Arrival
It was a shock, in the taxi from the airport, to look out over the town from the Cathedral, at the harbour of St. John’s. The green water below was colder than ice, the bowl of white hills wrapped the wooden town, and clay chimneys puffed thin white columns that stood, on a low gray sky, in strangely still air, like stalagmites. It was stark and beautiful.
Percy Janes
St. John’s, the Southside in Winter
By Percy Janes
The long-back beast now settles down for a protracted rest.
Slowly he stretches forward sandstone paws,
Gathers his granite shoulders in,
And lets the snow-furred pelt of winter bind him round
For polar sleep.
In bowel depths his heart may still be pulsing warm,
But all along that yielded frame,
From corrugated tail to haunch and flank,
And sorry and curving and bouldered neck,
An icy stillness rules.
Before the final freeze, the monster slides his crusted eyelids down.
And then from stony ledge of lip, slow pointing day by day.
He grows his giant walrus teeth
That hang and hold
Useless and beautiful, enamel hard,
Til at spring softening needle ends
Pale blood of winter starts to drip
Announcing soon
that old Leviathan
Will wake and yawn his arctic armour off again.
We stayed at the soon-to-burn-down Welcome Hotel on Duckworth Street. The only people we knew in St. John’s were Michael and Elizabeth Rochester. They had come from Ontario in 1967; Michael was a professor in the Physics Department at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN). They introduced us to some young Baha’is living in Mt. Pearl, a suburb of St. John’s. We helped form its Baha’i Assembly. Its members, like us, were from other parts of Canada: Ray and Elaine Mackie, Ginny Rochester, Bruce and Judy van Goozen (later became Judy Filson), Chris and Barb Chrismas, Cathy and me.
Coming to Newfoundland, we imagined living in a rustic house by the sea; but, for the next nine years, we lived in a suburban basement apartment.
Cathy in our basement apartment, 23A Sunrise Ave. Mt. Pearl, St. John’s, Newfoundland
Cathy in St. John's
We had shipped, from Montreal, a large wooden trunk with almost everything we owned. A notice in the mail told me the trunk had arrived. It said I should phone Mr. Doyle at the Railway Station. “Could I speak to Mr. Doyle, please?” The man answered, “Dial, here.” I repeated, “Could I speak to Mr. Doyle, please?” He said, more emphatically, “Dial, here.” Confused, and pleading a little, I said, “But, I want to speak to Mr. Doyle!” He said again, a little louder, “This is Mr. Dial speaking!” An Newfoundland-Irish accent; at last I got it.
This was the day to look for a job. I prepared by walking downtown from our place in Mount Pearl, about 10 kilometers along Brookfield Road, Waterford Road, and Water Street. It was like flying in slow motion. The road follows the crest of a swollen plain that keeps Signal Hill in constant view. The path then dips down the Waterford River valley and on to the harbour. The first stop on my list was the office of ?Gushue? on Water Street. He talked to me about Newfoundland, the history of his firm, and his own life. After an hour or so he said he had no openings.
The next stop was Frank Noseworthy’s office on 5 Church Hill. He asked me to start work the following Monday. The bay windows of his office overlooked the heavily-treed graveyard of the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Completed in 1885, it was a Gothic Revival church designed by George Gilbert Scott, a famous British architect.
Very quickly, Cathy also had a job, at Exon House, an institutional home for mentally- challenged children.
A few days later, we wanted to see the ocean. We stuck our thumbs out on Topsail Road and a red Volkswagen pulled up. It was a student on his way to Memorial University (MUN). We told him where we wanted to go. “Jump in”, he said, “I’ll take you to Topsail Beach.” He let us out and we said goodbye. Later we put an ad in the MUN Gazette asking “the student with the red Volkswagen” to look us up. He called and we invited him over for supper. His name was Bill Parsons; he lived in Mount Pearl with his parents.
Our furniture at the time was a chair-seat from a car, and an electric frying pan. His parents adopted us. His mother, an ardent Christian, asked us what religion we were. She referred to us the Bah-Hi’s, and made sure we attended every Christmas turkey dinner.
Saturday night was “Hockey Night in Canada”. Mr. Parsons, Bill, and a son-in-law sat with their feet up in the living room watching the game on TV. Their favorite team was the Toronto Maple Leafs. Through a small serving-window between the kitchen and the living room, Mrs. Parsons paused to look out at the men watching TV. “Now, I’ve been thinking;” she said, “the plural of ‘leaf’ is ‘leaves’. They shouldn’t be called the Toronto Maple Leafs, they should be called the Toronto Maple Leaves”. A chorus of “Oh, Ma!” rose from the living room.
St. John’s, at 200,000 or so people, was not too big, and not too small. Its role as capital city of the province, made it large enough to have an international airport, a provincial university and government offices. This gave it unusual diversity for its size. It was also small enough to have some overlap between social, professional, artistic, and religious communities. I believe this facilitated an unusual degree of mobility among the different layers. The size of St. John’s was such that you could remain quite anonymous if you wanted to; but you could also “copy” (a local word for jumping from one floating ice pan to another) among the groups.
Two communities in Newfoundland were especially important to me: The St. John’s Downtown Arts Community and the Newfoundland Baha’i Community.
The Downtown Arts Community
St. John’s first health food store, Mary Jane’s, opened on Duckworth Street East around 1973. This store became a node in the downtown social network. One lunch hour I bought some soybean nuts and was eating them in the office. Frank Noseworthy came over to my desk, tried some, and said, “Joe, they’re not very more-ish.” Cathy and I were interested in health foods and took an organic gardening course from John Evans, a professor of biology at MUN. At his home he had enough land to provide individual garden plots for his students. For one of the weekly classes, he showed slides of a trip he had made to China in 1972. He was part of an organized tour to look at agricultural practices in rural China. In Beijing, his group stayed at the Beijing Hotel. One evening he went outside and stood on the sidewalk. A crowd gathered around him, staring. Perhaps having never seen a foreigner, they all started to applaud.
