Talk:Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Newfoundland and Labrador, an attempt at building a useful resource on the province and its people. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page (see Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ for more information). |
The first UC minister in the then squatter's town of Happy Valley, near the Goose Bay Airbase, Goose Bay, Labrador, was the Rev. Lindsay G. King. He and his wife, Jean, went there in 1953: http://www.roads.gov.nl.ca/cameras/happyvalleygoosebay.stm
The following is the Rev's first person story:
"Amazingly, if you look at the current picture on the first page of the above site you will note that there is no snow on the road at this time. Today, the temperature, when I checked, was 38 degrees F, or 4 Celsius, where 0 is the freezing point of water. Believe it or not, I am in touch with a retired UC minister who has chosent to retire there. He now operates an organic farm in the area.
"The following site is about the community of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, which is now over 10,000 people. http://www.happyvalley-goosebay.com/comprof.htm
"To get to Goose Bay in July, 1953, my wife and I took a plane--I remember it was a WW 2 DC 3. We flew from Moncton, New Brunswick, over Anticosti Island, northern Quebec. It was a three-hour flight. The weather was excellent.
"On a beautifully warm July day, about 11:00 AM, we landed on the Canadian part --the larger part, built and used by the Americans since 1943--of the base where we were met by the Protestant base padre, Padre Phil Ross--a UC minister. He took us to his home for lunch. It was our first experience eating wild goose. Interesting and enjoyable. Both he and his wife came across as warm personalities.
"During lunch Padre Ross said: "By the way, Rev. King, I was asked to meet you and your wife and to take you to your new congregation. Because of certain difficulties, the details of which you will learn about later, it has been arranged for you to meet Thorwald and Alice Perault. They are actually Moravians. However, because they have some space, they have agreed to let you stay with them until things get straightened out. Were you aware that the only UC missionary on the coast, the Rev. Lester Burry will be on holiday for a month? (I wasn't.) He left, yesterday."
"Much later, from a book written by a friend and a second cousin, the Rev. Dr. Hector Swain, I found out the following: the Rev. Lester Burry (1898--1977). http://friendsofsafeharbour.org/revlesterburry.htm After his graduation from Mount Allison University (BA in arts and theology, 1924) http://www.mta.ca
Padre Ross told me: "I understand that the Rev. Burry served in Newfoundland from 1924 to 1932. Influenced by the famous medical missionary, Sir Wilfred Grenfell, he came to North West River, in 1932, and has been the only UC missionary in the area since. You are the second."
SIR WILFRED GRENFELL--Labrador doctor and missionary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Grenfell
"Following lunch, our host took us to "Happy" Valley. The trip was about six miles along a twisty, bumpy, sandy, tree-lined--mostly dark slim spruce--road. Except for the Grenfell Mission Station, and the one United-Church-owned-and-operated school--not far from where we stopped and were to stay, had the appearance of a shack town. The church was a shack. I later discovered that the community of about 115 families--living in reasonably-sized lots along the single road not far from the edge of the Hamilton river--had already been up rooted from homes they had built too close, according to the authorities, to the base.
"By the way, none of the above--and the reason for this is a story in itself-- had been revealed to us prior to our appointment to this mission. Looking back, it seems as if we were was part of a "mission impossible".
"We also soon discovered that, just prior to our arrival, the community--made up of about fifty per cent United Church, twenty five per cent Anglican, and twenty five per cent Moravian (See the site http://www.mun.ca/rels/morav/morav.html ) had gone through a crisis. A failed attempt was made, by an independent group of Christian fundamentalists, one with a strict Pentecostal theology, to build what their leader, the Rev. Paul MacKinney (now deceased)--an American originating out of Chicago--told them was the one and only true church of God. I found out later that, originally, the Rev. MacKinney offered to cooperate with the UC and lead the people in building a truly united and community church. This did NOT happen.
"Without going into the details of what did happen: By the time we arrived, only about fifteen families supported the Rev. MacKinney, his family and his ministry. One hundred families chose not to go to the so-called community church.
"It soon became clear to me that the UC missionary, The Rev. Lester Burry, responsible to the UC for all Labrador at the time, without disclosing to me what he actually had in mind, had engineered that I be assigned to assist him in trying to prevent the take-over, by the Rev. Paul MacKinney, and the fifteen families who had left their original churches to follow him, of the one church property in the community.
"In my next post I will outline what happened next. What I did caused one of the fundamentalist leaders to become so angry that, publically, he threatened violence."
THE CHURCHES IN NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~hrollman/ Very interesting to history buffs.
Contents |
[edit] Photography
- Perhaps a photograph of the cityscape should be in the entry? --Riley 22:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Newfoundland and Labrador municipality infobox
Who amongst us has the ability to design a Newfoundland and Labrador municipality infobox, check out Dawson Creek, British Columbia for example. HJKeats 15:53, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
- SomeStranger is helping to design one (after seeing me fumble around trying to make my own). It's currently called {{Nltowninfobox}}.
