September, 1970

September, 1970 is the month that bore witness to the Middle East erupting in near apocalyptic furor that became known as Black September, the Ford Motor Company introducing the Pinto – a vehicle known primary for its penchant for exploding when one tapped the rear end, and the drug overdosed demise of Jimi Hendrix. Closer to home it is the month that saw the first of the family leaving home. My sister is packed and ready to go on a very long trip to start university. She would take the steamer back to our home town, meet up with some former school mates, take the ride to the capital city and from there take a flight that would carry her farther from home than she had ever been before. It is a trip that will take 2 days. In an old family photo she sits on the front steps in her finest peasant blouse with short puffy sleeves, luggage stacked neatly by her side and despite her best efforts to the contrary her smile belies nervousness.

Unlike most provinces, the students here graduated high school at grade 11 so kids leave home for university, if that is their plan, earlier than most. Years later a grade 12 program would be implemented. On one hand this would delay the parental anxiety of kids leaving home for a year. One the other hand it meant parents had to wait an extra year to get the kids out of the house. My father was very excited about his daughter not only excelling academically but also getting accepted into a great school. I would learn later that my sisters always felt extra pressure from my father. For my father, education - especially in his case - was an escape to a better life and one can only assume that he did not want his daughters unable to fend for themselves. Perhaps this is why all my sisters became working professionals. Whether or not my father’s tactics of putting an added onus upon his daughters worked is something to which only they can attest. Sons, as most parents seem to believe, do not need the extra heed.

Today, Sharon is leaving home. Everyone stands on the wharf as the big blue and white ferry pulls up to dock. Men scramble to grab the ropes tossed from the ship onto the concrete platform and pull the much larger mooring lines to secure them to the steel heads. A small gate opens in the gunwale and an aluminum gangway with rope railing is lowered to the edge of the wharf. My father is the first up the gangway carrying the bulk of my sister’s luggage followed by my mother and sister with the rest. A short time later my father returns and later my mother, with crumpled tissue in her hands and red wet eyes, returned to the wharf. The ship’s horn blasts as the ferry edges sideways from its dock and when there is enough clearance the water churns violently at the rear of the ship as it slowly makes it way out of the Bay Roche’s small harbour. My mother continues to watch the boat until it disappears around the steep cliff that marks the entrance, and exit, from Bay Roche.

Number one hit from September of 1970
Rose Garden by Lynn Andersen

19 years later I would get sweaty and overly familiar to this little number heard in clubs almost always located on the wrong side of town. Canadian outfit Kon Kan with I Beg Your Pardon.

August, 1970

In late summer of 1970 toilet training isn’t going well and despite the many efforts to get me to go to the ‘big toilet’ I am still pretty much obstinately committed to using my Johnny Jr. But this month, more important than my toilet training, is the family returning for a visit to our home town. My parents want to check out the old house and then go to the cottage for the traditional family vacation. My oldest sister is only a few weeks away from leaving the province to go to university and this would most likely be the last family vacation she would be joining us on.

We are taking the steamer back to our home town and on Bay Roche’s newly expanded wharf – thanks to the fish processing plant – we all waited. While the steamer line was a favoured way to travel for most of the locals, the service was not known for it punctuality. Today, it meant an hour of waiting and during the delay passengers had a choice of either milling about the wharf or going inside the tiny steamer line office which contained a purser’s window where one bought their tickets, a wooden banquette, and what was even then an ancient Coke machine which still functioned. With her kids getting increasingly restless and some still too young to wander about a potentially dangerous wharf, my mother decided that it would be best to sit in the steamer line office. It wouldn’t be too long from now that me and some other young kids would hang out on the wharf on our own. The steamer line had the only coke machine in town and the price was half of that at the store. Also, the wharf would be where a horse would nearly chew off my right pointer finger in a couple of years. But for now we waited for the big blue and white passenger boat to pull in and dock. 24 hours later, be back in our home town.

My mother was elated back in her town. Her best friend and neighbour greeted us at the wharf and was literally hopping with excitement to see my mother again. At the house, we all spilled out of the neighbour’s car and my father unlocked the front door, proceeded into the cellar, turned the electricity back on and opened the old valves that fed the water pipes. The house creaked and rattled back to life as the water found its way through the piping. Blinds were lifted and curtains pulled back and a spirited energy once again filled the rooms. Home, for everyone, does not only mean a specific place but also a particular time, never duplicated just emulated.

