THE NEWFOUNDLAND QUARTERLY :: ONLINE EXCLUSIVES

Special Father's Day article

My Father's Story

By Jeannie Guy

My father, Albert Guy, was what some would call a man's man. He loved the outdoors, engines, and science, but he was different from most men of his generation in that he had the soul of a poet and a wicked sense of humour. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke, other men, and we, listened. And he could fix anything.

Growing up during the Depression in outport Newfoundland, he, like so many others, had to make do. My parents, who both grew up in Catalina, Trinity Bay, learned at an early age to get along with what they had and what they could grow, catch, hunt, gather or make. They told us they never had any money but they never went hungry or felt they were deprived of anything, either. So when our maternal grandfather died, it was natural that our mother was taken out of school to help at home with the boarding house her widowed mother had been forced to open; but Father's family were a bit better off so he finished high school easily even though he would rather have been out trouting with his cousin Charlie.

When WWII broke out, Father, then working as a marine engineer, was caught, as others were, aboard a commercial shipping vessel and told he was now in the Merchant Navy. So Father as a young man sweated in the bowels of the noisy, smelly engine room of some ship in the heat and grease and steam, and managed to keep sane in the stormy North Atlantic knowing that a German submarine or warship could blow them all to smithereens, or worse, any time, any moment. And not for just one hour, or one night, but day after day, night after night, as they transported goods to Britain and up and down the eastern Atlantic seaboard. We are not made of tough enough stuff nowadays to handle that kind of situation - what we call now stress - but Father would say, "That is how it was, Jeannie. That was it."

After the war he worked on the U.S. Army dock in St. John's keeping their ships' engines going. When the Americans started making noises about pulling out of Newfoundland, he went to work for the Department of Highways keeping their heavy equipment - tractors, graders, dumptrucks - in working shape. He did not fix them himself anymore but was a purchasing officer. Still, work had its place for Father. It was only a means to buy the things he wanted in life: enough "grub", a little "swally" once in a while, a comfortable home, a decent car, and a shack by the pond (or as people for the mainland of Canada would call it, a cottage on the lake).

My two sisters (Judy and Pat), our mother and I must have tried his patience at times, but he never showed it. He treated us like able-bodied seamen, I guess, as we were expected to chop wood, shovel snow, dig ditches, find the right screwdriver, go fishing, stand-by focusing the flashlight, haul rocks, start the motor on the boat, or paddle the canoe like any boy our age, and "jump to the blue drop" when we were so ordered. In later years that transformed into cleaning the nozzle on the oil furnace (while you cooked his supper), helping change the brake pads on the car, re-caning the seats of old wooden chairs, tarring the roof, moose hunting and salmon fishing with him (for Judy, at least). We were never allowed to get out of some work because we were female. I guess he was a feminist, in the truest sense of the word, long before it was a word. I asked him, in his very senior years, whether he would not have rather had boys. He considered a moment and said he thought it was better to have girls as, "You fellas have looked after me alright."

Sometimes engineers from the university would ask for his advice or give him things they could not fix, especially small engines and generators. Sometimes he just had to touch a broken machine and it would be fixed. He was amazing. We would laugh at how easy it was for him, but he would smile mischievously and say, "No. It's not fair, is it? To have all this and naturally curly hair too?" (Which he did.)

Of course, as a child or a teenager, I did not appreciate any of this. As soon as I could get out of the house and away, far away, from Newfoundland, I did. And I did not go back for years. But like every traveller, eventually you go home, especially as my parents were in the very senior years. When Mother was put in a nursing home with a stroke, I went home as often as I could, to see her and to spend time with Father.

Those days were usually spent with him in his basement workshop, and me cooking and cleaning. But in the evenings, "when the sun was over the yardarm and it was time to splice the main brace", we became good buddies. We had dinner in the dining room by candlelight with a glass of homemade plonk, and he would tell me about his grandparents, and life at sea. After, while I washed the dishes, Father would stoke up the fire in the fireplace, and we would have our coffee and brandy. Then, he would recite poetry by memory to me by the light of the fire. His favourites were Omar Khayyam, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling. He enjoyed it all the more if there were a raging blizzard outside, with the wind whistling through the telephone wires and the house shaking, enjoyed it because he was in a warm, dry house and not in a leaky vessel with a cranky engine at sea.

He often compared himself to a ship when I made my weekly calls to him from Ottawa. How are you doing, Father?" I'd ask. "Oh, about 5 knots," he'd said, when he was just steaming along, or "hove to and double-reefed," when he was not feeling so well. Or: "I'm in dry dock," when he was really not well and mostly just keeping to the sofa.

When he died at 92, or "on his 93rd trip around the sun," as he called it, I missed him sorely. I spent weeks with Judy and Pat emptying the house our parents had lived in for 60 years, and where we all grew up. It was difficult work, and hard when I had to take the tools down from his workbench and pack them up for the very last time. He would have accepted it though: "That is the way she is, Jeannie, my dear. That's the way of the world." Cleaning out that house haunted me for months.

