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The Shipping News (1993) by E. Annie Proulx was a very successful book that introduced life in Newfoundland to an appreciative audience around the world. In due course, Hollywood decided to make the Pulitzer Prize winner into a movie, and Kevin Spacey was selected to star in it, with a supporting cast that included the veteran Newfoundland-born actor Gordon Pinsent. Naturally, they filmed it on location on the Rock. One famous evening in 2000, the cast showed up to relax at Rocky’s bar in Trinity (population: 200) and soon, as word got around, the place was so crowded that the walls were bulging out.
Kevin Spacey — a decent man, despite being a Hollywood star — quietly told the bartender not to worry, that his security people would make sure that these fans didn’t get out of hand, and everything would be fine.
“Kevin, me son,” said the bartender kindly, “these crowds aren’t here because of you. They’re here to see Gordon!”
In Stories About Storytellers I state flatly that “I never met a Newfoundlander I didn’t like.” My friends on the Rock turn thoughtful when I repeat this, treating it as a sort of challenge (“Ah, just wait till he meets grouchy old X, or that mean bastard Y — I must arrange it, then we’ll see”). Or perhaps they regard it as evidence that my list of acquaintances in Newfoundland is much too short, or that I have led a timid, sheltered life. But despite their best efforts, my statement remains true.
And it’s certainly true about Gordon Pinsent. We had bumped into each other occasionally over the years, when the famous actor entered the book world with a couple of novels, and a memoir, and I liked him a lot. But we became friends after he had starred in the 2006 movie Away from Her. As you probably know, this fine Canadian film by Sarah Polley is based on the Alice Munro story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” Gordon stars in it alongside Julie Christie, who (with the help of a Canadian accent that would fool immigration officers) drifts off tragically into the mists of Alzheimer’s. A lovely movie, about an all-too-common family tragedy, and Alice, I know, admires it very much.
After the movie came out, I was sitting beside Alice at the Giller Prize gala when I saw Gordon, agelessly resplendent in his tuxedo, sitting at a table across the room. I slipped away, and asked him if he had ever met Alice Munro. His eyes widened. No, but he would love to. So I had the pleasure of taking him over to meet Alice. He bent over her hand and these two remarkable stars, born within a year of each other, lit up the room with their obvious delight at finally meeting.
And I — standing alongside with a beam that extends to this day as I recall the memory — was able to reflect on how lucky my life had been, putting me into such a happy position, metaphorically introducing unknown writers to the world, or literally introducing Gordon Pinsent to Alice Munro.
At the end of May 2014, I went back to Newfoundland to attend the AGM of the Writers’ Union of Canada, of which I am a proud honorary member. In St. John’s, true to my instincts to find the edge wherever I go (Haida Gwaii, Point Pelee, Grand Manan) and because I had already, on an earlier visit, tramped down Cape Spear, the easternmost point of the continent, I instantly hiked up Signal Hill, to look out at the wide Atlantic. And there, coming smiling out of the crowd of tourists looking for an iceberg, was a solidly built, dark-haired Toronto fellow much less formally dressed than when he works in Garfield Weston’s head office: none other than my friend George Goodwin. He was in town with Sheila for a family wedding. And right there on Signal Hill we recalled the work we had done, involving Gordon Pinsent as a gracious volunteer, in staging the huge fundraising in Toronto for Al Purdy’s A-frame. We marvelled at how Al Purdy’s influence clearly stretches right across the country, to the very edge.
Turning eastward, we marvelled, too, at the stroke of scenic luck that had left a picturesque iceberg adrift right off Signal Hill, the subject of a million snapshots. We even devised the theory that the iceberg was really an inflatable white plastic mock-up, cunningly created and towed into place at night by the Newfoundland tourism authority.
Seriously, icebergs are big business in Newfoundland. I remember one that many years ago attracted thousands to Clarke’s Beach to see its remarkable shape, like the Manhattan skyline. A few years ago there was almost blood on the water in a fight over a big, dramatic iceberg that had floated close to shore. On one side were the industrial boats that were licensed to harvest the ice, taking large chunks of the spectacularly fresh water off the iceberg, to turn it into cool drinks like vodka and beer. Fluttering protectively around the diminishing chunk of ice were the opposing forces of the tour boats that ferry tourists out from St. John’s to see a real live iceberg. “Hands off our iceberg!” “Icebergs are cool!”
