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     freight from railcars, and the processing of passengers. The people of the town
     were entrepreneurial and independent. I completed my high school education
     there. This was a much larger school, and it did not have the rigour and
     discipline that we experienced in Marystown. This was a shock at first. Of
     course, like most kids of my age, it did not take long to get used to it.
    There was one shining exception to this, and that was our maingrade eleven teacher. I say main in the sense of a homeroom teacher who also
     taught us a number of subjects. His name was Mr. Paddock (Brose); he later moved
     on to teach at Memorial University and become Dean of the Faculty of Education.
     We were a lucky forty-two students to have him as our teacher. For the first
     time (outside of Father’s admonitions) I was encouraged to think about things,
     not to accept things at face value, that reason was a very valuable commodity,
     and that dogma and entrenched positions often retarded advancement. This was all
     new to me but very exciting. I had been so involved in sports and friends and
     all the normal adolescent things that this was the first time I had been forced
     to stop and consider the larger world.
    The culmination of this new thinking occurred one day when Mr. Paddock asked me
     to stay for a few minutes after school. After school! This was unusual, and I
     didn’t know what to expect. Sitting in the back of the room, I had become a bit
     of a distraction for the teacher, and while I was doing well in most of my
     subjects, I think Mr. Paddock felt I was unfocused and just a little too
     carefree as a high school senior. He approached my desk and abruptly asked,
     “Brian, what do you intend to do with your life?”
    I stuttered something stupid in reply. And then it was over. Mr. Paddock turned
     and left the room. I struggled to my feet and left the room and school,
     pondering that simple but provocative question. I knew this was an attempt to
     shock me to my senses, and it worked. I had given little thought to my future,
     and it was time. Within several months, high school would be over, and what
     then?
    I enjoyed my Lewisporte years and became heavily involved in sports, especially
     baseball and hockey. Now, we had few facilities at the school or in the town
     generally. Across from the school was an outdoor rink, and just “up the road”
     from the school was a level ground that was supposed to be the sports field. We
     made the best of it, and in my last year we had organized games on that rink and
     actually played hockey with other teams in nearby towns of Botwood and Gander.
     There were a couple of really cold winters when we actually skated and played
     hockey on the harbour. Our out-of-town games were a realtreat
     since we would be playing indoors. In Botwood it was in an old World War II
     undersized building, with real ice but of course no snow clearing, while in
     Gander it was a regulation-sized artificial ice surface in an arena. We really
     had no coaches, but I recall on our out-of-town excursions our vice-principal
     acted as such, and I can remember him urging us in the car on our way to our
     game to “shoot when we got in over the blue line.” I don’t think we won any of
     those out-of-town games! Similarly, we had a few teams organized and played
     baseball on a makeshift diamond on the nearby field. I liked hockey, but I loved
     baseball. There seemed to be more strategy and planning, and I enjoyed how
     quickly explosive it could become.
    And then there was my paper route. I delivered the weekly Grand Falls Advertiser every Saturday along the main street, from the United
     Church building almost to the end of Lewisporte West. I came to like this weekly
     ritual on my bike. It was the people once met who I remember most. There was an
     elderly Mr. Lacey who still kept his little grocery shop open, although few now
     frequented such an outdated place. Bigger stores had sprung