Some Day the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More (3 page)

There was one shining exception to this, and that was our main
grade eleven teacher. I say main in the sense of a homeroom teacher who also
taught us a number of subjects. His name was Mr. Paddock (Brose); he later moved
on to teach at Memorial University and become Dean of the Faculty of Education.
We were a lucky forty-two students to have him as our teacher. For the first
time (outside of Father’s admonitions) I was encouraged to think about things,
not to accept things at face value, that reason was a very valuable commodity,
and that dogma and entrenched positions often retarded advancement. This was all
new to me but very exciting. I had been so involved in sports and friends and
all the normal adolescent things that this was the first time I had been forced
to stop and consider the larger world.

The culmination of this new thinking occurred one day when Mr. Paddock asked me
to stay for a few minutes after school. After school! This was unusual, and I
didn’t know what to expect. Sitting in the back of the room, I had become a bit
of a distraction for the teacher, and while I was doing well in most of my
subjects, I think Mr. Paddock felt I was unfocused and just a little too
carefree as a high school senior. He approached my desk and abruptly asked,
“Brian, what do you intend to do with your life?”

I stuttered something stupid in reply. And then it was over. Mr. Paddock turned
and left the room. I struggled to my feet and left the room and school,
pondering that simple but provocative question. I knew this was an attempt to
shock me to my senses, and it worked. I had given little thought to my future,
and it was time. Within several months, high school would be over, and what
then?

I enjoyed my Lewisporte years and became heavily involved in sports, especially
baseball and hockey. Now, we had few facilities at the school or in the town
generally. Across from the school was an outdoor rink, and just “up the road”
from the school was a level ground that was supposed to be the sports field. We
made the best of it, and in my last year we had organized games on that rink and
actually played hockey with other teams in nearby towns of Botwood and Gander.
There were a couple of really cold winters when we actually skated and played
hockey on the harbour. Our out-of-town games were a real
treat
since we would be playing indoors. In Botwood it was in an old World War II
undersized building, with real ice but of course no snow clearing, while in
Gander it was a regulation-sized artificial ice surface in an arena. We really
had no coaches, but I recall on our out-of-town excursions our vice-principal
acted as such, and I can remember him urging us in the car on our way to our
game to “shoot when we got in over the blue line.” I don’t think we won any of
those out-of-town games! Similarly, we had a few teams organized and played
baseball on a makeshift diamond on the nearby field. I liked hockey, but I loved
baseball. There seemed to be more strategy and planning, and I enjoyed how
quickly explosive it could become.

And then there was my paper route. I delivered the weekly Grand Falls
Advertiser
every Saturday along the main street, from the United
Church building almost to the end of Lewisporte West. I came to like this weekly
ritual on my bike. It was the people once met who I remember most. There was an
elderly Mr. Lacey who still kept his little grocery shop open, although few now
frequented such an outdated place. Bigger stores had sprung up, and the little
guy was soon to be no more. But it gave people like Mr. Lacey a reason to get up
in the morning and a chance to chat, even to a boy like me. He was not well, and
often when I would inquire about his health he would exclaim that he was
“wonderful sick.” One got the pulse of this part of town, from Mr. Lacey, to
young adults with a second-hand motorcycle under constant repair in the yard, to
the elderly lady whose generous tip at Christmas was always exhilarating, to
Vatcher’s auto mechanic shop, where there always seemed to be someone in the pit
fixated on looking up at the underbelly of a decrepit Chevy, Ford, or
Chrysler.

There was a touch of the political at this stage of my life. I remember an
incident involving the then-Premier, Mr. Smallwood, who on a visit to Lewisporte
sought out my father, then a social worker for the area. Apparently there had
been some representation made by a local citizen who had questioned through the
premier a decision Father had made concerning the citizen’s eligibility for
assistance. The premier took the opportunity of the visit to see my father about
it. From overhearing a conversation with my mother later, Father was
obviously very upset by the public nature of the visit and the
fact that he was bring pressured to provide assistance where the rules prevented
it. Father told the premier that he would have to set up an appointment if he
wished to pursue the matter. I also remember a political rally in the local
theatre for a Conservative candidate in an upcoming federal election. The
candidate was Ambrose Peddle, who went on to win the riding and later become the
province’s ombudsman. And perhaps most importantly, I remember that at our high
school a number of us got together and, in talks with the principal, set up the
first student council for the school, of which I became the first president. It
was also during this time that I began working during the summer holidays and at
Christmastime. I remember working at a clothing store one Christmas.

But my most interesting memories are of travelling to St. John’s to work with
the provincial government. My first summer was working as a filing clerk at the
Department of Health and Welfare in a wooden building situated near the old
Newfoundland Hotel. This was a great experience that gave me exposure to the
capital city. I stayed with my grandparents on Carpasian Road overlooking St.
Patrick’s ballpark where regular baseball games were played. Given my interest
in baseball, this was a dream come true, and I spent many an evening and weekend
down at the ballpark learning the finer points of the game as I tried to get
near the players and coaches.

My grandfather would usually stay home and watch the games from his back
garden, still using cricket terms to describe the game. I saw pictures of him in
his youth as part of a cricket team in St. John’s. My grandparents Young were
wonderful people. My grandmother was a Ross (originally from Margaree Valley,
Cape Breton). These were the grandparents who owned a lot of land in what is now
Pleasantville where, they operated a farm, supplied the hospitals with milk, and
sold vegetables to customers door-to-door. My grandfather was originally from
Greenspond, but his parents moved to St. John’s when he was a young lad. He
worked for fifty years with the department store named the Royal Stores, rising
to become the manager of the wallpaper department. He was a hard worker and had
a great memory.
I remember his many recitations of poetry,
including “Horatius at the Gate” by Lord Macaulay.

