A Time That Was: Christmas in Newfoundland

A Time

That Was

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Christmas in Newfoundland

Gary Collins

Flanker Press Limited

St. John’s

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Collins, Gary, 1949-, author

A time that was : Christmas in Newfoundland / Gary Collins.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77117-365-0 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77117-366-7 (html).--

ISBN 978-1-77117-367-4 (kindle).--ISBN 978-1-77117-368-1 (pdf)

1. Christmas--Newfoundland and Labrador--Anecdotes.

2. Collins, Gary, 1949- --Anecdotes. I. Title.

GT4987.15.C64 2015 394.266309718 C2015-906441-4

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© 2015 by Gary Collins

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.

Printed in Canada

Cover Design by Graham Blair

Flanker Press Ltd.

PO Box 2522, Station C

St. John’s, NL

Canada

Telephone: (709) 739-4477 Fax: (709) 739-4420 Toll-free: 1-866-739-4420

www.flankerpress.com

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We acknowledge the [financial] support of the Government of Canada. Nous reconnaissons l’appui [financier] du gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities.

Contents

Preface

1 - A Time That Was

2 - Mummer in the Barrel

3 - The Christmas Salmon

4 - Uncle Louis’s Christmas

5 - The Christmas Rescue

6 - Christmas in the English Channel

7 - The Can Opener

8 - Flowers for a Queen

9 - Concerts and Times

10 - In with a Bang

Acknowledgements

Dedication

I dedicate the stories in this book, with great joy as well as with much sadness, to my son Nicholas (Nicky) Collins. The photo of the boy upon this page is one of only two we have of him. He saw but three Christmases.

Preface

To you reading these few words, I will say a sincere thank you. Or, as my dear mother would say to me when I had done something good for her, God love your heart.

Thankfully, all nine of my other books have become bestsellers. Without readers like you this would not be possible, and, in effect, I guess my first book, without such success, would have been my last.

I would like to thank my publisher, Margo Cranford of Flanker Press, for insisting that I write this work. She has always wanted me to do Christmas writing. She felt sure my readers would enjoy such a book. I hope she was right.

The writing of this manuscript has brought me much joy—as Margo assured me it would. I told Flanker Press in no uncertain terms that they would not get any Santa down the chimney story from me. I decided on a collection of true stories with a Christmas theme. I also insisted on the title for the book to be A Time That Was. I sent Flanker Press a rough draft of one of the stories that I intended to write, for their consideration—after all, it is their front money—and they agreed to publish it.

Upon the pages ahead, white as Christmas snow, you will be carried through green virgin forests upon creaking sleighs drawn by trudging ponies or by trotting dogs with tongues slathering. You will experience the pain of a child nearing death in the wilderness of 1930s Newfoundland, which might as well have been in Siberia. Live again the gone forever: witness the life of an outport duck hunter and his water dog; find yourself in the throes of battle upon a grey Christmas sea; share the simple giving of food and the sure comfort it brings at Christmastime; watch as lamplight beckons from a lonely window beside the restless sea and shines upon new Christmas snow; hear the knelling of Christmas bells carrying their sweet news of birth across islands long since barren of human life. Feel the warmth of love ushered in by that most special of seasons, Christmas—timeless, ageless, magical, and infinite.

All of the stories are true, with some creative writing to endear the scenes as well as the wonderful characters. Ride in the swaying cab with an ice road trucker, pushing the northern lights with his bumper, inside the rim of the pole. Feel the sting of a child’s pain and the joy of a Christmas homecoming. Experience the poverty of possession as well as the wealth of sharing.

If you are of an age to relate to these stories, I would urge you, seated by the warmth of your modern Christmas, to share your own times-that-were with those dear to you. And if you have not reached an age yet to relate to any of these tales, consider this: You are right now living through a time in your life which you will one day cherish . . . as your very own time that was.

I wish you and all those you hold dear the most precious Christmas, one that is filled with the joy of sweet memories.

1

A Time That Was

I stood there looking out our living room window at the darkening mid-December sky. The lights of Christmas were coming on around the bay. An expensive stereo system behind me crooned familiar Christmas tunes. Outside the window, traffic hissed along the paved street. The supermarket across the way glittered with coloured lights and blared out Christmas music to draw patrons inside. My daughter joined me at the window.

Nice out, isn’t it? All Christmassy and lovely.

Yes, I replied. It’s very nice.

Time to get your tree up, ya know, she said, as she does every year. Though she had a family and home of her own, she always looked for the tree in the home where she had grown. But then, my daughter knew that her mother and I still decorated a real Christmas tree and usually waited until just a couple of days before Christmas Eve before bringing it into the house. Our other decorations, inside and out, were complete with lights in the lawn trees and around both doors. The eaves of the house were framed with twinkling colours. Only the large living room window remained bare, awaiting the sweet-smelling fir tree that would soon be displayed there. It would draw the eye and outshine all the other decorations.

My daughter soon left my side. After a while, I was turning away from the window when there came a knock at the door, and a high-pitched voice with indrawn breath asked, Any mummers ’lowed in? Quickly, I looked out the window again, fully expecting a troupe of mummers at my door. I was so filled with a sudden wave of nostalgia that it took a second or two for me to realize the sound was coming, not from outside my door, but from my stereo. The music started, and the duo called Simani sang the history of a mummers Christmas in the outport Newfoundland of my youth. The song ended with the line, Good night and good Christmas mummers me dear, please God we will see you next year.

