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"DR. AND MRS. J.B. WILSON
OF TOWN SQUARE, WABANA, 1957-1962:
A FEW RECOLLECTIONS"
by
Dave Careless
February 2026
OF TOWN SQUARE, WABANA, 1957-1962:
A FEW RECOLLECTIONS"
by
Dave Careless
February 2026
Above: Brenda and Dr. James B. Wilson with the Company Staff House in the background, where they stayed when they first arrived on Bell Island in 1957. Dr. Wilson graduated from the University of Birmingham (England) in 1938. He served in WWII before coming to Newfoundland. He practiced in Trinity, Trinity Bay, before moving to Bell Island in 1957, where he was in practice before returning to England in 1962.
About the author: Dave Careless was born in 1948 in Rotherham, in the coal-mining district of South Yorkshire, England. His father, Tom Careless, was working in the wages office of the National Coal Board at Aldwarke and Silverwood pits when he received a job offer in the autumn of 1957 to come to Bell Island to work at DOSCO's Main Office in charge of production and projections, determining how much ore was being produced and how much was required to fill the order books. Tom came on his own to get the lay of the land and was quickly promoted to Assistant to the General Manager (a position he held until the mines closed in 1966). In March of 1958, 10-year-old Dave and his mother, Jennie, arrived in Newfoundland. Dr. Wilson and his wife, Brenda, were among the first people that Tom Careless met when he arrived on Bell Island and they remained close friends of the Careless family until the Wilsons left in 1962. These are Dave's memories of some of the antics that Dr. Wilson got up to during that time. (Read more about Tom Careless in the "C" section of the "People" page on this website. See more Careless photos on the "Photo Gallery" page. Read more of Dave Careless' Bell Island memories in "Personal Experience Stories" under "Extras" in the top menu.)
A momento of Dr. J.B. and Brenda Wilson
I don't have all that many mementoes of my youth spent growing up on Bell Island, but one of the few things that I do have harking back to my Wabana days, along with several framed photographs of my childhood self with my much loved dog and a glass bowl on the side table with several small chunks of hematite iron ore in it, is a small square framed watercolor sketch of an old English heritage building, Whalley Abbey, hanging on the wall directly above the desk at which I'm sitting to write this. Sixty years ago that very same framed drawing hung on the dining room wall in our house on Greenwood Avenue, and before that had been on one of the walls in the small Town Square apartment that had been occupied by Doctor James B. Wilson and his wife Brenda, who were resident on Bell Island for five years, from 1957 to 1962. Their rather cramped living quarters adjoined the good doctor's surgery, and were accessed from an alleyway between the apartment/surgery and the adjacent shop immediately below it on Town Square.
I don't have all that many mementoes of my youth spent growing up on Bell Island, but one of the few things that I do have harking back to my Wabana days, along with several framed photographs of my childhood self with my much loved dog and a glass bowl on the side table with several small chunks of hematite iron ore in it, is a small square framed watercolor sketch of an old English heritage building, Whalley Abbey, hanging on the wall directly above the desk at which I'm sitting to write this. Sixty years ago that very same framed drawing hung on the dining room wall in our house on Greenwood Avenue, and before that had been on one of the walls in the small Town Square apartment that had been occupied by Doctor James B. Wilson and his wife Brenda, who were resident on Bell Island for five years, from 1957 to 1962. Their rather cramped living quarters adjoined the good doctor's surgery, and were accessed from an alleyway between the apartment/surgery and the adjacent shop immediately below it on Town Square.
"She's with me!!"
My father had been on Bell Island for three months when my mother and I finally landed in St. John's, on Friday, March 14th, 1958. We had flown from London to Gander on the previous Monday night, the intention being to meet my father, who had flown to Gander to meet us, and then the three of us would fly to St. John's together, but the best laid plans of mice and men, as the saying goes! With my father waiting in the Gander air terminal and a snowstorm raging outside, the BOAC DC7C with my mother and I aboard circled the airport a couple of times and then gave that up as a bad idea and flew on to Montreal! We eventually made it back to Newfoundland four days later, after a couple of nights in a hotel in Montreal and one in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and remarkably, when mother and I finally reached St. John's late on the Friday afternoon, my father was still snowbound in Gander! A nice young man, who had been sitting in the same row as my mother and I on the TCA plane, had just suggested to my mother that he would perhaps share a taxi into the city with us when a rough and ready looking character in an old, rather tatty, blue fisherman's knit sweater pushed through the throng surrounding the baggage carousel, took my mother by the arm, and announced, "she's with me!" This was our rather dramatic introduction to Doctor James B. Wilson, resident of Town Square, Wabana!