In 1974, I subscribed to two Chinese magazines from Beijing; Pictorial China, in English, and Construction in China, in Chinese. The former featured images of bumper harvests and earnest workers, as well as news of a campaign, “Pi Lin Pi Kong”, (Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius). Lin Biao, was accused of plotting to overthrow Chairman Mao; and Confucius was blamed for China’s backward thinking. The latter magazine had a lot of text I could not read, a few grainy black and white photographs of plain looking buildings, and some detailed construction drawings. This was my first introduction to contemporary Chinese architecture. Years later Hongyu (my second wife) told me that without the campaign against Confucius she would never have learned so much about his teachings.
Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius is the most important thing for the whole country, the whole Party, and the whole army to do.
Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius
China Pictorial, 1974
My future wife, He Hongyu, in 1974. She was born in 1958.
I was thrilled to receive these magazines all the way from China. I looked at a world map; St. John’s and Beijing were almost exactly on opposite sides of the globe. I longed to go there; but had no idea how that would ever happen. I put an ad in the Memorial University newspaper looking for a student to teach me Chinese. A MUN student from Singapore responded. We used a Grade One, Singapore textbook. The first page showed a young boy and girl, saluting the Singapore flag. I learned to say, “I love the national flag” (Wo ai guo qi.) I spent a year taking long bus-rides from Mount Pearl to the University for an hour of class each week. I learned very little, and gave up.
* * *
For a couple of years, I worked at the Architects Guild. Dave Sheppard, a young architect in the office, would sometimes jump from his chair onto the wide window sill, press his face against the glass, and shout to the traffic on Kenmount Road, “We’re in here!” Charles Cullum, a founding partner, was a good friend. Robert Mellin, a young architect from the US, about my age, had just become a partner. We began a life-long friendship. One of his forst projects was the new Queen Elizabeth Library at MUN.
Robert Mellin (2016)
Robert had left a promising career path in the US, to work in a small city at the remote eastern edge of Canada. He had let go of the normal career path for architects; namely, working for big-name architects in big cites. As of 2020, his home base is still here. The list of his achievements in the footnote below[ Robert Mellin, a list of some of his achievements:In 2002 elected to the R.C.A. (Royal Canadian Academy),elected to Fellowship in the RAIC in 2009, received ten Southcott Awards for his heritage conservation projects in Newfoundland. In 2006 he received the Paul E. Buchanan Award for excellence in fieldwork and interpretation from the Vernacular Architecture Forum. He is past-Chair of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. His book Tilting: House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2003 and it won the Winterset Literary Award. In 2011, Professor Mellin’s book Newfoundland Modern: Architecture in the Smallwood Years, 1949-1972, was published as part of the McGill Queen’s/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History series. In 2015, his book Winter in Tilting was published by Pedlar Press (St. John’s, Newfoundland). In 2015 and 2017 he received Lt. Governor’s awards for his architectural design work in Newfoundland. Robert Mellin was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2014, and in 2015 he received a doctorate (honoris causa DLitt) from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2018, he was appointed to the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador.] do not include his talent as a musician. For a while, he struggled with whether to be a musician or an architect. It was while on a tour of Canada, in 1972, as a base player in a concert group, that he was invited, in St. John’s, to join a local firm as junior partner. In Newfoundland he blossomed. A life-time of valuable activity opened up before him.
In 2015 he received an honorary Ph.D. at Memorial University for his contributions to the architectural and cultural heritage of the province. In his convocation speech to the graduates, he spoke of the importance of respecting and celebrating the contributions of others, and of taking time to pursue interests not directly related to the enhancement of your career. He emphasized “the importance of paying attention to the little, serendipitous, and sometimes ephemeral things that may happen to us in the course of our lives, things we occasionally embrace, but more often ignore. Things that can set in motion a chain of events, or that can lead to opportunities that can take us outside our usual habits and customary expectations, into uncharted territory. ” As an example, he spoke of having a Newfoundland dog when he was a child in Pittsburgh. This led to an interest in Newfoundland.
* * *
While working at the Architects Guild, I obtained my first driver’s licence. I had passed my test and was waiting in line with several others who had also passed theirs. Behind a long counter up ahead, I could see into their office work-space. I overheard an animated conversation about Uncle George.
Mary: Me Uncle George died.
David: Really! Where did he die?
Mary: In Melbourne, Australia.
Robert: When did he die?
Mary: Well, it was around three in the morning their time.
David: Now, that would be around five in the afternoon according to our time.
Mary: You forgot the half hour.
David. Right, that would make it 5:30 pm our time.
Roger: Say, what time did he die in England?
David: That would be 7:30 in the morning, I think.
Roger: And when did he die in Vancouver?
Betty Ann, who has been listening all the while, cut in and said: My dear, in some parts of the world he’s not dead yet!
* * *
Cathy soon connected with a large and active arts community. She teamed up with Lisa Schwartz, a yoga teacher and dancer, and with a young student, Helen Bidgood. In 1976, they prepared a performance for the biggest theater in town, the Arts and Culture Center This building was designed by Ray Affleck at Arcop in Montreal. He had been one of my teachers. Lisa and Cathy’s dance was based on the work of David Blackwood, a renowned Newfoundland artist. Their performance was a prelude to the premiere of an NFB film about Blackwood’s work. The film, called “Blackwood”, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. The narration of the film was provided by the prominent Newfoundland actor, Gordon Pinsent.
Through Cathy, I met Lisa Schwartz’s husband, Ron. He had moved to St. John’s from California to be a Professor of Sociology at MUN. Lisa had been to India to study yoga; and Ron had been to Darjeeling to learn Tibetan from refugees. He created the first computerized version of the Tibetan language.
Through Ron Schwartz, I met Peter Pope. Peter had come to St. John’s a few years before me, also from Montreal. In 1977, at his home in the Battery, a part of St. John’s overlooking the Narrows, Ron and Peter and I (three “come-from-aways”) decided to form a company that would focus on passive solar, energy-efficient homes and heritage conservation. The 1974 energy crisis had helped spur an interest in energy-saving construction. Peter pulled out the I Ching to help choose a company name. We gathered round the table tossing coins to choose a hexagram. Under the warm light of an incandescent light bulb inside an inverted paper bag, Peter read out the hexagram. It included the word “Affinities”; that became the name of our company.
My future wife, He Hongyu, in 1977, riding a horse in Inner Mongolia.
