I’ve mentioned before how down here in Pigeon Inlet we’re trying to make a Canadian out of Pete Briggs, and Pete being the kind of man he is, tis not easy. But we’ve made a lot of progress and early last fall we nearly had ‘em won over. Skipper Joe swears that there at the school concert back in November, when we were all trying our best to sing Oh Canada, Pete’s lips were actually moving. Skipper Joe can’t swear if any words were coming out but, like we all agreed, the principle was the same, we’d made progress. Then to spoil it all come this unfortunate business about John Cabot.
The nerve of that schoolteacher, says Pete, to tell his youngster, in school, that perhaps John Cabot didn’t discover Newfoundland after all and that perhaps it was some place up on the Mainland he discovered instead. “What next”, says Pete. “We haven’t got much as it is but take away John Cabot from us and we’ll have nothing.” But I’m getting ahead of my story.
Most of the arguments Pete used to use two or three year ago were so foolish that even Pete could see it and had to give ‘em up and try new ones. He even used to say he intended to bide a Newfoundlander because he was born a Newfoundlander. Grandma Walcott answered that one for him. She could remember the night Pete was born and he might have been born a Newfoundlander alright she said but he was a awful scrawny one and he should thank his stars that he didn’t bide like that.
Now personally I don’t care whether John Cabot discovered Newfoundland or not. What I mean is, ‘twas his own business and whatever it was he did discover, there’s nothing we can do about it now. So as far as I’m concerned, if anybody else wants John Cabot, they can have him and welcome. Jethro Noddy feels the same way only Jethro says perhaps the mainland wants him so bad they’d be willing to pay a little something for him. Perhaps, he says, there should have been something about John Cabot put in Term 29. But I tell him tis kinda late to think about that now and besides, when I mentioned to Pete Briggs the possibility of selling John Cabot, it made him madder than ever.
Now the trouble started just before Christmas when Pete’s little girl, in doing her history exam, said naturally enough how John Cabot discovered Newfoundland in 1497. The teacher, she’s a young thing just out of college in St. John’s and right bursting with book learning, she put a question mark after it and next day Pete went up to the school and asked her what did she mean by questioning something that every Newfoundlander knowed as well as his own name. He says she tried to brazen it out by saying as how the history experts nowadays were beginning to figure that it wasn’t Newfoundland at all that John Cabot discovered but some place up on the mainland.
Well, Pete was fit to be tied. He asked her how stunned did they think John Cabot was not to discover Newfoundland when it was right there in his path. Or did they think he just said “Oh there’s Newfoundland. I got half a mind to discover it, but no on second thoughts, I think I’ll sail around the end of it and discover the mainland instead cause that’s bigger” Now Pete would’ve said more but right about then he choked up. Anyway he went back home vowing he’d never send his youngster to that teacher again, to get corrupted.
Now it puzzled me & Grampa and the rest of us as to just why Pete was so worked up. After all, Cabot is not a relation. As far as we know there’s no connection between the Brigg’s and the Cabot’s, not even by marriage. So I took it upon myself to find out.
“Pete,” I said to him one day, when there were just the two of us, “what odds about John Cabot.” He looked liked he wished he had hair on his head so’s it could bristle.
“What do you mean, Uncle Mose,” he said, “what odds about John Cabot?”
“Why,” said I, “let’s face it. If they want him up there on the mainland we can’t save him.”
“Uncle Mose,” he said, “John Cabot was the only bit of history I learned in school. There was another bit about a fellow named Jacques something or other but I never did get that straight. So if I loose the bit about John Cabot discovering Newfoundland in 1497 twill mean I made a complete waterhaul, and that’s hard to swallow.” And he’s still finding it hard, cause only last night when again we were doing our best to sing Oh Canada at the Women’s Association concert, I took good notice of Pete’s lips. There wasn’t a biver in ‘em. It looks like we got to start all over again.