Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time...

I'm sure many of you have heard the above, probably even said it a time or two. Well, I ve said it a few hundred times, and I'm sure I will again. We all do things that when looking back we wonder if we suffered a brain fart of some sort.

Several years back, 18 to be exact, I had a brain fart. I let my wife talk me into moving to Newfoundland. For those of you not familiar, Newfoundland is a Canadian province. It is actually quite beautiful, and within its boundaries, you capture most of the features of all the Canadian provinces. Rugged ocean coastline, flatlands like the prairies, low mountains, and so much more.
We only spent a year in newfoundland, the year which I lovingly and hatinly called the best year of my life, and the worst year of my life. The worst because work was slim to none, the best because of all the wonderful people we met.

Anthony Harvey Photo

I'd been offered a job to go lobster fishing, which was the main reason we decided to go to Newfoundland. The work is hard, the pay is GREAT! I was to go working with my brother-in-law. Well when I arrived, that had suddenly changed. So here my wife and I were in a small community, named HarbourMille, population 82, just rented a house, and the work I was going to do, suddenly was gone.

Photo by Ocean Safaris

Luckily for me, the guy I was renting the house from owned a mussel farm. he hired me to help with the harvesting of mussels. he employed about 8 guys for this work. It was a cold, wet, dirty job, but it was work. harvesting mussels depends on several factors, one, the weather, and two, the weather! The weather had been unusually warm for several months, which hindered the growth and quality of the mussels. So if they aren't to a certain size and yield, you can't harvest. We went several weeks without being able to harvest, so money was very tight. We were scraping by, but just barely.

Now during this time, we met so many great people. The village was small, and had a population of 82, and I think we met them all in the first week we lived there. One of those people was my brother-in-laws uncle. Everyone called him Uncle Freeman. He was in his late 70's when we met him. He had been born deaf, and had never had any training with sign language, or proper lip reading, yet he could understand what you were saying when you talked to him directly facing him. He couldn't say much, but one thing he could say, was his name he had given my wife... Big boobs! He even use to joke with her and call her, lazy ass! He did this jokingly, because he had noticed my wife was always working at something.

Uncle Freeman, Photo by Ocean Safaris

He use to come by several times a day for a cup of tea and some crackers or cookies. One thing many newfies enjoy is a good cup of tea... they also like to have a drink! So I met a guy named Ed, a local fisherman, and loberman. A great guy, who missed his true calling. he should have been a comedian. This guy had me in stitches when we hung out, which was just about everyday. He and I had some great adventures, many included a "bit" of drinking!

I also met a young fellow, who was also a friend of Eds, they had grown up together. His name was Lloyd, but everyone called him Dog. He acquired that nickname because of the way he lived. He spent all his waking hours working just enough to go to the shop and buy booze. this process was repeated each and every day. He lived in a three storey house, which only one room was actually liveable. That was where he slept. It had a heater and a stove and also a bed, that was it. the rest of the house was a disaster.Most of the windows had been long gone, and because of that, the house had been ravaged by wind, rain and snow.
Now even though Dog played the part of the village drunk, he did not play the part of the village idiot. In those lucive moments he was actually quite smart. he was also a very nice guy. He just liked to drink. He was everyone's friend, but for some reason had taken a liking to me, and he'd often drop in to our house on the weekend, Saturday, usually, and watch the hockey game with me. His favorite team was the Toronto Maple Leafs, as is mine. It was hard to watch a game with him at times, because one minute he'd be watching the game, the next he'd be sliding around the room pretending he was the goalie!

I remember one morning around 5:30 I was laying in bed, when I heard down below, outside our bedroom window, my name being called. I got out of bed and looked down, and there was dog, not completely sober from the night before, asking me to let him in. So I went downstairs and let him in, made him and myself a coffee and asked what was so urgent he had to wake me up at this early hour.

He told me that he and I had to go haul his net before it got too light out. I had no idea what he was talking about, but figured I'd go along, at least I may keep him out of trouble for a little while. We had also woken the wife up with all our yapping, and she told me to be careful.

So off he and I go down to the dock, where he had a small rowboat tied. He also owned a motor, and i asked him why he didn't have his motor on the boat. He told me we had to be quiet, and the motor would be too loud. So he rowed out the harbour a ways, around a small cove, just out of sight of the villages houses. There he had set a salmon net. Well he and I hauled that net, and it was a hell of a haul. He had set it very low, so low, it was touching bottom.he'd done this so the Department of Fisheries and Oceans wouldn't discover his net.

There were rocks, redfish, lobster, crabs, and above all, 12 of the biggest salmon I had ever seen. So we grabbed our booty, and off we went back to my home. Dog gave me two of the larger salmon, and the rest he took to sell so he could booze it up again. This was just many of the adventures I had with Dog. I miss that guy, really i do. He moved from HarbourMille about two years after my wife and I left, gave up drinking, moved in with a lady, has a good paying job, and has all the boy toys, motorcycle, truck, boat, and even got his pilot's license.

Now getting back to ed, he and I became fast friends and we had several adventures. One of those included another friend of Eds named Roy. Roy was the poster child for hypochondriacs of the world. If he heard about it, he had it at one time or another, or was suffering from it at that very moment. He was a great guy though.
He, Ed and I went to Eds camp/fishing operating cabin one weekend. On those trips we always did the same thing, we went to the store, bought a few supplies, stocked up on beer and occasionally some rum, got the boat ready and off we went. On the way to the cabin, we throw the anchor out, jig a few cod fish, and continue on our way. When we arrived at camp, Ed would grab his scallop rake and a couple of lobster traps, we'd set the traps and go rake some scallops. When we were done we'd check the lobster traps, and if we caught a few, we'd head back to the cabin.
That was where I became the head cook and bottle washer. I'd always make us a big pot full of seafood chowder every trip. Ed and Roy both loved my cooking, or so they told me, I think they were saying that so they wouldn't have to do any cooking.
On this particular trip, Ed asked me to fry the scallop frills. I'd never had them, mainly because they looked so dayum gross, but he assured me they tasted great, and even better if fried with salt pork. So that is what I did.

Eastern Fisheries Buyers Photo

The next morning Ed woke me up and asked if i'd seen Roy, he wasn't in his bunk, and Ed hadn't seen him. I told him I hadn't and we both went outside in different directions to find Roy. Well we hadn't been outside so very long when we heard Roy hollering Eds name. It was coming from the cove. Ed and I met along the way, only to be greeted by Roy standing in the cold saltwater ocean waist high.
First he cursed at me, and then asked Ed to get him something to wear, he had tried to fart, but that wasn't what came out...
Yup, messed his drawers. He blamed it all on me for cooking the salt pork with the scallop frills. Even as he cursed and stood there in the water, Ed and I busted laughing, which eventually became contagious, as Roy had to laugh at his predicament as well. We had many good laughs those months I lived there... eventually the mussel farm was going to be sold, so my wife and I decided to go back to Nova Scotia where I took up at the print shop I left off. That lasted about 6 months, and off to Ontario. That is where we are now, and I have to be honest, I'm getting that travelling feeling again...
I really wish I had all my photos from my time in Harbourmille, It was a very beautiful and scenic area. They were all lost, and I've never found them. All I have are the pics left in my mind.