As good as it gets
At age 99, Russell Parsons still looks for the sunny side of life
By Craig Westcott
If a good attitude and a sense of humour is the key to a long life, Russell Parsons of the Admiralty Coast Retirement Centre in Kelligrews is living proof of it.
The 99-year-old is one of the friendliest people you’ll meet if you visit the home, and he’s quick to share a story about his long rich past and is just as interested in your life too.
Nine years ago, Parsons published his own book, fittingly entitled, “My first 90 years.”
The self-published work, of which there is only a single copy, has proved popular with visitors, staff and other residents of the home, so much so that they have to take turns reading it as evidenced by the numerous bookmarks the borrowers have inserted to mark their places in the true to life memoir.
Though he wound up his career as an instructor at the College of Fisheries in St. John’s, Parsons’ long working career is as colourful as the man himself, and his childhood and teenage years a pretty typical example of what life was like for Newfoundlanders in the 1920s through to the 1960s.
Of the many changes Parsons has seen over the last century, Parsons reckons the introduction of electricity has probably had the biggest impact on people’s daily lives. Like all Newfoundlanders of his vintage, Parsons grew up in a time when houses were lit by kerosene lamps and, in many cases, heated by woodstoves.
As a child in Ochre Pit Cove on the North Shore of Conception Bay – so named for the cliffs of oche which people used to dig up and mix with water as a substitute for paint – Parson grew up helping his father and brothers with the vegetables and hay, and the family’s hens, cows, sheep, and occasional pig.
“At bed time the fire would be put out and everybody had a large beach rock heated in the oven,” he recalled. “This rock would be wrapped in cloth and taken to bed for heat throughout the night.”
In the fall, Parsons picked blueberries and partridgeberries and sold them to the merchant for 10 cents a gallon.
“The merchant gave you a note to take to the store and get what you needed,” said Parsons. “There was no money, so we lived cheaply from the land and the fishery…In 1935, I fell and broke my arm and was taken to the doctor by horse and wagon and had it set. All our transportation was by horse and wagon, there were no cars, narrow dirt roads, no radios, no TV to watch, no movies, no bath tubs.”
On Sundays, everybody went to church.
At the one room school he attended in Conception Bay, Parsons sat at a desk his father built that was big enough to accommodate him and his three brothers. As with most one room schools on the island, the students would take turns bringing kindling to heat the building. Recess time saw the teacher handing out mugs of hot cocoa malt that the Dominion’s Department of Health furnished the schools with to boost the children’s diet.
Art age 15, Parsons made his first trip to the Labrador fishing with his father and older brother. They spent that season living inside a fashioned from the planks of two old boats. Over the following seasons, the father and sons fitted it out better, bring along supplies each trip for flooring and shingles. They would leave for the Labrador each spring aboard the S.S. Kyle, sailing out of Harbour Grace, on a six-to-eight-day journey. A fishermen’s berth cost $6.
“We filled a large bag of shavings to sleep on as we slept in the hold in the freight,” Parsons noted in his memoir. “The women slept in the steerage, we cooked in the galley when the cook was not using it, which was quite a chore even to boil the kettle which was done at night after 12 o’clock.”
One year after the fishing season ended Parsons and a friend ventured as far west as Corner Brook, hoping to land jobs at the herring plant in Curling. They struck out and ended up working in the lumber woods in Deer Lake, cutting logs all winter with a three foot bucksaw and then making a road to get the wood out.
Parsons’ next adventure saw him and a buddy head to Nova Scotia for the winter, where they got jobs on a dragger. His friend ended up with a serious injury and had to be taken to hospital where he sat the rest of the fishing season out. Parsons worked on, visiting him when breaks allowed. On one trip back to Halifax, and a little tired of the stormy fishing weather, Parsons managed to find work as a longshoreman. One of the big boats he unloaded regularly was Empress of Britain which sailed between Halifax and Britain.
“She was the same size as the Queen Mary,” Parsons recalled, during a chat at Admiral’s Coast. “When I went to Nova Scotia, I had to go through immigration up there.”
That’s because Newfoundland was still a colony at the time and not yet part of Canada. “I was 19 when I got there,” Parsons said.
Needless to say, Halifax was a big change from Ochre Pit Cove and life on the Labrador. “Was it ever,” said Parsons, laughing.
When summer came, Parsons decided to return home. That’s when he started dating his future wife, Lorraine Sellers from Western Bay, and after another season fishing on the Labrador, managed to get a job in Buchans. Lorraine managed to get a job in the area too.
“I was a diamond driller,” said Parsons, referring to the loud, smoky rigs used to cut through rock to get at the valuable deposits of zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold at what was then, and remains to this day historically, one of the richest deposits ever mined in the world.
Parsons and Lorraine kept dating and it wasn’t long before Parsons had a promotion and a wife. A year after that, they had their first child, Beverly Gail.
“That’s where we started off,” said Parsons, smiling.
A year later, however, the wanderlust grabbed hold of Parsons again, so he took a job as a supervisor at the boys home on Bell Island, and moved his family back to Conception Bay.
“I worked there for a year, and then I applied for a mechanics course at the trades school on the south side of St. John’s,” said Parsons.
His instructor helped him get a job with a garage and finish his courses in the night. Meanwhile, the family kept growing with boys Brent and Calvert coming in fairly quick succession, and then a few years later, Scott, who served as Parsons’ amanuensis in typing up his father’s notes and preparing the book.
When Parsons moved to St. John’s in 1949, he managed to buy a house for $3,000. “It was only a little small, four room house, and I said, ‘We’ll start that one off.’ We stayed there two years and then I doubled the price of it,” he said, grinning again.
Parsons’ garage job with George G.R. Parsons Limited (no relation) had him travelling the province installing engines and fishing equipment aboard fishing vessels. When the College of Fisheries advertised for a mechanical instructor, Parsons was fortunate enough to get it.
The next years were happy ones with lots of travelling and family trips. In the early 2000s, however, Lorraine started suffering heart trouble and other ailments. She died in 2005.
Since moving to Admiralty Coast, Parsons has hooked a lot of colourful mats, and his gregarious nature has made him popular with the other residents. His room is filled with photos of his family, including children and grandchildren. Among them is an old photo of Parsons’ parents, George and Victoria Parsons when they were married at 21. And then there’s the photo of Lorraine.
“Sometimes living alone there are times when life gets difficult after spending 60 years living with a partner,” admitted Parsons, who like everyone, has endured his share of troubles, including the loss of his son Calvert 18 years ago, and a bout with lung cancer a half a century ago that has left him with COPD in his remaining good lung. “With determination and patience, I always seem to survive and renew that part of life that is left. Simply put, I deal with it and enjoy life as it is and improve it if you can.”
Russell Parsons, age 99, displays the book he wrote, ‘My First 90 Years,’ in his room at Admiralty Coast Retirement Home in Kelligrews just before Christmas. Craig Westcott photo