The Curse of the Labrador Duck (13 page)

I found hell, which certainly was surprising. An endless stream of heavy lorries raced westward, perforated occasionally by commuter vehicles. The din echoed off the stone-fronted buildings to create a cacophonous crescendo. Pedestrians were not at all welcome, and the very few other pedestrians who braved O’Connell Bridge looked as disoriented as I felt. Looking for inspiration, I stood beside a statue
of Daniel O’Connell, and felt sad that I had no idea who he had been. Perhaps I should have continued north along O’Connell Street, which has been described as Dublin’s answer to the Champs-Elysées, but I didn’t. I might have marched up Moore Street and down Moore Lane, but I didn’t do that either. Instead, I tossed an imaginary coin and started east along the river.

It is said that Dublin has leapt forward in the last fifteen years, after years of neglect, and that restored old buildings and redeveloped areas had replaced lots that previously sat derelict. When it comes to the region bordering the north and south shores of the Liffey, the city still has a long way to go. I found no trace of soul. I did, however, find a trace of Labrador Duck in the guise of an unlovely building with a plaque indicating that it had served as the original headquarters of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, whose ship
Royal William
had brought the duck to Ireland.

The region along the Liffey was rich in promises of redevelopment of the portions of the waterfront no longer used for shipping. Blocklong signs on plywood fences described luxury housing development, but at that point in its genesis it was still a load of broken concrete and rusting machinery, and I was reduced to dodging heavy truck traffic where sidewalks had been demolished but not replaced. Around a boat basin, I found a series of partially occupied warehouses whose businesses had nothing at all to do with water. Moving further and further east, I finally came to the district still used for real shipping. Large wire fences kept me from getting anywhere near any real ships.

Zigzagging back along the river’s north side, I finally found something that touched me. It was a series of statues of emaciated figures in remembrance of those who suffered and died as a result of the Great Famine starting in 1845, and the lack of assistance that followed. In particular it was a tribute to those Irish families that had emigrated to Canada, and so helped forge the nation as it exists today.

T
HE NATIONAL MUSEUM
of Ireland has an incredible archaeological collection, including material from the Stone Age onward. This is all housed in a magnificent building opened in 1890. The museum was hosting several special events and lectures through the summer. On
the books was a special presentation on bats by Dr. Claire Cave, an example of nominative determinism almost as good as a bat biologist friend of mine who married a woman named Robin. The museum was also sponsoring a children’s art competition on the topic of Ireland’s watery places. And that very evening, I was due to give a lecture on Labrador Ducks.

I like an audience, and have no objection to helping with advertising. I once did a radio interview promoting a talk while suffering a blinding migraine, with a corn snake wrapped around my neck. I hadn’t been asked to do any promotion for the talk in Dublin, except for providing them with a brief description. When Lisa and I arrived at the museum for my talk, we were surprised to see no posters, no bulletins…not much of anything. Indeed, the only advertising we found was in the museum’s booklet of summer events. It was buried on page 38, in blue ink on a slightly lighter blue background. And so I wasn’t altogether surprised to find that my audience consisted of just twenty people, including Lisa and two people who had helped to organize the talk.

Despite the relatively small group, I danced and pranced, told Labrador Duck stories, and threw in a plug for the National Museums every chance I got. After the talk and the question period, one particularly well dressed, bejeweled, and enthusiastic fellow came up to ask additional questions and make supportive comments. His name was John McKenna, and he came across as someone who felt that life was a really good bit of fun. When we were tossed out of the museum a few minutes after my talk so that the building could be locked up, McKenna and his partner, Trish, invited Lisa and me out for a drink at a watering hole just down the street. We politely declined, claiming that it had been a long day. McKenna asked again, promising that it would be “just the one.” Again we declined. When McKenna asked again, we knew that there was no way to politely decline a third time. And so off we went to the Horseshoe Room at the Shelbourne Hotel.