Dr. Wilson and his wife, Brenda, had been living in the Company Staff House on Bennett Street at more or less the same time as my father, and they had become quite friendly. When my father realised that the weather conditions were going to prevent him getting back to St. John's before we arrived there, as even four days after the snowstorm he was forced to get a train from Gander back to the city, he had enlisted Jim Wilson's help, asking him if he would meet us at Torbay Airport and take us to the Newfoundland Hotel, which he did. I can still remember that initial journey from the airport in the doctor's rather ratty Land Rover. I had just turned ten the day before, and at one point he pulled up at a convenience store and said to me, "Do you want a bottle of pop?" I said, "Yes, please." He went into the shop, came out and thrust a bottle of Coca-Cola in my hand and said, very brusquely, "Here, they don't have straws in Canada!" He and Brenda didn't have any children, and he was always a bit awkward around kids, but he was a gentle, well-meaning soul really.
Once we eventually got settled on the Island, after our furniture had arrived from the UK, and we got comfortable in our company house at the corner of Bennett and Bown streets, we started to see a bit more of Jim and Brenda Wilson. One afternoon, after we had been there just two months or so, the back door was quietly opened and a small white puppy, with a curly tail and a black patch over his left eye (hence his name Patch), was slid into the kitchen, and the door just as quickly closed again. Dr. Jim Wilson had made a delivery, one that was to become a member of our family for the remainder of our time on the Island; a generous and well meaning gesture that I've been forever grateful for throughout the rest of my life. Just when I needed a friend and loyal companion the most, it was 'Doc' who came up with the perfect solution. I was also able to come to his aid one day, in a rather unusual and very unorthodox sort of way, even if it was, in the end, all for nought!
My father had been on Bell Island for three months when my mother and I finally landed in St. John's, on Friday, March 14th, 1958. We had flown from London to Gander on the previous Monday night, the intention being to meet my father, who had flown to Gander to meet us, and then the three of us would fly to St. John's together, but the best laid plans of mice and men, as the saying goes! With my father waiting in the Gander air terminal and a snowstorm raging outside, the BOAC DC7C with my mother and I aboard circled the airport a couple of times and then gave that up as a bad idea and flew on to Montreal! We eventually made it back to Newfoundland four days later, after a couple of nights in a hotel in Montreal and one in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and remarkably, when mother and I finally reached St. John's late on the Friday afternoon, my father was still snowbound in Gander! A nice young man, who had been sitting in the same row as my mother and I on the TCA plane, had just suggested to my mother that he would perhaps share a taxi into the city with us when a rough and ready looking character in an old, rather tatty, blue fisherman's knit sweater pushed through the throng surrounding the baggage carousel, took my mother by the arm, and announced, "she's with me!" This was our rather dramatic introduction to Doctor James B. Wilson, resident of Town Square, Wabana!
Dr. Wilson and his wife, Brenda, had been living in the Company Staff House on Bennett Street at more or less the same time as my father, and they had become quite friendly. When my father realised that the weather conditions were going to prevent him getting back to St. John's before we arrived there, as even four days after the snowstorm he was forced to get a train from Gander back to the city, he had enlisted Jim Wilson's help, asking him if he would meet us at Torbay Airport and take us to the Newfoundland Hotel, which he did. I can still remember that initial journey from the airport in the doctor's rather ratty Land Rover. I had just turned ten the day before, and at one point he pulled up at a convenience store and said to me, "Do you want a bottle of pop?" I said, "Yes, please." He went into the shop, came out and thrust a bottle of Coca-Cola in my hand and said, very brusquely, "Here, they don't have straws in Canada!" He and Brenda didn't have any children, and he was always a bit awkward around kids, but he was a gentle, well-meaning soul really.
