Newfoundland English, a puzzling complaint for a Zimbabwean doctor to hear, and my own experience with health care in St. John’s ▬
Sources:
○ Canadian Medical Association, How Is Health Care Funded in Canada?, https://www.cma.ca/how-health-care-funded-canada
○ CBC Radio, “Dr. Mohamed-Iqbal Ravalia’s Journey from Zimbabwe to Newfoundland to the Canadian Senate,” The Sunday Magazine, June 15, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-june-17-2018-1.4692469/dr-mohamed-iqbal-ravalia-s-journey-from-zimbabwe-to-newfoundland-to-the-canadian-senate-1.4707848
○ CBC Radio, “My Own Private Twillingate,” The Sunday Edition, https://www.cbc.ca/nl/features/privatetwillingate/
○ “Is ‘Dicky Bird’ a Newfoundland Thing?,” Reddit, 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/newfoundland/comments/ukn276/comment/i7ra458/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
○ Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, Welcome to Twillingate, https://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com/destinations/twillingate
○ “Twillingate Islands,” Wikipedia, August 23, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twillingate_Islands
○ “Twillingate,” Wikipedia, April 24, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twillingate
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Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Newfoundland Boy, part personal memoir but mostly about the Canadian province of Newfoundland. This is episode 8: “I Finds Me Bird.”
Before I get to the subject I want to talk about in this episode (my personal experience of health care in St. John’s since I moved here about seven months ago), I want to comment on the title of this episode.
“I Finds Me Bird.”
There are three aspects to it. First, Where did I first hear that sentence? Second, What does it mean? And third, How is it a good example of Newfoundland English?
This is a sentence that I’ve had in my head for years, and so my first intuition when I was thinking about where I’d first heard it was that it is part of a joke that someone had told me. And a joke that I didn’t remember the setup for any more, though I half-remembered that it was about a male patient making a visit to his doctor. The doctor isn’t from Newfoundland and so doesn’t understand what the man is talking about.
It turns out that that’s close to the origin of it, but it’s actually not a joke. It’s about a real doctor named Mohamed-Iqbal Ravalia, originally from Zimbabwe, who ended up practicing medicine in the Newfoundland town of Twillingate. The current population of the town is about 2,000, and it’s located in the Twillingate Islands, which are off the north-central coast of the province. The national broadcasting station in Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, almost always just called the CBC—they aired an interview of Dr. Ravalia in 2009 and re-aired it in 2018. I found it on the CBC site but unfortunately though it says to click the listen button at the top, there is no listen button. I also searched the Wayback Machine—if you don’t know about this gem of preservation on the internet, you should—but alas couldn’t find it saved there either. For the record, the story about the doctor is on an episode of the former show called The Sunday Edition. The reporter is Heather Barrett and the documentary is called “My Own Private Twillingate.” See some links in the show notes.
I was hoping to hear Dr. Ravalia actually telling the story, but the gist of it is that after he had arrived in Twillingate, a patient, a man, came into his office and used those words to describe his ailment: “I finds me bird.”
It’s a great sentence and tells you a lot about Newfoundlanders and especially about Newfoundland English. Bird means penis and finds in this case doesn’t mean, you know, actually discovering it there just below your belt line. It means something more like not only noticing something but, in the medical situation, having some trouble with it. So, in standard English, the patient might say: I’m having some pain in my penis, or something like that.
Two other words in the sentence are typical of Newfoundland English as well. Finds, for example, when the subject of the sentence is I. In standard English we’d say I find, but it’s very common to hear the -s form of the verb used not only for what’s called in grammar the third person (he, she, it), but for the other persons as well: I finds, you finds, he finds.
And the pronunciation of that other word in the sentence is also common too in Newfoundland, that is, me instead of my. You hear that all the time and in all sorts of contexts. I got me best suit on for church on Sunday. The priest is one of me uncle’s friends. Where’s me goddamn shoes at?
So much there, compacted into one short sentence. I finds me bird. That must have been something pretty unexpected for the good doctor to hear.
OK. Let’s zoom up a few years and get to health care in St. John’s in the present. Even if you don’t live in Canada, you may still know that we have universal health care here (that is, we don’t pay to see a doctor or to go to the hospital). According to the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian government spends about 12 percent of its GDP on health care, and that includes everything from hospitals to doctors to drugs to medical equipment, and much more.
That’s the good news. But anyone who lives in Canada, and it’s perhaps even more noticeable in Newfoundland, knows that it’s very difficult to find a family doctor. When I moved here seven months ago my name was automatically put on a list to be assigned a family doctor, but people don’t me pretty blithely that I’d never get one. The waiting list is too long. There are not enough general practitioners, working on ailments with your bird or anything else.
It’s a desperate situation for a lot of people, and generally means that when they get sick they have to go to the hospital or to a clinic. People in a hospital waiting room for medical care are generally in for a long wait. They are triaged and so if what you have is not life-threatening, you will sit for a while. In clinics, you may sit for a while, too: it’s kind of first-come, first-served. And of course there’s no continuity of care in the sense that you might not see the same doctor every time.
I go another route. St. John’s has several small private clinics that are not designed (or priced) for the wealthy, but that offer for a fee some of the basic services that you might get for free from your family doctor. And this is subjective of course, but the fees are reasonable. I don’t have a family doctor but I have what’s called a nurse practitioner. It costs $75 to visit her. If that cost were $750, or if I had to see her several times a month, I likely wouldn’t do it, but I consider it a small amount to pay for what is excellent service. She’s well trained, keeps all her records electronically, listens well, is efficient, and on and on. And I can get appointments within days of calling. And she does some stuff over the phone.
I’m not quite sure how it all fits it with Canada’s Health Care Act, which mandates that health care be free of charge. I’m saving my receipts (electronic BTW) and I am not too worried if I am fully reimbursed or not come tax time. For me it’s ideal because I don’t have much wrong with me and I like the simplicity and efficiency and the people there. I finds me belly and I finds a couple of other things, so all is good.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And please join me again next Tuesday.