The decor of the bar has been described as understated Gatsby. I suppose this means lots of mirrors, wood, and brass. A Dublin landmark for fifty years, we were told that author James Joyce had frequented the Horseshoe, although I suspect he didn’t do a lot of
his best imbibing there, having died several years before it opened. Lisa and I were dressed nicely, but I still felt out of place, surrounded by lawyers and parliamentarians in suits costing more than my first car. McKenna and Trish were able to put us immediately at our ease. McKenna had whiskey, Trish and Lisa had wine, and at McKenna’s suggestion I supped a Guinness. It is said that Guinness doesn’t travel well, and so this was my opportunity to drink it with the least amount of undesirable travel, having come from just down the road at St. James Gate.

Trish was willing to sit back and look lovingly while McKenna held court. We wandered all over favorite topics, including jewelry, art, travel, history, and archaeology. McKenna described himself as the “fecker” who was costing the Irish government millions of euros by preventing them from running highways through areas of great archaeological significance. We pulled out some stationery and a pen so that McKenna could illustrate some fine points of Irish language and geography. After just a few minutes, the paper looked as though it had been attacked by a toddler holding a pen for the first time, which McKenna put down to his dyslexia.

Just before the evening came to an end, McKenna signed over to us the copyright for an image that was going to make us rich. He scribbled it out in pen on another piece of paper. It was a stylized sketch of James Joyce, incorporating Joyce’s eyeglasses into the word
Bloomsday,
a festival held on June 16 each year to celebrate Joyce’s greatest novel
Ulysses
. I gather that if Dublin ever uses this logo, Lisa and I will be able to claim that we hold the rights to it, and sue the living daylights out of the city.

B
EFORE FLYING OUT
of Dublin, I had one more opportunity to find a bit of the city to adore. The opportunity came in the form of a prebreakfast run. My earlier impressions about traffic noise had come at rush hour. Surely those impressions had been misplaced. Not so. Passing through the gates of Trinity College, I heard church bells chime 6:00, and yet the din of traffic was already at full roar. I hadn’t given up on my thesis that the best of a city should be somewhere near its biggest river, and so I set off, running west along the Liffey. I crossed at O’Connell Bridge, and again at Ha’penny Bridge. Then
I ran across the Millennium Bridge, followed by the Grattan Bridge, the O’Donovan Rossa Bridge, and the Father Matthew Bridge. North on the Mellows Bridge, south on the Blackhall Palace Bridge, north on the Rory O’More Bridge, and south on the Frank Sherwin Bridge. At this point I ran out of bridges, and so ran back to Trinity College, having failed to fall in love with Dublin.

I confess that my lack of passion for Dublin is probably completely my own fault. We were in the city less than four days. I met only a handful of its residents. I didn’t get to Phoenix Park or Dublin Zoo. I didn’t take in Dublin Castle or the National Botanic Gardens or the Museum of Childhood. Instead, I tried to find beauty by walking and running along the river Liffey. I had walked beyond the limits of my tourist map. Tourist maps are designed to keep tourists away from grotty building sites, heavy truck traffic, and unsympathetic architecture.

So here is my compromise: if the Dublin tourist bureau were to invite me back for a longer visit, I would stick to the itinerary, and I would promise to enjoy myself. I would attend only preapproved festivals and take only guided tours. I would then write a glowing and complimentary article about the city at the end of my stay. I would be perfectly pleased to fly economy but would not say no to a room at the Shelbourne Hotel.

Having made a careful examination of more than a dozen Labrador Ducks, I thought it was a good time to see where some of them had shuffled off.

I
am not a hunter. Indeed, I don’t know any vegetarians who are. In the past, quite a few people hunted Labrador Ducks, even though they reportedly tasted awful. The story goes that when a Labrador Duck carcass was brought to market in New York, it would hang there until it rotted off the hook, because everyone knew how truly dreadful they tasted.

