ANNIE'S SONG

She was fifteen when she left her home and came to Canada. That was in 1905. She looked, like most girls of her day, young for her age. But her youthful years covered up her skills of homemaking. That's what brought her across the Strait. She came to replace her step-sister as a domestic to a small mining town doctor. The step-sister all of seventeen herself, was getting married.

The fishing village Annie left behind was no more than a dot along the arm of a great bay. The rocky coastline held a rugged beauty all its own. The frigid ocean was a terror to man, but a home to giant schools of fish. Cod, mackerel, salmon, squid were everyday fare. The very best of food.

The family house was a collection of squares. Each year, as the family grew, or income improved, another square would be added. It clung to the side of the cliff and the walk from it to the well was another climb.

Behind the house, and higher still "where the highway runs now", was the family garden. Only the hardiest of vegetables grew there. It was not just a question of gravity but also a short and cool growing season. Potatoes, turnips, carrots, beets and cabbage were the staples. Annie recalls many a summer afternoon having to "pick the potato bugs off the plants so we'd have something left to eat".

Across the dirt path that served as a road and ran in front of the house was a spit of land jutting out into the river arm. It was flat, it was cleared and the hay grew there rather well. It was the best piece of land in the area and the cow and old horse shared its wealth. Annie remembers taking fresh water from the well on the hill to the animals when there they were surrounded on three sides by it.

No! Annie's father was not a fisherman, not any more anyway. He had fished in his younger years. That was when his first wife lived. But after he married the widow Smith, the railroad came through and he had voted right so he got a job as brakeman. It meant a steady income for the family and steady hours for Phil. Off he'd go at 5:30 in the morning and return around 6 in the evening, seven days a week. At week's end he'd bring home almost ten dollars.

Annie's family ate lots of fish, not so much because it was fresh as because it was free. The small fish flake near the water's edge gave forth the unmistakable odor of drying cod, well salted. The Sunday meal, however was always a roast of salt pork. The pig on tonight's table was the playmate of yesterday's pen. It was the original recycling factory. Annie took the scraps from the supper table to the young pig. A few months later he was getting the same treatment.

School in Annie's day was a place you feared to go and a place you quickly escaped from. The school master was a tough old bachelor. He was said by the local people to be so mean even a three time widow wouldn't marry him. However, you knew your lessons or you would be lucky to live to regret it. Annie learned to read, write, spell and she never though of going to a University.


Everybody along the shore was related or so it seemed from the way Annie's people talked. Anyone, who in any way was considered an adult, was called uncle or aunt. The rest were cousins. Even though most of the time there was no connection at all. It helped cover the situations like the marriage of Annie's mother and father. She was married before, he was married before, and they were still in their forties. With luck they might make it again, at least one of them. And old Phil did after Annie's mother died in 1906.

Church was a big part of family life. They never got there much, except in good weather, but when they did it was a special occasion. It affected their social life a great deal. Not that the priest was often around to supervise dances--the old folks saw to that. On Saturday night all activities stopped at midnight. You might be in the middle of a roaring game of auction-forty-five, or your legs might just beginning to feel light on the dance floor, or the fingers of fear might be crawling up the back of your spine from a ghost story, but when the old chime clock brought over from Ireland rang out midnight,
everything stopped. It was Sunday then.

Depending on the wind and the swell of the sea on Sunday morning you might chance out for Sacred Heart Church. Decked out in your Sunday clothes, you rowed the dory down stream toward the gut for about a mile and tied up on the opposite shore below the church. One thing you never had to worry over was getting a seat. Annie's father paid the yearly due or rent for the second seat on the epistle side. If the priest knew his pews he knew who was where and who wasn't on any given Sunday.

That's what Annie left behind when she came to Canada. She only went back twice. The first time was only a year after she left. Annie went home to tend her mother who was dying. After the funeral she came back to Canada. The second time she went home was in '65, fifty years later.
All of what Annie remembered was gone then.

July is Annie's birthday. She's 89. Happy Birthday Ma.

Fr Jim Mason, CSsR
1979