Once we eventually got settled on the Island, after our furniture had arrived from the UK, and we got comfortable in our company house at the corner of Bennett and Bown streets, we started to see a bit more of Jim and Brenda Wilson. One afternoon, after we had been there just two months or so, the back door was quietly opened and a small white puppy, with a curly tail and a black patch over his left eye (hence his name Patch), was slid into the kitchen, and the door just as quickly closed again. Dr. Jim Wilson had made a delivery, one that was to become a member of our family for the remainder of our time on the Island; a generous and well meaning gesture that I've been forever grateful for throughout the rest of my life. Just when I needed a friend and loyal companion the most, it was 'Doc' who came up with the perfect solution. I was also able to come to his aid one day, in a rather unusual and very unorthodox sort of way, even if it was, in the end, all for nought!
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A chilly and windy Sunday afternoon on the cliff tops at Long Harry on the east side of the island, with the mainland on the other side of Conception Bay visible in the distance, as our family dog, Patch, is attempting to steal one of Brenda Wilson's fake fur gloves in order to get her to chase him to retrieve it! The photograph dates from approximately 1961. |
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"I have a somewhat unusual driving stance, your Honour!"
One particular Monday morning, sometime during the winter of 1961 or thereabouts, stands out in my mind. My father was shaving, I remember, in the bathroom of our house on Greenwood Avenue and he had the radio on to listen to the local news, when a piece came on there to say that, "An out-of-town doctor was arrested overnight for drunk driving in the capital city." Right away, my father guessed who that might be, and, as it turned out, guessed correctly, and so spent a good part of the day getting Doc Wilson all the help he needed in getting him back to the Island. Looking back on it now, sixty plus years later, that might well have been the beginning of the end of Jim and Brenda Wilson on Bell Island.
I've mentioned in some previous ramblings of mine on this Historic Wabana website about how fascinated I was as a kid with the buses back in my hometown of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, so much so that my dad once bought me an old steering wheel off a bus or a truck from a scrapyard for just a few shillings, and I used to sit and play with it for hours, with the steering wheel perched on an upended cardboard box in front of me, pretending I was driving a bus around the town. I was only about eight years old and it kept me amused for hours. Bizarrely, when it came time for Jim Wilson to make his court appearance in St. John's on the impaired driving charge, he borrowed my steering wheel and took it to court with him, supposedly to show the judge how his typical driving posture, with both hands clutching the wheel at 'twelve o'clock' and him being hunched over it, in the good doctor's words, "could be misconstrued as him being drunk in charge of the automobile!" As reported by my father who had witnessed this charade in court, the judge's response to this unprecedented bit of pantomime was along the lines of, "Very interesting, Doctor Wilson, I assure you, however, I have no choice but to find you guilty as charged!" Doc Wilson was fined and lost his license for several months, and my steering wheel, after having its big day in court, returned to the much more mundane duties of driving around various Rotherham housing estates, with the youthful driver attempting to make all the proper sound effects wherever appropriate!
Below: On an ore carrier at Scotia Pier, circa 1960. I’m not quite sure what I was doing there, but there I am, on the bridge of the S.S. Dalhanna, with my mother and several other Wabana notables! I forget the name of the gentleman on the extreme left, but next to him are Kay and Dick Clarke, Brenda Wilson, me, my mother Jennie Careless, Dr. Jim Wilson (in his typical ‘one too many’ pose), and the ore carrier’s Captain.
One particular Monday morning, sometime during the winter of 1961 or thereabouts, stands out in my mind. My father was shaving, I remember, in the bathroom of our house on Greenwood Avenue and he had the radio on to listen to the local news, when a piece came on there to say that, "An out-of-town doctor was arrested overnight for drunk driving in the capital city." Right away, my father guessed who that might be, and, as it turned out, guessed correctly, and so spent a good part of the day getting Doc Wilson all the help he needed in getting him back to the Island. Looking back on it now, sixty plus years later, that might well have been the beginning of the end of Jim and Brenda Wilson on Bell Island.
I've mentioned in some previous ramblings of mine on this Historic Wabana website about how fascinated I was as a kid with the buses back in my hometown of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, so much so that my dad once bought me an old steering wheel off a bus or a truck from a scrapyard for just a few shillings, and I used to sit and play with it for hours, with the steering wheel perched on an upended cardboard box in front of me, pretending I was driving a bus around the town. I was only about eight years old and it kept me amused for hours. Bizarrely, when it came time for Jim Wilson to make his court appearance in St. John's on the impaired driving charge, he borrowed my steering wheel and took it to court with him, supposedly to show the judge how his typical driving posture, with both hands clutching the wheel at 'twelve o'clock' and him being hunched over it, in the good doctor's words, "could be misconstrued as him being drunk in charge of the automobile!" As reported by my father who had witnessed this charade in court, the judge's response to this unprecedented bit of pantomime was along the lines of, "Very interesting, Doctor Wilson, I assure you, however, I have no choice but to find you guilty as charged!" Doc Wilson was fined and lost his license for several months, and my steering wheel, after having its big day in court, returned to the much more mundane duties of driving around various Rotherham housing estates, with the youthful driver attempting to make all the proper sound effects wherever appropriate!
