Remembering Jack

From:   "Don Crooks" <sailordon@n...> 
Date:  Tue Mar 9, 2004  1:41 pm
Subject:  Remembering Jack (and Anne)


Hi Don,
Thanks for the walk back through time. Jack was quite the character. We didn't always see eye to eye, but for the most part got along good. 

Remember the cruiser he bought whose name was "Joy"? I arrived home from a short hitch at construction in the big T.O., in the summer of ' 54, which, come to think of it is a half century ago, and was sitting at the counter in the canteen, probably eating a western, on the evening of my return, when Jack broached the subject of rigging "Joy" for sword-fishing, down Cape Breton way. What beautiful words!! YES! YES!! YES!!!
I had the mast and rigging but it was too heavy for little "Joy", so Jack, Mike and I went over to the Mount (Misery) and cut a smaller stick and with bits of bark still hanging from it we put the stays on it and stepped it in the "Joy", and made a stand, or pulpit, and put that on the bow. We were ready for the high seas; only trouble was the weather was thick as mud, and Jack didn't like the idea of running in the fog. So we waited, and waited, and waited. My need to get to CB could be likened to a sun baked desert traveller striving to reach an oasis. Finally one morning the fog glenned up enough that one could see out past Goose Island, so I called Jack, and said, " It's cleared, Jack, lets go" all the while knowing it was black thick below New Harbour Point. We got as far as White Head that day, and the next day Jack insisted that we go through the Lakes, because, he said "It might blow hard outside". We did and took a howling norther going across the big Lake, while the weather off the coast was white ca'am and the boats from Gabarus to Glace Bay
took many fish, while we were punching across the Lake to Baddeck. The next morning we got away early with the wind out of the north at about fifteen knot and ran down the channel When we got out to Black Point I said to Jack, “Perhaps you had better go aloft and get the feel of the rig". "Okay, kid" was his reply, and up the mast he went. This Mount Misery crow stick started to twist and protest under Jacks weight and I heard him aver that "I don't like this!" When we got out in the chop of the north wind meeting the receding tide from the Lakes, and the boat started pitching Jack came down, but when we got outside Haddock Bank, I said, "Jack, you better go aloft again, we could see a fish anytime now (never dreaming we would) and we didn't get to Point Aconi buoy before I spotted a fish and pointed him out to Jack who was on the remote steering station on the mast. I yelled at Jack: "You give me a decent shot at him and I'll buy when we get to the ' Bay"! Sure enough, he put the boat up on the fish in a highly credible manner for a novice, and after I ironed (harpooned) the fish, Jack went ballistic. "How many do you think we'll have when we get to Glace Bay," he shouted. We stayed down there three weeks and came home. We missed out on a big tame fish on Smokey Bank, due to a fuel pump failure, but in all we had a great trip. 

Again, thanks for the memories, Don.
Don Crooks

Remember (1)

Remember the days when life was free,
From government restrictions,
And those who lived here by the sea,
Were in their own jurisdiction.

Remember the kindness, it was never too late,
To do a neighbor a favor,
To help cut his wood , or share lobster bait
Kind acts that gave life it’s flavor.

Remember John Angus in his little white skiff,
Rowing his way to the Sand Beach
To check if a salmon was trapped in the bowl,
Or a small one meshed in the leader.

Remember the mail when Ed Rhude would bring,
Parcels from Simpsons and Eatons,
New clothes for the season; be it winter or spring,
For the old ones had taken a beatin.’

Remember the plant and the old garbage scow,
That lay at the back of the wharf,
With the good “ Maura G “ to tow her to sea,
It sure wasn’t ‘ Ashes of Roses ‘

Remember it then, but look at it now,
As the world hurtles onward through space,
About forty souls in total are left,
Facing the bleakness of winter.

Remember the place of the days of our youth,
That hummed with the business of living,
There were fish to be caught and ducks to be shot,
And rabbits to catch in the winters.

Remember the nights on Betty’s Cove Pond,
When we’d skate by a big roaring fire,
The Pond now is gone, but the memories live on,
Entrenched in our hearts now and forever.

Seanachie
On a summer-like November 29th, at Drum Head.

