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

“If we are to achieve results never before accomplished,
we must
employ methods never before attempted.”

— Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Peckford, A. Brian

Some day the sun will shine and have not will be no more / Brian
Peckford.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic monograph.

Issued also in print format.

ISBN 978-1-77117-025-3 (EPUB).--ISBN 978-1-77117-026-0 (Kindle).--

ISBN 978-1-77117-027-7 (PDF)

1. Peckford, A. Brian. 2. Premiers (Canada)--Newfoundland and
Labrador--Biography. 3. Newfoundland and Labrador--Politics and
government--1972-1989. 4. Newfoundland and Labrador--History--1949-. 5.
Federal-provincial relations--Canada. 6. Canada--History--20th century. I.
Title.

FC2176.1.P43A3 2012       971.8’04092       C2012-905010-5

© 2012 by Brian Peckford

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
. No part of the work covered by the
copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic,
electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any
request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and
retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access
Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800,
Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.

Cover Design: Adam Freake Edited by Erika Steeves

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We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing
activities; the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested
$24.3 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada; the Government of
Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.

The title is taken from a line in a speech I gave, which of course is quoted in
the book. The actual wording was, “One day the sun will shine and have not will
be no more.” Although this book is based on my life, a fifty-year-old memory,
while good, may tend to spice a little for effect.

FOR MANY YEARS NOW I
have been planning to write this book.
The stories, events, and people have been rolling over in my mind on almost a
daily basis.

When I began writing about my experiences as a social worker in rural parts of
the province, I discovered the most unusual thing. It happened one afternoon
when I had begun the exercise. I was writing away in what I thought was a
third-person account of these experiences. I stopped for a moment, and when I
looked at what I had written, I was shocked. I had been writing in the
first-person, complete with dialogue, without my knowing it. And there were
pages and pages of it. I could not believe that I had just written that
material!

I am sure there are those who would say that these short stories are fodder for
another book. For me, they must be in this book since it is only through such
stories that I think one has the opportunity to realize why I was so passionate
about our place. I was lucky to experience both the older way of the early
fifties as a boy and then to see it repeated later in northern Newfoundland and
southern Labrador as a university student before the roads, electricity, and
jukeboxes came to be, and then to experience the transition as it began, and
simultaneously to have been a part of the “new” in Lewisporte and St.
John’s.

These experiences as a student have had a profound effect upon me. I remember
my first political adventure, not counting high school
and
university. I decided to run for the presidency of the Green Bay Liberal
Association at the last minute, and against the person who was being supported
by Premier Smallwood, who was also in attendance at the meeting. In this, my
first political speech (discounting the school and university politics), I
remember using the experiences of my student days to describe my understanding
of the province and hence why I was qualified to run for the office. Of course,
it also signalled that from the start I was anything but an insider. And during
my political career I always seemed most at home when I was in rural parts: yes,
asking for a vote, but being impacted by what I saw and heard, especially the
resilience and tolerance of the people. These experiences seem photographed in
my mind and are an integral part of my sensibility.

It is really not the story of one person, but through one person the lives of
many who thought like me and fervently desired to see a more prosperous place
and our history respected.

The process by which we were able to help to effect this change was anything
but smooth. Of course, there were moments of joy, but most were a struggle and
often it looked impossible.

I am sure there are those who would argue that I overemphasize Newfoundland’s
struggles. Well, my life seems to replicate that view, both my own early
experiences and those in public life. I make no apologies.

Better times have arrived, and let us hope that we have learned from distant
and recent history. I still hold out the hope that, now, through these better
times, we can address our fishery, achieve more influence, and see a revitalized
rural Newfoundland.

“Being grown up is not half as much fun as growing up.”

— Anonymous

BESSIE R
LEFT BAY
Bulls with a cargo of salt for Port aux Basques and
intended to load a cargo of fish at the latter port. It arrived in Fermeuse on
the Southern Shore on Sunday, February 17, 1918, and its master, Sandy Thistle,
fully expected to harbour at Trepassey that night. However, once out and en
route, the fickle forces of nature took command.