Until the following summer, when the three of us went back to Catalina to see our grandparents' old house, and visit their graves, and see the site of our great-great-great grandfather's forge. There is now a new museum in town in the old two-room schoolhouse. It was not the original schoolhouse that our parents attended together, but not far from it, and it had the original furniture, with a pot-belly stove. The old wooden desks were kept in rows by worn wooden rails on the floor. They were splattered with ink from the inkwells in the tops and carved with generations of student names. I thought, if my father had sat in this room, he would have sat in the back row. So I went there directly, and sure enough, there was his name carved in the desk, as plain as could be: Albert Guy. I was overwhelmed. It was as if he were speaking to me and laughing. What a joke! After all these years. He might have been a lad of 10 or 12 when he had carved it. At least we assumed Father had carved his own name. Our parents went to the same school and perhaps Mother had carved his name. More laughter. That was such thrill.

But still, I missed him. As we cleaned and cleared the house in St. John's, every item we picked up was a decision. Is it dangerous? Is it perishable? What is it? Do you want it? What shall we do with it? Thousands and thousands of bit and bobs, and tools and gadgets. On and on. A boat he had built in the basement. Two dozen electric motors. Miles of wire, rope, telephone cable, steel rods, copper wire, brass chunks, welding rods, tin, rubber, wood. Buckets of bolts, nails, and screws. Gallons of solvent, glue, paint, varnish, gasoline, acid, grease. Guns and fly rods. Tools and toys. Boxes and tins. Radios and telephones. An old schoolbag. Old fishing baskets. Our old sled. Antiques and collectibles and just plain junk. And then there was the backyard and the canoe.

The canoe. What to do with an old 19' Prospector canoe that had broken gunwales? The canoe was not new when Father had bought it over 50 years ago. We had all learned to paddle in it. Had all spent hours paddling him around the pond while he fished. Lifted it onto the top of the car a hundred times. Helped carry it up and down the path near the shack just as many times. It was almost as much a part of our family history as the house, but none of us could fix it, or were interested in getting it fixed. It was in rough shape, as Father had not been able to take care of it in his later years. Take an axe to it, and haul it to the sidewalk for the garbage man? Get a truck and take it to the dump? It is about 60 years old. How many 60-year-old canoes are there in Newfoundland? We called the provincial museum and luckily they were interested in it, and came with a truck to take it away.

The next year Judy read about an exhibit on small watercraft at the provincial museum (The Rooms), so she went, out of curiosity. Imagine her delight when she saw there in pride of place, centre stage, almost, Father's old canoe, gunwales patched, cedar strip interior all washed and cleaned of the worst of the old fish scales, moose blood, fly repellent, sweat, coffee and who knows what else. But when we all went to see it that summer, we could see that the lovely patina that only comes from continuous wear and proper handling and use over years and years were still there, all the holes and dents and scratches that were what Father would call "battle scars", each one a story. He had done it again, reached out and touched us, and pulled us all together in the museum. I could hear him laughing.

A short time later there was a repeat performance. Again, he seemed to pull us together from a long way away. Judy had met a lady at a school reunion dinner. By happy coincidence, she sat next to this woman, who had gone to the same school that we sisters had. So they introduced themselves and made polite conversation, as anyone would. When Judy told her our family name, the lady asked after our parents. Judy told her where they were from. "Oh," she said. "I have a picture of your father at home. His mother, your grandmother, and my mother were best friends." So, when the opportunity arose, all three of us went to visit her. After savouring her delicious homemade buns and lovely coffee, she brought out her parent's black and white wedding photo.

Sure enough, among the wedding party and guests was my paternal grandmother and her two small children, Albert (my Father) and Tess (my Aunt). Father was probably about four or five, so the picture was probably taken in about 1917. He was dressed in a white sailor suit with short pants, and his blond naturally-curly hair could not be contained under his flat straw hat. He looked like he was having a difficult time standing still. My grandmother would have had her hands full with him, Tess, and his younger brother, Bob, as her husband (my grandfather) was often away at sea for long periods of time. Father, as a young lad, used to tease Tess by dismantling their mother's treadle sewing machine when Grandmother was out. Tess, as the only girl, would have been left to babysit the two boys. Imagine her distress when Father would pretend he could not get the machine back together until the very last minute, when Grandmother was walking up the lane!

So, there was the blond-haired, blue-eyed darling of his grandfather's eye in a photograph almost 90 years old, a photo that none of us knew about. He may never have seen it, either. But there it was, and there he was. Teasing again. Tweaking my nose. Reaching out and tapping on my shoulder. Three times in as many years, since his death at 92.

And now, I am waiting. Waiting and watching and wondering when it will happen again: When will I feel my Father's presence? Pat and Judy both say the same. We all hear our Father's words come from our mouths. We see his influence in many of our actions and attitudes. And I have his blond curly hair and (I hope) his sense of humour, and his love of reading. But no one, just no one that I know, can fix things the way he could. No one has all of that and naturally curly hair too.

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