Summertime traveling music in 1970
Get it On (Bang a Gong) by T Rex (with Elton John helping out)

July, 1970

The province, in a controversial act, decided to drag the province “kicking and screaming” into what was then the 20th century. The idea involved offering incentives (initially this meant money) to families to move from their small villages to larger towns in an attempt to streamline and centralise services. This resettlement plan, taking place over two decades, involved the ghosting of 200 towns and villages and the forced move of 50,000 people. Predictably, the resettlement plan did not go as smoothly as the government had hoped. After several years they realised that people were in no hurry to leave their homes and way of life and, in an absolutist move, the government closed all essential services like ferries and mail finally forcing the holdouts away from their towns and homes. In a family outing from which my older brother and sister opted out of, we are going to take the boat to visit one of these ghost towns.

This outing was going to be different in one key way - my mother would be piloting the boat for the first time with passengers. After we were all aboard, my father untied the stern and bow of the boat. After tossing the rope onto the aft deck, my father kept one foot on the wharf and with the other he kicked the stern of the boat away from the dock. Making his way to the bow of the boat, my father hopped on as my mother pulled back on the gearshift lever causing the engine roar into life. With the water churning at the rear, the boat slowly pulled sternway away from the wharf. With a quick turn in the harbour, we were on our way around the steep rocky point that marked the entrance to Bay Roche.

On a clear warm midsummer afternoon the sea is a deep sapphire blue. The colour of the ocean fades slightly as it comes close to the rocky cliffs where waves break in soft white folds over fallen rocks worn smooth by millennia of waves and wind. My mother holds the boat close to shore as my father keeps an eye on any hidden dangers like sudden shoals this close to land. After about an hour, my mother pulls the boat into gap in the cliffs to reveal a rocky beach. At the center of this beach there is an old wooden wharf supported hundreds of spindly legs. Just beyond this wharf are grassy slopes on these gentle hills were the abandoned houses in various states of dilapidation. Some looked as if they were lived in only yesterday while others leaned at such precarious angles it felt like one might actually catch the moment when the house would loose its battle with the physical laws and fall in a flattened pile of broken glass and shingles. Some houses were gone completely with just the stone and mortar foundations remaining. These were houses the owners could not leave behind. These homes were literally lifted from their bases and floated to their new town and it was not an uncommon sight in the 1960’s to see a two story house floating by, being towed to its new town.

My mother rather expertly pulls the boat up to the old wharf and my father tends to the mooring. Moments later we are running on abandoned paths and wooden walkways. My mother has packed a lunch and a short time later we are sitting on blankets eating sandwiches and sipping Kool Aid next to an old cemetery filled with graves now only visited by occasional strangers on warm summer afternoons. Eventually the houses, walkways and even the wharf will be consumed by rot and time but these lonely ghosts will remain.

From July of 1970
Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum

June, 1970

The first month of summer and school is out. The new house now feels even smaller as there are kids hanging about. Most of my siblings are getting to better know their new friends and if there is one thing about living in a small town is that friends are automatic. With the limited pool one cannot afford the luxury of choosiness. My mother and the mother of my new friend, Mason, have become close and this Saturday afternoon in June, the air is warm, the town, which at first seemed grey and barren is now surrounded by greenery spotted with patches of coloured flowers both wild and tamed. There is also something new to everyone in town this summer; the distinct smell of offal fermenting in the early summer sun. Offal is a slurry-like substance made from the inedible parts of fish that the new processing plants cooks into a fertilizer. The smell, somewhere between rotting fish and urine, is lingering and to palpable as it sits in open-topped loading bins. The smell, the plant promises, will only occur once a month and since the new plant has brought good playing jobs to the Bay Roche, the townspeople are feeling expansive enough to tolerate the stench. The smell notwithstanding, my uncle has come to visit.

My uncle Joel, my mother’s younger and only brother, is the quintessential product of the 1960’s. After earning his degree in education he bummed around for a year traveling, camping and ingesting social chemicals. After he was done his “sojourn of self discovery” he found a position teaching in the northern part of the province. As my grandparent’s youngest and only son his visit to Bay Roche was treated like a celebrity had come home. It was noted on this visit that me and my uncle Joel bore a striking resemblance to each other, although I, at the time, lacked the mutton chop sideburns and shoulder length hair. What I remember most about my uncle Joel is that his love of music rivaled my father’s. My uncle brought with him a collection of records and on my grandparent old console he played songs that he brought back form places that seemed exotic and distant; or at least made to seem exotic and distant as recalled through the halcyon tales of uncle Joel’s travels. I, of course, do not personally remember the first visit of my uncle Joel but he, like my grandfather, was enjoyed an audience and could spin a yarn as well as his father. The difference being Joel stories had a level of veracity (and groovy soundtrack) lacking in the far fetched anecdotes of my grandfather Pryce.

In later years, it would be my uncle Joel who would first introduce to music that would stay with me up until the present day. Music that remains important to me.