Our first project was the renovation of Nos. 5 and 7 Masonic Terrace, two attached townhouses in the old downtown. I quit my job at the Architects Guild and in the fall of 1977 we started. The houses were basically abandoned, had settled in places, and were slated for demolition. The whole downtown was rundown. There had been an exodus to the suburbs after WWII, with families wanting more garden space for their children and bigger, newer houses. The demographic map of the city showed the old town had relatively higher proportions of the poor, the elderly, single-parent families, and people on welfare. John Hearn, an architect, told me when he was young, and living downtown in the 1950s, people said “row housing causes crime.”
Nos. 5 and 7 Masonic Terrace. Peter Pope in the front; Joe Carter at the rear
Although physically in poor condition, the architecture of the old city had a character - a language, that was beautiful and worth preserving. It had relatively high density, shopping and places of work were nearby, and it had great views of the harbour. In old St. John's, streets start from the water's edge and negotiate the slopes at pedestrian and horse-cart angles. These ‘ramp’ streets intersect rising tiers of level ‘contour’ streets concentric with the harbour shore.
The ergonomic logic and the intimacy of this pre-automobile pedestrian street pattern is reinforced by clapboard row houses fitting snugly along the sidewalks. Surprisingly, all the downtown dwellings have the same townhouse floor plan. On each of their two or three floors there is a room overlooking the street, and another overlooking the enclosed “courtyard” space behind. Beside these two rooms is a staircase; at the bottom of the stair is the front entrance vestibule. Kitchen and bathrooms are at the back, in line with the stairs. The only variation in this plan-type is the location of the coal fireplaces located in each room. The fireplaces were either in the shared wall between the houses, or in the wall separating the front and back rooms.
Using only one plan-type, is that a way to create harmony in the environment? Why do the streets of Old St. John’s exhibit such lively diversity? The principle means to achieve this is the use of a “pattern”. While, conceptually, every house has the same floor plan; in practice, each house is a variation on a theme. No two houses were exactly the same size. The colours of the outside walls can be different (and change with time). The decorative details vary from house to house. Sometimes the houses join together in twos or threes held together by a shared Mansard roof. Their balloon-frame structure allows adjustable floor levels. The roof-line of several houses can remain constant while the first floor of each house changes slightly, to find a comfortable relationship with the sloping sidewalk. There is a high degree of individual interpretation.
I imagine God saying, “I’m going to make some people, and they’re all going to have the same face: two eyes, one nose, and one mouth.” Someone interrupts God and asks, “Isn’t that a recipe for monotony?” It turns out it worked very well. The ‘parts and whole’ relationship in Old St. John’s is a powerful demonstration of unity in diversity.
St. John’s in 1885
Old St.John's from the air
The logic of the ergonomic road pattern defines city blocks. Street-walls of row houses define the boundaries of the blocks and surround a courtyard behind. The abundant backyard trees were a verdant contrast to the treeless streets. Movement through the streets is punctuated with views of the harbour and the Southside Hills. The ships play their parts on the water-stage below, watched, or heard, from the bleacher-town. The hills across the water, mostly too steep to build on, are carpeted with a sub-arctic blanket of wind-surviving low growth that gives the amphitheater-town a seasonal backdrop. This is St. John’s defining urban pattern, a sloping town beside a harbour.
Section of St. John's
If I had gone upstream in the architectural design world, to Toronto or New York, I may have missed the chance to learn what St. John’s had to teach. Later, traveling to older parts of European cities, Old Beijing, and many small villages in rural China - thanks to living in St. John’s - I was able to recognize what all these pales have in common, the use of patterns.
At one point, we had fifteen or so people working at Masonic Terrace, including Paul Steffler, a musician, a couple of Vietnam War draft dodgers, and Peter's sister Peggy. Peter had the most construction experience, so he was the foreman. We were short on skilled people and things did not always go smoothly. Peter worked very hard to manage his temper but sometimes it was all too much for him. On one particularly black day, he was so upset, I was afraid to speak to him. The lanky blond draft dodger from Tennessee said to him, ”You're having a bad day, Peter." Peter immediately relaxed, and told me later, “That was the right
thing to say, at the right time".
I sent my Montreal friend, Pieter Sijpkes, a postcard saying, “Help, we need a carpenter!”. Within a few weeks our classmate, Colin Munro had contacted his brother, Peter Munro. Peter had been in Soho, New York, helping an artist make wooden models of bicycles, and wanted a change. He moved to St. John’s and became a partner in our enterprise. He taught me how to make my own tool box with dovetail corners. He was also a talented musician. Paul Steffler wrote scores for a large group, of which we were all members, called “The Battery Big Band”. We played for dances in Paul’s workshop in the Battery. Peter Pope was the saxophone player; Peter Munro sang and played guitar. This was typical of the downtown ‘arts’ community; we initiated and participated in many events that we created together.
5 & 7 Masonic Terrace
5 & 7 Masonic Terrace
The banks had ‘red-lined’ the old city. In this poor and ‘unreliable’ place, they would not lend money for home repairs. Most of our funds were borrowed from Peter’s mother. We paid $17,000 for the two houses and spent $30,000 in improvements, for a total of $47,000. The market value, when we finished about a year later, for the two houses combined, was only around $30,000. If we sold them, we would lose a lot; so we rented, trusting the market value would rise to match our investment. For a few years we were landlords.
In 1982, for our work on 5 & 7 Masonic Terrace, we received a Newfoundland Historic Trust, Southcott Award. Although we rescued the houses and were part of a small movement to save the old downtown, nothing helped its rescue more than a federal government program for the renovation of older urban neighbourhoods in Canada called RRAP (Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program). People could borrow up to $20,000 to improve their own homes. The federal government insured the loans, so the banks had no risk.
The program triggered a virtuous cycle of home improvements by the owners; house after house was re-done and the downtown started to come back to life. Gentrification began, as well, with some middle class people - university professors, artists, and others - moving in. The children we met when we first started renovations came around asking for cigarettes. A few years later they were in French Immersion, a popular system to help English-speaking children to become bilingual.
Roughly from 1977-1980, Affinities Projects included:
Nos. 5 and 7 Masonic Terrace Renovation
Publish "Recyling Houses in Old St. John's" (1980).