Sadly, you can guess who won.
The most important view from Signal Hill is not out to sea, but straight down to The Narrows, the rocky gateway into the wide St. John’s Harbour. The whole harbour is shaped like a hair dryer, with The Narrows as the thin handle. Between the cliffs, the passage into the harbour seems amazingly narrow, as if you could throw a baseball right across it. In the old days even a few inaccurate, rusty cannons on the heights could easily lob cannonballs down onto suicidal attacking ships, making St. John’s one of the safest harbours in the world.
The British navy used it for centuries. As you stand on Signal Hill you can almost hear the snap of the sails of the ships that squeezed through here over the years, carrying men named Cook, and Bligh, and Nelson, and thousands of others. But none of the ancients were involved in a battle more desperate than the one to keep the world free from Hitler in the Second World War, the Battle of the Atlantic. In the early years of the war when Britain stood alone, it seemed that the German U-boat submarines were winning the war. They were sinking so many of the supply ships travelling in convoys across the Atlantic, carrying troops, and arms, and fuel, and food to the besieged British Isles, that Winston Churchill himself feared the worst. In the end, the U-boat war was won, thanks especially to St. John’s — christened “Newfiejohn” by the Canadian sailors who made up the corvette navy.
The Corvette Navy was the title of the book that I published in 1977 by James B. Lamb. Jim was a big, cheery Toronto-born fellow who had spent the war serving in corvettes, rising to command HMCS Minas, then HMCS Camrose, before going on to a career in newspapers in Moose Jaw and Orillia. Stephen Leacock’s Mariposa, where the main naval story concerns the sinking of the Mariposa Belle in five feet of water, was an unlikely place for a Canadian naval war classic to emerge. But that is what we got from Jim Lamb, an absolute classic about what may have been Canada’s greatest contribution to the war.
It was a grim, deadly business, living — constantly wet and tired and often seasick — on the cold North Atlantic, trying to keep dozens of merchant ships in line and haring off to pursue the German submarines in the wolf pack when they made their presence known by sinking yet another ship. All too often there was no time to pick up survivors struggling in the water or shivering in lifeboats. The priority was to keep on hunting the submarines. On occasion this meant dropping depth charges into waters where your own men were swimming, screaming for help . . .
Despite that deadly background, the book is full of humour. Describing the fierce Royal Navy efforts to turn the new recruits — prairie farm boys, Toronto taxi drivers, Quebec bricklayers — into quick-thinking professional seamen, Jim tells the story of the terrifying British admiral, in full, gold-braided uniform, who came aboard a Canadian corvette determined to impart a lesson:
Coming aboard this ship, the Admiral suddenly removed his cap and flung it on the deck, shouting to the astonished quartermaster: “That’s an unexploded bomb; take action, quickly now!”
With surprising sang-froid, the youngster kicked the cap over the side. “Quick thinking!” commended the Admiral. Then, pointing to the slowly sinking cap, heavy with gold lace, the Admiral continued: “That’s a man overboard; jump to it and save him!”
T
he ashen-faced matelot took one look at the icy November sea, then turned and shouted: “Man overboard! Away lifeboat’s crew!”
The look on the Admiral’s face, as he watched his expensive Gieves cap slowly disappear into the depths while a cursing, fumbling crew attempted to get a boat ready for lowering, was balm to the souls of all who saw it.
Jim also writes fondly about St. John’s and its people, as the place that was “home” after each hazardous Atlantic crossing. And he writes with especial fondness about the Crow’s Nest.
