FoodTrust - Connections

I was having breakfast this morning - toast made from western wheat, coffee from Costa Rica, and orange juice from Florida – while I read the Sept. 13, 1962 Family Herald magazine, published in Montreal and shipped by rail across Canada. So much for the “100-mile diet”…

Back when I was a kid the Family Herald was inevitably in the pile of newspapers on every kitchen couch. That was back in the days when most Prince Edward Islanders still called themselves farmers, even if they only kept a few milk cows and 20 laying hens.

What caught my eye in the old Herald this morning was the story “Elevator Agent - a Job in Transition”, about the vanishing grain elevators on the Prairies in 1962. A similar story could have been written about another vanishing job here in the Maritimes - the schoonerman. A friend of mine, Captain Tom Trenholm, 97 years old and living on the shores of Murray Harbour, is the last of those schoonermen.

This is the time of year when Tom and his wife Mary would have their schooner the “Vera Marie T.”, parked at a P.E.I. wharf - Matthew & McLean’s in Souris, Hayden’s on the Hillsboro River, or maybe Forbes’ in Vernon Bridge - filling the hold of their old schooner with turnips. They’d pour McIntyre Blues, Irish Cobblers, black oats (for the pit ponies), and turnips into the hold to take to the mining towns in Cape Breton and Pictou County. They’d bring coal back to P.E.I. for the long winter ahead.

Murray Harbour was one of the last active ports for the schooners. Dozens would be lined up at the wharves loading potatoes, in bulk or in bags, and 2-pound cans of Ray Brooks’ honey to sell as well.

One old schoonerman told me that by late November, after two weeks parked at the wharf in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, selling off his P.E.I. produce, he’d throw in a can of honey for free to anyone who bought five 100 pound bags of spuds.

Eighty years ago Georgetown was a booming town with the old P.E.I. railway, Parker’s Foundry, and the shipyard. A ferry ran to Pictou, Nova Scotia, and it was home port for icebreakers like the Minto and Stanley. Along the wharves, schooner masts stuck up like a forest.

For many years the druggist in Georgetown was Seymour Knight. Like the rest of the mercantile entrepreneurs who built and kept Georgetown running in the same league as the big boys like Charlottetown and Summerside, Seymour had his fingers in several pies. He owned schooners which he filled with turnips grown on his own farm. Seymour himself sailed around the world, and if he had wanted to, he could have worn gold earrings to show he’d sailed around Cape Horn. He would have needed 12 ears for the number of trips he reportedly made as a young sailor.

Friday Walker is now 97 years old. He grew up in Georgetown and told me his first two jobs as a lad were helping his grandfather make harnesses for horses. Farmers grew a specific type of rye for him because rye straw was the best to pack into the horse collars. Fridays’ other job was loading turnips onto Seymour Knight’s schooners. The turnips were huge and were nicknamed “whompers”. Friday says,” You could almost walk across the harbour on the decks of all the schooners!”

Schooners are so rare these days that if one comes to port we all get a day off work. The only things the same as they were 80 - 90 years ago, back when Captain Tom and Friday Walker were boys, are the fields of PEI potatoes and turnips….

… And the memories.

Dutch