I remember well his geography. The largest island in Newfoundland, meaning
insular Newfoundland, was Glover Island in Grand Lake, and the largest island in
all of Newfoundland was Fogo Island—ninety-two square miles—with Random Island
close behind at ninety square miles, and the pear-shaped island was
Ceylon.

My grandmother was a great gardener and spent endless hours nurturing her
flowers and raspberries. Although small in frame, she had an indomitable spirit,
and travelling the stairs to the basement many times a day, feeding the
coal-fired furnace, and practising her Scottish orderliness gave testament to
her hardiness.

I spent one more summer in St. John’s working for the same department. Being a
little older, I was no longer a clerk but had been asked to act as a welfare
officer at the city office in downtown St. John’s. This seemed a formidable
task, since it meant learning quickly a maze of regulations since I was to
interview and apply these regulations to clients (all of whom would be older
than I) to see whether they qualified for assistance.

I called my parents concerning this, since I felt overwhelmed by all this
responsibility. My father assured me that I could do it, and so I conquered my
fear and had a very busy summer learning a lot about people whose means and/or
mental or physical condition saw them as clients of the department.
Surprisingly, I was even allocated to be
responsible for
“unmarried mothers” for a while, since there was a sudden vacancy in that area.
Today, of course, without a degree or two and some experience, such work by a
high school student would be viewed as shocking and possibly illegal.

I interviewed a young unmarried mother who lived in squalid conditions and
needed a mattress. After a full investigation, her request was found to be a
valid one, whereupon I had a mattress ordered and delivered to her residence.
Elated with this new addition, she called me and offered me the first night on
the mattress. In appropriate bureaucratic language, I declined the offer. An
increase in the unmarried caseload was a common occurrence nine months following
the Portuguese fleet, which frequented St. John’s harbour for supplies, or to
avert nasty storms in the North Atlantic.

The year 1959–60 marked a significant departure from the normal progression of
our family evolution. The provincial government had begun a program for social
workers whereby they could apply and, if accepted, attend university for
educational upgrading. The successful applicant would be paid the same salary
for that time as if they were working their normal job, and tuition would also
be paid. The Department of Welfare had developed a relationship with the School
of Social Work at the University of Toronto. My father applied and was
successful, and so my four brothers and my sister and my parents moved in the
summer of 1958 to Toronto, a new large urban landscape, so different and
puzzling, an abrupt change from our tranquil rural background.

It was a hot summer and we were not used to these high temperatures, but it was
the humidity that was really unbearable, and living in a small apartment at
Metcalf and Parliament in the middle of the city compounded matters. It was a
modest apartment, and many immigrants were taking up residence nearby. My father
obtained a temporary job at the Canadian National Exhibition while waiting for
classes to begin; he worked in the music area, given his piano prowess and
interest in music. We all settled in as best we could and became familiar with
the neighbourhood. My older brother succeeded in getting a job with CPR and
attended night school at IBM, which had
recently established an
office in the city. The remaining five children were school-bound, three in
primary, and my brother and I were off to high school—Jarvis Collegiate.

Toronto was a big adjustment for the whole family. Except for Father, it was
the first time off the island for all of us (other than my brief stint to Nova
Scotia at an air cadet camp). The humid weather, the busy streets, the
streetcar, subway, skyscrapers, and the impersonal nature of the place made us
feel like we were in an alien land. We were saved somewhat by a nearby park and
the Riverdale Zoo, which proved a welcome escape from the noise and din of urban
life.

Nothing prepared my brother and me for our high school experience. Coming from
a rural town in Newfoundland of 2,000 with a one-storey high school,
200 students from grade seven to eleven, to a downtown four-storey brick
building of 1,400 from grade ten to thirteen, was a real culture shock. I am not
sure if I had seen a basketball before this, and certainly not a school library,
gym, pool, or those high and low bars. Add to this that we spoke differently
than almost everyone at the school and that most of the students did not know
where Newfoundland was, and those who had some notion thought we lived in
igloos. We were classic outsiders. My only friend at the school was a boy who
had just moved from the Ukraine. Nevertheless, we tried to fit in and abide by
the rules and regulations of this complicated, confusing place. But for me it
seemed the odds were stacked against me.

I played hockey, and although I was unused to artificial ice and arenas, I
decided to try out for the school team. Miraculously, I made it. That meant
extensive practices at Leaside Gardens. To get there you took a streetcar,
subway, and bus to the arena. Of course, that meant early mornings since these
practices were all on weekdays and I had to be back to school by 9: 00 a.m. On
one of these practice sessions the traffic back from the arena was exceptionally
heavy and I arrived back to school late, by ten or fifteen minutes. Well, this
automatically meant a trip to the vice-principal’s office. I explained what
happened, but I was subjected to what I thought was an unnecessary
interrogation.

“Young man, have you ever been in trouble before?” began the
vice-principal. This I automatically took to mean whether I had broken the
law, that I was being treated like some common criminal.

“I do not think that unusually heavy traffic on my return from practice
justifies such a question,” I answered.

Wow! That went over like a lead balloon, and I was suspended from school that
day. My father was contacted, and upon being questioned by the vice-principal,
he more or less took my position. His son had never been in trouble before, and
being late through no fault of his own did not seem to be sufficient reason for
such an approach.