One of my uncle Joel's favourites in 1970
Volunteered Slavery by Roland Kirk

May, 1970

May brings us my brother Matthew’s first birthday. Matthew’s arrival to the family brings the number of people who have birthdays in the same week to three. Sharon’s, Matthew’s and my father’s birthday all fall within five days of each other. In the future, in the interest of economy, these birthdays would be celebrated together rather than separately but as it is Matthew’s first and he gets his own party. Matthew, already well ensconced as the adorable star of the family, is enjoying with a natural ease the attention. And I, being just slightly over two years old, am trying to find a way to make as much noise as possible. At this time my preferred noise-maker is a Fisher Price toy telephone - a peculiar toy shaped like a classic phone but had a face with bobbing eyes and bulbous red wheels. The telephone made a clacking noise when pulled by the receiver and for a period of time this annoying sound was my entrance and exit music. I am told it drove people nuts so it must have pleased a two year old me.

My father had recently returned with the family boat and he was more than a little apprehensive about teaching my mother how to pilot. One couldn’t blame him, his first and only attempt at teaching a family member how to drive ended with him nearly ending up in the harbour and an expensive repair bill. In the the coming weekends he would be occupied with teaching my mother a new vocabulary like headway instead of forward and sternway instead of reverse, call commands and the basics of engine repair. My older siblings remember these weekends very well as every Sunday dinner, mixing with the smell of roast chicken and gravy, was my mother smelling like diesel fuel and hard grease. My mother was very excited about the new things she was learning and was, for the first time since moving to Bay Roche, returning to her normal self. My father admitted that she took to boating easily.

While the family was accepting of my mother learning to pilot, for the townspeople it was an unusual sight to see a woman at the wheel of a boat. And if my mother was hoping to make friends in Bay Roche she was cutting the potential field down considerably. Even my grandmother, a woman used to having to struggle to fit in, felt that my mother was putting herself on the fringe. My mother did not put much weight in the opinions of others and in the end, she would provide a very convenient taxi service for many women in town tired of the limited selection at the local store. They would have no qualms about asking my mother for a lift to Val Bois or other little towns in the immediate area and the men in town, perhaps relieved that someone else could help their wives run errands, seemed comfortable with the idea also. With her Our Boats, Ourselves example my mother brought a little bit of feminism to Bay Roche.

Hit from May, 1970
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

April, 1970

Bay Roche was a settlement created over 200 years ago when the British tried to purge the area of all French settlers. The French, fearing reprisals, hid themselves away in tiny coves and inlets: not too far from good fishing grounds, but hopefully out of reach of the British. The whole coastline was dotted with small villages bearing French names. It was much more the fish that dictated where these settlers lived rather than geography. How else to explain why people would choose such an untenable hillside to turn into a town. Decades later the French were patriated when France signed over all authority in the area to the British. And in doing so the settlers lost there nationality, language and religion. They did, however, keep the fish and this sustained them up until the present day when a modern fish processing facility would be built that would bring our family here. We are all a part of history.

After two months here the family is still a bit frazzled from the move. My Sister Sharon, despite kicking up the most fuss about moving, is having a better time of it at she counts down the days until she goes to university in the Fall. She has decided to go to a university in city a thousand miles away so her stay in Bay Roche would be relatively brief. In the meantime she is enjoying her star status in her senior high school class. It does bear mentioning, however, that there are only three other students in the Bay Roche senior high school class.

My mother and father are not having as good a time as my father bears the weight of my mother’s displeasure of being in Bay Roche. My father has his job to keep himself busy and while he does not report to like or dislike his work, it does afford him a daily distraction. My mother, on the other hand, has a house that still needs settling which only stands to remind her of the move itself. One of the biggest irks my mother endures is that the local store carries none of the brands of food she likes (or at least used to) and she is told constantly that there is a Grandy Mart in Val Bois, a town about 6 miles by water. The ferry runs back and forth a few days of the week between Bay Roche and Val Bois. Oddly, it was this minor inconvenience that prompted my mother to demand that the family boat be brought to Bay Roche from our home town and that she be instructed on how to pilot. For a woman whose lifetime fear of drowning was family legend, this comes as not a little shock. In the coming months my mother learned how to pilot the small longliner and this would serve as her substitute for the family car. My mother was a very skilled captain.

Hit from April, 1970
Your Song, by Elton John

March, 1970

The family is settling into the new town. Calling it a town is actually a stretch as Bay Roche was a village of around 500 people. A town made slightly larger by our arrival. We were not the only family to arrive as three other families had moved to Bay Roche to help run the newly opened fish processing plant. Bay Roche was having a veritable population boom.