Toy Store interior at Murray Premises for Don Wright's wife.
Rochester's Garden Window and some energy retrofit
No. 9 Winter Place Renovation
Addition to No. 7 Newtown Rd. for Philosophy Professor at MUN.
Prof. Geoff Stiles and Cathy Stiles House on Marine Drive; design and build.
Helped build John and Margo Evan's house on Marine Drive. Design by Robert Mellin.
Construction Site: Stiles House on Marine Drive, St. John’s
After a few years, our company faded away. Peter Pope already had degrees from Princeton and Oxford. He went to MUN to get an MA and Ph.D., pursuing his interest in the early modern Atlantic world. From 2000 to 2015 he was Professor and then Head of the Department of Anthropology & Archaeology at MUN. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012. Peter was an award=winning author as well, receiving critical acclaim for his meticulous works, The Many Landfalls of John Cabot, and Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century.
Having taken risks, and suffered together, we bonded. Although our idealistic company had waned, our friendship deepened over the years. In 2017, he died quite young at 71. He was a rich reservoir of knowledge, caring, and humour.
* * *
Fig. 2-10a Oil Pastel, St. Pierre et Miquelon 1977
Stained glass made in Bren Blackmore’s Studio
Bren Blackmore
Sketch on blackboard on facade of Pieter’s home on Sainte Madeleine. Made during one of my annual visits back to Montreal. Adversarial activities are not winnable in a global context.
In late 1979, with Affinities shutting down, I was willing to return to a desk job. I had my hand on the telephone, about to call Charles Cullum at the Architects’ Guild, but I hesitated. It was unlikely he had any work for me; construction in the province had slowed down. I took my hand off the phone, picked up my sketchbook, and headed for Petty Harbour, a beautiful fishing village not far from St. John’s.
I spent the day in Weir’s Store doing an oil pastel painting of the interior. My hope was to survive with my art. Cathy was in New York City studying dance for a year at NYU and I was supporting her. The price I could get for the oil pastel - compared with the time it took to do the painting - made my plan not feasible. I decided to switch to linocuts. I could make multiple copies; they would be easier to sell. I sketched the oil pastel image onto linoleum and carved my first lino block. http://www.townsnet.cn/artWriting/nfldArt/nfldArt.htm
I needed a way to make prints. A few years earlier, Ray Mackie had introduced me to Don Wright, another artist working at MUN Extension. One of his works was in an empty shop on Water Street. Don filled the space with ship’s rope, a walk-in sculpture. He was a hemophiliac; sadly, he contracted HIV through a blood transfusion and died in 1988. In 1972, he co-founded St. Michael's Print Shop in Tors Cove with Heidi Oberheide. I showed Don my work and told him my idea; a series of linocuts about outport communities and their activities. He said, “Go ahead.” The print shop had high quality materials and tools that I could use for a small fee.
For each linocut there was a 7 to 10 day cycle of work that included the following steps:
Make a pencil sketch at each location (one to two days).
Trace each sketch with tracing-paper.
Place the tracing-paper with the image face down on a piece of carbon paper.
Trace over the image again on the back of the tracing paper to transfer a mirror-image of the sketch onto a piece of linoleum.
Carve the linoleum plate (about 24cm x 32cm.).
Take the plate to St. Michael's and print 50 copies in one day.
Sell the prints in the streets of St. John's (about $15 each).
Weir’s Store, Petty Harbour
Bidgood’s Fishplant, Petty Harbour
Chafe’s House, Petty Harbour
St. George’s Anglican Church, Petty Harbour
Fish Plant, Petty Harbour
Stack Brothers net mending shed, Petty Harbour
Most of the sketches were done near St. John’s but some were not. In the Clarenville Shipyard Lunchroom, one hour was not enough time to finish. I had to return the next day. Fortunately, everyone sat in exactly the same place as the day before. As I sketched, a man called out from the back of the room, "Don't skitch Garge's mout', ye won't git'n on the pay-age" (Don't sketch George's mouth, it won't fit on the page).
Clarenville Shipyard Lunchroom, 1979
St. Alban’s Shipyard, 1979
Bowaters Paper Plant - Corner Brook
Detail of Bowaters
Two linocuts at the Rooms; Newfoundland archives, art gallery, and museum
The long sessions at the print shop, about 12 hours each, were a race to get fifty prints made on the same day. Turn on CBC FM radio and listen to Lister Sinclair, Tapestry, Ideas…. mix the ink, roll it on the plate, place the acid-free paper down, squeeze it through the press and peel off the print, fifty times; then lay them all out to dry around the room. I usually had the place to myself, sandwich lunch, and in the late evening, turn off all the lights, lock up, step outside with my bundle-treasure into a black and starry night with the noisy ocean close by. I stabbed the dark with my headlights and drove home.
United Nail and Foundry, St. John’s
In 1980, I made a sketch in the main workroom of United Nail and Foundry, a smoky factory hall on Hamilton and Alexander. It had started in 1847. At that time in Newfoundland the schooner fleet numbered more than a thousand vessels, and the demand for ship's hardware and repair was enough to support a major industry.
For a while, after joining Canada in 1949, to protect local industry, the large Canadian mainland steel companies only brought raw material into Newfoundland, not finished product. The foundry’s pattern shop had the highest-skilled woodworkers I had ever seen; a spiral coin chute for a cash register made out of cherry, machinery gears large and small, ships grommets, manhole covers,…… Anything that needed to be cast, was first made of wood. These ‘patterns’ made the cavities in the moulds into which molten bronze was poured.
My sketch of the foundry never became a linocut. The business closed and was torn down in 1982. I took a truck load of patterns to my home. I gave some patterns to the NFLD Museum and sold/gave some to friends.
Many years later, in 2017, I was back in St. John’s having a cup of tea with Kathy-Clark. She said, “Joe, I found your lino-cut plates in my basement.” Missing for over thirty years; they reappeared. I have no memory of why Don Wherry (1935-2001), Cathy’s husband, had them. I must have left them with Don before I went to China. Two were missing, “The Stack Brothers”, and “Petty Harbour Fish Plant”. In 2018, my plates found a home in Archives and Special Collections, Queen Elizabeth II Library at Memorial University. In November of 2018, I went back to St. John’s to make a few prints at St. Michael’s Printshop which had moved downtown while I was in China.
