Here we are with Christmas bearing down on us once again. As you are reading this, people all over the country are frantically running from store to store searching for just the right present, desperate to finally cross one more person off their list. Then paper, ribbons and bows are selected and our purchases are wrapped, decorated and finally artistically arranged to make an impressive pile under the tree. On Christmas morning all that careful folding and taping is quickly reduced to a red and green blizzard of flying scraps and we end up knee-deep in colourful drifts of crumpled paper. The vast majority of presents exchanged will most likely be manufactured in an anonymous factory in some distant land, but there will be a small percentage of this year’s Christmas gifts that will bear no nylon tag saying “Made in China or Thailand or India”, they won’t be encased in a plastic shell that’s almost impossible to open, and they won’t have a computer bar-code attached. Some of the most appreciated and treasured gifts are ones that were created by someone who took the time to sit down with a pair of knitting needles or a sewing machine or a hammer and some lumber and produce a one-of-a-kind item with you in mind.
When I was eleven or twelve, one of the most sought-after items by young boys on the island was a model boat. Frank Shaw was generally considered to be one of the finest model makers on the Island, from his shop in Irishtown he turned out some very high quality work. There were others, usually fishermen who whiled away the stormy winter days building miniature replicas of the same boats that were bobbing up and down at their moorings in the harbour, everything from Cape Islanders to draggers to herring seiners right down to exact copies of the punts and dories tied to their wharves. All these years later, any of these models that were lucky enough to survive are most likely sitting in a place of honour on a mantelpiece or in a sunroom, maybe protected in a glass box, treated as a piece of art. That wasn’t the original intent, these were built to be toys to be played with, not objects to be put on display.
As kids, we did have some appreciation for the detailed artistry that the more skilled model-makers put into their work; many hours must have been invested in reproducing not only the boat, but miniature trawl tubs, anchors, oars, gaffs and a lot of the other little items you would find on a fishing boat. Some of the models were exact copies of specific boats and it was kind of neat to be sailing your boat among the seaweed covered rocks of the shoreline and look up to see it’s full-size replica floating in the harbour. Someone, it must have been one of the Titus boys, had a model of the “Miss T”, the same boat that his father went fishing on. It took a lot of time and some considerable skill to produce these “toys”, but for the most part, all we kids were really interested in was, did it look like the boats we were used to seeing, would it float properly and how much “fish” (seaweed) would it carry.
As a child in Holland, my Uncle Benny had become interested in model-making. After moving to Canada after WWII, he lived in Westport for a while and learned a lot from Frank Shaw and the other model makers on the Island. He and his friend Donald McDormand honed their skills in Donald’s father’s fish shed. Benny says that Ace was quite tolerant of their interest in miniature ship building; a bit surprising, taking into consideration that the hulls of most of the ships they built were made from Ace’s wooden lobster buoys that they had split in two. My Uncle took what he learned in Ace’s shed and from the Island modelers and turned it into a life-long career. He worked for a couple of years as a cabinet-maker at the Saint John Shipyard where he built models of ship interiors and eventually moved on to a job as model maker for the Ontario Science Centre. His high-quality models of famous and historic ships can be seen in museums all over the world.
After the snow fell, there was another home-made toy that we used to enjoy, it also was a miniature replica of a common Island item, but this one required much less time, skill and material to produce. All you needed was a couple of trap laths, a hammer, a saw and a few nails. First, four short pieces of lathe would be sawed off and carved into the shape of runners, then two more short pieces would be used as front and rear supports for the runners, finally a longer piece of lathe would join the two units together, with the rear runners being solidly fixed and the front runners being attached with a single trap nail so they could swivel. What you now had was a very basic model of a bobsled. After tying a piece of fishing line to the front of the sled and the other end of the line to the other lathe, you could walk along and guide your sled over the snowdrifts. I remember seeing lots of little parallel lines in the snow along the side of the road.
Another winter toy I remember was one that I attempted to build myself, without much success as it turned out. One year someone got a pair of skis for Christmas, they looked like they were having a lot of fun with them on Joe’s Hill so I thought I would also like to take up skiing. Christmas had just passed by and my birthday wasn’t for another ten months so it didn’t look good for getting skis as a gift. Besides, chances were pretty good that my father would look at any request from someone who lived on Brier Island to spend good money on skis as the height of foolishness, after all, the island is noticeably lacking in mountains, a basic requirement for making any real use of skis.
As I mulled over my problem, it occurred to me that barrel staves are sort of shaped like skis, and as it happened I was aware of the location of an old barrel that had fallen apart after the steel retaining rings had rusted away. After yanking out a couple of suitable looking staves, I cut a few pieces of cod line from an old, retired trawl and nailed these to the staves. This would do as bindings to attach my feet to the skis. Next I needed poles to go with my skis and I knew just where to get them. The old smoke house had bundles of “herring stringers”, long thin poles that fish were strung on while they hung in the racks being smoked. I selected a couple of these black, greasy, smoked herring smelling sticks and set off for Joe’s Hill, my skiing ensemble now complete.
By the time I got to the top of the hill I was nearly exhausted, my skis were almost two inches thick and had obviously soaked up a lot of water over the years, they were quite heavy and I didn’t look forward to carrying them up the hill again. But, standing on the top of Joe’s Hill and observing the wide expanse of snow before me, I figured I would have so much fun skiing down that I probably wouldn’t mind walking back up. To make sure that I didn’t go too fast and too far and hit the fence at the bottom of the field, I picked a spot on the hill that wasn’t too steep for my first run.
After tying the cod lines to my boots, I stood up, set my herring stringer poles, and pushed off... except I didn’t move an inch. I tried again, a little harder this time...still nothing, maybe I needed to be on a steeper section of the hill. I laboriously shuffled over to a better spot and tried again... same result, no amount of pushing or trying to slide my skis back and forth would get me going. I ended up on the steepest section I could find, pushing with my poles and leaning as far forward as I dared, I felt like I was on an almost vertical incline but nothing would make those skis slide, I could have been on the steepest slope in the Alps and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Who would have thought that making skis out of rough lumber that has been soaking in fish-pickling brine for forty years or so would turn out to be a bad idea?
I ended up stepping out of my cod line bindings and walking away, for all I know the barrel stave skis are still there, pointing down the side of the hill, waiting for some other poor soul to give them a try. Years later I took up skiing again, but with proper equipment and on a real ski hill this time, I enjoyed it, it was a lot of fun finally getting to zoom down the hill, but I’ll never forget my first ski experience on Joe’s Hill.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.
