This book represents the sixteenth 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.
Howard was 54 years old when he took up pen or pencil to write the first of his many diaries in December 1939. What motivated him at that time was the belief (wrong, as it fortunately turned out) that he would not live much longer, as a result of a bad heart condition resulting from diseases he endured during his time in the trenches in Gallipoli, on the Somme and in Ypres during WWI. He was worried, and in this he was justified, that many of the stories of the old days that he faithfully retained would be lost forever if he did not record them in writing. The younger generation even then had lost interest in such things and the race of community oral historians of which he was one was coming to an end.
In his diaries, he spoke of his own personal experiences, at home in his youth and in his later years, his adventures in western Canada as a young man, and overseas with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in WWI. But he also recorded observations on the significant and insignificant (to most historians) events of daily life in a small outport village on the Southern Shore of Newfoundland in the early to mid-1900s. And he also recounted events from the history of his village as passed down to him by earlier generations of oral historians.
The current volume is liberally laced with anecdotes and remembrances but is, for the most part, an example of the daily diary type. The manner in which the anecdotes are interspersed with daily observations can be a bit confusing at time.
In this Sixteenth volume, the diary transcribed covers a very brief period between March 18 and July 12,1957. At this time in his life, Howard finds himself feeling his age, which is not surprising considering he will soon to 72. But his rather morbid attention to the deaths of others his age and an anticipation of his own death is premature, as he has fifteen years of life ahead of him. He is no longer in charge of the Morry fish business in Ferryland. That phase of his life ended in 1954. But he keeps his hand in by managing his own salmon net. 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. He is now concentrating on his great ambition for the fish plant which is, for the first time in over 100 years, the shipping of salt fish to foreign markets.
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 areas.
Howard spends a good deal of time in this diary, as he has done in many of the preceding diaries, recording old Newfoundland sayings, superstitions and anecdotes, as well as recounting historical events concerning Ferryland to be sure that they are not forgotten.