In 2019, I visited St. John’s with my wife, He Hongyu. While havng tea at Andy Jones and Marylin Bernard’s home, I told them the story of the recovery of my long-lost lino-cuts. I mentioned two of them were still missing. Andy said, “Well, I have one under my bed.” Somehow he had become the owner of the Petty Harbour Fishplant lino-cut plate and for many years he had it on his wall. He returned it to me and it has now rejoined the other plates at MUN.
* * *
Proposed Interconnected Trail System for St. John’s, 1980
One weekend in, 1980, I walked down the Waterford River from Mt. Pearl to the Harbour. Tommy Chrismas, from one of the Baha’i families in Mt. Pearl, came with me. We had to fight our way, at times, through dense trees. Garbage and construction waste had been dumped at several places in the river, but its beauty was not all erased. I drew a map showing it revitalized as a pedestrian path, added a linked series of paths for people and bicycles all around the city.
Through my work as an architect, I had met Tony DeJong, the City Planner. I showed him my drawing and he invited me to meet with him and the City of St. John's Parks and Recreation Committee to discuss it. This was part of the beauty of St. John’s; it was small enough that I could approach the city government about an idea and I knew someone to talk to.
* * *
One day, I was walking along Gower Street in the old downtown. Mike Jones drove by in a car with several other people. He stuck his head out the window and said, “Come with us Joe, you’re going to be in a movie”. We spent a few hours in a back alley below Duckworth Street shooting a scene in which Brian Downey says, “Joe, Joe!”. I turn to wave and was struck dead by a falling lump of frozen soup. The latter had been thrown out a window during a domestic altercation. I am referred to in the credits as “Soup on Head Man”.
Mike Jones
Scene from the Adventure of Faustus Bidgood: Joe Carter as “Frozen Soup on the Head Man”
The movie, “The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood”, directed by Mike Jones, was based on a story by his brother Andy. It was a community project that drew on the talents of hundreds of people. The members of that community can be seen in the extraordinarily long credits at the end of the film. This was an acknowledgment of the collaboration and contributions of many people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lutlp4PgMnQ
It was the first feature film ever produced entirely in Newfoundland with a Newfoundland cast, crew, and funding. It was initiated in 1977 and took ten years to complete. The daughter of a pregnant women earlier in the film, later appeared as a child actress. After editing, in one scene, Andy Jones goes through a door and comes out the other side ten pounds heavier. He had gained weight over the duration of the project.
* * *
In 1981, I built a bathroom for Patty Tramley, in her house at 179 Gower Street. She worked at the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador as an exhibition coordinator and was a weaver and teacher of weaving. In 1978, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She could still walk a little, but was confined mostly to a wheelchair and her bed. She could no longer go up and down the stairs and needed occasional access to the outside. She moved her bedroom to the ground floor. The only bathroom in the house was on the second floor; so, I built one for her in the triangular space under the stair across the hall from her new ground-floor bedroom.
She wanted to sit in her chair to shower. She couldn’t control her hands very well, so we made the bathroom totally waterproof. A grab-bar over the toilet allowed her to swing around from her chair onto the toilet seat; her arms were still strong enough. The walls and floor were lined with fiberglass. The floor had soft glass cloth with resin brushed in to give a non-slip surface. I covered the walls first with pictures and prints that she liked, including one of my lino-cuts. The sheets of fiberglass on the walls were transparent enough to allow all the art work to be visible. Her bathroom was also a gallery.
Patty was in ‘Women for Change’, a disabled women's action group affiliated with the national Disabled Women's Network (DAWN). She became a writer and advocate for disability issues. Just before she died in 2002, her only means of communication was one eyebrow.
* * *
Also, in 1981, Edyth Goodridge, then head of the Gallery at MUN, asked me if I would persuade Rae Perlin to have an exhibit of her work. Edyth told me many people had tried, but Rae always said “No.” Cathy and I were close friends with Rae; we met her through the Baha’i Community. Rae had become a Baha’i in 1969.
Rae Perlin
I asked to see her sketch collection. There was a pile of 200 or so pocket-sized sketch books piled at the bottom of her bedroom closet. While digging through them, I listened to her stories about being allowed by her Jewish father, around 1930, to leave St. John’s, as a single girl, to go to New York, only if she went to study nursing. She managed to squeeze in art classes with Hans Hofmann at the Art Students League of New York. This school, on West 57th, says Wikipedia, “has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably-priced classes on a flexible schedule to accommodate students from all walks of life. Although artists may study there full-time, there have never been any degree programs or grades, and this informal attitude pervades the culture of the school.”
That must have suited Rae very well. “From the 19th century to the present, the League has counted among its attendees and instructors many historically important artists, and contributed to numerous influential schools and movements in the art world.”
The sketch books were from her travels in the US, Newfoundland, France and England. In the 1950s she studied at L'Academic Grande Chaumiere in Paris, France, and at the London Polytechnic in England. She was nomadic, with her occupation in her pocket. In 1959 she moved back to St. John's to care for her ailing mother, and to work as a nurse. She never expanded to large canvases. I think her way, and her gift, were a good match; the gesture, the freshness of the first look. She had the speed of a Chinese calligrapher; and she said it so true.
I asked whether I could curate a show of her work, and she said, “Oh, alright”.
She wore a long dress at the opening of her show in 1982, with a rose in her lapel. She kept smiling and apologizing at the same time. She died in 2006 at St. John's after a long struggle with Alzheimer's.
Rae Perlin, Self-Portrait
* * *
In late 1981, although the economy had slowed down and larger architectural design projects were hard to find, I found full-time work again, with Frank Noseworthy. One of our projects was the renovation of the Longshoreman’s Protective Union (LSPU) Hall. This former union hall had become a theater and was the cultural headquarters for a large segment of the St. John’s arts community. The renovations increased the seating from about 80 up to 110 and improved fire safety.