The new house was a two story eastern salt box with a steeped pitched roof. It was different only from most of the other houses in town in that it was slightly larger. Larger yes, but much smaller than the house we left behind. A smaller house meant sacrifices and none greater than siblings, previous used to having their own bedroom, were now forced to share. My oldest sister, citing seniority, claimed a small room as her own as did my older brother Ben. I got to bunk with my 10 month brother Matthew. Mary and Debrah, never civil to each other at the best of times had to share a room; a room easily found if you followed the distinct caterwauling of fighting sisters. My parents took the only bedroom on the main floor. But what the house lacked inside it made up for it on the outside. Behind the house was a natural playground. The back yard was created by cutting a shelf of land into the steep cliff behind the house. The yard was deep recess of a grassy land held back by a tall stone wall which was banked on either side by the natural slope of the cliff; each slope flowing into either side of the yard. The stone wall would prove great for climbing (and falling from). At the top of this wall grew a thick copse of spruce trees. In winter, we would discover, the slopes would be perfect for sledding. In summer, the cliffs and tress beyond the top of the wall were prime for exploring.

My grandparents were always around and so I was happier. There were very pleased about us being within walking distance now even if my mother was not happy to be there. This is the month I celebrated my second birthday and the party was held at my grandparent’s house. A lot of people from around town came by to meet my parents and from this gathering I made my first friend. He was a boy my age by the name of Mason and the only son of a young family. All in all, it was not a terrible way to begin one’s terrible two’s.

A song my sister danced with me at my second birthday and a hit from March, 1970
Lola, by The Kinks

February, 1970

It would become a question that would be asked for years. Why would our parents plan a move in the middle of an east coast winter? It was often noted that my father could have started his job and a few months later, after school was out and the weather was more agreeable the rest of his family could join him. Whether it was my father not wanting to be away from his family for that long or my mother not wanting her husband left alone for months is not known.

Most of the house has been packed up and sent on ahead and would be waiting for us. Items of furniture, deemed too large or unnecessary for the new house, sat in various rooms: abandoned for the sake of space. Three of my older siblings had left a week earlier to stay with my grandparents in Bay Roche. Sharon, Debrah and Ben were getting transferred to a new school there (a school that was considerably different from the modern one they were used to). Mary, Matthew and I would be going by car in a couple of days. Going by boat would have been preferred but they did not run the steamer service in the winter months. The journey by car would be long and tiresome over some rough rural roads. We would drive to a small town close to Bay Roche and take a ferry from there. The car, having recently been repaired, would be put in storage and used infrequently for the next few years.

It was a Saturday morning in late February when the rest of us finally left the house. Outside the car was packed and ready for the 16 hour drive. Prior to leaving the house behind, my mother busied herself by sweeping each and every room. My father shut off the water and drained the pipes. My mother, having swept up the last piece of visible dirt, picked up Matthew, and took me and my sister out to the car where our neighbours, and my mother’s best friend, were waiting to say good bye. Inside, my father pulled the main switch on the fuse box, shutting off the electricity. A few minutes later he stepped out of the front door, locking it behind him. Te big old house was vacated - empty and quiet - for the first time in 100 years.

Hit from February, 1970
War by Edwin Starr

January, 1970

It is a new year – a new decade. A decade in which I will forge my earliest memories. The basic constructs of who I will become is going to be built in these years and the person I am today would be seeded in the 1970’s. For better or worse my value structures, the basis for my trust, an the groundwork for emotional being – all that was not genetically predisposed – would be the result of my experiences in the next few years of life. But before my developmental actualization is to take place the house needs to be packed up. The place is in chaos as a lifetime of living makes its way from the cupboards, off the walls and out of closets and into packing boxes. This house has been home for as long as anyone can remember and it does not bear the efforts of storage easily.

My mother, other that the occasional admonition of arguing siblings, is keeping quiet as she carefully removes dishes from the china cabinet, most decorative and rarely used, to wrap them in towels to better protect them. My father is down the hall, boxing records and packing up his little den with the fastidious care. The older siblings are each responsible for getting packing everything of theirs that is not essential and for my oldest sister Sharon this would mean the tedious removal of the hundreds of photographs with which she has wallpapered her room. Not everything in the house is to be packed up as the new house is smaller and many items are going to left behind and the old place becomes goes from being a home to a warehouse. The arguments are yet to happen as to what stays and what goes but if one thing is certain my father will not leave without his records and books.

In a few weeks the house would be locked up and the keys handed over to the neighbours who my parents have made arrangements to take care of the place. The idea of renting the house was not an option. The notion of strangers living in her house was out of the question to my mother and although my father saw this as a lost of potential revenue he was not about to push his luck debating his position already having convinced my mother to move.

I am 22 months old and still completely oblivious to what is happening. Instead I delight in, as is the wont of most young children, an empty box.