Pond Inlet

         Pond Inlet

                        "Men of the High North you who have known it, 
                        You in whose hearts it's splendors have abobe,
                        Can you renounce it, can you disown it?
                        Can you forget it, it's glory and it's goad?
                        Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it?
                        Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot,
                        Only remain the guerdon and pain of it,
                        Zest of the foray and God, how you fought!"

                                                                      R. W. Service.

It is Canada's birthday, 1967; celebrating 100 years of confederation. We had transferred from Liscombe Light and Fog Alarm Station to a position as oiler on the heavy icebreaker John A. MaDonald, my wife and young family moving to Drum Head to take up residence in the Lloyd Flick house which we had purchased from Archie Manthorne.
Immediately upon moving in I drove to Halifax to join the ship and on Dominion Day we sailed, after bunkering at Irving Oil in Woodside. We proceeded to Montreal to load a conglomeration of cargo for the northern communities, about 6000 tons, as I recall.
Montreal; always a good port for shoregoing, was especially so that year with Expo 67 in town. We'd head over there evevy time we were off watch and took in the most of it during the five days it took to load the ship.When sailing time came we were all happy to leave Montreal and it's oppressive July heat. We made an overnight stop in Quebec City( where no one was allowed ashore) Quebec is the clothing depot for the Coastguards Eastern Region and we made the stop to pick up uniforms et cetra.
Pond Inlet was our third stop. The first two were Cape Dyer And Broughton Island, where we landed supplies for the innuit. This was in a time when the northern supply system wasn't as well established as it is today and government ships were hauling a lot of freight. Today the freighting is mainly in private hands, with the aboriginal people owning NTCL, headquartered in Hay River, they own a fleet of tugs and barges and do a lot of supply work in the central and western arctic, they also have some chartered vessels, while Groupe DesGagne of Quebec is one of the main suppliers to the eastern arctic.With the amount of goods and services to be moved in the short navigation season the supply operation entails a lot of high calibre logistics.
We reached Pond Inlet in mid-July and off-loaded the cargo consigned to the village, which was named for John Pond, royal astronomer, by John Ross, in 1888. The R.C.M.P. and the Hudsons Bay Company both set up posts at Pond in 1921. On the hillside that sits between the village and the airstrip, the Mounties have made and keep maintained a larger than life replica of the forces insignia, bison head and all, sided by on the left, Pond, and on the right of the insignia,Inlet. .All done with small white painted rocks. In the crystaline Arctic air it can be seen some distance off shore.
The ship was in over the week end, and both the catholic and protestant clergy sent out invitations to the evening services.We filled the tiny churches full to over flowing, having 96 crew, plus eight passengers on board.
I was one of the crowd who attended th Anglican church, and among our group was one Arthur Durnford (pronounced Dunford) from a small outport on the south coast of NL., name of Francois. (Pronounce that Fransways) Art was a real good singer, and an Anglican, so even though the service was in Inuktitut, Art sang right along in his south shore dialect, which, as we told him as indecipherable to us as was the Inuktitut version.
After church Don MacLeod of Yarmouth, my room mate, and I went up over the hill for a walk toward the airstrip. Anyone who has never experienced an Arctic summer cannot envision the proliferation of wildflowers that bloom in many areas of that harsh and unforgiving landscape. Tiny flowers of many colors, covering the morain so thickly that one can literally leave their tracks in them. Fleeting; in the short duration of their season, they are unimaginably frail. I tried to press some for Carolyn, but they disintegrated to dust, when I opened the book I had pressed them in.
The water front of Pond Inlet was then and probably still is unbelieveably squalid........carcasses of seals, whales, dogs and what-have- you lay, around the waters edge in abundance. I often recalled this scene in later years when I had the opportunity to visit many ports in Greenland, which are kept in pristine condition, and the innu of Greenland always appeared to me to be more upwardly mobile than do their Canadian counterparts across Davis Strait. Perhaps the Danes have been better mentors than the bureaucrats in our Dept. of Northern affairs.
North from Pond Inlet is Bylot Island which is flanked by Eclipse Sound and Navy Board Inlet. This island is a rookery for many species of birds and it's cliff's are home in summer to tens of thousands of mating pairs. Bylot Island played an important part in the hey day of Arctic whaling, the Northern Right whale being found off it s shore's in abundance in the 1800's as were many other species. Many are the song and story of the hardships endured by the whalemen of that era, when whale oil held such an important place in the world' s economy.  Seen in the above are left to right, the author, Boatswain Clayton Foote, Quartermaster Charlie Smith and O/S Milford Roy. This was taken on the landing barge on the beach at Pond Inlet. Note the emblem on the hillside described in the text.
Our Arctic is an awe inspiring place of beauty where I was fortunate to spend three summers, covering an area from Jones Sound to the Bering Strait and from Tanquary Fiord to Hudson Strait and most of the ports on the west coast of Green Land from Thule in the north to Juliannahab in the south. Three summers that will live in my memory forever.

