by Farley Mowat
“Somebody had to come,” Mark replied with cheerful stoicism. “And I’m enjoying it. There’re so many good people and so much work to be done in the parishes–so very much.”
“How often do you get to Grey River?” I wondered.
“Not often enough. I take the coast boat or a lift on anything happens to come this way. I rarely get here Sundays, but the people don’t care. They don’t expect miracles,” he said, laughing.
“But this place has special problems.”
He paused and I could see he was reluctant to describe his smallest and poorest parish in an unkind way. “They’re very independent, the River people. They’ve had to be to survive.”
“Any idea how long they’ve been here?” Farley asked.
“Not really. The markers in the cemetery are made of wood and only last a generation or two. My oldest parishioner, Annie Warren, thinks she is ninety-eight and she tells me her grandmother was born here. That would go back to about 1800. We just don’t know. We do know, from their surnames, that many of their ancestors must have come from England–Dorset and Devon mostly–like most English-speaking folk on this coast. Historically it has been overlooked.”
Farley nodded. “Easy to see why. You can sail along this coast even on a clear day and never even see the entrance.”
“But isn’t it surprising, once you’ve got in, the way it changes?” Mark added. “All the runs and tickles full of trout and salmon. Trees in all the valleys. A land of plenty, you’d think. Have you been farther up? Into the arms?”
“We’re going this afternoon,” Farley replied. “Care to come along?”
“I’d dearly like to,” Mark said wistfully, “but I’ve got so much to do before the westbound steamer comes in tomorrow. The church is falling down, and I still haven’t found a teacher for the school. Nobody from outside wants to spend the winter in River.”
“Mark, why does everyone look down their noses at this place?” I asked.
He shook his head as if embarrassed. “Perhaps because most people like to feel superior to someone else. I’d rather not go into it, if you don’t mind. There are many stories, and probably they are just that–stories. Thanks for the drink. I must be getting along. Aunt Fannie always has dinner for me when I arrive.”
“Aunt Fannie?”
“Fannie Young. Fine woman. Very kind. She usually boards the teacher, and she runs the telegraph. Something of an unofficial leader. No one would acknowledge she has any special position but not much gets done without her instigation or approval.”
“Any relation to Henry Young, the broom maker?” I asked.
He pondered the question. “I don’t think so, Claire, but you have to remember about two-thirds of the people here have the surname Young. I still haven’t sorted out who is cousin or aunt or uncle to whomever else.”
“One more question. Can you tell me what it means when someone here says ‘gone bukams’?”
“Bukams? Oh, you must mean Buchans. That’s a mining company in the middle of Newfoundland. A lot of Grey River men go there to work as guides for the prospectors because they are all first-rate countrymen. There’s a saying on the coast they are more like Indians than the Indians. It’s certainly true they prefer to be inland rather than at sea. One of the things that makes them different.”
Not far north of the settlement the fiord branched into three arms. The longest led to the northeast, another to the east, and a shorter one to the westward. We stopped the engine and drifted while we studied the chart, trying to decide which way to go.
The chart itself was an adventure. It had been laid down in the 1760s by the celebrated Captain Cook, long before he sailed to fame and death in the South Pacific. He had been just thirty-five when he explored the Newfoundland coast for the British Admiralty, and the charts he made then were still essentially the ones we had before us now.
“God almighty, look at the depths!” said Farley, looking at our chart. “Two hundred fathoms below us and thirty fathoms right to the shore! Our anchor chain wouldn’t reach the bottom till we ran our bowsprit into the cliffs. And see how many headlands he called Blow-me-down! But it looks as if there might be a safe cove we could crawl into away up in the eastern arm.”
There was, and it was spectacular: a niche about the size of a small ballroom, surrounded on three sides by spruce trees clinging to almost sheer cliffs, with a weightless filigree of a tiny stream floating down. Called the Nook, it was small enough so Farley could string mooring lines ashore from bow and stern, making use of some very old mooring rings set into the rocky walls that he said were wrought iron and big enough to hold a full-rigged ship.