Thistle had an experienced crew; most like himself belonged to Hickman’s
Harbour on Random Island: Mate Joseph T. Blundon (or Blundel) and Levi Benson.
Cook John Anderson lived in British Harbour, but he later moved to Britannia on
Random Island. W. J. Peddle hailed from Little Heart’s Ease and Lewis Rice from
Bay Bulls. Joseph Peckford, a well-known citizen of St. John’s, was supercargo
on the schooner. As supercargo he would have managed the business transactions
of the
Bessie R
, whose main work seems to have been trading fish and
supplies along the coast.

The skills of Thistle’s crew were soon to be tried, for the schooner ran
headlong into a snowstorm with southeast winds. Within hours this swung around
to a gale from the northwest—the worst winds for sail-driven vessels off
southeastern Newfoundland. For twenty-four hours
Bessie R
was pushed to
sea, and during the gale the jumbo boom broke off. The log—towed on its line
behind the ship, which would give some indication of speed and distance—broke
and Captain Thistle had no idea how far his schooner had drifted off.

Slowly he and his crew worked the vessel back to within sight of
land, perhaps somewhere on the east side of St. Mary’s Bay. Thistle figured this
was the general area, but
Bessie R
was near a rock called by local folks
The Bull. Thistle didn’t recognize it at the time, but he realized he needed to
keep his schooner out to sea. Despite the best intentions of his crew, contrary
winds pushed
Bessie R
near Holyrood Arm and there was no way to swing the
schooner around to get out. The vessel made its last-ditch standoff the town of
Point LaHayse, or as it is known today, Point La Haye.

Meanwhile, the residents of Point La Haye had gathered on a headland and were
watching the valiant efforts of the six seamen. When
Bessie R
sailed in,
they ran to the beach to help if they could. At first it seemed as if it would
ground and break up offshore. There seemed to be no recourse but disaster and
death. One account of the wreck says, “The people on the shore never thought
that any of the crew would reach the shore alive, and they gathered on the beach
praying for their safety.”

But Captain Thistle drove
Bessie R
right up on the beach and the crew
were able to jump off from the bowsprit to the shore, much to the amazement of
Point La Haye residents. Joseph Peckford sustained the only injury. During the
two or three days of fighting the storm, Peckford had taken his turn at the
wheel and bent over to examine the compass. The main boom swung, hitting him in
the middle of the back, and his chest struck the wheel with considerable force.
One of the wheel spokes injured his chest.

Despite their close call and two or three days of exciting and anxious
hardships, the crew, all but businessman Peckford, went about their life work on
the sea. They found employment at Harbour Grace and went there to join the
schooner
Henry L. Montague
for another stint on the ocean.

This was not the last word on the wreck of
Bessie R
. Apparently one man
was so impressed with the self-rescue of the hardy seamen, he wrote an unsigned
letter to the St. John’s newspaper
Evening Advocate
dated March 11, 1918.
The heading says, “Nothing Can Daunt Our Brave Seamen.”

In the June 22 edition of the
Trade Review
, as quoted by Patrick
O’Flaherty in his book
The Lost Country: The Rise and Fall of
Newfoundland
, the following article appeared:

In volume four of
The Book of Newfoundland
, one finds the following
concerning Joseph Peckford:

This was my grandfather Peckford, who came to St. John’s from Fogo Island after
jumping a sealing ship in St. John’s in the 1890s. In St. John’s he met Clara
Brett, also from Fogo Island, and married. Joe fished out of St. John’s harbour
for fifty years and reportedly went to the seal fishery for forty-nine years,
and my grandmother kept a small store. The Peckford home that Joe built still
stands; some of his wharf and rooms were at the bottom of Temperance Street, now
all filled in as part of harbour enlargement and on which the Terry Fox Memorial
now stands.

In 2009 I visited Fogo Island to further investigate the birthplaces of these
two grandparents: Locke’s Cove and Lion’s Den. Walking a wonderful new walking
trail on a glorious August day, I visited Lion’s Den and Locke’s Cove. It was
only then that I realized that Joe and Clara had likely known one another before
their St. John’s days, as the distance between both places was not great. Who
knows? They might have been earlier lovers and Joe’s jumping ship was to find
his lost love. Curiously, no headstone remains of the Peckfords
on Fogo Island. After some crawling around in one of three cemeteries, I found a
fallen headstone of my great-grandfather Jonathan Brett, Clara’s father, who it
is reported was a shipbuilder.