In a trance, I gulped the emotion down before my eyes betrayed my feelings. The songwriter had captured and brought it so vividly to life, I nearly cried over the God-given memory of a time that was.

I watched him come down the hill with the fir tree bouncing on his broad shoulders on the eve of Christmas. My warm breath removed frost from the window in the front door and melted a hole through which I could peer out. My father was now coming out the lane and I could see the tree bobbing up and down above the naked alders above the fences. I ran from the door window to the one facing the lane in the frigid living room, but the layer of frost upon it was too thick to clear quickly, so I ran back to the one with the better view. Now my dad was coming through the garden, walking through the gate, which had been long since held wide open with snow. Now he was crossing our garden of snow. Our yard never seemed so long.

Then he stopped and shrugged the load from his back. My mother’s smooth face warmed my cheeks as she pressed next to me against the window to inspect our prize. My father held the tree up proudly with his left hand. He stepped an arm’s length away, his ruddy face beaming with delight at the treasure he had brought out of the forest.

Turn it around, cried Mother through the frozen pane. Father turned the tree as requested. Mother stepped back from the window and rubbed her hands with glee. ’Tis perfect, b’y! ’Tis perfect! she exclaimed. Father’s face beamed all the more. His tree had passed inspection. My mom and I hurried to the door and, oblivious to the cold, threw it wide open.

Bring the tree in. Hurry up, hurry up!

My father squeezed the precious tree through the door, its branches sending the smell of myrrh throughout the house. The inside room door was opened and he bore the tree inside, stamping the snow off his boots as he went. For once my mother didn’t notice. Soon the tree was fastened to its proper place in the bay window. Lengths of twine leading from nails driven in opposite corners of the alcove and tied to the treetop kept it secure. To hide the twine, cards kept from years past were draped over it, tent-like. My mother never threw away a card. At Christmas my father was like a young boy, always full of excitement and mystery. He and I were allowed to place the store-bought bulbs and dangling icicles as well as homemade woollen crafts anywhere we liked on the tree—at least until my mother laughingly adjusted most of them to her liking. My mother was not a very excitable woman, but her face glowed as she hurried back and forth from the kitchen to the parlour and made sure my father and I had placed the precious bulbs on just the right branches. She couldn’t stay long, for the wood stove oven was filled with partridgeberry tarts, and on this day above all others she would not allow them to burn one bit. The evening set in. The room was dark when the door was closed, but when the hall door opened and allowed the Aladdin lamplight from the kitchen to fall softly upon it, the tree glowed and sparkled like our moonlit bay.

The scene from that long ago Christmas Eve is such a simple and carefree one, I sometimes wonder if we are any better for the passage of time.

My Uncle Louis always came for a visit on Christmas Eve, as well as our neighbor, Ches, who, though a logger, walked with a sailor’s gait. They were both master storytellers, and I listened eagerly to their many cuffers. The men were loggers, as was my father, and they told of long forest trails in deep woods and huge black bears that stole loaves of bread from under their camp bunks while they slept. They relived stories of heavy logs pulled by muscled horses so vividly that I could hear the clink of harness and the creaking of sleds over the snow. And while they talked about horses, which were the strongest animals and could run the fastest and had the most endurance—and could be the laziest, too—my mother warned them that talk about horses always brought gales of wind.

My father never smoked, though he loved the smell of tobacco. Ches and Uncle Louis were heavy smokers. Their yarns were frequently interrupted by trips to the stove, where they lifted one of the lids and snoffed their cigarettes. The blue curling smoke from their last draws, pulled along by the heat rising from the hot stove, escaped through the cracks in the ceiling flange around the silvery funnel. They told of other times when Christmas trees were adorned with rabbit bladders painted in gay colours, of tufts of rabbit tails and coloured strands of worsted wool skilfully skivered among the green branches, and rare pieces of orange peel, saved for the occasion and cut in spirals, dangling from the limbs.

Soon their cups of live tea were drained and the partridgeberry patty tarts were eaten. The patty tarts were usually saved for visiting mummers and children, but my mother knew the burly loggers loved them. The men prepared to leave. They donned their wool cuffs, hugged my mother, and with a heartfelt Merry Christmas meant for everyone, they left our house and stepped out into the frozen night. When the cold air gushed in and met the warmth of our house, a cloud of steam suddenly appeared and haloed the leaving loggers. By the time the door closed behind them, my mother was hurrying across the kitchen with mop in hand and wiping the puddles of water from under the table. Looking out the kitchen window, I watched the men trudge away. Their dark figures against the pure white snow were the only things moving in the night. Soon they separated and headed toward the trailing lamplight emanating from their own respective kitchen windows. A few flankers suddenly rose above one of the roofs, identifying the funnel from which it had burst. While I watched from my place by the window, Uncle Louis’s door was opened and a soft light spilled out on the snow. For just a moment his broad shadow hid the light. Then I saw his form clearly reach up and knock aside a few icicles that reached downwards above his door. His door closed off the light again, and I turned from the window.

The only visible evidence of our recent visitors was the lingering smell of tobacco smoke, but the genuine love and spirit of their presence in our simple home by the sea would keep my heart warm for as long as I lived. That precious evening sped away too quickly, but like Dickens’s Pip, I was buoyed along by my expectations. Anything could happen at Christmas. For just two days before, I, along with the rest of our town, had witnessed an amazing sight. We had been told for days that Mr. Jesse Collins, owner of the largest store in town, was bringing in Santa Claus for a quick visit. There was even talk of Santa arriving on a helicopter. In 1957, most of us had never seen a