Next day we scrambled to the top of the cliff looming high above to look for the source of the waterfall. When we reached the crest, we found ourselves on a bald ridge separating Grey River’s eastern arm from the open sea boiling into Gulch Cove, six hundred feet below. The view was spectacular. We could see south to the Penguin Islands and beyond.
Surely we weren’t the first to appreciate this wonderful vantage point. A lookout here could have kept an eye open for anything coming or going to seaward for twenty miles. If it was an enemy on the horizon, you would have had lots of warning. If it was a potential prize, there would have been plenty of time to spring a trap. What a lair the Nook would have made for buccaneers!
During the days that followed–most of them sunny and warm–we explored the arms in our dory. On a flat point of gravel and sand between the western and northeast arms, we found old circular tent pits and bits of flint marking what must have been a camping place used by aboriginal peoples for a long time. Grey River–an actual river that empties into the northeast arm–is one of the longest on the island. Its headwaters almost connect it to Red Indian Lake, the Beothuks’ last refuge. From there the Exploits River runs all the way to the northeast coast of Newfoundland. This was once the major north and south canoe route right across the island for the Beothuks, then for the Mi’kmaqs, then for European “furriers.”
One night in our lamp-lit little cabin Farley mused about that. “Buccaneers and Red Indians. Both of them outside the law and every man’s hand against them. I wouldn’t wonder if they got together in more ways than one…and if some of them are still here in Grey River.”
One day we rowed to a little brook on the north side of the eastern arm. Though Seal Brook was small enough to jump across, it was swarming with sea trout about a foot long. We caught enough for dinner, then picked blueberries to be eaten with canned milk and sugar for dessert. There was a bit of a sandy beach covered with wild peas at the mouth of the brook. The peas were so tiny it took me over an hour to gather and shell enough for a meal. I didn’t mind. I was learning to appreciate the Newfoundland phrase: “Dey’s lots o’ toime, me dear. Lots o’ toime.”
Another morning I woke to the sound of something squishy flapping around in the cockpit. When we went on deck, we found there had been a run of squid into the cove during the night and a falling tide had stranded some in pools among the shore rocks. Albert was a born fish-dog. He loved to eat any kind of fish and could catch them too. As far as he was concerned, squid were fish, so he had been busy snapping them up one by one and carrying them back to drop them in the cockpit, where they squirmed about and shot black ink all over everything.
Farley cleaned several squid, which I stuffed with salt pork and wild peas and baked in our tiny folding oven. They tasted wonderful, though Albert preferred to eat his share raw.
In the evenings we read and at 8:00 p.m. would turn on our small battery radio to hear the familiar voice of Harry Brown at CBN in St. John’s reading the marine forecast:
“…And now the weather for mariners and ships at sea…” came the faint, static-ridden voice. “…moderate to strong southeast winds with visibility reduced to three miles, lowering to zero in mist and fog.” Since the marine forecasts tended to err on the side of optimism, this meant that if we left the shelter of our idyllic cove, the fog would likely be
so thick on the outer coast we wouldn’t be able to see our hands in front of our faces, so any idea we might have had of sailing farther east was forgotten. Grey River seemed to have the best weather in Newfoundland so we happily decided to enjoy its seclusion. For nine days we did just that, never seeing another person. We were at peace there as I have seldom been before, and rarely since.
Our time in Grey River was running out. Reluctantly Claire and I hauled the anchor and sailed back to the settlement, a gentle northerly breeze pushing us along and clear skies overhead, although there was a sou’east gale raging along the outer coast. The storm outside was fierce enough to drive the old schooner Queen of Roses into shelter. She was moored to the wharf so we made fast alongside, then went aboard her for a chat with her skipper.
I thought he would be incredulous when I told him what the weather was like a few minutes and a few miles inland, but he just nodded.