The day before the Hall reopened in March, 1983; it caught fire. Someone, in rehearsals, had hung their shirt on a bare light-bulb over a mirror in the dressing room. The fire spread up the rehearsal room wall making a lot of smoke. I stood with Andy Jones, a local actor and one of the staunchest supporters of the Hall, outside on the street, watching the firemen put out the fire. Damage was not extensive and the show could go on the next night, but the theater had to be aired out. The place was going to be cold. The audience could wear their coats, but the performers - dancers sponsored by Cathy’s Neighbourhood Dance Works -
would have to dance on a cold floor.
Andy Jones
I felt sympathy for Andy. I had seen him the year before working hard to raise money for the renovations. One activity was a booth at a summer fair. There were baked goods for sale made by LSPU Hall patrons; you could throw darts at balloons to win a prize, a doll. “Step right up folks”, he shouted, keeping up a steady stream, “Come one, come all. Try your luck, three darts for a dollar.” And, at one moment, in mid-patter, glancing up at the kitschy doll he held in the air, said, “Even when you win, you lose!”
* * *
On New Years Eve, 1982-3, I used Cathy’s ghetto blaster to record the annual spontaneous blowing of ships horns in the harbour to celebrate the new year. I saw the old town as a natural amphitheater. I thought, “Why not create a Harbour Symphony, with all the ships’ horns participating in an organized piece?” Discussion about the urban form of the old downtown had become a polarized debate between the developers, who wanted to build tall buildings on Water Street, and the advocates of heritage preservation. A Harbour Symphony might heighten appreciation and respect for this unique urban site.
Early that summer, I asked Paul Steffler if he would create a ten-minute piece for ship's horns. We made a score with a time-line and simple notation. Paul wrote separate "music" for each ship.
Musical Score for Ship’s Horn (1 of ten parts), 1983
That summer Don Wherry and Kathy Clark had organized the first Sound Symposium and we offered the Harbour Symphony as our contribution. See www.sound.nf.ca.
As the time for the week-long Symposium approached, Paul and I went to visit David Fox, at the office of the Harbour Master. His first reaction was "Confusion in the harbour could be dangerous." But, he didn't say "No!". We then asked Gerry Duggan at the Coast Guard whether he could give us a daily noon countdown over their radio. He was sympathetic but said it was against regulations to use their system for other than official purposes. After a long pause he said, "But we could ‘test’ the system, perhaps with a countdown at noon? When would you like us to ‘test’ the system?"
The first ship we approached was the Fisheries Patrol Vessel "Cape Roger". The captain said, "Did the Harbour Master give permission for this?" We said, "He didn't say ‘No’". Finally the captain agreed. The second captain we approached was skeptical. He asked whether the other ship captains had agreed. We said that, so far, all the other captains had agreed.
Not all captains hesitated. The young Belgian skipper of the OSA Ghent, Dirk Gerhardt, was excited by the idea. He immediately climbed on top of the bridge, wearing industrial earmuffs, and shoved his fist into the bell of the horn, while it was playing! The effect was like John Coltrane at the top of the decibel scale, with soaring squeals, warbles and whoops. Later, he did a solo on Day Five!
Harbour Symphony Team, 1983
In the creative collaboration atmosphere of the Downtown Arts Community it took less than a day to gather enough people. Duckworth Lunch was our headquarters where we recruited musicians, two per ship, one to count the time with a stop-watch and another to operate the ship’s horn.
We had one rehearsal under the skylight in Bren Blackmore's Stained Glass Studio in a loft between Water and Duckworth Streets. Mike Jones filmed us as we used our voices to imitate ships' horns. The next day we were "on stage"; on the boats, in the harbour. For the week of the Sound Symposium, we organized six-to-ten minute daily "symphonies".
Other musicians attending the Sound Symposium contributed scores for the series of hill-slapping symphonies. I remember one especially turgid, billowing piece which shook the city without a break for a full twelve minutes. I was listening from the top of Signal Hill. A low fog had rolled in, the harbour went out of sight and the sound came up like spears through a roaring white blanket. I thought for sure the Harbour Master would shut us down! Every day federal government office workers in the Sir Humphrey Gilbert Building on Water Street called Ottawa, stuck phones out the windows and said, "Hey, Listen to this!" The CBC National Television News covered the event; many local residents, hearing the noise downtown, thought the stevedores were on strike.
Mike Jones, and others, filmed one of the Harbour Symphonies from rolling boats in the middle of the harbour with cameras pointing in different directions. Jim Rillie recorded the sound. On one of the closing evenings of the Sound Symposium, they projected the films onto large sheets surrounding the main hall of St. John’s College. We all sat on the floor in the middle of the room while the Harbour Symphony was played on the sound system around us. It was as near as you could get to recreating the event. Mack Furlong was the generous host. He invited us all to gather next year at the Avalon Shopping Mall parking lot for a car-horn symphony.
The Harbour Symphony has been repeated ever since at the bi-ennial Sound Symposium. See www.soundsymposium.com.
Paul Steffler made several more compositions. One by Mack can be heard at The Harbour Symphony July 9, 2012. "Brute" by Mack Furlong. The event also become an on-going civic celebration activity in St. John's, to celebrate Canada’s Birthday on July 1, for example. A CD collection of the best St. John’s Harbour Symphonies over the past 15 years was released in the summer of 1998.
Left to right: Paul Steffler, Verlé, Joe Carter, Genevieve Duguay, Peter Pope, December 2016
Genevieve Duguay, Peter Pope December 2016
Mac Furlong
I was invited to help stage a Harbour Symphony for the Vancouver World Fair in 1986. Later, in 1995, Paul Steffler and Don Wherry were invited to go to Montreal to set up a Harbour Symphony. The church bells of Our Lady of the Harbour were included. It has become an annual late-winter event.
Sitelines
In 1984, I tried a variation of the Harbour Symphony, a night version synchronized with the rising full moon. I had noticed the bright, white moon rising dramatically from behind the Southside Hills across the harbour around 8:30 in the evening. I stood on the dock beside the Harbour and watched the June moon to find out exactly when it rose. I used this information to plan an event for the July full moon.
I found twelve teenagers from the small community on the Southside Hills to help me light up the brow of the hill while the Harbour Symphony was playing and the full moon was rising. One night we rehearsed. I gave each of them a powerful flashlight and we spread out along the Brow of the Hill, about a 100 meters apart. I was at the farthest point to the East, overlooking the Narrows.
