This book represents the fifteenth volume of what will ultimately be twenty-five volumes in a series of verbatim transcripts of the diaries of Howard Leopold Morry, written by him starting in 1939 and concluding with the last known volume in 1965.
Howard was a raconteur and oral historian cast in the same mould as dozens of other men and women in Newfoundland in those days who carried forward the history of the small outport villages in which they lived. In many cases, their knowledge, gained by word of mouth from generation to generation, is our only record of the events that took place in these tiny villages for many decades and even centuries.
The twenty five volumes in this series differ in composition between two diary formats: the first format is that of an unbroken narrative of events in the life of the author, Howard Leopold Morry, or of the history of the community in which he was born and raised, Ferryland, Newfoundland; the second format is that of a conventional daily diary reporting on events of the day, including the weather and sea conditions, the ups and downs in the fishery, births, marriages and deaths of family, friends and neighbours, and newsworthy events at the local, national and international level. None of the 25 volumes are actually all of one format or the other. They all contain a larger or smaller component of each form of diary.
The current volume is almost equally divided between these two forms of diary. And as an added bonus, there are several loose pages on the early history of the Morrys of Ferryland. Caution must be observed in this regard as some of the information rates more as family lore than a true history.
In this Fifteenth volume, the diary transcribed covers a relatively brief period between September 23 1956 and March 14 1957. At this time in his life, Howard finds himself feeling his age for perhaps the first time, and experiencing more and more the aches and pains of old age. He is no longer in charge of the Morry fish business in Ferryland. In 1954, he ceased to outfit his own cod trap crew for possibly the first year since he returned from his service in WWI. But he keeps his hand in by managing his own salmon nets. Howard's eldest son, Bill, has taken on the lion's share of responsibility for the Morry fish business, having taken over and improved the fish plant which was begun by his brother Reg just after the war. He has also begun to outfit a trap crew as Howard once did. In addition, he is now taking on the kinds of quasi-governmental perks and duties that Howard himself had previously enjoyed. He had earlier experimented with new seasonal trades, such as acting as a coal merchant but seems to have abandoned this. He is now concentration on the primary role of the fish plant which is, for the first time in over 100 years, shipping salt fish to Spain, Italy, the Caribbean and the USA. Howard is heavily invested in the successes and failures of these ventures but plays no part in them himself.
Howard has continued functioning as a small scale farmer and livestock owner and also continues his work harvesting wood from the surrounding woods and groves for a variety of purposes. But his age and increasingly limited mobility has reduced his efforts in these area.
By far the most interesting element of this diary, as in several of the earlier diaries since Howard has reached his 70s, is the rich store of stories and anecdotes of his and Ferryland's past.
As in previous volumes, in order to provide readers not familiar with the "cast of characters" or the local and international historical events mentioned in the pages of the diary a clue to their identity, an extensive set of endnotes has been provided as an assistance in reading and fully understanding the context of the diary.