Robert Hunt - Townies

By Robert Hunt

Townies

Corner Boys

Christmas Treasures

( with Lisa J. Ivany )

At Heart

( with Lisa J. Ivany )

Townies

Robert Hunt

Flanker Press Limited

St. Johns

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Hunt, Robert J., 1949-, author

Townies / Robert Hunt.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77117-377-3 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-77117-378-0 (epub).--

ISBN 978-1-77117-379-7 (kindle).--ISBN 978-1-77117-380-3 (pdf)

1. Hunt, Robert J., 1949- --Childhood and youth. 2. Hunt, Robert

J., 1949- --Friends and associates. 3. Students--Newfoundland and

Labrador--St. Johns--Biography. 4. Students--Abuse of--Newfoundland

and Labrador--St. Johns--History. 5. Abused children--Newfoundland

and Labrador--St. Johns--Biography. 6. Holy Cross School (St. Johns,

N.L.)--Biography. 7. St. Johns (N.L.)--Biography. I. Title.

FC2196.25.H86 2015 971.81040922 C2014-908325-4

C2014-908326-2

2015 by Robert Hunt

all rights reserved. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any meansgraphic, electronic or mechanicalwithout the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.

Printed in Canada

Cover Design by Graham Blair Edited by Susan Rendell

Flanker Press Ltd.

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St. Johns, NL

Canada

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9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. Lan dernier, le Conseil a investi 157 millions de dollars pour mettre de lart dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

This book is dedicated to and inspired by the many young men and women whom I had the pleasure of growing up with in the much smaller and younger St. Johns of the 1950s and 1960s. Some are the corner boys and girls of my neighbourhood while others are school friends who suffered mental, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of some of the Christian Brothers at Holy Cross School in St. Johns. It is my hope that the latter will take some comfort from seeing their stories in print. We were much more naive and powerless than todays youth and lived in a different era: it is unlikely that the provinces children will ever suffer again from such systemic violence to their bodies and souls.

The names of students and Irish Christian Brothers have been changed to protect the innocent. Everything else is true.

This book is also dedicated to my brother Hubert, who passed away on Boxing Day, 2013. He was a wonderful person with a truly happy character and one of the funniest people I have ever known. He is sadly missed by his wife, Gladys, and his family, and by me and my three brothers, Edward, Calvin, and Angus. Hubert loved everything that flew, especially eagles. Now he is soaring free, too.

Contents

Preface

Holy Cross School was destroyed by fire on December 11, 1969. I was twenty years old when I saw it burn to the ground. I remember that night so very clearly. I was at home when my next-door neighbour and good friend Malcolm Dickie White came running into our house at 40 Brazil Street saying that our school was on fire. We ran the few blocks to Patrick Street where, along with hundreds of people from the surrounding area, including Holy Cross students, we watched as a raging inferno destroyed the once beautiful building. As quickly as the fire started it was over. In a matter of hours Holy Cross School was reduced to ashes and so was a part of our young lives. Both Dickie and I had mixed emotions that evening.

After the fire there were many rumours, including one that said some of Holy Crosss former students had started the blaze. This rumour still survives. Some of the students standing there watching the school burn that night were crying while others seemed to be smiling as flames tore through the schools core. I thought at the time that some of the things that had occurred within the walls of Holy Cross had disappeared with those walls, but approximately twenty years later the Hughes Inquiry brought them to life again. When I started to write this book, I spoke to former students from that era about what had happened to them during their school years at Holy Cross. I always knew that I would write about those sometimes dark days. Some people have advised me to let it rest; others told me that it was a good thing to write about it, for many have not forgotten.

I have written this book to release some of the feelings of senselessness and frustrationand worsethat I and others harboured from those years, from the beatings, the hair pulling, the kneeing in the groin, the lashing of the leather strap, and other acts of cruelty and violent abuse that we sometimes endured. We were no angels, but we knew the extent and viciousness of what we went through was not warranted. We were punished for the simplest things. Some blame it on the era in which we were bought up, others call it an abuse of power, some call it fitting. Myself, I think a misplaced trust in authority on many levels led to what happened.

None of it should have been allowed. It should have been stopped, not tolerated, by those who held power but werent directly involved. We students were products of the times, having no power at all and no one to turn to but one another. Our parents were also products of the times: they did not question the authority that led to the abuse of their children, because that same authority also ruled them with an iron fist. The church, the law, and the government were in bed together in those days. They were the establishment. Very few parents came to our defence. Most parents believed that if we didnt behave in school the nuns, Brothers, and priests had the right to discipline us. In fact, some parents believed that punishment helped to mould their children into respectable men and women.

Many of the stories in this book are those of former students of Holy Cross, men who trusted me to tell the stories of what happened to them as schoolboys. What they have suffered over the years is unfathomable. Listening to them was hard. I was beaten several times by Christian Brothers, once severely, so I thought I had some idea of what they had gone through. But not entirely. Some were abused beyond imagining, and hearing about it shook my faith in human nature. Most of them have held their stories inside for many, many years. I hope that publishing them here will somehow help these former Holy Cross students find some inner peace in their souls and their minds. I know that it has done me a world of good to get it down on paper.

The Inner City

Most of the houses in downtown St. Johns are two- or three-storey row houses attached on one or both sides to their neighbours. They were death traps in my day. If a fire started, usually two or three homes burned together before it was contained. Most of these houses were built around the turn of the last century. Our house on Brazil Street was no exception. I find it amazing there werent many fires when I was growing up, even though most of our houses were heated by wood and coal, and later oil. There was little insulation, mostly newspapers or even horsehair. The only comfortable room in each house was the kitchen. During the winter my parents and my brothers and I slept under four or five blankets during the night to avoid freezing to death. It took us forever to get warm. The bed would be freezing when we got under its covers. Temperatures dipped into the double minuses on many winter nights. I often thought about what would happen if a fire started in our house. Two of my brothers and I had two adjoining bedrooms on the third floor. My room had the only window that would open properly and it was a long drop to the ground.