Dedicated to the men and women who lived in rural Newfoundland in the years before Confederation with Canada.
I have written several stories here showing the hardships suffered by those living in the many inlets, harbours, coves, nooks and crannies that littered the coastline of Newfoundland in the pre-confederation with Canada years. Despite the adversity however, there were still those who looked back with affection and yearned to experience once again a winter’s night with the family huddled around the “waterloo” woodstove in the kitchen telling stories or singing songs as the women knit wool socks or mittens and the men made plans for the Spring Lobster fishery. Those who survived to live eighty, ninety or even one hundred years were a hardy people and it is to their memory that I dedicate the following verses.
I looked far back in other years
Back to another day
I saw as in a dream the scenes
Of things now passed away
The old wood box in the corner
The wash tub by the door
It was the Newfoundland I loved
The Newfoundland of yore
The Kerosene lamp was burning bright
There was birch in the waterloo
As you knelt by your bedside to pray at night
There was none so thankful as you
Some thought that we had little
Others thought that we were poor
But our hearts were light and we slept content
In the Newfoundland of yore.
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