“Yiss, me son. River be like that. Makes her own weather. Don’t like nothing from outside. Specially strangers. I’d say you and your missus was some lucky you had no trouble. Most folk gives River a wide berth. When the Queen has to put in here, I sees to it all hands minds they ways. Don’t want no foolishness here. Don’t even let me old dog go ashore. They don’t abide dogs in Grey River.”
“We’ve noticed there are no dogs. Why would that be?”
“Well, skipper, you don’t hear it spoke too loud but ’tis said that in the old times River folk was so foolish they’d not put by enough grub to last the winter…and when they run out, they’d bile the dogs.”
“But why would that turn them against dogs now?”
“P’raps to spike the tale. If they was no dogs in River, how could they have et ’em? See?”
Claire and I puzzled over the anomaly of a dogless Newfoundland outport. It made little sense. Not long after returning to Burgeo, I asked Spencer Lake if he could throw any light on the mystery. Spencer told me that the dog-eating “claptrap” had originated in the 1880s after a pair of Nova Scotian men trawling for halibut from dories belonging to a banking schooner became separated from the mother ship during a sudden snowstorm.
“It was January, and wicked weather. Those two men in their dory couldn’t find their schooner, but three days later happened onto Grey River. By then one fellow was frozen to death and the other had both his hands froze solid to the oars.
“Those times houses in places like River stood empty in winter because people went away into the country to live in tilts in places where there was plenty of firewood. Luckily a few River people were wintering at Frenchman’s Cove only a few miles in and they came upon the dory.
“The long and the short of it is they rescued the survivor and looked after him as best they could all the rest of the winter because he was too knocked about and sick with gangrene in his feet and hands to be taken anywhere else. Come spring he was well enough so they could sail him in an open boat to Burgeo. By then he’d lost all his fingers and most of his toes. The men who brought him to Burgeo also brought those bits of him along in a wooden box so they could be buried with him if he died here, as they thought he would.
“Instead, he got better and went on by steamer to Nova Scotia and never took his toes and fingers with him. Nobody knew what to do with the bits so they asked Sam Small, the chief merchant here, and Sam said to bury them in the churchyard, where I suppose they still are.
“The tale got around that the poor chap had spent a terrible winter at Grey River in a cabin with nothing to eat but seaweed and dog meat. Well, of course, that story went all up and down the coast and the River people couldn’t shake it. So at some point they decided to be rid of dogs entirely. How they were able to make out without dogs for hunting and hauling boggles me, but that’s what they did, and still do. As far as River folk are concerned, dogs don’t exist.”
A few months later, when Claire and I were visiting Boston, I told my editor Peter Davison about the Grey River dogs.
“Grey River wouldn’t happen to be the same place as Little River, would it?” he asked. “If so, I might have something to add to your story.”
He gave me a book recently published by his own firm. It was called Lone Voyager, the biography of Nova Scotian fisherman, Howard Blackburn, who, early in the twentieth century, became famous in New England for sailing small boats across the Atlantic–not once, but twice, and single-handed both times. Moreover, Blackburn had accomplished this feat despite having lost all the fingers from both his hands.
It was Blackburn’s fingers that rested in Burgeo’s churchyard.
The book, together with excerpts from Blackburn’s own account, provided some graphic descriptions of Grey River just before the turn of the last century.
On the bitter winter’s day in January of 1883 when the cast-away’s dory drifted ashore at Little River (as he knew the place), Blackburn was met by a crowd of “thin and tattered folk…children running about bare-foot despite the rind of snow and ice along the shore…[and] by a pack of yelping dogs.”
He was carried over the ice-edge and across the frozen landwash to a little group of log cabins and taken into the home of Frank Lushman and his family. His recollections of the cabin centred on a massive stone fireplace in the middle of the dirt floor and on the absence of lamps or even candles. There were only oil-filled saucers with floating wicks to illuminate the low-ceilinged, smoke-filled principal room and the two adjacent cubbyholes that served as bedrooms for the seven members of the Lushman family.
