Challengers of the Sea

By Jim Wellman

Challengers of the Sea brings you face to face with men and women who take on the best and the worst of what the Northwest Atlantic Ocean offers. Read gripping accounts of losing sons, husbands, fathers, brothers, and best friends to the ravages of unforgiving seas.

Meet others whose lives have been touched by the sea in a variety of ways. Learn about a woman who pilots a Beechcraft airplane, looking for everything from icebergs and whales to those who contravene Canadian laws affecting waters off the east coast of Canada. And meet an artist who uses her craft to send a message of the need to conserve ocean life.

You will also meet two men who work hard in different ways to make the fishing industry in Atlantic Canada safer. And learn about coping. When the bodies of loved ones lost at sea are never recovered, there is no closure for those left to grieve in silence after the rest of the world moves on. Theirs is a special kind of heartbreak.

Praise for Jim Wellman
“Wellman does a wonderful job of describing the rough but rewarding life of those who rely on the ocean to make a living, and the fickle and unpredictable nature of the Atlantic Ocean.” — Northern Mariner

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flanker Press
• Release date: Feb 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781771176774

Jim Wellman

Jim Wellman grew up in Port Anson, a small fishing and logging community on Newfoundland’s northeast coast. The son of a schooner captain, Jim never strayed far from his marine roots despite choosing a career in journalism. For fifteen years, Jim was host of the popular radio program the Fisheries Broadcast on CBC Radio in Newfoundland. After taking an early retirement from the radio business in 1997, Jim turned off the microphone and picked up a pen. He has written six books with marine connections. Jim has been contracted by several agencies and corporations such as Marine Atlantic, the Canadian Sealers Association, and Heritage Canada to draw from his marine knowledge, particularly in the fishing industry. In November 2002, Jim became managing editor of the Navigator, Atlantic Canada’s premier fisheries and marine magazine.

Book preview

Flanker Press Limited

St. John’s

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Wellman, Jim, 1946- author

Challengers of the sea / Jim Wellman.

Includes index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77117-676-7 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77117-677-4

(EPUB).--ISBN 978-1-77117-678-1 (Kindle).--ISBN 978-1-77117-679-8

(PDF)

1. Seafaring life--Atlantic Provinces--Anecdotes. 2. Atlantic

Provinces--Anecdotes. 3. Atlantic Provinces--Biography. I. Title.

FC2019.S42 W44 2018 971.5009’9 C2018-900079-1

C2018-900080-5

——————————————————————————————————————————— ——————————

© 2018 by Jim Wellman

All Rights Reserved.

No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.

Printed in Canada

Cover Design by Graham Blair

Cover photo courtesy of David Greening, the Navigator magazine

Flanker Press Ltd.

PO Box 2522, Station C

St. John’s, NL

Canada

Telephone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Toll-free: 1-866-739-4420

www.flankerpress.com

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We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 157 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Contents

Dedication – Two Names But One of a Kind

You Can’t Fix It – Corey Starkes

Safety First – Stewart Franck

Queen of the King Air – Teri Childs

Houston, We Have a Problem – Peter Cowan

The Collector – Garry Smith

Building a Better Future – Leonard LeBlanc

No Second Chance – Hubert Blanchard

Concerning Multi-Species – Florence Pinhorn

Fish Man of Labrador – Gilbert Linstead

Dutchman in the Promised Land – Bert Boertien

The Tragedy of Miss Ally – Della Sears

No Friend of Poachers – Larry Rumbolt

Happiness Is a Clean Boat – Jana Jeffery

Dream Boat Turned Nightmare – Brad Watkins, Byron Oxford

Our Playgrounds Were Wharves and the Sea – Ghislain Cyr

Almost Home – Dean Hynes

Time for a Change – Kevin Wadman

A Man of Uncommon Courage and Bravery – Ernest Thornhill

A People Person – Mildred Skinner

King of Hickman’s Harbour – Austin King

Index

Dedicated to the memory of a long-time friend and former colleague, Alain Meuse.

Alain, a Nova Scotia journalist, passed away August 2017 in Yarmouth.

He contributed several monthly articles to the Navigator magazine for ten years. His last story was written just days before he passed away.

Navigator editor Kerry Hann asked me to write a tribute to our colleague.

Two Names but One of a Kind

You know that someone with two sets of names, both first and last, is bound to be an interesting person, and the man we spelled Alain Meuse was more than just interesting—there was no one quite like him.