Labrador Ducks presumably spent the summer breeding somewhere in northern Canada—Labrador might be a good guess. Although there is not a single record of anyone having ever killed a Labrador Duck on its breeding ground, it is safe to assume that it happened, but no one bragged about it. Labrador Ducks spent their winters in the vicinity of New York City. People killed lots and lots of these ducks on the wintering grounds around Long Island. It follows that those ducks must have flown between the breeding and wintering grounds, following the coast in both directions, and there are a few records of Labrador Ducks being shot while they were taking a short break on migration. Stopping for a snack and a rest, my poor little ducks were blasted away at by the citizens of New Brunswick
and Nova Scotia. Having spent the summer tracking down stuffed ducks in Europe, I had just enough time for a visit to eastern Canada before getting back to my other duties.

I knew of three scenes of Labrador Duck carnage. I had seen the adult drake in Liverpool that had been blasted while it rested in Halifax Harbour. The soul of the drake in Ottawa had been sent to heaven while visiting Pictou. I was soon to see a male in Chicago that had been unlucky enough to think that Grand Manan Island might be a nice place to have a nap. It was also time for me to see a live Labrador Duck.

Waiting for me at Halifax International Airport with a smile and a warm hug was my dear friend Sarah Shima. In imagining Sarah, think of a slightly older and slightly less Goth Christina Ricci. Think of a lustrous china doll with a permanent, disarming smile, but a look in her eye suggesting evil thoughts. To share a few duck adventures with me, Sarah had driven all the way from her home in Knowlesville, New Brunswick, to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We had a bit of time to kill before our first appointment, and zigzagging among the lakes of eastern Nova Scotia, we stumbled across a golf and country club. My dress pants and shirt and gray hair must have carried a bit of weight, as we were able to waltz into the bar and were served drinks on the deck without being asked to justify ourselves. And so, with the smells of golf course fertilizer and herbicide wafting over us, I explained to Sarah why I had asked her to accompany me on duck adventures around Atlantic Canada.

Now it was one thing to arrive in Halifax, stroll down to the harbor, and say, “Gee, so that’s where they shot a lot of innocent Labrador Ducks.” It is quite another matter to make a big deal out of it. It seemed to me that I needed to speak to the final authority about Halifax Harbour—the Harbour Master himself.

Captain Randall Sherman had a neat gray beard and was wearing a tie with sailboats, but his shipshape office was surprisingly uncluttered by naval paraphernalia. He is a compact and engaging man, and we were welcomed warmly. Captain Sherman explained that he had been a master mariner for twenty years before moving to the post of Harbour Master. He is now responsible for safety and navigation and for things that might blow up in the middle of the night. The port
is particularly sensitive about things blowing up after the ship
Mont-Blanc,
laden with an incredible cocktail of explosives, blew up on the morning of December 6, 1917, killing more than 1,900 people, crippling many more, and leveling great chunks of the city of Halifax. It was the largest human-created explosion before the nuclear age. Trying to keep everything in running order and avoid a repeat of the
Mont-Blanc
disaster, Captain Sherman and his team at the Port Authority have to keep track of some 2,400 cargo ships using the harbor each year, as well as their 15 million tons of cargo. On top of this are 3,000 yachts out of 5 clubs, 3 harbor ferries, visits by 100 to 140 cruise ships annually, and the comings and goings of the American navy. Halifax has a beautiful, wide blue harbor. It is 65 to 100 feet deep and doesn’t need dredging. It doesn’t freeze over in winter, has no currents to speak of, and has comparatively small tides. All in all, this is a great harbor, as long as you are not a migrating duck.

I told Captain Sherman about the Labrador Ducks that had used his harbor until some 150 years ago. He explained that even at that time, my ducks would have found Halifax a busy port, although all of the vessels would have been under sail. In the era of Labrador Ducks, ships would pump greasy water out of their bilges, and toss all of their other waste into the harbor. Not so today. Spills are rare and dealt with quickly, and cruise ships have their own waste treatment plants.

