Bay of Spirits: A Love Story

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

“Us al-ays gives the other fellow a hand,” he told us earnestly,
leaning forward to tap my knee for emphasis. “Us has to do that, you
understands. Twas the way she al-ays been upon the coast.”

In the above excerpt from Bay of Spirits, the coast is the southwest
coast of Newfoundland, mainly around Bay d’Espoir (the Bay of
Spirits); the us are both the settlers of that remote shoreline who made
a precarious living fishing and whaling, and Farley and Claire Mowat
(then Wheeler) who, in the late 1950s, fell in love with each other,
with their sailing schooner Happy Adventure, and with the people of that
coast. This is Farley’s recounting of those love affairs and, lucky
for us, he chooses to devote most of his memory to the people. For it is
the people like Ernie Riggs, skipper of the Baccalieu, Sandy and Millie
Kemp of Pushthrough, Dolph Warren of Milltown, Phil Dominie of
Raymond’s Point, and many others whose stories of hardships and
enterprise, happiness and anguish, at a time when fish were beginning to
disappear and Joey Smallwood was intent on centralizing the smaller
outports, that we are eager to hear. For what Mowat describes, in loving
detail and with great compassion, are lifestyles that are now, to a very
large extent, gone the way of the jigger and capelin.

Of course, some of the stories we have already heard in such books as
Farley’s The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float (1969), A Whale for the Killing
(1972), and Claire’s Outport People (1983). But, while there is some
overlap, there is enough new, and enough that comes again to refresh our
memories, to make this book a pleasure to read and learn from.