I was always a loyal listener to CBC Radio. In 1973, I got a job working for KAWASAKI MOTORS as a dealer rep and they moved me to Moncton, New Brunswick. I was making 350 bucks a week and had a great expense account. I was 23, not married or involved and, man, did I have fun.
My job was to get up every Monday and leave my really cool bungalow on the Shediac River, which I bought for 15 thousand dollars, and travel the maritime provinces including Newfoundland and visit our Kawasaki Motorcycle and Snowmobile dealers in the four province's. I had a new Chevy Impala with a great sound system and I listened to the CBC daily, starting with Peter Gzowski's 'This country in the Morning', three hour long, out of Toronto, and broadcast nation wide. When Peter died and the show was no more, it was a great blow to our country, Canada. Truly.
A couple of times a year they flew me to Toronto for sales meeting but I was doing a good job and they were happy with me. My trips to Newfoundland were my happiest. I had first cousins (my father's brother Bill's children .He was a prince) in Grand Falls and they were very kind to me. Clarence was a new lawyer starting a practice and his sister Patricia became a great friends, to this day. She eventually married Frank Fagan who was an excellent businessman and humanitarian and they had two fine sons in St John's, Andrew and Richard. Both became doctors MD's but sadly Richard died a few years ago from cancer in his 20's. Heartbreaking.
Eventually they learned to cope and suddenly, last year Prime Minister Harper offered Frank the post of Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador and they accepted. So now they are Honorable, which is appropriate.
I don't listen to the CBC as much as I used to. But I still miss Peter Gzowski. Luckily for me, on one of my trips to St John's my cousins introduced me to my future wife, Jean O'Byrne. She was a physiotherapist recently recruited from Ireland by the Government of Newfoundland 1975, due to a shortage of physio's in the province. Three months later we married in Toronto and Yamaha transferred me back to Toronto.
My family had arrived in Newfoundland some time around 1750 and settled on Tilting Harbor, Fogo Island, some 15 miles off the north east coast. There they fished cod, which was plentiful and grew a garden of potatoes and some vegetables and practiced the Catholic faith with a fearsome devotion.
Life was harsh and death was a common part of life, whether it was childbirth or disease or even the common flu. The village of Tilting, was the commercial fishing capitol of the island and many a great Lunenburg style sailing vessel was built on it shores. Their history is long and steady, as they rarely left the island except to sell their catch and buy supplies in St John's. I wrote a novella with my son Jon called "Michael Burke", which is available on Amazon Kindle, for a token price. ( it was recently optioned for the movie rights) Michael Burke was an ancestor from my mother's family, the great Burke family of Waterford, Ireland.
When I could, I would visit Fogo Island and stay at my aunt Cecilia's wonderful home. Her children were married and moved away by then, and her husband, Lons Donahue, had died a few years before. Now he was a saint. The feather beds she had were ancient and coma inducing. I never had a better sleep, before or since. She was my mother's eldest sister and she lived late into her 90's, dying, not more than a few years ago.
Through all of these days, the CBC Radio was my companion.
No comments:
Post a Comment