UNIT4
A Canadian Family Story
My story begins in Newfoundland
where my brother and
I were born during
the Second World War.
The island of Newfoundland,
which was originally a British colony,
became the newest province
of Canada in 1949,
the same year that the People's
Republic of China was born.
Our mother was born
and raised in Newfoundland.
During the War (World War II),
she worked in St. John's,
the capital city, where she
met a young Canadian sailor
from Ontario. He was
a member of the crew
of a Royal Canadian Navy ship
that was part of one
of the convoys that
escorted supply ships across
the Atlantic Ocean to Europe
during the war. They fell
in love and subsequently,
got married. The rest
is history, so to speak.
Our family moved to Ontario
in late 1945, just
after the war ended.
In 1999, acting on impulse,
my brother and I decided
to take our mother to
Newfoundland for a visit.
It had been almost
fifty years since we had
last visited our mother's outport
(remote or very rural island village)
where she grew up.
It was also the 50th anniversary
of Newfoundland's becoming part of Canada.
In 1950, I was six
and my brother was five
when we last visited
our mother's childhood home.
At that time, Ireland's Eye
was a vibrant, quaint
fishing village hugging the
rocky shore of a small,
enclosed harbour. There was
no electricity. There were no roads,
no automobiles, and few signs
of automation of any type.
There were oil lamps and
wood stoves in the homes
and mere sootpaths between
the aggregate of small communities
on the hilly island,
also named Ireland's Eye.
We can still see and
hear the inboard motorboats,
putt putting (sound of engines)
into the harbour, hauling
their day's catch of fish.
The image of hardy fishermen
with pitchforks hoisting and
tossing the codfish up to
the stilted platforms from
the bowels of the boats
is still quite vivid.
The aroma of salted,
drying codfish, lingers still.
What I remember best,
of almost half a century ago,
was going out with
my Uncle Fred in his boat
to fish. That particular day,
we were huddled together
and lashed to other boats,
just outside of the harbour.
I can still hear
the lively gossip between
my uncle and the other fishermen,
above the rippling and splashing
of the waves against
the hulls of the boats.
I remember the boats
heaving periodically, on the
huge gently rolling waves.
My Uncle Fred had only
one arm, but amazingly,
he could do everything
as if he had two hands.
He could even roll
a cigarette and light it.
These are my memories
of the quaint Newfoundland
glory days gone by.
It was a very hard life
in those out ports,
but a life romantically cherished
by most of those who lived it.
Our mother was not feeling up
to the trip at the time
we were ready to leave,
but insisted that my brother
and I go on this odyssey.
We would later provide
her with pictures, a written account,
and videotape of the trip.
Although we toured other parts
of Newfoundland, including an overnight
stay on the French Islands
of St. Pierre and Miquilon,
just off the south coast
of Newfoundland, our main objective
was to visit Ireland's Eye.
This necessitated finding water transportation.
We managed to arrange
for a boat to take
us on the half hour
trip to the island.
As it turned out,
the married couple who
ferried us over to the island
was actually a couple of
our distant cousins, whom
we had never met.
We had intended to
have our cousins drop us off
on the island and pick
us up a few hours later.
However, either because we were
newly found cousins, or they were
typically hospitable Newfoundlanders,
or they thought that
my brother and I would
get lost, they wanted
to stay with us.
Probably all three factors
influenced their decision.
They were absolutely fabulous.
They got caught up in
what my brother and I
were trying to do.
They were very knowledgeable about
the island and the people
who had once lived there.
Clutching a narrative of the island,
written by another of our cousins,
the forgotten history of that
special place became more coherent
to the four of us.
As we entered Ireland's
Eye's small harbour, which was guarded,
by a family of hawks
in a nest high on a rocky point,
a weird sensation came over us.
There, in front of us,
was the place we visited
fifty years before, and about
which we had heard and read
so much throughout our adult lives.
We thought, what an
aesthetically breathtaking sight!
The glittering sun, on that day,
gave everything a picturepostcard image.
This was indeed a slice of paradise.
The ruins of a few
remaining buildings that dotted
the hillsides and shoreline
and the once dominant
St. Georges Church on the hill
at the end of the harbour,
aroused in us an exciting sense
of history and of our heritage.
Looking out over the harbour
from the hill by the church
at the extinct community,
revived memories of fifty years before.