Below: On an ore carrier at Scotia Pier, circa 1960. I’m not quite sure what I was doing there, but there I am, on the bridge of the S.S. Dalhanna, with my mother and several other Wabana notables! I forget the name of the gentleman on the extreme left, but next to him are Kay and Dick Clarke, Brenda Wilson, me, my mother Jennie Careless, Dr. Jim Wilson (in his typical ‘one too many’ pose), and the ore carrier’s Captain.
"He's gone too far this time. I'm not giving this back."
As I've alluded to already, Jim Wilson was a generous character, and especially so when he 'd had a few drinks. It was a rare Saturday night when we didn't go home from that Town Square apartment without my having something he'd insisted I take with me, a nice pen, for example, or a book perhaps. My dad would always say, "You know you'll have to give that back tomorrow, kid, don't you." And I'd tell him, "Yes, of course." Most of the time it was something I wasn't particularly interested in having anyway. One Saturday night in the winter of 1961/62 though, after he'd had a few whiskies in the Town Square flat, he was determined I should have his old college scarf, a nice long wool one composed of red, blue and yellow bands. I was quite fond of it to start with, so I eagerly accepted it. I can still remember saying to my dad on the way home to Greenwood Avenue, "He's gone too far this time. I'm keeping this, I really like it." Father had to admit that he had indeed overstepped the mark, and agreed that I should keep the scarf. Needless to say, keep it I did, as I had the accessory for over twenty years. When my daughter, Erin, was just about three years old, we went out to a fast food restaurant here in Halifax one wintry Sunday afternoon and, being occupied getting her warm clothes back on as we were about to leave, it was only when we were some distance away from the place that I realised I'd forgotten the scarf. We doubled back to get it but were already too late, somebody had made off with it. To say I was crushed would be an understatement, as not only was it a scarf that I really liked, it was a cherished memento from those days on Bell Island twenty years before, and a link with Jim and Brenda Wilson, who were a large presence in those early years of my life in Wabana, and both fondly remembered.
The photo below of Town Square was taken in the early 1950s when the Roman Catholic church, halfway up on the left, was still a one-storey building. In the 1952 and 1954 telephone directories, Mrs. Mary Kennedy was listed as the proprietor of Cousin's Ltd., seen on the right, which was a drycleaning business. By 1958, the main floor of this building was Dr. Wilson's Surgery, with the Wilsons' apartment occupying the back of the main floor. The Kennedy family lived upstairs.
As I've alluded to already, Jim Wilson was a generous character, and especially so when he 'd had a few drinks. It was a rare Saturday night when we didn't go home from that Town Square apartment without my having something he'd insisted I take with me, a nice pen, for example, or a book perhaps. My dad would always say, "You know you'll have to give that back tomorrow, kid, don't you." And I'd tell him, "Yes, of course." Most of the time it was something I wasn't particularly interested in having anyway. One Saturday night in the winter of 1961/62 though, after he'd had a few whiskies in the Town Square flat, he was determined I should have his old college scarf, a nice long wool one composed of red, blue and yellow bands. I was quite fond of it to start with, so I eagerly accepted it. I can still remember saying to my dad on the way home to Greenwood Avenue, "He's gone too far this time. I'm keeping this, I really like it." Father had to admit that he had indeed overstepped the mark, and agreed that I should keep the scarf. Needless to say, keep it I did, as I had the accessory for over twenty years. When my daughter, Erin, was just about three years old, we went out to a fast food restaurant here in Halifax one wintry Sunday afternoon and, being occupied getting her warm clothes back on as we were about to leave, it was only when we were some distance away from the place that I realised I'd forgotten the scarf. We doubled back to get it but were already too late, somebody had made off with it. To say I was crushed would be an understatement, as not only was it a scarf that I really liked, it was a cherished memento from those days on Bell Island twenty years before, and a link with Jim and Brenda Wilson, who were a large presence in those early years of my life in Wabana, and both fondly remembered.