Seanachie

Pigs, and the Supernatural

Pigs have always figured bigtime in fore runners and such manifestations, such as demonic possession etc., Take for example The Amityville Horror. The author used a pig in that story plot. 

Nova Scotia fishermen, from the south shore in particular, among many other superstitions, abhor the use of the word pig, spoken on board their boats.It was the worst word in the English language. I' ll tell you a true story that happened in 1948. 
We had a hurricane in July tha year. I' m sure that Everett would remember it well. The " On Time III " was, I believe, in Main-a-Dieu, Brent Bingly and I were in Louisbourg tied up at Cadegan's wharf, third in a raft of seven boats in the outside string. Many boats were driven ashore, but all the boats at Cadegan's came through unscathed. 
It rained heavily all night, better than four inches fell. By the next afternoon it was fine enough to go to sea, so all the boats left Louisbourg and after they passed the light, fanned out somewhat to give some space or elbow room between them. 
When Brent and I got down off Big Lorraine Head, we saw a flock of gulls clustered around something in the water, just to the right of our course, so in curiosity I altered course to investigate, and when we arrived at the gull's point of interest, here was a little piglet floating, quite oblivious to the gulls or us, because he was " Un cerdo muerto. " as they say in Matanzas. 

Simon Garrison, a noted swordfish killer from Sambro was following pretty well in our wake about a quarter mile back, in the beautiful yacht-like " Miss Sambro III " Simon had three men aloft, while he himself was standing on the wheel house roof, ready to run for the pulpit, stood a fish be sighted. They also did an investigation, and when Simon saw the drifting porker, he gave an order. " Take her home !! "

Some of the fleet watched Simon's boat grow dim on the horizon heading for Guyon Island, all hands below, at maximum knots, which he kept her at, til they reached his wharf in Sambro, where they unrigged the boat, stowed the gear away and when they finished went home and had a sleep and come down the next day, got the swordfish stand, spar, harpoons and all the other gear, put it back on her and headed back for Cape Breton where they finished a profitable season in September. A fresh start, Simon said, was the only way to break the bad luck of seeing the sea going pig. 

Seanachie

Perserverance

                  





The gray cloak of the North Atlantic sea fog shrouded the double dory

and her lone occupant, who was straining on a pair of eight and one half

foot spruce oars, while droplets of moisture poised for a moment on the

brim of his swordfish cap, before falling like tears to be absorbed by

his shirt front.



Progress was very slow; the dory barely creeping over the water. Taking

a brief respite from his labours, the rower pulled his oars across the

dory so that the loom of each oar rested between the thole pins in the

opposite gunnel. Reaching behind him he took a small earthen jug by it's

handle and took a long swig. The water was warm, and did little to slake

his thirst.



Two hours earlier he had gotten aboard the dory after a sword fish had

been harpooned from the Drum Head sword fishing boat "Wilma L" Idling

along at dead slow speed on Scaterie Bank, the crew had come upon the

fish, as it lay upon the surface hoping that the sun would shine to warm

it's back, as it swam lazily along through the long undulating swells.



While the fish was being played, or drowned, the " Wilma L "  become

separated from her dory in the pea soup density of the fog, and now that

the battle was over, there was no sign or sound of the boat; only the

lapping of the water against the dorys side, so the now lifeless fish

was secured with a tail strap to the stern becket of the dory for the

long tow home.



With no radar or other electronic aids to navigation such as we enjoy

today, going astray from ones vessel on the fishing grounds was a very

real and present danger, not so much among the sword fishing fleet but a

common occurrence among the dory fishermen who manned the banking

schooners, there was however super fog alarms at the major light

stations, which where called diaphones. The coastwise lights would be

equipped with large units and the harbour lights with a smaller horn. It

was a rare time when a vessel was running down the coast when

atmospherics would be so poor, that they couldn't hear the sonorous

bellow of one or perhaps two fog alarms. ( It was one of the large

diaphones that was installed on Green Island during the reestablishment

of the station in 1965.)