If any single place could be said to be the heart of the corvette navy, the Crow’s Nest, officially entitled the Seagoing Officers’ Club, would be it. Certainly it was home to all of us in the escort ships; a place where you could drop into at any time of day or night and be assured of a welcome, a drink, or a simple snack — the hot ersatz eggs and Spam sandwiches were always good — from the assiduous Gordon and his wife, who presided there. Dozens of enormous leather armchairs were scattered about the bare floor, and grouped about the fireplace, with its comfortable padded fender. The walls were resplendent with the crest of every escort ship in the western ocean; original works of art, most of them, and always worth a tour of inspection to see what new ones had been added since the last visit.
I can add that because HMCS Wetaskiwin was universally known as the “wet-ass-queen,” an anonymous artist was inspired to produce an unforgettable ship’s crest, which some might call a triumph of “Primitive Art.”
I can report this, because the Crow’s Nest still exists! On my 2014 visit I went to see a show by Ted Barris about his book The Great Escape, to be given in the old club. It’s now a National Historic Site, right beside the War Memorial downtown. I went up the famous fifty-nine steps, to find the welcoming collection of armchairs, and the fireplace, that Jim Lamb wrote about. At the end of Ted’s exciting show I poked around, and introduced myself to a great Crow’s Nest veteran, Gary Green. When I mentioned the magic words The Corvette Navy and “Jim Lamb” I was welcomed with open arms. Jim Lamb’s publisher! Gary took me around, showing me the dining room, then the collection of crests — then the ultimate prize, beside the bar, the captured U-Boat periscope, one of the very few in existence.
I crouched to peer through it, and remembered how, around 1980, I was the movie reviewer for CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning. I had to cover Das Boot, the war movie about a German U-boat crew being hunted by corvettes, and sinking deeper and deeper in the attempt to hide from the depth charges until its rivets start to pop under the strain. I took Jim Lamb to the movie with me to get the response of an old U-boat hunter. He was surprisingly sympathetic to the plight of the submarine’s crew. A gracious winner.
If I was a celebrity in the Crow’s Nest when I mentioned that I had published Jim Lamb’s book, the celebrity was compounded by my admission that, yes, I had also published Hal Lawrence’s 1979 naval memoir, A Bloody War. That title came from the old Navy toast to “a bloody war, and a sickly season,” both of which were likely to lead to losses, producing promotion opportunities for keen young officers.
Hal, who came from a Toronto military family, joined the Navy as a midshipman in 1939, and after training was excited to receive his first posting … which proved to be a tug in Halifax harbour. This posting was not as unimportant as it sounded. Ever since a German sub had got into the Navy’s Home Fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow, torpedoing the battleship Royal Oak, at the cost of 833 lives, the Navy had been fussy about manning the submarine nets outside its ports. That U-boats were lurking around Canada’s coasts was made painfully clear later, when HMCS Charlottetown was torpedoed in the St. Lawrence River, near Quebec City. Hal and his shipmates on the Andree Dupree supervised the opening and closing of the net protecting Halifax. No U-boat ever got through in the course of the war.
Hal’s book is subtitled “One Man’s Memories of the Canadian Navy 1939–1945,” and it covers a wide variety of exciting actions. But the centre is that same Battle of the Atlantic that we know from Jim Lamb. Here’s Hal Lawrence’s account of winter 1941:
The escorts of that winter’s convoys rushed from emergency to emergency, from sinking to sinking, outnumbered by U-boats, with inadequate equipment, through survivors howling for help, chasing a precious ASDIC contact that might give them a kill. … Sleet, snow, rain, ice a foot thick on the forward superstructure; four hours on watch, two hours chipping ice, sleep and eat in between. It was a macabre and desolate winter.
Even when they were allowed to slow down and send out lifeboats to pick their men out of the water, it was not always pleasant work. Once, Hal reached out to grab one man, and his arm came off in Hal’s hand.
But Hal, too, spent many happy hours in the Crow’s Nest, and writes about it. Then his ship, HMCS Oakville, was sent south, and he became a hero. The Oakville found the surfaced U-boat, U-945, and Hal and Petty Officer Powell were ordered to arm themselves and board and capture her. The Toronto Star’s subheadline was “U-Boat Rammed Thrice by Corvette Oakville Then Two Leap Aboard.” (Note the use of “sub-headline.”)