Allen Muise, as he was officially named, passed away on August 5, 2017, and his loss leaves a huge gap in fisheries journalism in southwest Nova Scotia. For the Navigator staff, his passing means the loss of a colleague. For me, personally, it means the loss of a colleague and a friend of thirty-five years.

Alain was born in the small French Acadian community of Amiraults Hill, near Wedgeport, but made Yarmouth his home for over fifty years.

Friends say he was a trailblazer of sorts. Most young French Acadian men in his area of Nova Scotia stayed close to their roots in adult life making a living through fishing, farming, and other resource industries, but Alain wanted something different.

After graduating high school, he set off to Toronto to study journalism at Ryerson University. Not one for the big-city lifestyle, Alain was back in southwest Nova Scotia immediately after graduation to begin what turned out to be a stellar journalism career that lasted more than five decades. He wrote for several publications. Most notably, he was editor of the Sou’Wester, a fisheries newspaper based in Yarmouth. Ten years ago he became a contributing writer for the Navigator magazine. His last article was written while he was in the palliative care unit at Yarmouth Hospital just days before his passing.

Alain is remembered for many things. Besides being a great writer with his own distinctive (some would say quirky) style, he was a great cook. He was especially known for making a mean rappie pie, a traditional southwestern Nova Scotia Acadian dish made primarily with grated potatoes and chicken. His daughter Barb Muise says when her dad went on sport fishing trips with buddies, he would always appoint himself chef for the outing.

Alain was an avid reader and a collector of books that he loved to share with friends, and he had a keen interest in photography. He was an avid sportsman as well as a sports fan. He was also a good athlete, excelling in every sport he tried despite his small stature. He always got a kick out of telling the story about his fascination with the game of football (North American style) that he first saw when he studied at Ryerson. Attending every home game Ryerson played, he decided to give the game a try despite his lack of knowledge about even the fundamentals of the sport. He had never touched a football before he went to Toronto, but amazingly, after a couple of tryouts, Alain was accepted to play with the Ryerson football team.

Here I was, 5’7 and 125 pounds soaking wet, staring at these great big guys coming at me—they sounded like a herd of cattle running down a hill—but I’d cut them big buggers off at the ankles and run like the devil," he laughed.

Golf later became his passion, and even the more accomplished golfers admired his ability to compete with the best of them. He also loved baseball and was an excellent pitcher and batter. And in winter he was always up for a game of hockey.

But perhaps more than anything, Alain was known for his sense of humour.

Tina Comeau, editor of the Tri-County Vanguard newspaper and a long-time colleague of Alain, paid tribute to her friend and former mentor. Commenting on his wit and humour, she said it would be best not be alongside Alain during an event where laughing would be inappropriate—funerals and church services come to mind.

He saw humour in just about everything and couldn’t resist launching another of his renowned witticisms to sum up the event. It’s just the way he was, she wrote.

Alain’s daughter Barb Muise agrees.

Barb says Alain was a wonderful dad although he wasn’t her biological father.

Alain married my mom when I was in grade six, and he adopted me along with my two siblings. To me, he is the only father I ever had, she says, adding that it took a special kind of man to take on that kind of responsibility.

Barb speaks glowingly of Alain and talks about how he often used his wit and humour to embed meaningful parental guidance in ways that would never be forgotten. One of her favourites is a story about when she did a school creative project.

Barb set up a card table in the living room to use as her desk and worked on the project for two or three weeks with all kinds of papers and things strewn everywhere. When she announced to Alain that she had finally finished her creation, Alain said, Good, maybe now you can clean up that mess. Barb listened and put things in their appropriate places. Her somewhat surprised dad suggested she should get an award for that. So he did something about it.

"A little while later, I found a piece of paper on the desk with Dad’s handwriting. It went like this:

We, the citizens of [street address] . . . in the town of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, on January 4, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and seventy-three, do hereby decree that this date will here on in be known as ‘Barb Cleared Her Desk Day!’ — A.M. [Mayor].

Barb regales passionately with story after story about her dad.

I’m very proud of him, she says with a smile.

Barb’s husband, Paul Smith, says Alain had a deep knowledge of Yarmouth regional history.

I grew up in Yarmouth, but we moved away to Ontario years ago. I went back once, and Al took me around the area, telling me about everything as we drove. I learned more history of the town and region from him in that short time than I learned from grade one to grade twelve. He was an amazing local historian.

For most readers of the Navigator magazine, Alain was an intrepid reporter of fishing news from southwest Nova Scotia. One of the people he came to know well was Denny Morrow, former executive director of the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association. Denny describes Alain as a dedicated journalist.