At four in the afternoon as he methodically bent to his work the rower

could hear the blasts from two horns, one being the East Light, Scaterie

Island, bearing over his left shoulder, whilst over his right shoulder

came resounding at slightly lesser volume, the horn at Louisbourg. The

rower estimated that from the sound of the two horns and his bearing

that he would be about twenty miles off Main-a-Dieu. He muttered an

expletive and kept on rowing.



 At  five in the afternoon, he could hear the sound of engines running

at high speed and the sound was getting louder by the minute. Suddenly

out of the murk astern of the dory there appeared a sleek Cape Island

boat. Painted light gray, with a white wheel house and trunk cabin, her

hull trimmed with black rub rails, she made a pretty sight as she came

roaring up toward the dory. The name appearing on her bow was "Miss

Sambro II "



The man at the wheel saw the dory, and when but a few yards away,

recognized the rower. Slowing the boat down to an idle and calling the

owner and the other crewmen from below, were they eating supper, he

shouted to the dory man, " Where are you heading, Ian? "

"Main-a- Dieu," came the reply.



By now the owner of the "Miss Sambro II " Simon Garrison, was on deck

and he also knew the rower. "Ian," he yelled, I'll tow you in, but

you'll have to give us that fish " (he was joking, of course) The

already dark afternoon turned even blacker as volleys of virulent

invective spewed from the mouth of the rower, as he told Simon what to

do with his tow line. Seeing that the ownership of a  four hundred pound

broad bill swordfish  was not to be tampered with, Simon came up to the

dory, his crew hoisted the fish aboard, took the dory in tow, gave Ian

some supper, and two hours later they groped their way from the Southern

Point of Scaterie to Mad Dick Shoal bell buoy and into Main-a- Dieu

where Ian was reunited with his brother Raymond and the other crewman.

They sold the fish to Peter Mullins and all lived happy ever after.



********************************************************************



The above relates to a day in the life of Ray and Ian Luddington, and

this actually happened and was talked about for years within the sword

fishing fleet.



Ray had three boats named after his daughter Wilma. I believe the

original Wilma L was owned prior to WWII. "Wilma L II" was built in

Bickerton by Jake Kaiser. Ray only fished her for one year and sold her

to Donald MacKinnon of Ingonish Ferry. "Wilma L III" was also built

across the bay by Jake, and became a total loss, when she broke her

mooring in the cove (DH)in a fall easterly, drove across the bay and

smashed up near Quinces Brook.



A salvage operation was mounted the next day, but by the time the sea

had gone down there was nothing left but the two engines. The Engine

School was in DH at the time, Clive Boehner was the instructor,and the

engines were rebuilt at the school. Ray got a boat from the Fisherman's

Loan Board that had been repossessed and finished out the season in her.



He purchased "Helen & Linda,"his last boat, from Edgar Kaiser.the

following summer.  I brokered the sale of this boat to Leonard MacDonald

of Souris PEI, in the late spring of 1961.Leonard took her home to PEI

after Ray was done smacking at Caribou, at the end of the lobster

season.

.

Don

Overboard!

    