Number one hit from January, 1970
I Want you Back by The Jackson Five

December, 1969

My parents are throwing a party. Ostensibly it is a holiday party but it is really a party to say good bye to friends and neighbours. They have lived in this town a long time and have put down some deep roots. Moving to another town was not going to be easy for them.

My older sister Sharon was still sulking about leaving her friends and, as it was revealed shortly after the news was announced that we were moving, a boyfriend behind. On the night of the party she was commandeered – which meant paid – to baby sit my sister Mary, myself and younger brother Matthew and to keep us from getting under foot. Early in the evening my mother would put Matthew to bed and, my sister Mary and I would hang out in my sister’s bedroom while she played music by Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and other heroes of a fractured decade now at its close. Downstairs the gathering of my parent’s friends is getting drunker and louder until the din of shared laughter and conversation eventually overpowers the music. My father never drank and he, like a lot of sober people at social events, tended to the little details like food, drinks and making sure the music kept playing, even if no one was listening. My mother loved gatherings like these and was in her element as she caught up on the news and gossip. My mother was not a ‘kitchen mom’. She was not bound to convention when it came to hosting a party and if there was a drink that needed refreshing or a plate that needed clearing my mother did not see it as her automatic duty. The party was for forgetting the move and the daunting task of transplanting herself and her family. Tonight was for forgetting, at least for a few hours.

And so the 1960’s came to an end for me and my family. The 1970’s would bring changes and even greater challenges to the family but now on this December night my parents are happily surrounded by friends and music and upstairs, as my sister plays her records, I am dancing in that awkward toddler way to a completely tune.

Number one hit from December, 1969
Someday We'll be Together by The Supremes

November, 1969

Another blustery November evening has everyone stuck indoors and it is as good a time as any for my parents to spring some news onto the kids. While the event exists before the memories of my younger brother Matthew and I, my older siblings knew something was going on. The family had just finished dinner, served in the dining room for a change and perhaps to ensure that everyone was in one place when the news was announced. At the head of the table sat my father sipping his standard post-meal cup of tea. He always drank tea after every meal and always from the same, rather ornate, cup and saucer. It was the only cup and saucer like it in the house and it was known as ‘Dad’s cup’. He then told everyone we were moving. A bald statement made without panoply for any fanfare would have belied his essential pragmatism. My mother, it was noted, sat adjacent to him, silent, already resigned to the news.

Mixed with the obvious questions of, “moving?”, “where?” and, “why?” came the explosive response of my sister Sharon. Prone to the overreaction of all teenagers, she jumped up from the table and ran up the stairs to her room, punctuating her entry into her bedroom with the loud bang of the door being slammed shut. My mother pushed her chair partway from the table, uncertain as to who she should first attend – her kids at the table or her daughter upstairs. My mother’s decision was made for her as my sister Sharon came bounding down the stairs moments later and out the front door disappearing into brackish gusts of a mid November night. She ran off to find comfort and consolation at the home of a nearby friend.

My older brother Benjamin, feigning lack of interest and poking at the food left on his plate, was sparked into mild protest when my father told us where we were moving. The family was moving to Bay Roche in three months. I am told my brother Benjamin, who was close to 14 at the time, was heard to swear for the first time (at least for the first time in front of my parents) and he slumped backed into his chair, tossed his fork onto his plate and uttered a bewildered, ‘fuck’. If my parents did not chide him, particularly my mother, it probably had more to do with the fact that Ben had only expressed her feelings on the move as well. My father was taking a management position at the new fish processing plant that was nearing completion in my grandparents town of Bay Roche. It was a position that came with a substantial increase in pay and my father felt a good move professionally. My mother, perhaps having exhausted herself in counter arguments about the move, remained silent. It is not just kids who leave friends behind.

My earliest memories would be created by the events of the few years we would live in Bay Roche.

Number one hit from November, 1969
Na Na, Hey Hey, Kiss Them Goodbye by Steam

October, 1969

The house seems a quieter place now that my grandparents have left. Quieter, but certainly an air of tension exists as my parents try to hide themselves from their kids to discuss something in muffled, secretive tones. It is the sixth sense in all children that lets them know when something is about to change the family in a major way. It is the fallacy of parents that they should think the kids are completely oblivious. In October of 1969, even a 17 month old me would have felt the disquieting pall that has fallen over the house.