On the night of the event, we got in position. The ships started to blow. I could hear Don Wherry playing tubular bells near the large parking garage on Water Street. In the middle of the piece I heard a big shout and roar go up from the Parking Garage; a Boeing 737 flew overhead flying to the airport (an unexpected addition); and, for added effect, I put my flashlight down to light up a bright red distress flare. I thought all was well until I started walking back along the brow of the hill. I found all the young people huddled behind a rock. It was windy. “Why are you all here?” I asked. “Didn’t you stay spread out and shine your flashlights at the city?” “No, mister, it’s too cold”.
Later, in town, I found out people had seen my flashlight, my flare, and then another strange light. This latter light got very bright. “Where did Joe get that huge light?”, they asked. When it turned out to be the moon, they all cheered. The people below on the harbour didn’t know what the fuss was about. The moon-rise for them was two minutes later.
Back at the Ship Inn, Ab Stockwood consoled me for the light show that didn’t happen; he said “I can see you are in pain. It’s good you take responsibility for what you do.”
For the next month’s (August) full moon I went up on the Brow of the Hill again, alone, and stood in each of the twelve positions, shone my flashlight for a minute at each stop, and lit off another flare near the Narrows. Justin Hall was on a roof deck in the city, photographing me with his camera on a tripod. One photo with twelve exposures. He opened the lens every time I shone my light. The full moon was in a different position for each exposure. In the photo the moon becomes an angled blurred line in the sky at the right.
* * *
The following are two more poems about the harbour by Newfoundland poets. The first is by Agnes Walsh who co-founded Neighbourhood Dance Works with Cathy Ferri. Not unusual for Newfoundland, she is also a playwright, an actress, and a storyteller. The second by Mike Wade who died young from cancer. A friend, Mary Lewis, a local actress and screenwriter, told me she went to see Mike in 2004 when he had three months left to live. He was very poor so she was surprised to see a huge, expensive Smart TV in his living room. “Where’d you get the money for that, Mike?”, she asked. “Six months deferred payment”, he said.
The Harbour’s place in the soul of St. John’s can be seen in various poems. One by Percy James is at the beginning of this chapter. The work of two poet friends follows:
Agnes Walsh
Para a Santa Maria Manuela
By Agnes Walsh
Night came and it whispered,
“Oush sinus, ash vey eresh”
It was a tropical in the thick of the town,
But off in the distance icebergs moaned.
The water beyond the harbour is vast.
It holds endless possibilities for young men.
One with the blue scarf around his neck,
Arms strong, ambivalent to shy facial muscles.
There was no warning,
No time time to even pick up a book or the voyage.
Old men laughed toothless laughs
And ate raw fish.
Mucidad. Come es ridiculo amor, ha ha!
But the captain served champagne for breakfast
And gave us a blessing to go ashore.
North Africa is a Terra de Bacallao in winter.
A blue scarf blows blue on the horizon.
All the ships are of hard cold steel, cold iron these days.
No festive pink buoys, no soccer games on the harbour front.
We await you nos amigos.
We will sing and dance at your return.
Mike Wade
Three Cold Trawlers Asleep on a Friend’s Couch
By Mike Wade
Across the harbour three ships tied up, immovable on the mirror
Arc lights, colours floating, defying photography and words,
The free image in time slipping away.
The future leaking into the present,
The difference between film and theater,
The difference between life and its opposites,
The built-in decay factor, itself never decaying, cycling.
Art requires auditors.
Nature requires nothing.
Useless questions haunting our decaying sensations
Out the Narrows, a red light flashes in time
Programmed to provide information in stop and go fashion
The difference between knowledge and wisdom
These are memories, visions of things dead
Ourselves dead and not knowing
Will never know, never die
Being already dead, all sensation, memory.
All past while we examine spilt milk on the formica counter of the 20th century.
The hallucinatory hills blur darkly.
The red and green lights wink conspiratorially.
Three cold trawlers asleep on a friend’s couch.
* * *
In 1984 I designed a poster for a collectively written play, performed at the LSPU Hall, called "High Steel".
In 1984, a prominent Canadian pianist, Walter Delahunt, was coming to St. John’s for a social visit. Walter was a member of the Baha’i community. We planned a week of music, from May 1 to 5: experimental improvisational music by Fusion and Wet Cheese Delirium; chamber music by the Aeolian Quintet; jazz by Paul Steffler; traditional Newfoundland music by Pam Morgan and Anita Best; and finally, Walter’s concert of classical piano. The five-day event was called The Downtown Music Festival. I knew most of the performers and organizing was not that difficult.
Walter needed a grand piano and the LSPU Hall did not have one. We found someone at CBC who could lend us a piano and even ship it over to the hall from their studio. The day before Walter’s concert, it arrived. Unfortunately, the piano had been used in a country and western show and was completely covered in white vinyl “mactac”, an adhesive kitchen cupboard shelf liner. Mary Lynn Bernard and I spent all night meticulously stripping it off.
Justin Hall and Joe
Fig. 2-37 (Insert Photo of Festival Poster by Justin Hall) (LATER)
For the Festival poster, I wanted a glimpse of St. John’s and a sense of St. John’s famous wind. First I called on two friends; Justin Hall, a musician and photographer; and Sharon Dyas, a young musician and actress, and member of the local Baha’i Community. We climbed the tower of the United Church on Cochrane Street. Up in the tower there was a good view of the city and, above the rooftops, the wind was strong. Sharon started to play the flute and Justin took pictures. Wind there was, but no evidence of it in the picture until Justin said to Sharon, “Flick your hair.” Her hair was long, down to her waist, and she brushed it with her hand. By the time it was back on the flute her hair was blowing sideways. And Justin got the shot.
The Festival received good reviews from the critics and it was recorded by St. John’s CBC Radio.
* * *
1985 was proclaimed by the United Nations as International Youth Year, or IYY. I designed a Youth Urban Awareness Project and presented it to Susan Jamieson at MUN Extension. It was meant to be a ten-week summer program that exposed senior high school students to three kinds of urban activity: government, business, and culture. The students would do some research, conduct tours, meet leaders from, and have two week job-placements in, each of these three worlds. Through exposure and experience they would leave the program better able to decide their future area of study and career. There was a recruiting campaign, but there wasn’t enough time to implement the program this year; so it was planned for 1986.
