The Badger Riot (19 page)

“Thank you Mam,” she whispered.

Phonse and his wife came over with their daughter Madeline and little five-year-old Bernie for Christmas dinner. In the parlour, they had set up the Christmas tree and Jennie smiled at Pap down on the floor playing with a train set he had gotten for the boy. It helped to have children in the house. The sisters cooked dinner, and although it wasn't the happy, boisterous meal of years past, they all made the best of it.

Tom came by again in the afternoon and sat with them. He played with little Bernie, who by this time was strutting around wearing a pair of six-shooters, complete with red embossed holsters and real shooting caps. Tom and Bernie played Cowboys and Indians and Jennie couldn't help but laugh at their antics. She thought that Tom was like a big kid himself. Bernie, crouched behind the table, yelled, “Bang, bang, you're dead, fall down!” Tom obligingly rolled on the kitchen floor, clutching his chest and shouting, “I'm shot! I'm shot!” Jennie realized anew the preciousness of this man. And she remembered Mam saying that they'd have a child of their own.
Please Mam,
she prayed silently.
Please ask God to make it happen.

When Tom went out to the porch to pull on his boots, Jennie went with him. They stood close, so close she could feel his breath on her forehead. She looked up at him and whispered, “Thanks for
coming over today, Tom. And thanks for the Christmas present. I'm sorry that I have nothing to give you in return.”

“That's all right. It was kind of a gift for both of us anyway. How about if I come and get you tomorrow and show you the house?” Tom chuckled and wiggled his eyebrows. “We might even be able to discuss my gift then as well.” Jennie pushed him teasingly out the door, laughing for the first time since she couldn't remember when.

On St. Stephen's Day, or Boxing Day, Tom came shortly after breakfast and got Jennie. She bundled herself up and held his arm as they went to see their house together. She had not even seen the outside of the house that Tom had been building, never mind the inside. Jennie was that stubborn, no matter how curious she'd been. She hadn't allowed herself to walk in on Halls Bay Road for a sly look.
I will not look at it
, she used to think.
I will not. Supposing he is building it for someone else.

As they rounded the corner, he made her close her eyes and led her through the snow until she was standing directly in front of it. When she opened her eyes, she gasped in wonder.

They were standing on a piece of land Tom's father had given him years ago. Facing her was a bungalow painted yellow, with a peaked roof. It was built up high because of the floods, and they climbed the steps and went inside. Jennie breathed deeply at the smell of new lumber and paint and rushed from room to room. There were two bedrooms, a darling little kitchen with nice cupboards, a lovely front room and – Oh, wonders! – a bathroom with a big claw-footed bathtub. It was beautiful.

Tom said, “Now Jennie, we'll go down to Cohen's in Windsor and you can pick out all the furniture yourself. I don't care as long as you get me a nice comfy chair that I can sit in and listen to the news after supper.”

Jennie ran into his arms and kissed him all over his face. “Oh Tom, I love you, I love you!”

Tom moved her gently from him and she could see that a deep red colour had spread up his face; even the tops of his ears were pink. Clearing his throat self-consciously, he said, “Do you think we might discuss my Christmas gift now?”

Without waiting for her to respond, he walked over to a cupboard and opened it to reveal a big quilt neatly folded on the shelves. He took it down and with Jennie by the hand led her into the bedroom.

They were starved for each other, after a year. Tom spread the quilt on the floor and they made up for lost time. “We're christening the house, Jennie,” Tom said. And then their stars came down . . . and nothing else mattered.

Later, as they lay on the quilt, Tom said, “Well, Jennie girl, that's the best Christmas present I ever had,” and he pulled her close. “Never again will I let anything come between us.”

Jennie laughed and nestled into his chest. “Give me a chance to get me breath back and I'll gladly discuss your Easter present too.”

They didn't move in until spring, but before that the house was christened many times. And finally they talked about what had driven them apart. Tom said that his mother had admitted to Mr. Albert that it wasn't true what she'd said about Vern and Jennie or about Ralph and Jennie. Actually, she said she hadn't lied, just that she'd made a mistake.

Jennie left it at that. Mam used to say
let sleeping dogs lie.
But she was wary and mistrustful of her mother-in-law forever after, even though, for the sake of Tom and his father, they eventually became reconciled enough to sit down for an occasional family meal.

Tom and Jennie settled down to their lives in the spring of 1953. By this time they both figured there would never be any children. Jennie never went to a doctor and neither did Tom. They were the kind of couple that the old women talked about over their knitting:

“My dear, she never had any children, you know. Dey sez she got inward trouble.”

Or: “My dear, dey sez that he had the mumps when he was young and dey went down on him.”

None of that was true, but they didn't care what people said anyway. Tom and Jennie had each other. “What odds,” Tom said.

“Right, what odds,” Jennie agreed.

That fall, a stray cat followed Tom home one evening and decided to stay. Tom always had a soft spot for the felines and called her Bucksaw. The cat followed him everywhere. That Christmas Tom brought home a little white crackie with brown spots. Jennie called the dog Freckles. The little family was healthy and happy in the house Tom had built.

In 1958, union organizers started coming into Rod Anderson's camp to talk to the loggers, to tell them what their working life
should
be like.

The first time was on a fine Sunday in late summer. The men were hove back for the day having a rest. A rest just meant that there was no cutting on Sunday. They used the time to file their saws and sharpen their axes. Some of them washed both their clothes and themselves in a nearby brook or lake. The cooks were working flat out. Besides having to feed the men their Sunday dinner, bigger than other days, they had to catch up as well with the usual making of bread, molasses buns and, perhaps, some pies.

Into this scene walked two strangers. They introduced themselves as organizers from the International Woodworkers of America, the IWA.

“We're here, boys, to tell you about logging camps in British Columbia. Now, you might think that is pretty far away and has nothing to do with you fellas, but you're wrong. It is far away, but Newfoundland is part of Canada now and has been for the past nine years. It's time for Newfoundland loggers to be treated like other Canadian loggers. Do you know that camps on the mainland have showers, indoor toilets and central heating?”

This got the men's attention. Most of them didn't even have those kinds of things in their homes. They were from small isolated outports still struggling to become part of the twentieth century.

“Now, gentlemen, we propose to change all that. We propose to give you a new union that will improve your working life and give you a better wage to pass on to your families. We're asking you right now to sign up with us. Membership dues are one dollar. If you haven't got the fee right now, you can pay us later.”

Rod listened to what the union organizers told the men. Perhaps they had a point. So he said they could have supper with the men and stay overnight. It being Sunday, the meal was boiled dinner: salt meat, pease pudding, doughboys, potatoes and turnip. Then the organizers bedded down in a spare bunk with the loggers.

The recruiters' hair and clothing became lousy that night, and in the morning their arms and legs were covered with red welts that the men told them were bites from bedbugs. This was part of the life of a logger. Rod had slept on the same bunks and eaten the same food when he worked for his father and he had accepted it.

He mentioned, in passing, to other contractors that maybe they should see about building better bunkhouses, but they had laughed him into the ground. “My son,” they said, “if we was to improve anything, our profits are gone. The Company won't give an inch on any upgrading, you know that. Besides, what do we care? It's not our property; it belongs to the Company.”

Sometime later, on a trip across the River to Badger, Rod was called into the A.N.D. Company manager's office. Mr. Cole was long gone and had been replaced several times by managers brought in from England, St. John's and mainland Canada.

“Well, Rod. I hear you're allowing union men to take over your camp.”

For a moment Rod was too astonished to answer.
Take over his camp? What was this all about?
“Well, sir, I wouldn't say they are taking over anyone's camp,” he said. “They're trying to organize a union. What's wrong with that?”

“The Company doesn't want the IWA, that's what's wrong with
that. We've been getting along fine here for fifty years. So, my advice to you is: no more being friendly with the union organizers. There are lots of contractors willing to take your place and you know it.”

Rod passed along word to Bill, his foreman. “If the union fellas come back wanting to stay overnight or have a meal, just say you're sorry, but we have no room. And say the Company has said they can't be fed.”

Other contractors did the same, some with more forcefulness than Rod. But it was too late. The IWA had made serious inroads into the camps. Every logger had signed up on the spot. They were all focused on the new union's promise of better camp conditions, a shorter work week and a wage increase.

The IWA began broadcasting a radio program called
Green Gold,
aimed at informing the loggers of the current happenings. In the camps at night, after supper, the men gathered around battery radios to listen to news of the union's progress. Rod turned a blind eye to the activities of his men. If they signed up, he didn't want to know about it. All he wanted from life was to do his job, look after his family, and live in peace.

On the first of January, 1959, the loggers went on strike and Badger changed overnight. Most of the town, aside from Company employees and contractors, seemed to be pro-union. The IWA set up picket lines at every exit and entrance to the community. Other places were similarly affected: Millertown, Peterview, Terra Nova, Glenwood and Gambo; wherever the A.N.D. Company had a woods operation, IWA organizers were there.

Rod Anderson's camp emptied out. Bill Hatcher said he'd help him get his tractors down off Sandy for friendship's sake, but then he was going to go. His cook and cookee left the camp as well and joined the picket lines.

The Company manager called a meeting for all the contractors.
Twenty-two of them from the Badger Woods Division gathered at the A.N.D. Company office.