The photo below of Town Square was taken in the early 1950s when the Roman Catholic church, halfway up on the left, was still a one-storey building. In the 1952 and 1954 telephone directories, Mrs. Mary Kennedy was listed as the proprietor of Cousin's Ltd., seen on the right, which was a drycleaning business. By 1958, the main floor of this building was Dr. Wilson's Surgery, with the Wilsons' apartment occupying the back of the main floor. The Kennedy family lived upstairs.
Below is a photograph taken, I think, in the Town Square surgery of Dr. Jim Wilson, who is pictured on the left, holding some sort of lengthy stick, an extra long snooker cue, perhaps?! His wife Brenda is in the front of the picture, and to the right is H.S. (John) Haslam, General Superintendent of mining operations at Wabana for a time. In the middle, holding the Haslam's Siamese cat, Simon, is the diminutive Muriel Haslam, with an ever-present cigarette between her fingers! I'm not sure what the occasion was, but I'm pretty sure that Doc Wilson wasn't averse to carrying out the odd bit of veterinary work on the side whenever it was required, which probably explains the presence of a very attentive Simon in the picture, safe in Muriel Haslam's arms!
"The kids upstairs were playing with it and broke it."
The surgery and the Wilson flat had a family living upstairs above it, occupied by the Kennedys, who had several children. They often came downstairs to visit Brenda, and she quite often took one or two of them with her when she went on her 'mushroom picking' expeditions up by the air strip, which she did quite regularly. It was around this time, 1961 or so, that Jim Wilson and my father, between them, invested some money in a rudimentary reel-to-reel tape recorder. Doc had a keyboard of sorts, perhaps it was even a full size piano, it's so long ago I can't remember now, but if it was it was definitely an older model. Apparently, Doc fancied himself as a piano player, and particularly enjoyed taping himself playing the instrument and then playing it back, and not just once, but over and over and over again! My father was upset one day when he went down to visit Jim and Brenda and found the tape recorder damaged to an extent that it would likely never work again. Jim's mumbled story seemed to be that the kids upstairs had gotten into it and somehow had dropped it and smashed it beyond repair, but my dad told me quite a long time afterwards that apparently the kids upstairs hadn't laid a finger on the tape recorder. Instead, Jim, having had too much to drink one night, had been taping himself playing the same piano piece over and over again despite Brenda's exhortations for him to stop. Eventually she'd simply had enough and picked up the machine and heaved it across the room, with it ending up in pieces on the floor. So ended the saga of the shared reel-to-reel tape recorder!
Brenda Wilson (below), and (perhaps) one of the Kennedy children who lived in the apartment above Dr. Wilson's surgery on Town Square, harvesting mushrooms at The Back of Bell Island, September 1962.
The surgery and the Wilson flat had a family living upstairs above it, occupied by the Kennedys, who had several children. They often came downstairs to visit Brenda, and she quite often took one or two of them with her when she went on her 'mushroom picking' expeditions up by the air strip, which she did quite regularly. It was around this time, 1961 or so, that Jim Wilson and my father, between them, invested some money in a rudimentary reel-to-reel tape recorder. Doc had a keyboard of sorts, perhaps it was even a full size piano, it's so long ago I can't remember now, but if it was it was definitely an older model. Apparently, Doc fancied himself as a piano player, and particularly enjoyed taping himself playing the instrument and then playing it back, and not just once, but over and over and over again! My father was upset one day when he went down to visit Jim and Brenda and found the tape recorder damaged to an extent that it would likely never work again. Jim's mumbled story seemed to be that the kids upstairs had gotten into it and somehow had dropped it and smashed it beyond repair, but my dad told me quite a long time afterwards that apparently the kids upstairs hadn't laid a finger on the tape recorder. Instead, Jim, having had too much to drink one night, had been taping himself playing the same piano piece over and over again despite Brenda's exhortations for him to stop. Eventually she'd simply had enough and picked up the machine and heaved it across the room, with it ending up in pieces on the floor. So ended the saga of the shared reel-to-reel tape recorder!
Brenda Wilson (below), and (perhaps) one of the Kennedy children who lived in the apartment above Dr. Wilson's surgery on Town Square, harvesting mushrooms at The Back of Bell Island, September 1962.