This isn’t to say that the waters of Halifax Harbour are crystal clear. There are 350,000 people in the Greater Halifax area, and 100,000 people on Halifax Peninsula proper. These people create an awful lot of waste, which is dumped untreated through 43 sewage outfalls, straight into the harbor. Some of these outfalls are in prime tourist areas. Millions of dollars have been spent studying the problem, and residents pay a surcharge on their water bills for improvements, but not a lot has been done to fix the situation. Despite this, an amazing assortment of wildlife uses the harbor, including minke and fin whales; mackerel; and blue, mako, dusky, hammerhead, and tiger sharks.

For a man responsible for 55,000 ship movements a year, Captain Sherman proved very generous with his time. Before leaving, I cautiously asked him about his relationship with
Theodore Tugboat
.

For many years, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a children’s television program by that name. For fifteen minutes each day,
Theodore
and his fellow tugboats pushed other ships around the “Big Harbour” while learning valuable life lessons. Each episode was narrated by the only real person on the show, the Harbour Master, played by singer-turned-actor Denny Doherty. Sherman laughed at my question and said that the show had made him, or at least his job title, famous around the world. He had even appeared with Denny Doherty on a
Theodore Tugboat
Christmas special. Today, a full-scale recreation of
Theodore
sails up and down the harbour, providing tours for children of all ages.

As Sarah and I stepped from the Port Authority offices,
Theodore
chugged by. We waved at the people on board and they waved back. I contemplated a time when the harbor had been a regular stopover point for Labrador Ducks. It was a magical moment that was only slightly dampened by a smell that seemed very out of place. It took a moment to realize that it was the smell of raw human waste. We left Halifax for the two-hour shot north to Pictou and my date with the ghost of Reverend McCulloch.

You W
ILL REMEMBER
McCulloch as the Presbyterian minister who is spending the better part of eternity in hell for shooting Labrador Ducks in Pictou, including the drake whose stuffed remains resided for a long spell in Halifax before coming to rest in Ottawa. I wanted to see where McCulloch had spent his predamnation days, and where he shot Labrador Ducks. And since I was going to be there anyway, I had agreed to give a Labrador Duck talk the following evening to the Pictou County Genealogical and Historical Society, with particular emphasis on McCulloch.

Sarah had booked us into a cheery and welcoming little bed-and-breakfast operating out of a house built in 1840. The owners gave me the impression that they really wanted Sarah and me to be a married couple, given that we were sharing a room to save money, and so I didn’t hesitate to use the phrase
my wife
whenever I could slip it into a conversation. This probably left them wondering what a sweet young thing like Sarah would see in an ugly old geezer like me.

With time before supper, “my wife” and I ambled through the
town. We found no shortage of grand old homes with magnificent views of the harbor. Even the more modest homes had a sense of pride and maintenance. We discovered signs explaining that in Pictou the minimum fine for parking in the spot at the post office set aside for disabled drivers is $136.25, and that the fine for loitering in front of the bank after being asked to shove off is $155. We found that the official mascot of Pictou is Causeway Cory, a cormorant dressed in raincoat, rubber boots, and a sou’wester hat. At one time, Pictou had been supported by a big shipbuilding operation. Today the major sources of revenue are tourism, a facility building parts for oil tankers, and a large pulp and paper mill.

Immediately across from our B&B, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada had erected a monument commemorating Pictou Academy, which was linked to my current duck quest. In both French and English, a plaque told me that, on the site, in 1818, Reverend Thomas McCulloch had established the first home of the academy. The institution was modeled on the universities McCulloch knew in Scotland, and emphasized “logical argument, scientific practice and equality of educational opportunity.” McCulloch was clearly an important and influential man. Even so, I would have thought that he could have come up with more practical subjects than logical argument to teach to the men and women of a small, early-nineteenth-century Canadian fishing village. Swimming for one’s life after falling into icy water from a capsized fishing boat, for instance. It took me 792 steps from the site of the old Pictou Academy to reach the house erected for McCulloch.

That night, I was delighted to find that Sarah snored like a band saw. As an insomniac, I am always afraid that my tossing and turning will keep a roommate awake. No problem in Sarah’s case; one minute after her head hit the pillow, from across the room, the serenade began. I inserted foam rubber earplugs, and tossed and turned to my heart’s content.

