It was in the 1960s that my Mother got her drivers license. She was 29 then and was frustrated by the lack of possibilities that not having a license imposed.

My Father worked on the  fishing draggers of National Sea and was gone for 10 out of every 12 days. And even when he was home he was exhausted from his work and didn’t feel like moving. The last straw for my Mother was when he couldn’t take her blueberry picking.  It was then that she made up her mind to get her license.

It was an old Ford Station wagon that Dad had bought second hand in the early 1960s. It was a pale green car with white on top and around the fringes. It was a car that seemed to stretch on forever. When winter came my Dad would put chains on the tires of that old station wagon. We were renting Rachel Munroe-Murphy’s house on Main Street at that time. (Rachel Ann Munroe ( 1907 - 1992 ).  We lived downstairs and Jack Mirao’s family lived upstairs. It would later become Sam and Barbara Carter’s house.

The house is gone now.

The memory of those early years has diminished over time, but I do remember Dad bringing home the deer he successfully hunted tied to the top of that old car. He cleaned them from the swings he made for us from the logs he cut on land in Big Lorraine.

My Father hunted his whole life.  Born in Big Lorraine, my Dad’s Father T. Fiander and family lived off the land: fishing and hunting, cutting pulp in the winter time in the back woods from over the roads and bridges they created, and cutting railroad ties for the Dominion railroad.; then supplementing their income by working double shifts on the coal pier in Louisbourg.

When the fish plant opened at Louisbourg in 1952 he was able to take what he learned fishing out of Big Lorraine harbour to the side trawlers. He got married at 34 to a young woman named Florence Kennedy from Little Lorraine and moved to Louisbourg.  Eventually I, my brother and the station wagon came along.

Even though she only had her beginner’s licence my Mother would sometimes take me along. I hid on the floor in the back seat while a friend accompanied her as she practiced driving. It was exciting to be in cahoots with my Mother doing something that was prohibited. Fortunately I was never caught by the police and a life of crime was aborted.

And my Mother got her licence.  

My Mother would have that station wagon full of kids in the summer time. She made sure my brother and I had our friends come with us when we went to Kennington Cove or Brickyard; or for a picnic on the site of the old Marconi station near the Fortress. While riding in the backseat you could see the paved road pass by through a hole in the floor. Cars of the time fell to rust quickly from salted winter roads.

My Mother and Father would often travel to Big and Little Lorraine, Gooseberry and Wild Cove - frequenting the spots where they had grown up. There would be a lobster boil at Gooseberry Cove and sandwiches at Wild Cove.  One year while driving to Big Lorraine that old green and white station wagon lost its gas tank. I don’t remember how we got home. My Father proceeded to show that losing a gas tank had not been unusual in his life, and hooked up a javex bottle in its place until he could get a new one. But a javex bottle full of gas will only get one so far.

After the Iceland II went aground at Fourchu in 1967, my parents took us along on an adventure to see the grounded dragger. It must have been sad for my Father to see the boat that he and Charlie Baker had worked on not that long ago aground and broken apart. Years later I overheard my Father talking to Charlie (while mackerel fishing off the government wharf), and he wondered if they had been on the boat, at the time of the grounding, that perhaps the tragedy of 10 men dying might have been averted. (Or would they also have been victims.)

It had been a long trip to Fourchu since the road to Gabarus was now closed, with the station wagon breaking down on the way back.  But there were helpful people in a nearby home who helped us on our way.

Dad bought a new blue Ford Maverick for 3000 dollars in 1970 and the station wagon was sold. Eventually “Red” MacKeigan and his family bought the station wagon. Eventually he sold it as well.

The 1960s with that station wagon and family and friends was memorable. It was how my Mother got her driving start and more freedom, much to the benefit of the kids in the neighbourhood.