Sailing Away
By the summer of 1962, time was fast running out for Doctor Wilson and his tenure as one of the Company's doctors. My father arranged passage for Jim and Brenda on an ore carrier, The Dalhanna, that had been chartered to carry a cargo of Wabana's finest iron ore to a port in Germany, likely Hamburg. Not only did it have the iron ore on board, it had the passengers' small blue Envoy Epic as well, packed with whatever they thought they could take with them, lashed down on the ship's hatch covers for the trans-Atlantic crossing. I'm pretty confident in saying that the Household Finance office in Churchill Square in St. John's had no prior knowledge of the voyage of Jim and Brenda Wilson or the Envoy Epic, despite the fact that the car was still several payments short of being paid for! Such were the lives of Doctor and Mrs. Brenda Wilson! I can still vividly remember being with my folks when they drove Jim and Brenda down to Scotia Pier to board the ship, using Dr. Templeman's borrowed Land-Rover. They very nearly didn't make it, as the passenger door on the Land-Rover hadn't been closed properly and, as we turned unto No.2 Road from Town Square to head towards the Curling Club and Petrie's Hill, the door flew open and nearly deposited Brenda in the roadway! That could well have been the sad but nevertheless rather fitting final chapter to Doc Wilson's Newfoundland motoring exploits!
The photo below is of Dr. J.B. and Brenda Wilson and their Envoy Epic at Long Harry, May 1961. Dr. Wilson enjoyed shooting golf balls out over the edge of the cliff into the sea below.
By the summer of 1962, time was fast running out for Doctor Wilson and his tenure as one of the Company's doctors. My father arranged passage for Jim and Brenda on an ore carrier, The Dalhanna, that had been chartered to carry a cargo of Wabana's finest iron ore to a port in Germany, likely Hamburg. Not only did it have the iron ore on board, it had the passengers' small blue Envoy Epic as well, packed with whatever they thought they could take with them, lashed down on the ship's hatch covers for the trans-Atlantic crossing. I'm pretty confident in saying that the Household Finance office in Churchill Square in St. John's had no prior knowledge of the voyage of Jim and Brenda Wilson or the Envoy Epic, despite the fact that the car was still several payments short of being paid for! Such were the lives of Doctor and Mrs. Brenda Wilson! I can still vividly remember being with my folks when they drove Jim and Brenda down to Scotia Pier to board the ship, using Dr. Templeman's borrowed Land-Rover. They very nearly didn't make it, as the passenger door on the Land-Rover hadn't been closed properly and, as we turned unto No.2 Road from Town Square to head towards the Curling Club and Petrie's Hill, the door flew open and nearly deposited Brenda in the roadway! That could well have been the sad but nevertheless rather fitting final chapter to Doc Wilson's Newfoundland motoring exploits!
The photo below is of Dr. J.B. and Brenda Wilson and their Envoy Epic at Long Harry, May 1961. Dr. Wilson enjoyed shooting golf balls out over the edge of the cliff into the sea below.
Believe it or not, I did have one further contact with Dr. James B. Wilson. In 1972, when I was twenty-four, I made my first trip over to the UK in eight years; it was also the first time I had gone over there on my own. My father had a contact number for him, and it transpired that he and Brenda were living on a canal boat somewhere in the West Midlands, near Birmingham. This was quite ironic, actually, as apparently when they first went to Newfoundland in the mid-fifties, before they fetched up on Bell Island, Doctor Wilson, who had been in the Royal Navy during the war, had been working as a doctor in Trinity Bay, accompanied by Brenda and sailing around the outports, a lot of which had no road access, on an old schooner. I got through to the number and asked whoever it was who answered if I could speak to Jim Wilson, eventually persuading the chap to go and bring him to the phone. Although it took a bit of explaining to Doc just who I was, once he realised that the phone call was absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the authorities in Newfoundland or the Envoy Epic (!), he was completely gobsmacked that I had gone to the trouble to track him down just to say hello. I was able to tell him that I still had his scarf, which I did at the time, and to thank him once again for bringing my dog, Patch, into my life back on the Island in 1958. It was one phone call that I was always happy that I had made, and I inevitably think about it every time I glance up at the framed watercolor sketch of Whalley Abbey hanging on the wall!
To read more of Dave Careless' memoires of growing up on Bell Island, click the "Personal Experience Stories" button below:
To read more of Dave Careless' memoires of growing up on Bell Island, click the "Personal Experience Stories" button below: