I can handle a jigger, I cuts a fine figure

Had a pretty bad case of the lazies, but at long last here is the first of a few entries about our Newfoundland trip.

A while back, we’d told my parents that the next time they returned to Newfoundland we’d like to tag along, and a few months ago they gave us the heads up that they were going back. It was a family reunion, but not really. One of our cousins caught wind of a seat sale and alerted the rest of the family, and then everyone made plans to go but completely independent of one another. I’d only been twice before, once when I was about six (nearly no recollection), and once when I was twelve (and I was bored to tears because there was sweet F.A. to do). We’d actually tried to go the year prior to that, but just outside of Kingston our Winnebago burned down on the side of the 401. (That’s a story for another time.)

We were invited to stay with my Dad’s cousins who live in Upper Gullies (about twenty-five minutes outside St. John’s). They practice an “our house is your house” style of hospitality: eat our food, drink our booze—their daughter even suggested to Sarah that she could borrow clothes if she saw something she fancied. We were pretty wiped out (having caught a 6am flight), so we did some minor shopping, had our first of about 15 consecutively deep-fried meals, did some recreational drinking, and played cards.

The next day, we drove out to catch the ferry to Bell Island. My parents, in addition to nearly the entire Newfie community in Georgetown, are originally from there. The island is just oustide of St. John’s in Conception Bay, and it’s only about nine kilometers from end to end. We started at Dicks’s, which is a restaurant/bar that’s the first thing you come to once you’re off the ferry. It’s also just about the only thing I remember about the island from our trip in ’89. It’s funny—I was taking art lessons back then, and to kill some time I thought I’d sit down by the shore and draw. I don’t even think I was at it for very long, but everyone on that trip really remembers that. Little Davie in a lawn chair outside of Dicks’s: it’s the first thing they bring up when we talk about that trip. My Dad even remembers the colour of the lawn chair. Strange. Maybe it was the only time I left the Winnebago in two weeks.

After lunch, we went on a tour of the #2 mine. Up until the sixties, Bell Island was one of the largest producers of iron ore in North America. It was by and large the reason people lived on the island (over 15,000 people, back in the day). Then ore deposits were discovered in Labrador and elsewhere that were more easily accessible, and the running of the Bell Island mine stopped being as profitable a venture. When the work dried up, everyone left, with the majority of folks landing in either Cambridge or Georgetown. Poppy McLean started working in the mines at ten, running telegrams back and forth. By twelve he was working in the stables, minding the horse employed there (who spent nearly their entire lives underground). A few years later, he became a miner, and he worked that job until the mine closed down. Seeing those tunnels for the first time in my life, and hearing stories of the conditions from our guide, I was surprised that it wasn’t as terrible as I expected. I would never want to have worked there, but it wasn’t as claustrophobic as I’m pictured, and as far as injuries and fatalities went it was far safer than you would think.

Once the tour was done, we drove the length of the island (not a long journey), and we saw the lighthouse, the Seaman’s Memorial (commemorating an attack by Nazi submarines back in World War II), and then stopped at the Princess Pub to see an old friend of my Dad’s who tends bar. A lady friend, no less. They said they never dated, but I have my suspicions. The older I get, and the more lady friends of his I meet, the more I think that my Dad may have been the Austin Powers of Bell Island.