by Paul Almond
“At length, on November 13th, they embarked once more for St. Paul’s River inside Bonne Esperance, where the Reverend C.E. Bishop proposed to winter. After a long trip they reached Old Fort island outside their goal on November 19th an hour after midday, and thence Mr. Bishop sent the Rev. J. Almond and his Pilot at once back on the Evangeline to Mutton Bay, while he himself made his way to St. Paul’s River that same evening” (p. 46).
Fifty-Fifth Report of the Incorporated Church Society of the Diocese of Quebec for the year ending December 1896
The Rev. C.E. Bishop reports:
“On August 8th, 1896, we became the happy parents of a son...”
“The weather has been very bad and rough this fall, so we have had rather a hard time. Once we nearly lost the ‘Evangeline,’ also at another time our own lives, but were providentially spared...”
Fifty-Sixth Report (1897)
The Rev. J. Almond reports:
“This autumn we have two lady teachers added to our staff: Miss Lilian Almond [his sister] and Miss Marion Travers [also from Shigawake]...
“I was stationed at Mutton Bay until the 20th of January, and besides my services I taught day school. During the months of February and March I journeyed over 550 miles with my dogs and komatik, down to the Newfoundland district as far as L’Anse aux Loups.” Added later: “I have my own dogs and cometique and find it very convenient. There is nothing really worthy of the name of hardship, and the work is of a most enjoyable character.”[!]
“The months of May and June I spent at Mutton Bay. June and part of July in the mission boat, I visited the Coast line from Natashquan to Bonne Esperance [in the east by Blancs Sablons]... Mr. Bishop, accompanied by his wife, left for the Mission of Hereford on the fifth day of September.”
“I was admitted to the priesthood on the 5th of September, and appointed to succeed the Rev. C.E. Bishop as Priest in charge of the Mission of the Labrador. At Mutton Bay, Mr. Organ continues as lay reader, Mr. Thomas Green as our Sunday School Superintendent, and at Harrington, Mr. John Bobbitt acts as Lay Reader, holding service twice every Sunday. Mrs. Dan Bobbitt superintends the Sunday school...”
“The fishing in some harbours has proved a failure the past summer and some of my people will be in sore need of both food and clothing...”
Fifty-Seventh Report (1898)
The Rev. George Pye acknowledges the lord bishop’s assistance in getting fifty bags of flour delivered from the government of the day to help the populace through their hard winter. The cod fishery had failed.
WILFRED GRENFELL:
“Dr. Wilfred Grenfell came to Harrington and thus Mutton Bay and la Tabatière before 1900” (ref. Among the Deep Sea Fishers). “He came back in 1900 to begin plans for a hospital at Harrington and a nursing station at Mutton Bay in 1905–1906, which in fact opened in 1907.”
SOURCE: Sharon Ransom, Curator, Harrington Harbour Museum
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON:
“In the summer of 1833, Audubon, his son, and several friends embarked on the schooner Ripley and sailed from Eastport, Maine, to what Audubon called the Labrador.... He was not opposed to hunting for sport food, or commercial gain; he had hunted for pleasure himself.... But he saved his most withering condemnation for ‘the Eggers’ of Labrador and Newfoundland who caused unbelievable havoc among the nesting colonies.”
SOURCE: Audubon’s Wilderness Palette: The Birds of Canada
by David M. Lank (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1998)
The Deserter
Imagine you’re in a swaying hammock on a British man-o’war around 1800, riding out a harsh spring storm in a deserted estuary of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Behind those high red cliffs lie a hundred miles of uncharted wilderness, populated only by indigenous peoples. If you jump ship and are caught, you will be branded a deserter – subject to death by one thousand lashes. What can you bring to help you survive? Within minutes, the ice-strewn waters could freeze your body and claim your soul. If this were your one chance for a life in the New World, would you jump?
Thomas Manning did, and his leap into uncertainty begins the epic tale of a pioneer family, one of the many who built our great nation. Through his and his descendants’ eyes, we watch one small community’s impact on the great events which swirl about them and bring conflicts they must face in their struggles to create homes and families.
Absorbing, touching and full of adventure, THE DESERTER is Book One of the Alford Saga, a series chronicling two hundred years of Canadian history, as seen through the eyes of a settler’s family.
ISBN 978-1-55278-977-3
mm paperback $10.99 CAD
The Survivor
Thomas Manning, branded a deserter from the British Navy, is forced to change his name to James Alford to avoid the death penalty. Determined to forge a new life on the Gaspé Peninsula, he struggles to survive the harsh landscape and win the hand of Catherine Garrett.
After working in harsh sub-zero woods, he saves the life of an orphan working in a sawmill, and so gains crucial lumber to build a homestead out of intractable wilderness. But first he must battle murderous brigands to rescue a starving bull calf he hopes will be the first of the oxen he so desperately needs to clear his land. Finally, heroically surviving Canada’s worst famine, he faces down implacable bureaucracies to keep the farm he has been fighting to being under cultivation.
A captivating and fast-paced adventure, THE SURVIVOR is Book Two of the Alford Saga, a series chronicling two hundred years of Canadian history, as seen through the eyes of one settler’s family.
ISBN 978-1-55278-967-4
C Paperback $19.95 CAD
The Pioneer
The riveting Alford Saga continues with James Alford, the Deserter, battling old age and ferocious winters, but even more crippling, the departure of his son and only heir, Young Jim, who sets out on snowshoes for Montreal, seven hundred miles away from their home in Shigawake.
Arriving at last in Montreal, Jim is driven by starvation into a back-breaking job constructing the Victoria Bridge. He finds lodgings with an Irish widow in Griffintown, and falls in love. But after a stinging deception, he rejects the bitter realities of urban life and returns to the Old Homestead and its community of pioneers. His ageing father recruits him to rally recalcitrant neighbours to found a school for their children and a church for their worship in Shigawake.
Enthralling and adventurous, THE PIONEER is Book Three in the Alford Saga, a series chronicling two hundred years of Canadian history, as seen through the eyes of a settler’s family.
ISBN 978-1-77087-123-6
C Paperback $19.95 CAD