Page 97 - With George Prosser of Whitney Pier

ISSUE : Issue 74

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1999/6/1

your family do at night?) Nothing! There was nothing to do. There was lots of time we had work to do. We used to run the birch brooms. Make our own brooms. Go and cut the birch, get all white birch, sit dox'n, in the nighttime. It would take all night to make a birch broom. Everybody made one. Not only you made one, everybody made one. You used that for scrubbing the stage down. My poor old mother used it for sweeping the house. We lived off wildlife, too. Gulls or what? ever kind of bird • you save the wing. My poor old mother would be down on her hands and knees sweeping the floor with a bird's wing. There was no such things as brooms and that such that you can buy today. There was nothing like that. I suppose there was. There could be some, but we fellers didn't get it, anyway. We had to make all our stuff. You'd go and cut a tree the same way you cut the straws, for the long sticks, put the straws right around, wind it in with line and rope. Make a broom that way. That's like meat. You didn't get no meat. Christmas time, from the merchant there, you'd get a quarter of beef. You take a QTuarter of beef and share it up among five other people and it didn't go very far. You never got no more of that till the next Christmas again. We all lived on wildlife. Deer meat, seal meat, and all the birds. The grull, in them days, you'd kill them, cook them. That was what you lived off of. I was looking after a tanker down there, and my boss, he was a Cape Bretoner, his name was MacKenzie. He was my boss and he could eat rocks, although he would twitch you 'cause you were eating gulls and all that. I was looking after a tanker, (keep- Make a Good First Impression! • Letterhead • Envelopes • Invoices I* Business Cards • Reports • Price Lists • Newsletters • Manuals • Resumes • Purchase Orders • Menus • Flyers • Brochures • Tickets • Booklets • DESKTOP PUBLISHING. 562-2122 FAX: 562-7937 • 200 Charlotte St. (near Dorchester St.) • SYDNEY • CENTRES COAST TO COAST • COMMERCIAL RESIDENTIAL G. Landry's Vacuum Service Ltd. SEPTIC SYSTEMS CLEANED INSTALLED & REPAIRED BACKHOE BULLDOZER RENTAL PORTABLE TOILET RENTAL & SERVICE Front Lake Rd. Sydney 564-8413 ?? / SERVING ALL OF CAPE BRETON ' 1 ing) the fire and everything down there. So I said (to myself), "You twitch me about eating gull. I'm going to fool you." So I come home, I got a herring, a salt herring out of a pickle barrel, made a "glay"--a hook--took it down and put it on. The harbour was froze and I put it off on the ice. A big gull picked it up and I got him and I hauled him in. I skinned him. All I took was the body, and I made a stew. And (MacKenzie) come aboard to see how I was getting along. He had to make his rounds. I said, "I got some good chicken stew today, guy, you want some?" He sat down and I said to him, "Don't eat it all. I want some too." So he says to me, "That's some good eating." I said, "You know what you're eating? You're eat? ing what the Newfoundlander was reared up on. Gull!" And he wouldn't believe me. So I picked up the gull (skin) with the wings and the head and I said, "There's your chicken." (Laughs.) We were the only two boys on the island. No more children, only we two fellas and our sister. I had another brother drowned. There were three boys and a girl. That's all was on the island. There was no other families over there at all. You had to go to church though. Take the boat and go to church and Sunday school. Three times a day you went to church on Sundays, and al? most every day of the week you went to You don't have to sleep with us to get a great meal!" Cape Bretoners and their friends enjoy good food and good times DellaSydney Ddta Hotels & Resorts 300 Esplanade, Sydney, N.S. BIP 1A7 • • • ' (902) 562-7500 Canada Toll Free Reservations 1-800-268-1133 Select Sydney's First Class Accommodation At Affordable Rates

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