Spindrift

  Spindrift

  Spindrift

  A Canadian Book of the Sea

  Edited, with Introduction and Commentary, by

  Michael L. Hadley & Anita Hadley

  Copyright © 2017 Anita and Michael Hadley

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, info@accesscopyright.ca.

  Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.

  P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

  www.douglas-mcintyre.com

  Cover and frontispiece: David Blackwood, Flora S. Nickerson Down on the Labrador, 1978, etching and aquatint on wove paper, final wp 50.5 × 40.2 cm (imp.) All other illustrations by Matthew Wolferstan

  Dustjacket design by Anna Comfort O’Keeffe

  Text design by Mary White

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Printed on 100% PCW paper

  Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Spindrift (2017)

  Spindrift : a Canadian book of the sea / edited, with introduction and

  commentary, by Michael L. Hadley & Anita Hadley.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77162-173-1 (hardcover).—ISBN 978-1-77162-174-8 (HTML)

  1. Seas—Literary collections. 2. Canada—Literary collections.

  I. Hadley, Michael L., editor II. Hadley, Anita, 1938–, editor III. Title.

  PS8251.S43S65 2017 C810.8'032162 C2017-902727-1

  C2017-902728-X

  Dedicated to the memory of

  Norman Borradaile Hadley (1964–2016).

  “Bon matelot.”

  “I never could have lived away from the salt water or the salt air, because the sea runs in my blood.”

  —Captain Andy Publicover (1877–1960), captain of the Lunenburg schooner W.N. Zwicker

  Beginnings

  The inspiration for this book arose from an evening of nautical readings held at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia, Victoria. Entitled “Master and Commander,” the presentation offered an entertaining selection describing daring exploits upon the high seas. While passages were largely drawn from the adventures of Patrick O’Brian’s swashbuckling hero, Captain Jack Aubrey, other works from around the world were also represented. We were enthralled—and our seagoing imaginations tweaked. As we walked home past the vessels moored in Victoria’s Inner Harbour, we began to imagine a similar evening based on Canadian nautical writings. What would it include? Who would be the writers? How varied the experiences? How deep the emotions?

  So began a five-year quest for Canadian nautical writings. It was a time of joyful discovery. Casting a wide net, we began with literature—novels, poetry, short stories, plays—but soon moved beyond this rich source to include non-fictional writing: journals, histories, biographies, memoirs, even articles. And sometimes we found that they all seemed to be rolled into one. Ship’s logs, myths, stories of quiet exaltation and wrenching lamentations can all become poetry when the experience resonates deeply with the rhythm of the human heart.

  What we discovered has changed forever the way I think and feel about my country. I once had an image of Canada—narrowly populated from east to west along its southern reaches, then stretching endlessly northward towards limitless, unrelenting ice. It was the land—not the sea—that defined my country. But reading about the Canadian experience of the sea has reconfigured my image. From the Atlantic to the Arctic to the Pacific—yes, also to the Great Lakes—this land of heroic proportions is, as writer and novelist Rudy Wiebe has discovered, shaped and defined by water. Whether we live close to the sea, or far from its shores, it is the oceans that bind our destiny and inform who and what we are as a nation.

  The ten sections of Spindrift attest to the breadth—and sometimes contradictions—of our relationship as a nation to the sea. How our oceans encompass us, defining the limits of our vast land mass—at once connecting, separating, nourishing, threatening, bestowing, destroying, enthralling, betraying, inspiring …

  A whole community of seafarers inhabits these pages: Inuit, First Nations, explorers, navigators, immigrants, refugees, fishers, whalers, crabbers and squid-jiggers, hunters, boat builders, traders, scientists, adventurers, former slaves, lepers, missionaries, lighthouse keepers, divers, salvagers, travellers and pleasure boaters, poets, surveyors, rescuers, survivors and victims … and those who wait silently in solitude. The stories they tell—or that are told about them—are, in fact, our stories, for they broaden our experience of who we are as a nation. I can no longer remain detached from events occurring on one of our distant shores. From shore to shore to shore, we are bound to one another by a surging in our veins awakening some primordial memory deep within our common experience.

  In his book, The Idea of Canada: Letters to a Nation (2016), Governor General David Johnston challenges Canadians to give their country a gift to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary of Confederation. In celebration of our nation’s unique relationship to the three great oceans that bind us, we offer as our gift, Spindrift: A Canadian Book of the Sea.

  —Anita Hadley

  Waypoints

  Spindrift n. i. Blown sea-spray; ii. Spume; iii. Wisps of spray curling off the crests of waves in extreme winds.

  —Nautical lore

  The sea is a powerful archetype. It strikes unique emotional resonances when we experience it. This is also true when we experience it second-hand through the words of others. As captured in various cultural and literary traditions, the sea conjures up sublime images of power and majesty, of hazard and daunting challenge. The sea reveals undercurrents of myth, memory and imagination. It inspires haunting poetry. Just what this means for the Canadian experience of the sea is the subject of this book.