My dad had a dream of becoming  the keeper of Green Island (Country) light. This dream was first seeded in his mind while he visited his aunt Jane, the wife of one of the earlier keepers, and finally came to fruition when after a succession of keepers after uncle Henry (Burke) retired, the job finally came to open competition.
 Dad applied and came in second. A gentleman from New Harbour ……. Henderson was first, as he was a veteran of WW I. He decided he didn’t want it after all, so my dad realized his dream when he took over the station from Tremaine Cooke of Isaac’s Harbour.
After Uncle Henry’s retirement, the old light was torn down, and a new combination light and dwelling was built. The contractor was Ai Luddington of Drum Head, and there was several keepers in rapid succession, among whom was Ray Luddington of Drum Head; Peter’s grandfather; the last before dad was Tremaine.
Dad took over in the spring of 1928. The salaries for light keepers and probably all civil servants, were notoriously low back then, ($85. Per month) so dad, like many other keepers along the coast, decided to augment his wages by fishing, and procured an old ‘ Oscar ‘ boat to achieve this aim.
He powered her with a double cylinder marine gas engine, a four stroke, manufactured by Hercules Motors Inc. Which due to it’s design shook with vibration to such a degree, that it would cause passengers and crew to have double vision.
My mom didn’t much like traveling to and from the island. Once on board the big boat she was fine, it was the launching and landing that got to her, especially if there  was a little sea (surf) on the beach. For this task dad used a single dory, AKA, The Shelburne handline dory.
Green Island was noted for being a difficult place to land. The so called cove is a mere indentation in the beach, which changes in fall and winter storms………..it can be the finest of gravel one day and very large stones the next. The small dory was and would still be the vehicle of choice to effect a safe landing and/or launching in such conditions.
One fine summer day, probably in 1930, mom had been ashore visiting and was bound home to the island. Reaching the mooring where the little yellow dory sat curtsying to the white caps coming in around the Yellow Rock from the sou’ west wind,  dad rounded up and reversed the Falcon, and lifting the mooring out of the dory’s bow place it on the pawl ost of the big boat, tied it to the stem and all was in readiness to load his passenger, the mail and groceries.
With dad in the dory, to hold her in against the big boat, mom proceeded to get aboard the dory. They had done this many times, but this time Murphy came around. Mom was about to take her seat on the after thwart of the dory when she lost her balance and fell between the dory and the big boat. Being a non-swimmer, she went down to visit with the bottom dwellers.
When she broke the surface dad grabbed her by the wrist. To do this he had to let go his hold on the big boat. They were now drifting to leeward toward New Harbour Point. Mom wanted to hold on to the stern becket (a rope strap in the bow and stern of a dory to facilitate handling) and let dad tow her to the beach, but as there was a bit of a sea on, he thought she might break an ankle or leg, so he made a snap decision.
Rolling the little dory down toward mom ‘ til the water was flooding in over the gunnel, he gave a mighty heave and took her aboard along with a couple of barrels of water.
A dory, just like any other boat becomes unstable when water is taken in, the water sloshes round changing the center of gravity with great rapidity, this is known as free surface effect, and it was now threatning to capsize the dory as it drifted side to the sou’ west lop.
Dad bailed madly with the dory scoop, made for the purpose, but not for the volume of water that he had to contend with just then. Mom sitting on the dory’s floor boards, bailed too; with dad’s battered old felt hat!
They finally got safely ashore on the north beach, and made their way to the light, but neither of my parents ever forgot that near miss
     
           Seanachie

Oris Webber's Big Fall

I mentioned Oris driving Seldy's big dappled grey gelding in Winter's Harvest, and of that demonic equinine's predation on his hapless driver. Now it is time to talk about Oris's big fall.
Sometime in the early fifties, Oris decided to give it a go on the Great Lakes. He got shipped out on one of Quebec and Ontario Paper Co., boats the Outarde (see picture) The season passed and they had put the pulp carrier into Port Weller Drydock for work over the winter. When laying up, Oris and another deck hand were up on two extension ladders, 180 degrees apart, putting a tarp over the funnel.
It was a very windy day, and while they were engaged at this task, a gust pulled the tarp from the other seaman's grip, blowing it back across the top of the funnel toward Oris. Oris's ladder wasn't tied off, and the tarp carried him backward, ladder and all out over the boatdeck, where Oris released his hold and dropped, striking the boat deck, where he hit the rail, bounced and landed on the cement floor of the dry dock. Nine day's later, he regained concééniousness in St. Catherine's General Hospital. He awakened just as the Drs. were having a consultation at his bedside as to whether or not to pull the plug on the support system.
" You feller's never mind that, I'm alive; now get to work!" Which they did.
After multiple operations, pinning and screwing and plating this human Humpty Dumpty together again, they sent him to The tario Workers Rehabilitation Hospital at Malton, where he was a guest for fourteen months. He arrived back home in a white 1950 Ford two door. I believe he had 87 fractures, which says volumes about the toughness and positive attitude of this native son of DH., one of the perpetrators of the Gull Egg Caper.
The surgeons had fused both his ankles, which impeded his ability to drive heavy trucks to some extent ( or so they lead him to believe) but he kept on a-truckin' ! Witnesses said that the tarp billowing around him as he fell the 73 feet to the floor of the dock undoubtable saved his life.
Don