Newfoundland Portfolio: A History in Portraits

By J.M. Sullivan

This work represents trailblazing artists, dedicated activists, innovative entrepreneurs – people who made their mark through their work or their calling. It includes long-loved eccentrics and exceptional young adults who met with tragedy, as well as those who happened
on momentous events and those who were swept along by them. Together they
touch on a myriad of incidents and adventures significant to the politics, industry and culture of this province, our country and the world, and leave the gift and legacy of their work and ideals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breakwater Books Ltd
• Release date: Jun 20, 2006
• ISBN: 9781550812978

J.M. Sullivan

J. M. Sullivan is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Telegram, This Magazine, and on CBC Radio. She also works in theatre as a director, actor and playwright and is a co-founder of the St. John’s theatre company The Open Actor’s Studio. She lives in St. John’s with her husband, the actor/writer Bryan Hennessey, and daughter, Marianne.

Book preview

– J.M. SULLIVAN –

NEWFOUNDLAND,

A HISTORY IN PORTRAITS

PORTFOLIO

– J.M. SULLIVAN –

NEWFOUNDLAND,

A HISTORY IN PORTRAITS

PORTFOLIO

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Sullivan, Joan, 1963-

Newfoundland portfolio : a history in portraits / Joan Sullivan;

Annamarie Beckel, editor.

ISBN 1-894377-22-2

1. Newfoundland and Labrador – Biography.

I. Beckel, Annamarie, 1951-         II. Title.

FC2155.S84 2006     971.8009’9     C2006-903126-6

Copyright © Joan Sullivan 2006

Front cover photographs: (Top left to right) Oakley Family Photo,

Mercer Family Photo, Perlin Family Photo (Bottom) Watson Family Photo

Back cover photograph: (Top) Justin Hall; Michael Wade center

We acknowledge the support of the Department of Tourism, Culture and

Recreation for our publishing activities.

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 the

prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian

Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright

licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Printed in Canada

FOR

Christopher Michael Sullivan,

December 3, 1964 - March 10, 2003

James Michael Hennessey,

November 4, 1940 - October 19, 2001

and all those we miss, our beloved.

FOREWORD

In the 42 elegantly written brief lives collected in this book, Joan Sullivan illuminates the history of 20th-century Newfoundland and Labrador. Her approach is eclectic and her dramatis personae emblematic of the diversity of the province. Represented here are individuals whose talents and accomplishments cover a wide range of human interests and experience – women and men, outporters and townies, the prominent and the obscure, the conventional and the eccentric. All receive a sympathetic and intelligent narrative, based on careful research and thoughtful assessment. Readers who have enjoyed and been informed by the author’s obituaries as they appeared individually in the press over the last few years will savour this opportunity to read them collectively and appreciate their many interconnections. Joan Sullivan has mastered a demanding literary form and her work calls a complex past back to life, one Newfoundlander and Labradorian at a time. She has a sharp eye for graphic and revealing detail and knows how to tell a good story using shards of information. Her approach will appeal to both historical specialist and general reader alike. Here is a book that is at once companionable and informative.

In a 2005 talk to the Biographers Club of London, England, David Twiston Davies, the chief obituary writer of the Daily Telegraph (who revels in his Newfoundland roots), observed that his paper’s celebrated obituaries column aimed for shrewd, authoritative, anecdotal personal sketches. By this standard Joan Sullivan has succeeded admirably. She is an accomplished practitioner of a demanding and increasingly popular genre, and this most welcome volume of her work enriches Newfoundland and Labrador letters.

Peter Neary, University of Western Ontario, 2006

INTRODUCTION

"THE YOUNG RAF pilot had been shot down over Germany.

Unsure of his whereabouts, he spent several days roaming the

countryside, increasingly hungry, and still in uniform. After being

captured, he spent two years in Stalag 3, the POW camp featured

in The Great Escape. . .he was in line to travel through the

tunnel, but the escape was discovered before his turn came. . ."

– from Denys Ferry, Lives Lived, The Globe and Mail, Apr. 14, 1997

In the mid-90s, I co-authored two plays set in WW2, Commission-era St. John’s. Murder at the Royal Café and The Gingerbread Men were part murder mystery, part espionage tale set against the backdrop of an actual unsolved murder of a Chinese restaurant owner and the real spy vs. spy games of U-Boat attacks and rumours of Nazi gold, not to mention the growing political jangling of approaching Confederation. Denys Ferry, actor, was in both casts, as Lewis Furlong, KC, a pompous prosecutor. One evening, after a show, in the dressing room at the Resource Centre for the Arts, he told the story of being shot down over Germany, walking through the fog, finding himself in a little town, moving quickly, fearful, expecting at any moment that someone would see his uniform, because exposure and capture would surely follow. Gripping enough, but he then went on to talk of The Great Escape, seeing it on television, his kids asking, Which one are you, Dad? Denys Ferry had been there. It was stunning. And yet he was so quiet about it, so self-deprecating.

Soon after this, and terribly suddenly, Denys Ferry died. I knew of a Globe and Mail feature called Lives Lived, and decided to try a submission. It was published, and the editor, Karen Aschenberg, wanted more: more stories of people who had witnessed, done, experienced amazing, decisive events, and rarely sought attention or credit for it, stories of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who had been on the cusp of achievements, disasters, celebrated events, quiet triumphs. How many other stories like Denys Ferry’s were out there?

How many? More than 100 to date. Choosing 42 for this collection was a painstaking process, with the final choices based as much on variety, uniqueness, and historical serendipity as on prominence in Newfoundland history.

Person by person, they have engaging life stories.

But their composite effect is something else again.

Looking through them, I realize they compose a kind of accidental history of 20th century Newfoundland, a blend of prominent politicians, influential designers, dedicated educators, and johnnies-on-the-spot for such events as the 1932 riot or the horrendous 1942 Knights of Columbus fire. Some obituaries were of people who were born and died in the same small Newfoundland outport. Others came from China, the Netherlands or New York City to open a laundry or construct a massive offshore oil rig or found an enterprise or build a whole new community. When their lives are woven together they make a rich biographical Newfoundland tapestry.

Newfoundland is on the edge of Canada, often marginalized politically and economically. But it is a big island (seventh largest in the world), of geographic import and navigational significance. The arc of many pivotal events crossed over it. And it bred, and attracted, many remarkable people: writers, immigrants, soldiers, painters, sea captains, actors. An ill-fated young logger who got lost in a storm on the French Shore three decades ago on his way home from a Christmas party, a girl who was given her first $5 Brownie camera for Christmas just before the catastrophic wreck of the Truxton and Pollox warships on an isolated beach and who clicked away at the loss and the bravery and ended up with photographs in every major newspaper in the world.

These pieces include professional firsts, trailblazing artists, dedicated activists, innovative entrepreneurs – people who made their mark through their work or their calling. It includes long-loved eccentrics and exceptional young adults who met with tragedy. It includes those who happened on momentous events and those who were swept along by them. Together they touch on a myriad of incidents and adventures significant to the politics, industry and culture of this province, our country and the world, and leave the gift and legacy of their work and ideals.

His surviving the war, when he truly should have died, meant everything that came after was a gift.

– from Denys Ferry, Lives Lived, The Globe and Mail, Apr. 14, 1997

NOTE: All the stories included in this volume were originally published in The Globe and Mail. In reprinting them, we have changed the newspaper form to standard form and corrected minor errors in spelling and punctuation.

ANNE MEREDITH BARRY

ARTIST 1932-2003

ARTIST HAD A soft spot for the Rock.

Lyrical, bold strokes captured scenes across

country, and worldwide audience.

Anne Meredith Barry, the masterful printmaker and painter whose work was richly inspired by the landscapes of her beloved adopted home of Newfoundland and Labrador, has died from complications from pancreatic cancer. She was 70.

Ms. Barry, whose work and stature was ranked with that of David Blackwood and Toni Onley, participated in more than 120 exhibitions from Ireland to Japan, and Brazil to the United States, and her work was collected internationally. She created her lyrical, confident and feminine pieces, with their bold strokes and gorgeous colours, all over Canada but was especially enraptured by Newfoundland.

She created landscapes and seascapes, from out the windows of her St. Michael’s home and studio to Gunner’s Cove on the Northern Peninsula. She was the first artist-in-residence at Gros

Morne National Park, pioneering a now international program. A favourite trip was to take the Northern Ranger supply ship along the coast of Labrador.

She was one of Canada’s greatest printmakers, said Pat Gratton, the former director of the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, who met Ms. Barry more than 20 years ago when she phoned the artist to tell her that a crate of her imagery had been stolen from the gallery’s basement. That didn’t stop the artist from later serving on the gallery’s board and acquisitions committee, and donating copies of all her works to the permanent collection. A 1991 AGNL exhibition toured nationally.

She was forthright, passionate, and a professional role model who finessed and honed her printmaking techniques in order to become freer, Ms. Gratton said. Ms. Barry also made time for teaching art to children, a lesson learned from her mother, Noella Smyth, who considered galleries and symphonies vital to a well-rounded education. She would happily take Anne and her younger sister Elizabeth from school in Toronto to see touring artworks, Ms. Gratton said. She’d say to their teacher: ‘They can get geometry any day. They’ll never see Bernini again.’

While her mother painted watercolours as a pastime, Ms. Barry pursued art as a career, and graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1954. She first visited Newfoundland in 1971. Visual artist Mary Pratt would later say Ms. Barry brought whimsy to the province with her big, stylized views of sky, cliffs and sea, perhaps set between pinwheeling stars and serenading whales.

She made prints and gave workshops with the former Memorial Extension Service at Memorial University, and St. Michael’s print shop, where she was also a board member. In 1986, when the print shop moved into St. John’s, she purchased the former schoolhouse, and renovated it into her home and studio, where she lived with her husband John, who was a director of marketing and research with Southam Communications.

Ms. Barry also made books, including Shallow Bay Beach Walk (Walking Bird Press), with author Kevin Major and visual artist Tara Bryan. This place held immense power for her, Mr. Major said. A power others found overwhelming. Ms. Barry’s visual celebrations of that power evoked Matisse and were most often centred on the use of colour, he said. But they could also include maps and charts, silver foil, torn Japanese paper, calligraphy and excerpts from her private journals. She never stopped experimenting.

Her hospitality never waned. Mr. Major said her studio was one of the most visited in Canada. Visiting artists to St. Michael’s were always invited there; many others showed up unannounced. All were met with an open door, treated to cod chowder (with a secret ingredient), cats and a stunning view.

I believe she set a new standard for landscape artists in Canada, said Emma Butler, whose St. John’s Gallery has represented Ms. Barry since it opened in 1987. It was full of energy and joy and love for this place. I would describe her palette as dazzling. She loved painting large, but her printmaking could go small and intimate.

Ms. Barry liked the works of David Hockney, Jack Bush and particularly Patterson Ewean, Ms. Butler said. She liked his vibrancy, and bold strokes. He rode a bicycle through paint on a canvas he’d set on the floor. She loved that.

Ms. Barry helped to establish open studios in Toronto and throughout Ontario, as well as Devon House gallery in St. John’s, and was represented by galleries in Whitby, Ont., and Kamloops, B.C. She was helping to guide the development of The Rooms, the huge new provincial public gallery and archives on the St. John’s skyline.

Ms. Barry was also able to comfort artists going through a dry spell. I’ve heard her say: ‘Just keep working, just keep working in the studio even if you’re just sharpening pencils,’ said Anne Gamberg, co-ordinator of St. Michael’s print shop. She’d tell them they were empty now because something beautiful had just come out of them.

She knew how bad a creative block felt. Repetitive stress injury and a car accident left her unable to work for about four years in the late 1980s. It was really frightening, she recalled in an interview. After surgery and a lengthy recovery, she was back in the studio. Once I could work, I just kind of went nuts. I just didn’t have a life outside the studio, but that was fine – it’s what I wanted, what I needed.

No one has had a bigger impact on my career, said Ron Bolt, past president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. He