  Our collection gathers responses to a fundamental question: what is the recorded relationship of Canadians to the sea? More pointedly, how has the sea—as a medium, and as an experience—shaped the Canadian consciousness? By contextualizing passages drawn from a wide selection of authors—seafarers and non-seafarers among them—we have let each voice speak for itself. Each witness brings a unique perspective and flavour to what emerges as a compelling mosaic. The authentic tones and moods of these stories and reflections embrace all modes of expression from lyrical to dramatic. Canadian maritime experience—whether in home or foreign waters—is central to the nation’s cultural tradition and lore.

  Our principle of selection from among this rich diversity is clear: memorable writing that is brief, representative and engaging. Had we included everything that we had wished, this volume would have run to well over six hundred pages of revealing testimony. Clearly, we have had to adjust our sails to weather and wind: trimming, shortening and even bare-poling to complete the voyage. We have therefore restricted ourselves to those cultural documents which—taken together—reflect the spirit of what Canadians have experienced. What we now offer is “spindrift—wisps of spray curling back off waves.” While we have always sought intrinsically good writing, we have not hesitate
d on rare occasion to dip into the local and popular. But we do so only if it illuminates some dimension of the Canadian experience.

  Of course, other published collections have addressed the topic of Canada and the sea, each one with different emphases and focus. One thinks, for instance, of Allan Anderson’s compilation of interviews with seafaring workers in Salt Water, Fresh Water (1979); or of the regional perspectives in George Nicholson’s self-published Vancouver Island’s West Coast, 1762–1962 (1966) and Meddy Stanton’s We Belong to the Sea: A Nova Scotia Anthology (2002). Rainer K. Baehre’s Outrageous Seas: Shipwreck and Survival in the Waters off Newfoundland, 1583–1893 (1999) provides yet another graphic regional focus. Reflecting on Newfoundland’s historical record, he writes that the “influence of the sea has been pervasive, and it has left a deep cultural imprint, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador.” By casting our net even wider, we have found such cultural imprints wherever Canadians have put to sea.

  Writers who envision this broader canvas tend to argue for a particular seabound, geopolitical view of Canada. We see this, for example, in Victor Suthren’s edited work Canadian Stories of the Sea (1993), or in his historical survey The Island of Canada: How Three Oceans Shaped Our Nation (2009). Here he tacitly endorses the perspectives so often repeated in naval and nautical journals. “There is no nation with a greater physical connection to the sea than Canada,” he explains, “and yet there are few people with such a stunning wealth of seacoast who are as unaware, or unknowing, of that connection as Canadians.” His point is well taken.

  The written record projects “the sea” as a predominantly male domain: visceral, aggressive, challenging and subject to mastery by commanding figures. By contrast, it portrays women in their traditional roles as the supporters and mourners of male endeavour, and as the strength in family and community. Significantly, however, the actual Canadian experience of the sea has been gradually changing that image. For with the engagement of women in leading marine roles from deckhands to skippers, a new reality has emerged. Strikingly, however, the written lore of the sea has not yet caught up with these contemporary social changes. Our collection necessarily reflects this conventional reality. Ultimately, “the sea” sets the scene for a world of self-realization, beauty and tragedy, which embraces the experience of both women and men alike.

  The geographical context of Canada explains just how important such experience actually is. The nation lies gripped on three lengthy and rugged sides by the Pacific, the Atlantic and—by far the smallest of the world’s oceans—the Arctic. These form the primary focus of our exploration. They constitute a natural three-ocean frontier. Together they form a realm of maritime endeavour that has, since the earliest days of Canadian history, inspired the major share of nautical reflection. They bear the burden of proof for what the sea means to Canada.

  Yet we recognize that Canada has also been shaped by the Great Lakes, a remarkable inland sea. The largest body of fresh water on earth, it has been the scene of human endeavour matching anything the world’s oceans could offer: enterprise, migration and war among them. Mariners on these lakes have experienced all the weather conditions they could find deep-sea. The completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 opened this maritime heartland to ocean-going vessels. With its fifteen locks, the seaway now takes ships over two thousand nautical miles from the Atlantic into all five of the Great Lakes. Embracing over one hundred ports, it carries over 160 million tons of cargo. Fifty percent of the cargo runs between international ports in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Like the sea, the Great Lakes have also engaged the creative imagination. In the final analysis, however, we recognized with regret that traveller and poet Henry James got it right in 1871 when he observed: the Great Lakes are “the sea and yet just not the sea.” Their written heritage belongs in a separate volume.

