Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Newfoundland Boy, part personal memoir but mostly about the Canadian province of Newfoundland. This is episode 7: “Mothers Day in Corner Brook.”
In some parts of Newfoundland, a mudder is not what you might think it is. It has nothing to do with ATV’s on muddy trails or some kind of machine that magically transforms mere dirt into mud. (In St. John’s we call that rain, and there’s certainly no need for an extra special machine to do it.) In many places in the province, mudder is how the word mother is pronounced, and I just got back from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, earlier this week where I celebrated Mothers Day with my mother in person for the first time in at least 40 years.
(Before I get to the details, I have to give an example of the use of the word that you can find in a quote from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. Mudder is not there but it’s in the Newfoundland Slanguage book. The quote is under the definition of molasses, and goes like this:
Jack and Tom and Bill were brothers. One spring they decided to go fishing but they never had nar punt. So Tom said to his mudder one day, ‘mudder bake me up some molasses buns ‘cause I’m goin’ in the country the mar to cut some timbers fer a boat.’
That’s a pretty great quote, with a few Newfie words I could do full episodes on all by themselves! I especially like the mar, which means tomorrow.)
But where was I. Right. Mothers Day in Corner Brook. It was nice to take my own mother out and treat her. Corner Brook doesn’t have a lot of restaurants to choose from, but a place called Jennifer’s seemed to be where they were putting on the best spread. Full buffet, from noon to early evening. They also made a real effort to make it festive. Sometimes when I hear the word buffet, I think, Oh no, lots of warmed-over food and the ambiance of a high-school gymnasium. Not here though. The tables were spaced nicely around the large room and the theme colours were black and gold. Black table cloths and huge gold ribbons on the back of every chair. It’s a special day for my mother and so I was glad that the place looked great.
And the buffet itself. Oh my. Not only huge—several different kinds of salads, several pork dishes, several chicken dishes, pastas, and on and on. And of course desserts: lots of them too and at just the right size so that a mother could have one or two or five.
It’s always a little eerie for me, if that’s the right word, whenever I visit Corner Brook. I am not sure if this is a common feeling by anyone when they are visiting the place they grew up in. I was born in the hospital there and then lived there (or nearby) till I was 18. That’s when I moved to the other city in Newfoundland, and the one I live in now, called St. John’s, in order to finish off the last three years of my bachelor’s degree at Memorial University. 18 years is a long time and especially during such a formative period in the life of any person.
I’m a stranger there now in the sense that nobody knows me or would likely even recognize me, even if I did meet them when I was out and about, which I didn’t. And it’s similar but different the other way around. I recognize a lot of the city, and know some of the roads that have still not changed in all these years, but in total it’s kind of a foreign land. The once-central Millbrook Mall is not the main mall now and many or all of the stores are different. I used to go to movies there. Now that part of town and even the downtown of Corner Brook—it’s not a big city so these two areas are about a minute drive apart—both those areas have a bit of a feel of desertion about them because what’s called Murphy’s Square, on the edge of the city near the highway, has drawn people there. It has the big-box stores like Walmart and Canadian Tire and of course a Tim Hortons to sustain people with donuts and coffee as they make their way around.
I have a little story that illustrates, I hope, how it feels to be in a city that you both know and don’t know.
I left Newfoundland when I was 21 to start my MA studies at the University of Toronto. I studied English literature and I made sure to take a class from an unlikely celebrity at the time (hey, this is Canada), a professor and literary critic, specifically the great Northrop Frye. His groundbreaking ideas in the niche world of literary criticism had given him a fame that generated outward into the regular world as well. I remember clearly that during one of his classes he was talking about the idea of identity and using the example of an old photograph of yourself to illustrate his point. You look at a photo of yourself when you are, say, 2 years old, and you call it me even though you are now someone who’s 22 (or 102). How can that be? Physically and biologically the person in the image and the person you are are the same thing, but, factually, say, they couldn’t be more different.
That’s what I feel like in my hometown when I visit 43 years later. It’s ghost-like. This location over here evokes a small flood of memories, and this other one over there leaves me flat. Is this new, Mom? It’s odd, mostly enjoyable, but not entirely. Off-putting, disorienting. Part of me wants to emerge from this haunted ride into the bright sunshine of reality again.
But it was good to see my mother. She liked having me there and I enjoyed her company. And we both loved the desserts.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And please join me again on Thursday.