Soon after Howard’s arrival, a wooden tub filled with slush and pickling salt was brought in from outside and he was told to submerge his frozen hands and feet in this frigid brine.
“I will say no more about the agony I was compelled to undergo while the frost was slowly driven out.”
The five families occupying Frenchman’s Cove shared what little they had with Blackburn but their scant stocks of flour and meal were almost exhausted. The caribou had failed to come down to the coast that winter, and even salt cod was running out. By February the only source of fresh meat available was their dogs.
One by one the dogs disappeared into the black iron pot suspended over the fire. Blackburn claimed he could not bring himself to eat the meat, but said he was thankful for the broth.
Each morning Mrs. Lushman and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Nan, trimmed the rotting flesh and bone from Howard’s gangrenous hands and feet, then dressed the stumps as best they could.
It was fifty-one days from the loss of my first finger until the last fell off. Helpless as an infant I lay on a straw mat by the fire. My feet would not bear my weight and there was nothing I could do for myself. My life was in these people’s hands. Every morning for the first two months someone would come in and say:
“Well, Skipper Frank, how is that man this morning?”
Skipper Lushman would always tell them:
“He will never see another sun rise.”
I got so used to that I did not mind it.
One morning a man came in just after they had dressed my hands and feet and said:
“How is that man this morning?”
Skipper Frank answered:
“My God, he is going to live!”
I turned to ask him why he thought so but the other man saved me the trouble. He asked first, and Skipper Frank said:
“This is the first morning since the poor man has been with us that I have noticed any steam from his water.”
Howard Blackburn also remembered having seen sixteen dogs when he first came to Little River. Only one remained to watch his departure when, in mid-May, he was placed in Skipper Frank’s skiff and returned to the outer world.
Winter of Their Times
One autumn, at Jack McClelland’s urging, I decided a book about outport life might be worth doing. Jack agreed, but wanted it illustrated so I invited photographer John de Visser to come and spend some time with Claire and me.
John arrived early in February and soon afterwards we seized an oppor
tunity to visit Grey River with Mark Genge. We were to make the voyage in the Geraldine, a forty-foot longliner from Ramea that had been fished hard for twenty years until, as our neighbour Sim Spencer put it, she got too long in the tooth for it. Then John Penney and Sons used her as a smack for collecting fish caught at Grey River, Fransway (or Francois), and Rencontre. When she became too decrepit even for this, the company began chartering her to government officials and other unwary strangers for trips along the coast. Now a hapless St. John’s bureaucrat had hired her for a trip to Grey River to inspect the government wharf there, and Mark had begged permission for himself and us to go along.
The voyage did not begin well. Although the cold but relatively calm weather was civil enough, Geraldine’s old engine broke down not long after leaving Burgeo, and we had to be ignominiously towed into Ramea harbour. The ever-hospitable Marie Penney invited us to her mansion while Geraldine was being repaired. That evening we dined at Marie’s opulent table on a baron of beef and a twenty-pound salmon, while her major-domo kept our glasses filled.
The table talk centred on the fate of two large side draggers and their thirty-six crewmen, all from the Sou’west Coast, who had vanished a few weeks earlier while fishing on the Grand Banks in frigid and gale-ridden weather. Both had reported by radio that they were experiencing severe icing, with driven spray freezing so thickly to their rigging and upper works the crews were unable to clear it off. When, later that raging night, both ships went off the air, never to be heard from again, it was presumed they had lost stability and turned turtle, going down so suddenly there had been no time to send an SOS.
Marie’s distress over this disaster was sincere (Ramea alone lost nine men), yet she must have been fully aware, as were most of the rest of us, that the missing ships, bought second-hand from Britain, had not been designed or constructed to endure the horrendous conditions prevailing on the Grand Banks in winter. I knew about them from the skipper of one that had limped into Burgeo a few weeks earlier with a twenty-degree list, so heavily burdened with ice she looked almost as much like a berg as a ship.