I don’t usually reblog other people’s posts, but this new post by fellow blogger, Maurice Barry, is too interesting and beautifully written not to share. This should be equally rewarding reading for those of you who know about the “closing” of the Newfoundland outports, those isolated (not isolated by boat) fishing communities that the government deemed too expensive to support and those who aren’t even sure where Newfoundland is (check a map). This is his family’s experience with our changing world.
“Oh, poor old Red Island,” dad would intone in a voice heavy with regret. He’s been gone almost thirty-five years but I can see him now, hunched forward in the old wooden rocking chair, the same one his mother and grandmother used, but in a place and time far removed. His head, downturned, face cupped in his frail hands and his shoulders slumped. There was no mistaking the grief, the heartache, the loss felt for a time that was but would never return.
And my mother’s quiet demeanour; she, too, seated, knitting probably, in a rocking chair but of a much more recent vintage. Try as I might, I cannot recall reading the same grief from her. But, yet, who knows? It’s also been such a very a long time–almost thirty years now–since I was able to share those by now precious and rare moments of her quiet wisdom.
They…
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Robby Robin's Journey 