My maternal grandparents were Hiram Young and Queen Victoria Ross.
Great-grandfather Young moved from Greenspond, his birthplace, when my
grandfather was a young boy. Queen Victoria was born on the Ross farm, now
Pleasantville. The Rosses were originally from Margaree Valley, Cape Breton
Island. My grandmother, who kept a diary, recorded the following:

Great-grandfather Ross owned 100 acres of what is now Pleasantville, formerly
Fort Pepperell, and farmed there, supplying St. John’s with vegetables, milk,
and cream, including the General Hospital and the Governor’s House. He operated
a store on Water Street at one time, imported cattle from the Maritimes, and
raised thoroughbred horses. Grandmother Ross actually taught weavery at Mount
Cashel orphanage at one time. An enterprising lot!

Of course this enterprise came naturally, if one studies this Ross family. My
great-great-great-grandfather David Ross was brother to James Ross, the first of
his clan to settle in Margaree and third husband to Henriette LaJeune. She
fought with the French (coming from France herself) at Louisbourg when it fell
to the English. She had a medical background and became famous in Cape Breton
for nursing, administering the smallpox vaccine that she had brought
from France. She became affectionately known to all as Granny
Ross and lived to the age of 117. At St. Patrick’s Church in northeast Margaree,
there is a cedar sign which reads:

A memorial (although there is now some dispute over the veracity of her age) on
the south side of the church reads:

I WAS BORN IN
Whitbourne, a small railway town just sixty
miles from St. John’s, one of a handful of communities in Newfoundland that was
not next to the ocean. Although both my parents were St. John’s people, my
father’s position with the Newfoundland Ranger Force necessitated that he be
stationed at the force’s training facility in Whitbourne. I remember the train
passing through the town and how we kids would play close to the moving train,
almost daring it to touch us. I remember taking it to St. John’s with my mother,
and riding the streetcar in bustling St. John’s. Years later as a university
student I would take the train home for Christmas to Lewisporte, and even later
I was to take the train in an unsuccessful attempt to save it.

My first three years of school were in Whitbourne, the Anglican School; the
Catholic one was just across the road, just close enough so that we could throw
snowballs at one another in winter. You did not have to attend church to know
that there were major separations in the community. You knew through school. And
it was weird since it was the same God, same Jesus, and same book. But little
was said other than you were United, Salvation Army, or Anglican, or that real
strange one, Catholic. And that is the way it was. But fate was soon to bring me
closer to that strange denomination, only we called them religions then.

In December, 1951, when I was the age of nine, the family moved to Marystown,
my father having changed from being a law enforcement officer and small business
owner to a social worker. After his social worker training he was posted to
Marystown, a small, undeveloped community over 200 miles from St. John’s on the
Burin Peninsula. It was more isolated than Whitbourne and without electricity;
farther along the peninsula were the more developed towns of Burin, Grand Bank,
and Fortune, all economically active with fish plants serviced by offshore
trawlers.

It’s a bit of family lore as to how the family arrived in Marystown. Father had
gone to Marystown a few weeks earlier in December to finalize arrangements for a
house and to meet with the outgoing social worker and other such matters. Mother
and her brood of five were to follow later. There was a ninety-nine-mile drive
from the Goobies
railway station to Marystown, and we were to
travel there by train from St. John’s, a further 100 miles. Father would pick us
up there in a rented vehicle and drive all the family to our new community, to
our new home. Ah! The best-laid plans . . .

To Goobies we arrived—in a snowstorm—and Father was somewhere on the
ninety-nine-mile gravel highway, stuck in snow. So here we were—no doubt a
forlorn-looking group. Someone at the railway station who knew of a boarding
house nearby took pity on us and we were brought there to reside overnight. The
next day we learned that it would be impossible for Father to meet us—the road
was blocked. In those days, without the mechanical machinery of today, it would
be blocked for quite some time. Father would go back to Marystown. A new plan
had to be devised. Back to St. John’s we were to go, and to take a train as soon
as we could (a half-day journey) to the port of Argentia, where we could catch a
coastal passenger freight boat, which plied Placentia Bay communities including
Marystown.