way in which he laughed at that memory that stuck with me. A Boston fan, Reg’s tendency to laugh at a Bruins loss served to illustrate one of his most appealing qualities — Reg took neither the game nor himself too seriously.
Even when his body no longer cooperated, the way that Reg moved on his long walk to and from church was more graceful than most men. I don’t know how he did it. I remember another time when he handed me a huge bag of scallops — each one as big as a golf ball — when I knew how hard it must have been for him to help pull the cage those critters were caught in off the ocean floor and into the boat. It was easy to see that Reg once lived a very different life, raising six children with his late wife Annie, fishing and hunting, picking berries, and going in the country for weeks at a time without cell phones, fibreglass boats, and heavily horse-powered motors.
I was proud to be part of the team that buried Reg. While others faced the strenuous job of digging, picking, and jackhammering through granite, I was asked to assist with the careful lowering of the casket, and the backfilling of the hole. I saw those tasks as my final chance to assist with anything Uncle Reg–related. Even when staring down death, Reg was considerate. He sent a last-minute message to the burial crew, telling them that he knew how difficult jackhammering through rock can be, so no one was to worry about the depth of his grave. “I’ll be all right, my son,” he said.
Reg’s son Herman — McCallum’s unofficial greeter — had to leave town as a result of his dad’s death, what with no one to take care of him. While saddened by his father’s passing, Herman took his own departure well. Herman saw himself as leaving on a great adventure. He stood at the starboard waving, smiling, and parroting messages he had heard others express about the sad state of affairs in McCallum, as the ferry pulled away from the wharf. Herman’s leaving, however, left a large hole in McCallum’s heart, because Herman brought more volume, energy, and identity to this community than the rest of us put together.
Tim Fudge — Reg’s highly capable late-thirties son who was left alone at home after Herman moved on — was forced to relocate as well, but only to another McCallum locale, after his water froze when there were no longer enough neighbours nearby to facilitate adequate flow. It had been Reg’s job to keep that water moving and their wood stove stoked while Tim went out to work. Tim said that when he finally left the family home, he felt like he was leaving his dear old dad behind, so he went back and plugged in night-lights. Such a sweet and thoughtful thing to do, and so symbolic of all that’s right around here. Yet the vocal majority in this beleaguered province, and politicians as a whole, insist on treating these outport people poorly.
Everything dies, even communities and multigenerational ways of life — I realize that — but in the meantime, we don’t need to rob these dying entities of their dignity. This province can support these few people with something other than cold, hard, unconfirmed cash and contempt. Civil servants could work with outport people regarding their situation and include them in the planning process. The Southwest Coast might be a difficult place to call home these days, but it doesn’t have to be nearly as hard as it is. If only the empowered could be compassionate — a concept completely lost on Newfoundland leadership.
The next part of my walk is an undisputedly desolate stretch. The Pooles have gone to Gander, where Ivy’s need for dialysis can be best addressed, the Fudges have left for St. John’s, where they can better deal with Elsie’s Alzheimer’s, and the Crants are visiting their children in Montreal. On those rare occasions where I encounter someone walking the other way, it’s not uncommon for talk to be about resettlement. When I speak with those who wish to take the money, their resentment is greater than ever, while those who chose to stay will say, “Thank God all those hard feelings are gone, and things are back to normal.”
People often ask me how I vote regarding resettlement. I tell them that I consider three points of personal importance. One: if I was motivated by money, I would have stayed in Ontario. Two: I didn’t come here to tell twelfth-generation fishing families how to live their lives. And three: a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money, so I owe it to myself to consider government’s offer very carefully.
No doubt my final point causes the majority to believe that I vote to leave, but what they don’t realize is, if I had been born and raised on the Southwest Coast, I would be in one of two camps — long gone or here until death, as long as no one had to excessively look after me in the meantime.
Yet I don’t blame the ones who wish to go. They’re getting older and need more medical attention, and almost all of those they care about are gone. Plus, it’s time — people have rea
ched a point where they are finally good with going. I’m thrilled for them for that. So I waffle back and forth regarding this resettlement thing, because at the end of the day, I believe that everybody is entitled to a vote. It’s not the fault of anyone around here that the province of Newfoundland has such a hurtful way of doing business.
As I walk my final steps, I run out of time to talk. While this ferry’s crew would never intentionally leave without me, they do have a schedule to keep. This gives me an excuse to slip quickly past the post office, an endless but emotional source of everyday pleasure for me over the past five years, given the friendship I share with the two beautiful women who have managed it throughout my time here. Another place of friendship, Fudge’s Store, is right next door. Fudge’s has been good to me as well, although never so intimate as a quiet little post office in an isolated outport. That opportunity to occasionally talk privately with Linda Durnford or Sharon Feaver has been one of my life’s greatest gifts.
I note that Norman Durnford’s home is also empty. Norm has got himself a Sandyville apartment but is finding it hard to stay away from McCallum most days. And I see that Clyde Feaver is waiting on the wharf, an occurrence that I’m convinced is more than coincidence. I believe my guardian angels have sent Clyde to say goodbye on behalf of the Feaver family, so I quietly acknowledge his princely presence before I board that big rusty boat. “Have a good trip,” he tells me, as I do my best to address him directly.
The boys crank in the catwalk as I stroll to the stern. I know all too well that the back of this boat will be the best place for me to watch McCallum vanish into the fog. Everyone but Lloyd and Linda — my confidantes — have been told that I’m leaving to do some Cape Breton camping, but the truth is, after partaking in my eight-day meditation retreat, I’ll be travelling to Fenelon Falls. I’ve got an Ontario beauty who needs my assistance, and, in complicated ways that I don’t fully understand, I need her help as well.