Despite home tensions, and maybe it was that he was a glutton for stress, my father has agreed to teach my sister Sharon, recently turned 16 and nagging for a driver’s license, how to drive. My father was a man of some resolve and a fair dose of patience so teaching his first child how to drive should not prove to be too much of a challenge. One early Fall evening Sharon, with her learner's permit in hand, headed out with my somewhat resigned father, to the big green Buick that was still unaware of its fate. The stories around this event fall into two camps; my sister’s and my father’s. My sister claims that my father confused her and she panicked causing her to slam down hard on the wrong pedal. My father blamed a system that would let a person earn a learner's permit without being able to differentiate the gas from the brake pedal. Our driveway sloped down along the side of the house to the road and was visible through the kitchen side window. If you were seated at the kitchen table you had a view of the car coming and going. My mother remembers it this way: a fast green blur, the clearly discernible scream of her daughter, my father yelling something inaudible (although some select swear words were clear) and, a few seconds later, a colossal bang. Driving lesson number one was over.

My mother hurried out the front door to see what had happen and across the road she saw that the car had stopped, back end first, in the access lane that lead to the wharf. The rear end of the car had crashed into a large 8 foot wide steel cable spool, crushing the trunk to half its normal size. Inside the car sat my sister, still clinging to the steering wheel with a ghost white expression of disbelief. The passenger side door was left open where my father had hurriedly and wisely exited the vehicle. At the back of the car my father, and a couple of neighbours that had shown up, were examining the damage to the car and the complete lack of damage done to large cable spool that had been placed there early that week. My mother, in slippers, flopped across the street to make sure Sharon was ok. My sister was fine but the back end of the car fared much worse. My father, as was his style when he was very upset, said absolutely nothing. Later, after the commotion had died down, the car towed away, and everyone had settled in for the night my sister Sharon well observed that it was a good thing she had hit the cable spool otherwise she would have continued down the lane, onto the wharf and into the harbour. The message was not lost on my father. This was the only driving lesson my father every gave to any of his kids and my sister Sharon was soon enrolled in driver’s ed at the high school. There’s a great photo of Sharon in the 1970 high school year book It shows her, in a remarkably short skirt, surrounded by the kids of other relieved and/or exasperated fathers, all waving their driver’s licenses.

A song heard from my sister Sharon’s room all through late 1969
Space Oddity by David Bowie

September, 1969

Three of my siblings an I are winding down our month-long vacation in the tiny fishing village of Bay Roche – the little place where my grandparents had retired. When my grandparents, Beth and Pryce, decided, after a relatively comfortable life of working and raising kids, to retire to this remote and even isolated village it was not only a curious thing but one of great concern. Bay Roche was literally an island onto itself and not even connected to the main island by land. The general - albeit counterfactual - consensus was that my grandparents were putting themselves in jeopardy.

By boat, which was the only way to approach Bay Roche, it looked like someone had broken the side of a large tea cup to reveal, spotted along the steep inside, little multi-coloured dots of houses - many held in place by exposed stilt-like supports - rising almost vertically from the harbour. The town’s buildings were connected to each other by a lazy zigzag of compressed dirt roads. These roads were carved back and forth and slowly decended until they reached, in a single gentle grade, the spot at the bottom of this steep alcove that connected to the wharf. The wharf itself was dominated by a shrimp processing plant and, in 1969, the construction of a centralised fish processing plant for the fishermen of the region. A tiny glint of the modern world dropped on the doorstep of Bay Roche. A curious thing about Bay Roche was that, despite the fact everything was uphill in every direction, there were no cars. The roads could not support them. There were some industrial vehicles to clear snow and push dirt and a sloped-roofed, bus-like vehicle that had 8 wheels on either side that took people from the wharf to the very top house if needed. The question would be raised time and time again as to why my grandparents would retire to place seemingly cut off from family, friends and time .

My grandparent’s house was actually near the top and planted squarely in what may have been the only flat piece of land in town. Their house was a little veranda-ed, building painted green with white trim. In the front there was a vegetable garden that looked threatened to be overtaken by the large showy leaves of rhubarb. Behind the little house was a long narrow shed with a tin roof. This was my grandfather’s carpentry shop. I would later spend a great deal of time in that shop with him amid the exposed gears and flying, twisting canvas belts of ancient machinery. The tiny plot of land my grandparents created for themselves was sheltered and very comfortable. My grandmother felt very happy there and my grandfather, although retired, felt useful as his skills of cabinetry and carpentry were needed in this sequestered part of the world. In Bay Roche, my grandparents had a place to belong and they had each other on their grassy little square of land carved into the unforgiving rock after which the town was named.

We would soon be spending a great deal more time as a family in Bay Roche.

From September, 1969
Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones

August, 1969

In the summer of 1969 the family vacation became a somewhat fractured affair. My grandparents were about to leave and return to their home. They had retired to a small fishing village about a day’s travel – either by boat or by rough road – away. The entire coast line was dotted with similar small villages some with no more than a 100 people living in them. The province had set up a steamer line that went up and down the coast stopping at almost every little inlet and town and for decades this was the easiest and certainly more picturesque way of getting from town to town. And although the boat had long since become diesel powered, everyone still called them steamers. This year, my grandparents, perhaps sensing a little tension between my parents, thought it would be a good idea to give them some time alone and offered to bring most of the kids with them back to their . My oldest sister, Sharon, opted to go camping with her friends at beach that was popular in the area. My youngest brother Matthew was still too young for travel and stayed with my parents. My older sisters Debrah and Mary, my older brother Benjamin and myself got to go for the 24 hour steamer ride to my grandparents retirement nest in the tiny fishing village of Bay Roche.

For the boat trip my grandparents booked a berth so that we had a place to sleep but being summer almost everyone was up on deck enjoying the warm weather and rugged coastal scenery. The steamer, on its route, stuck close to the shoreline. It was said that the skippers of these ships were so inept that clinging close to the shoreline was the only manner in which they could find their way. It was an iniquitous joke as no one could actually recall there being a steamer accident in the history of the line. The deck of the steamer had fore and aft areas for passengers to sit and enjoy the weather with each area made accessible by a narrow gangway that ran up and down either side of the ship. The gunwale of the boat was made of high solid steel: solid to keep small passengers from going through and high to keep larger passengers from going over. Even in rough weather these passenger ships felt quite safe.

My grandmother, fearing that I might run off and overboard, had strapped me like a pet into a harness attached to a leash. With me safely tethered to her hand, all the kids and grandparents sat up on deck to watch the rocky shoreline drift past. The coastline looked as if the very edge of the earth had broken off and fallen into the sea. From shear 150 meter rock cliffs, steep valley inlets and fjords to rough beaches formed where inland lakes had forced rivers that snaked their way through the bogs and marshes and broke free into the ocean. The journey was a geological marvel. I would make this same trip many times later in life and never tired of the view.

August in Bay Roche, we would all discover, was a trip 100 years back in time.

Number 1 hit from August, 1969
In the year 2525 by Zager & Evans

July, 1969

In the humid midsummer of 1969 everyone was beguiled by the moon and though they were not bathetically enthralled it was, in its own way, romantic. The Americans were about to land there – at least most people believed they were. The rest thought Hollywood was staging the world’s most expensive home movie. My father had just bought a new, large colour TV for the family room and during the night of the landing he sat transfixed on the live broadcasted proceedings waiting for the big moment. As well as music and reading my father loved science and in the realm of science this was as big a show as came. He would vehemently deny that the new TV was bought just to watch the moonlanding but no one believed him. He was a geek before the word had meaning and the night of July 20^th he, like a billion others, waited nervously and excitedly. Just before the landing my father woke any sleeping kids to make sure they didn’t miss the historic event. Both my younger brother Matthew and I remained sleeping. My grandparents, 4 of my siblings, my father and mother sat around the colonial-inspired decoration of the latest Zenith floor model TV. Just before 11 pm, after some jittery and dusty images, Armstrong spoke, “Tranquility Base here, the eagle has landed.” My father, I have it on good record, was beside himself and making the celebratory noises of a guy whose team had just won. No one knows if he noticed that the actual moon landing footage was in black and white. But the show was not over yet. The more venerated moment of man’s first steps onto the surface of the moon - complete with scripted line - was yet to come. Also, there was the placing of the American flag on the surface in what has to be the first act of galactic imperialism. It was a good night for the world and a great night for TV, at least for those who could managed to stay awake. A story goes that my father told my sister Mary (a name chosen, inexplicably, by an ex boyfriend of my mother from her university days) that there were men walking on the moon. Mary, who was 4 at the time, went out to the back porch to see if she could see the men my father had just told her were there. Mary could see neither the moon nor the men on its surface as it was a cloudy night on the east coast and those men were 363,258 - give or take - kilometers away.

Meanwhile closer to home, the Canadian government, under the allure of its glamorous new leader, Trudeau, had just given French it official language status and it was now considered equal to English across the land in an act centuries overdue. In Montreal, the nation’s largest French-speaking city, John and Yoko, in a somnolent approach to activism, checked into the Queen Elizabeth Hotel to stay in bed for a week for peace. From there they recorded Give Peace a Chance. It was a valiant effort on their part but it seemed the only peace anyone was really interested in was a piece of the bed linen on which the couple had slept. Scores of little, square John and Yoko, “actual bed sheets” souvenirs flooded the market - most of which were fake. John, Yoko and Prime Minister Trudeau probably had a good laugh about it when they got stoned together later that month.

From Room No. 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal
Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon and Yoko Ono

June, 1969

With the addition of my new little brother Matthew, my grandparents and all the kids now being out of school the house has become a frenzied place. Everyone agrees that Matthew is adorable and they all cannot help but remark on how much he looks like his father. I suppose this is a compliment to both my little brother and my father. Meanwhile, I have become my grandmother’s shadow and it was her that heard me say my first word: nanna. It was a word in my grandmother’s ear at any rate. I suspect that most first words uttered are largely based on the interpretation of whoever first hears it. Fathers hear dada, mothers hear momma, grandmothers hear nanna and no doubt the dog hears ‘walkies’. Whatever the sound, it was clear that my grandmother was becoming the maternal force of my life.

To help reign in some of the chaos of the house, my grandparents have suggested taking the kids to see a movie. The local movie house was closed so my grandparents piled all of us into the car and my drove off to the next town 30 minutes away. There were no movieplexes in those days so whatever was playing is what you got to see. It may have better served my grandparents to call ahead first to check out what was on but I don’t think it really mattered to them. So, with a brood of kids that included a 15 month old me, everyone settled in to catch Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity. For my first movie-going experience I would not be offered typical kids fair of flying elephants, purple roosters or singing bears. I would get to enjoy what was essentially prostitutes trying to coax men - via song - into a fuck and a young girl’s hope of finding the right guy to save her from this life all done to the Frug. I have no recollection of that day and I was told that I fell asleep in my grandmother’s lap. Not Even Sammy Davis Jr. could keep me awake.

Whether or not the movie and Fosse’s sexy dance numbers were appropriate for family viewing was never addressed and, frankly, I doubt anyone cared. This would have been the first music I would have heard not from the radio or TV and whether or not the film left an imprint in my life is, well, yet to be seen. All I know is that the rhythm of life is a powerful beat.

Rhythm of Life from Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity
Performed by Sammy Davis Jr.

May, 1969

There is a new addition to the family and I (as well as my other siblings) have a little brother. He was a little late arriving; a condition of which he would prove to be predisposed. Much to my father’s delight he has all the traits of his paternal Irish heritage, the flaming - undeniably more controlled than mine – red hair, rosy complexion and striking blue/green eyes. And while I have the name of my father, my new little brother has my father’s looks.

My father emigrated from Ireland. Born into crushing poverty in the lanes of the recent Republic - so often rendered postcard quaint for the casual tourist - the truth of my father's childhood was quite inexorable. My father was one of 10 children of which only 7 survived to adulthood - two uncles and one aunt I would never know and an arrant reminder that there is nothing cute or picturesque about being hungry, cold and, even worse, scared. My father never spoke of Ireland much, almost never talked of his family and when he did there was a distant note to his voice as he meted out only the scarcest of facts about his background. These were not castigations against his upbringing or culture but simply the quintals of his own personal benchmarks. After all, being proud to be Irish is the Irish condition regardless of station.

My father escaped his poverty, studied and became a boat captain, moved to this province and began his captainship. He then he met my mother. My mother, fearing she would lose her new husband to the sea, insisted he take a more land-based position. My father gave up the sea for wife and family - a family to which a new son, looking remarkably like him, had just been added. Meanwhile, I was hanging out with my grandparents and delighting, for a rarified moment, in completely ignorant bliss.

Hit From May, 1969
Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater Revival

April, 1969

One year to the month and my grandmother, Beth, (my mother’s mother) is back in the house. My mother is only weeks away from delivering her newest child and once again my grandmother has been called in to help out and this time she brought her husband - my grandfather - Pryce, with her. After her last birth, my mother must have felt a need for backup in this one, despite the fact that my father had become nothing short of helpful to the point of doting - very close to doting, but not quite.

It is the lot of grandparents that most grandkids have always will see them as old. This was not the case with my own maternal grandparents. They were the only grandparents I would know and their positive energy was as contagious as a 3^rd grader’s cold. Beth and Pryce, even after 40 years of marriage, seemed an unlikely pair. He, with a ruddy face, excited eyes and a quick smile, and her, carrying the consignment of those who’ve lived their lives on the edge of society, maintained a more dispassionate demeanor – not at all cold but certainly more reserved than my grandfather. Greater than the odds that had been stacked against them in marriage was the fact that they had somehow managed to overcome the inevitable boredom of familiarity. Beth and Pryce never seem to tire of each other. What I most remember about them is that ever the opportunity arose that were they seated next to each other, my grandfather always held my grandmother’s hand in both of his, cupping her small hand between his rough carpenter’s hands. It is the pose captured in film, photo and video throughout their time together.

I am told my grandmother seemed to make me, now known for my somewhat dour and serious nature for one so young, into a - while hardly effusive - at least a happier baby. And whether or not it was because my frighteningly wild hair was slowly taming itself or the fact that I was loosing some of the excess baby fat, my grandmother always called me her “pretty boy”. She would call me her pretty boy for the rest of her life.

From April, 1969
Hawaii Five-O by The Ventures
(the date shown in the video clip is inaccurate – 1969, not 1964)