“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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I dedicate this book to all those Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who remained steadfast 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 sa
iled 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 i
t 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 . . .
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