  Significantly, Canadian heraldry has long proclaimed the centrality of the sea for Canadian identity. Certainly, the Latin motto A Mare usque ad Mare—From Sea to Sea—on the Canadian coat of arms expresses both a political and strategic vision. The motto is taken from the biblical proclamation of God’s all-encompassing grasp as expressed in Psalm 72:8, “He shall have Dominion from sea to sea.” Drawing on this, one might well argue for an overarching metaphysical vision of nationhood. One nation under God. Indeed, we owe that insight to Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, one of the thirty-three Fathers of Confederation who gathered in Charlottetown in September 1864 to discuss the draft British North America Act. It was the devout Tilley who suggested the name “the Dominion of Canada” for the new nation, a concept which the other Fathers endorsed. The sea, at this point, would seem to have been a boundary marker. In this light, all that lay between the Pacific and the Atlantic was an immense land to be bound together and, where necessary, mastered.

  Nor does the heraldry end there. Chiselled over the front entrance of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa stand the words “The wholesome sea is at her gates … Her gates both East and West.” Carved in stone in 1920 when the Peace Tower was being built, they evoke yet another range of possible meanings for the national motto. Though still regarded as a bounded land, Canada now has “gates”—like those of a fortress—encompassed by a single, “wholesome sea.” The author of this poetic insight was Ottawa lawyer and occasional poet John Almon Ritchie (1863–1935), remembered now perhaps solely for these words set in stone. Yet many have found the words both stirring and prescient. Take, for example, the reflections in Jeffrey V. Brock’s naval memoirs The Dark Broad Seas (1981): “Thrilling in their simplicity, they awaken the imagination and speak eloquently of a land that is not bound by physical horizons. Any pride and satisfaction that may result from contemplating Canada’s future should be tempered by the reminder that gates remain but prison bars unless the roads beyond are free.” This assertion about the freedom of the seas has particular significance for Canadian strategic thinkers and naval historians. In short, the phrase is a plea for navalism, national security and national defence. Here the sea has become a moat. Or perhaps a bridge for commercial and economic—or military—power projection.

  Our Spindrift: A Canadian Book of the Sea, by contrast, illustrates a much more multifaceted and nuanced experience than this. It reveals our human relationships to the oceanic environment, and how that environment fascinates and forms those who encounter it. The collection explores the interfaces between sea and shore, and evokes reflection on the meaning of human endeavour and purpose in great waters. While localized in expression, the themes are timeless: survival and isolation, loneliness and restoration, hope and despair, awe and dread, steadfastness and mastery. Beneath the surface of the experience “sea” runs an undertow and rip current marked by adventure and exhilaration, and by reflection on the sea as the setting for rites of passage. Always poignant, sometimes passionate—and even pacific—the sea emerges in these witnesses to Canadian experience as a key to understanding this vast three-ocean land.

  A diversity of experience—immediate and personal, or vicarious and national—invests the sea with meaning. Indeed, writers have shown how local experience can develop into a national tradition. Like the Atlantic schooner Bluenose, which is celebrated not only in song, postage stamps and popular lore, but also on the obverse of the Canadian dime, their writing projects a national vision.

  Within these pages, Canadians—with occasional foreign writers among them—celebrate the unique ties that bind us intimately to the sea. Out of the nautical diversity of their accounts ­emerges a striking unity. Like the eighteenth-century understanding of “wit”—a cast of mind that brings together objects that are normally kept separate and apart—our book presents a new kind of Canadian mosaic. Here the “wholesome sea” is not merely “at our gates.” It is an intrinsic part of our national identity.

  —Michael L. Hadley

  The sea

  Pouring

  Harmlessly

  Past the port

  Is ye
t the

  Menacing

  Tyrant of old

  That the

  Drowned

  Know.

  —Malcolm Lowry, “Injured Choriant or Paeonic” from The Collected Poetry of Malcolm Lowry

  Chapter I

  The Face of the Deep

  The expression “the face of the deep” is an ancient, biblical term that conjures up a primordial, re-creative phenomenon. Endowed by mariners with human moods and emotions, this face conjures up equally ancient notions: might, majesty, dominion and power. Indeed, writers who have actually experienced the phenomenon themselves, or whose creative imagination is alive to it, turn repeatedly to evocative language to express it. They speak of the sea as menacing, beckoning, mothering, creating, shifting, hungering—and awe-inspiring. This sense of awe captures what the face of the deep ultimately means: a synergy of fascination and attraction, mystery and invitation, and a reverential fear mixed with dread and delight. Venturing upon the deep invites one on a two-fold voyage: one, a journey into an untamed external world of the senses, and another into the human soul.

  The Call of the Sea

  L.M. Montgomery (1874–1942)

  “I understand now why some men must go to sea,” said Anne. “That desire which comes to us all at times—‘to sail beyond the bourne of sunset’—must be very imperious when it is born in you. I don’t wonder Captain Jim ran away because of it. I never see a ship sailing out of the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove ‘to fly away and be at rest,’ but like a gull to sweep out into the very heart of a storm.”