He was dedicated to the inshore fishery, and he covered that really well, and he covered it with humour and with wit, Denny says, adding that he admired how Alain never forgot his roots and always maintained contact with his friends from back home.

Every fall, he’d get together with a bunch of them from Amiraults Hill, Sluice Point, and area, and they’d all go deer hunting and camp out for several days.

Denny says that despite Alain’s humour and wit, he was a bit of an introvert, depending on who was in the crowd.

I’d invite him to gatherings and he’d rarely come, and when he did, he’d find one or two people to talk to for a little while and then would soon discreetly disappear. However, if he was at a fishermen’s meeting, he would be right at home, Denny says.

Denny says Alain had an innate bias toward the inshore fleet in his early reporting.

"I think it was a matter of him growing up in a small community where inshore, small-boat fishing was what they had. They considered the larger vessel fleet, especially draggers, as sort-of villains, so obviously Alain felt the same way. So they [larger boat captains and owners] never thought of the Sou’wester as a friend back then," he says, adding that Alain didn’t say anything negative about the fleet as much as he barely acknowledged them at all.

But as executive director of the Fish Packers Association, Denny represented many of those villains and asked Alain to come with him and tour several plants and meet the people involved.

And to his credit, he did, and he soon started covering that sector, and he did so fairly, Denny says, adding that the coverage was appreciated and respected.

Alain has long been considered a very knowledgeable journalist. He covered the fishing industry with integrity and honesty, often spicing his writing with a spattering of his famous wit and somewhat quirky verbal imagery.

He may have had two names, but he was certainly one of a kind.

Allen Louie Muise (Alain Meuse) passed away on August 5, 2017. He was seventy-five.

You Can’t Fix It

Corey Starkes from La Scie, Newfoundland, is a changed man since the accident in 2009.

As captain of his dad’s sixty-five-foot fishing vessel, Seafaring Legend, Corey was enjoying a good life. But in the early morning hours of October 24, everything changed, and as much as he wishes, he can’t change it back to the way it was before that day.

A week earlier, Corey, along with crewmen Scott Drover and Chad Sheppard, had steamed from La Scie across Notre Dame Bay to Twillingate to pick up ice before heading to the shrimp grounds. The plan was to spend four or five days fishing and return to Twillingate to off-load and sell their catch. A third crew member, Max Pittman, who was cook on the Seafaring Legend, drove from his home in Elliston, Trinity Bay, and joined Corey and the guys in Twillingate. The weather forecast wasn’t good, so they remained in Twillingate for an extra day before getting away.

It was late in the season and fishing was slow in mid-October. After four days fishing, they had managed to catch about a half-load of shrimp. Located 170 miles northeast of La Scie with approximately 50,000 pounds of shrimp in the fish hold, and word of bad weather approaching, it was time to head back to Twillingate on October 23.

Seafaring Legend

With only a half-load of fish in the hold, Corey decided to fish part of the way in by slowing the vessel to about 1.6 knots and shooting the net over the stern and towing for a couple of hours, or as long as there were shrimp going into the mouth of the net, but all the while keeping on course toward Twillingate. The weather forecast said rough, or at least uncomfortable weather, was on the way, and the skipper didn’t want to get caught off shore in a late October storm. Corey was on watch after supper, and he remembers how most of the evening progressed. Between regular wheelhouse duties, he was trying to call his older brother Craig in Fort McMurray.

It was Craig’s birthday, and I wanted to get a hold of him to poke a bit of fun at him about getting old, being over the hill and all that ol’ stuff, but I was having trouble getting a satellite signal or whatever, Corey laughs.

Scott, Corey, and Max

in a lighthearted moment

He did manage to make one call that evening, though. He talked to his father, Allan Starkes, back home in La Scie. After discussing the low catch rates and late October weather conditions, the two men decided that, after unloading their catch in Twillingate, it would be prudent to steam the vessel to Triton, about midway back home to La Scie, and have some year-end, winterizing, maintenance work done. When that work was completed, they would decide whether it was worthwhile to try one last trip for the season or call it quits.

At 7:00 p.m., winds were about twenty to twenty-five knots but getting steadily stronger. A little later, the men took back the net for the last time and Corey increased speed to eight knots. Scottie took over on watch, and Corey headed to the bunk for a nap.

As captain, Corey always slept in short shifts two or three times a day, whenever convenient while fishing, but during their steam home, he’d try and