vol. 10, no.5, october 1981 - Memorial University of Newfoundland

some oldtimers
Story-telling with Johnny Stride
cross the road from the
A Stride household in
Phillips Head, perilously close
to the landwash, lies the old
cemetery, a focal point for local
history. The original settlers of
the area are buried there ­
people such as Skipper George
Stride and his wife, William
March and his wife, and the
notorious Frank Rimmer, who
arrived in Newfoundland as a
stowaway on a French ship,
sometime in the 1870s.
"Back in 1910there was 30feet
of sad between the cemetery and
the sea," claims Johnny Stride,
Skipper George's grandson.
"You could drive a horse and
carriage along there full blast,
no trouble. But the sea kept
wearing away, wearing away,
until ten years ago it started to
expose Frank Rimmer's coffin,
and we had to rebuild the lower
edge of the cemetery." John
Stride, born 11 December 1908,
spent many years driving horse
teams in the woods for the International
Pulp & Paper
Company on Newfoundland's
west coast. He retains a keen
love for good horses and good
yarns.
"Frank Rimmer was a rugged
man," Johnny continues, "but
he was only short - he'd have to
get up on a brick to milk a
rabbit. When he was young, he
became famous for cutting the
biggest log that was ever cut on
Gander Lake. He lost part of his
arm in a woods accident and just
had a stump below the elbow . At
night, he would hang a lantern
on the stump and swagger along
the path. His first wife was a
Snow from Lewtsporte, and she
bore him five sons and three
daughters. After she died,
Frank married my grandmother,"
Another old-timer that John
Stride likes to remember is
Ephriam Rowsell, local furbuyer
from about 1880 to 1920.
DECKS AWASH-21
Johnny Strid e strikes a foreman's po se near the artillary statio n at Phillips
Head , where he was labour for eman lro m 1940,10 '43,
Eph Rowsell would travel to the
various settlements in the Bay
each February to buy furs, relay
news, and get into long conversations.
"One night in
Charles' Brook," explains
Johnny, "there was John Hutchings,
Danny Decker, and
Skipper George Perry all got
together when Eph Rowsell
arrived, and they talked about
the Bible all night long. They
were sitting around the wood
stove smoking Home Rule
tobacco. It was a Waterloo
Number Three stove with a rim
around it, and by four in the
morning, they had the top of that
stove filled right level with
matches from lighting their clay
pipes. After they had had a
couple of hours sleep, Eph
packed up his furs to head
across the Bay to Uncle Bobby
Porter's house . Just after he
left, Danny Decker remembered
some point he had forgot to
bring up in the discussion
the night before, so he put on his
snowshoes and caught up to Eph
Rowsell out the tickle just to
have the last word. That's the
kind of fellas they were in them
days!
"Once when I was going on the
spring drive, about 1927or '28, I