The “leaping aboard” was not as simple as it sounds, since they came under friendly fire, and had to jump into the water, and when Hal made it back to the sub, his belt snapped and his naval shorts collapsed around his ankles. He kicked them aside, and prowled around the sub’s deck naked, apart from a pistol, which secured the cooperation of the captured Germans (who were being kept below by his pistol threat, as opposed to his alarming naked state). But since Hal didn’t speak German, there was a failure to communicate.
I knelt by the hatch, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” A clamour told me they all did, “Ja, Ja.”
“No, no, I mean Sprechen Sie Englisch?” Silence.
“How are you going to get them up?” Powell asked mildly.
In the end all is well, Hal escapes the sinking sub just in time, and they all head off to the nearest American base, a place named Guantanamo. In due course, Hal the hero is brought back to Canada. A special propaganda poster of his capture of the sub at gunpoint is produced (tactfully restoring his shorts), and he tours around places like Toronto and, of course, Oakville, spreading the good news of this particular Canadian triumph. On one occasion, however, the rum-loving naval hero celebrated too well, and the resulting radio broadcast, he admits, was not a success . . .
We jump forward almost forty years, to 1979. Hal has stayed on in the Navy after the war, and had a distinguished career. Following retirement in 1965 he has joined the staff of the University of Ottawa, lecturing in English. Even better, he has produced his first book, and we, Macmillan of Canada, are about to publish it. Because of our success with The Corvette Navy, I know that we are likely to do very well with this dramatic, well-written book, and I have invited Hal to come to our sales conference to present it.
I should explain that a sales conference is hugely important. It’s the event when the entire publishing company, and especially its far-flung sales representatives, assemble in one central spot, often a Toronto hotel, and for days they learn about the new books that they will have for sale to the bookstores and libraries over the next few months. Some readers may remember that my piratical trip to Alistair MacLeod’s house was prompted by a looming sales conference, where I had to speak about No Great Mischief, and had not yet read it.
In the case of Hal’s exciting new book, A Bloody War, we had a heroic author (later in the war he had shelled the German-held beaches at D-Day) who was impressively well-spoken. This would send the sales force out on the road with gusto, metaphorically cheering and waving their cutlasses.
Hal was due to appear just before lunch, and I slipped out of the room to meet him and bring him in with due ceremony. The Sheraton Hotel has long corridors, and as I stood there expectantly, with Hal due in five minutes, I saw a strange sight in the distance. It was like a sort of long-range video game, where the travelling object was bounced from one wall to the other, then back again
. As the bouncing continued, the approaching figure became … Hal, in a dark suit. As he came closer, the dark suit showed many brown, dusty marks, as if it had been in contact with the floor.
When Hal got within range of me, he stood there swaying, one hand at his brow. He repeated the words “flu … terrible flu.” And weaved some more.
I excused myself and went back into the meeting room to announce that there was a change of plan, and Hal Lawrence would be presenting his book after lunch. I took him to a back table at a coffee shop out of the way and poured coffee and food into him. As the time for the afternoon session approached he was doing much better, but I was still very nervous. I helped him to dust off his dark suit, spruced him up, and led him into the conference.
After I introduced him I sat anxiously beside him. It did take him some time to warm up. Then, to my alarm, he became very warm indeed. Soon he was leaning forward, pounding his fist on the table and bellowing, “I enjoyed killing Germans!”
The effect on the sales force was dramatic. They loved the old sea-dog and his tales of action, and they practically carried him out of the room on their shoulders. “What a guy!” they said, and couldn’t wait to get out and sell his book. It became a huge bestseller, of course — although I never thought then that it would open doors for me in St. John’s some day. I’m sorry that Hal is long gone, because he would have loved the Crow’s Nest story, about the continuing impact of his book’s name in his old haunt.
Wayne Johnston (1958– )
If I’m happy to accept credit for books that I did publish, it’s only fair that I should own up to take the blame for fine books that I decided not to publish. So here goes. I was part of the editorial group that turned down Wayne Johnston’s 1998 novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.
Across Canada by Story Page 32