- Looks good, can we pop it into the article and populate it with the pertinent information and see how it looks? I did notice that the infobox is hard coded for NST. Our uniqueness again is showing through where Labrador is in AST. HJKeats 21:25, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Topics and sub-headings
This is a call-to-action for assistance from individuals who can lend a hand in the selection of the topics and additional information that you could provide to this article. HJKeats 02:42, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
- Well as of now the Geography section has more to do with history than with geography, so perhaps that information could be moved to the history section and the sub-headings "situation and transport", "physical geography", and "climate" would be added to geography. As for history, is there any notable pre-european settlement in the HVGB area? Other topics could include 'Tourism', 'Business', 'Politics' and 'Places of interest'. I don't know how easy it will be to get information on these topics, but I'll probably go down to the library next week some time and see if I can't scrounge up somethin.Jeremiad 13:47, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Stub
I thought there was a lot of information already and removed the stub notice. Put it back if I am wrong but I thought stubby information was less than a paragraph etc. WayneRay 15:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)WayneRay
[edit] additions
I added a reference and information on the discovery of the goose bay site. WayneRay 05:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)WayneRay
[edit] Spam?
[edit] ================================ THE STORY OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN HAPPY VALLEY
Until the summer of 1953, all church activities in Happy Valley, Goose Bay area, came under the supervision of the Rev. Lester Leeland Burry, the long-time--since 1931--resident missionary who lived at North West River.
THE WORK OF THE REV. DR. HECTOR SWAIN
[edit] ========================= For much of the following information I owe thanks to the Rev. Dr. Hector Swain--retired as a minister of the United Church of Canada. He now lives in Mount Pearl, a suburb of St. John's.
In 1983, he wrote a short book about the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Burry: LESTER LEELAND BURRY, Labrador Pastor & Father of Confederation (Harry Cuff Publications Limited, St. John's, NL, Canada, 1983). Interestingly, Dr. Burry was a member of the NL commission which helped bring NL into confederation with the rest Canada in 1949. Quite an accomplishment.
THE RIGHT PERSON FOR THE JOB
[edit] ================ In his book, Dr. Swain records that Dr. Burry was born in Safe Harbour, NL, on the north side of Bonavista Bay. He, one of nine children, was the youngest son of Stephen Burry and Mary (Bourne). He was born on July 12, 1898--the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, which was won by William of Orange, king of England.
His father, Stephen, was the hard-working owner of a fishing schooner in which he went to the Labrador. Later, with the help of his sons, including Lester, he made the family living by fishing on the Labrador. This experience, with his father, gave Lester the kind of practical education he needed to carry on his work as a missionary, later.
SAFE HARBOUR, THEN AND NOW
By the way, during Dr. Burry's childhood, Safe Harbour had only one general store, a one-room-all-grade school, and one church. This church was visited only monthly by a minister--a very important occasion. There was no post office. Later, as part of the re-location project of the NL government, Safe Harbour was abandoned by its last family, in 1955. Ironically, in the spirit of Mark Twain, at last it was safe, from the cancer of humanity.
Despite its humble nature, Safe Harbour, over the generations previous to this--as pointed out in Dr. Swain's book--produced many talented people who went on to be of great service to all of us.
At that time, educated to the grade eleven level, under E.J. Crummey, Greenspond. This qualified Dr. Burry to go on to study at Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB. There, he took what was known as the short course--five years of arts and theology. That was in 1923/24--prior to the formation of the United Church of Canada. In 1924, he was ordained to serve in the front-line of the pastoral ministry of the Methodist Church.
His first parish, following his ordination, was St, Anthony, where he served for four years. There, he met Dr. Wilfred Grenfell who influenced him to volunteer for the Labrador mission work. But this step came later, after he had spent some time in Curling and Little Bay Islands.
Dr. Burry--on behalf of the Newfoundland Conference of the United Church of Canada, volunteered, in 1931, to go "down north" to "the Labrador", as they used to say.
A GOOD BOAT AND A GOOD DOG TEAM IS WHAT I NEED
[edit] ================================== He agreed to go to Labrador on two conditions: "I will need a good boat. In addition, I will need a good team of dogs." he said. Because of his family background, Lester Burry knew about boats and what he needed to get the job done. The boat he wanted was built in June, 1931. The Glad Tidings II was dedicated, in Twillingate, by the Rev. Dr. Mark Fenwick, superintendent of missions.
Although, at the time, he did not have lot of experience with dogs, he was aware of their team-value and as a form of transportation. [more on this, later].
What is the status of the above? (should it stay, or be deleted) Teak the Kiwi 23:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