The next morning, I rose early for a walk through Pictou while Sarah had a little lie-in. I headed uphill, expecting to find less grandiose homes further from the water, but found quite the opposite. The homes were palatial, with big porches and greats chunks of well-maintained grassy property around them. I wondered how much this
sort of palace with a great view and one and a half acre of land would cost in my hometown, before realizing that no such combination existed in my hometown.

After breakfast, Sarah and I set off for the Hector Exhibition Centre, where we were greeted by St. Clair Prest, who had coordinated my talk. Prest is from Moose River Mines, which has the distinction of being the site of the first remote radio broadcast in the region following a mine disaster. I suspect that Prest had spent a considerable portion of his childhood explaining his given name. The original St. Clair was, in fact, a fellow who had died 1,400 years earlier, and had been designated one of seven patron saints of tailors.

We gabbed with Prest about the Reverend McCulloch and the comings and goings of Pictou. He told us that the rink of the New Caladonian Curling Club (established in the 1850s) had three sheets of ice, but, having been built on reclaimed land, it had settled oddly, making the flight of rocks a bit tricky. He also explained that Pictou is gripped by five months of substantial snowfall each year, taking the shine off the otherwise idyllic community.

McCulloch House, maintained as an historic site, was closed for renovation and restoration when we visited. Ever willing to please, Prest opened it and showed us around. He indicated that the second floor had been added since McCulloch’s time. In its earlier form, it had just one floor with four great rooms, with a sleeping loft above. There were about a dozen stuffed birds on display from McCulloch’s collection. There was also a beautiful painting of a “Labrador Falcon,
Falco Labradoria
” on display. It measures 58 by 86 cm and has a dedication in the lower left corner, which reads: “Presented to Thomas McCulloch Esq. by J. J. Audubon.” It was truly beautiful with exquisite detail that I could appreciate fully only with a magnifying lens. I fear for this work, because the roof of McCulloch House has leaked at least twice in the past. The picture isn’t in pristine condition, with little creases and some small staining from damp, but it will take only one really good leak to wreck it beyond repair. I suspect it is of tremendous historical value.

That evening, Sarah and I arrived at the Hector Exhibition Centre half an hour early for my talk about Labrador Ducks. I became a little bit edgy when we found only one car in the parking lot. It was
Prest’s. I started to worry that I might be talking to a rather teeny audience. At least the “Open/Closed” sign was turned the right way around. Prest had found a slide projector in a back cupboard and hoped that it worked. Luckily it projected an image, even if it rattled like an old Triumph TR3.

I needn’t have worried about the turnout in Pictou; the evening drew more people than my talk the month before in Dublin. It was quite a social occasion, and ladies brought in coffee and tea and trays of sandwiches with their crusts cut off. The audience was enthusiastic about my talk, so I was wildly enthusiastic in return. I used funny voices and told funny stories and jumped around like a lunatic. An impressive string of questions and comments followed. Leaving the Hector Centre, Sarah and I retired to a bar with a deck for a drink to unwind. I had two large beers, and Sarah had half of a small one, which, she said, made her lips numb.

We had been given every indication that the unrelenting winter weather keeps Pictou from being completely idyllic. When the snow arrives, it shoulders its way in like a drunken sailor and is reluctant to leave without a fistfight. Sitting on the deck of the bar, drinking my beer, I discovered a second small flaw in paradise. Our world is addicted to paper, and when you live in a country that makes a sizable portion of its revenue from cutting down trees, you can expect that some folks are going to make their living by converting wood into paper. Hence the small flaw. Pulp-and-paper mills stink. Pictou has a mill. It isn’t a stuff-a-skunk-up-each-nostril kind of smell, but it isn’t an orchid-corsage-on-the-dress-of-the-prom-queen odor either. Sort of acrid, sort of sweet, sort of like syrup and pork fat, it made me wonder how people working at the mill manage to deal with it.