Some Day the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More

by Brian Peckford

  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 too
k 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.