* * *
Cathy taught dance in the basement of the LSPU Hall and later at the Cochrane St United Church across the street from our home. Students would participate in performances that were usually a response to some aspect of life in Newfoundland. She was the first in St. John’s to take dance outdoors with performances in alleyways, streets, parks, and on sidewalks. Her performances grew out of collaboration with her students. Ideas blossomed in her class that led to many collective dance creations. In 1981, she, and her friend and fellow dancer, the poet Agnes Walsh, co-founded the Neighbourhood Dance Works (NDW), an organization that still exists.
Poster of NDW (LATER)
It...”began as a performance collective dedicated to creating innovative new dance works in St. John’s. As the organization developed, a performance series was established which showcased local talent, as well as work by leading Canadian dancers, making NDW the primary presenter of modern dance in the province. Neighbourhood Dance Works has become a nationally recognized presenter of contemporary dance and has showcased internationally established artists alongside emerging choreographers and dancers, advancing the careers of many Newfoundland dance artists.”[ https://www.neighbourhooddanceworks.com/]
In 1983 we moved downtown to 76 Cochrane Street - it had belonged to Edyth Goodridge. The attic floor of our home was often a dormitory for dancers from other parts of Canada.
Divorce
Our relationship with the arts community gave each of us an engaging sphere of activity. It kept us going as individuals, but not as a couple. The interesting projects we engaged in were probably a way to be busy and avoid the work of getting to know each other. Cathy and I found ourselves living parallel lives, not really together. We had no children. It became apparent there were aspects of each other’s character that we had not known well enough. In particular, we were poor at communicating about emotions. We were becoming estranged.
We went to a professional marriage counselor, but he said our marriage was too far gone; he couldn’t help us. Cathy moved out. The Local Baha’i Assembly helped us. In the Baha’i Faith, divorce is strongly discouraged, but permitted. Where there is deep estrangement, a Year of Waiting is inaugurated, and the couple abstains from other relationships and tries to reconcile.
During our Year of Waiting (March 1985 to March 1986), the Assembly asked Elizabeth Rochester to help Cathy and I with some counseling. We met individually and separately a few times at Elizabeth’s home and she asked us challenging questions. I remember the box of Kleenex for the tears.
Elizabeth had a degree in social work, and worked in the field before coming to Newfoundland with her husband, Michael. Her skills were put to use in Baha’i local and national education activities. Counseling needs in our community - usually problems in marriages or other family issues - often involved Elizabeth’s participation.
I learned I was especially good at avoiding frankness. Small wounds, instead of becoming opportunities for growth, festered. Cathy and I were not mature enough for marriage, and it didn’t grow. Thanks to Elizabeth, the suffering I experienced through marriage breakdown and divorce was at least made meaningful. The suffering wasn't wasted.
Why do we walk into the major events of our lives, marriage and parenthood, with little preparation other than what we absorb from our parents and the society around us? Why aren’t these important institutions a conscious part of our education?
Going to China
One day, at Frank Noseworthy’s office, the draftsman asked me if the gray Dodge Colt parked nearby on Gower Street was mine. “Yes”, I said. “Well, you’d better take a look”, he said. A drunk driver had crashed into the back of my car and pushed it into the car in front of mine. Compressed at both ends, there was not much left of my abbreviated car. I needed the insurance money, anyway.
The struggle at the office with smaller-scale projects was taking its toll. We had to do almost as much work for small projects as we did for larger ones, but the fee, based on building area, was much lower. Finally, Frank had to close his business and merge what was left with another office. I was laid off. ‘Fragmented’ again.
Our cat, Strider, a friend of nine years, was named after a character in Lord of the Rings. He used to climb on my shoulders and wrap himself around my neck with his front legs hanging over my right shoulder and his back legs over my left. He would scratch his cheek on the corner of my glasses. He was getting old, his teeth were gone, and he couldn’t eat. I put him on my lap as I drove to the vet. They said the best thing to do was to “put him down”.
Cathy had moved out. I had lost my wife, my job, my car, and my cat. If the Year of Waiting did not result in reconciliation, then I would lose not only my marriage, but my house as well. Cathy did not want it, and I could not afford to buy her half. I started taking in boarders - Ab Stockwood was one - to help cover mortgage payments.
Since mid-1984, I had been trying to find a way to go to China. I wrote letters to various agencies and institutions, Canadian and Chinese. For example, I read an article about Bao Jia Sheng, a professor of architecture in Nanjing, who had designed courtyard style apartment buildings with flexible floor plans that people could subdivide according to their family needs. I wrote to him about possible research collaboration, but there were too many obstacles to overcome.
In January, 1985, I wrote a letter to Maureen Anderson, the Secretary of the School of Architecture at McGill, in Montreal. I shared with her another fragile bubble of thought, “I would like to go to China”. She passed my letter on to the McGill International Office. Maureen had heard that the head of that office had just come back from a tour of China. I received a letter from the Head of McGill International saying that Tianjin University was offering a course for foreign architects from May 20 to July 20, 1985. She sent me the contact information.
I wrote a letter to Tianjin University and, in late February, I received an invitation letter, from Liu De Fu, Head of the Foreign Affairs Office at Tianjin University. I mailed the Tianjin invitation letter and my passport to the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, assuming I would get a visa in time. I had already planned to be in Vancouver in late April to do a couple of weeks of consulting work on a Harbour Symphony for Expo 86; I could do that on the way to China. In order it to get a good price for a plane ticket, I had to buy one early. If the visa did not come before my flight, I would lose part of the cost of my ticket.
I was scheduled to fly out of St. John’s on April 27, 1985. By April 15, the visa had still not arrived. A few anxious phone calls to the Embassy in Ottawa did not make the situation clearer. The day before I was supposed to leave, the mailman put an envelope through my front door mail slot. I heard the little package fall to the floor. It was my passport, with a tourist visa inside. On April 27, my friend, Pat Ralph, gave me a ride to the airport.
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