User:Llewelynpritchard/blog
Reference
The peace and quietness of Wild Bay in the early morning as the water lapped and sparkled against the shoreline was truly a medicine for Richard ap Meurig. The total ambience of the surroundings had a stillness that spread over him as his thoughts wondered from the past to the present. He mused to himself. Is all this really happening? Am I actually walking the same shoreline after a 33-year absence from this community? So much of the physical aspect has improved and the warm-hearted, hospitable, sincere people still share their homes and lives with outsiders who visit. Richard had come out all those years ago to work in Wild Bay as a young, 18 year-old Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) teacher. Unknowingly, his background in Wales had prepared him for an adventure from 1969 to 1970 that was to play such a captivating part in his future life. Does life give us a destiny or do we make our own he pondered? Why do things happen as they do? (An interesting fact is that Richard’s name is the same as that of a Welsh merchant in Bristol, England who had appeared in a Customs roll a very long time ago as an "ap Meryke." He was supposed to have been the heaviest investor in John Cabot's expedition to America in 1498. It is, therefore, very probable that America had its name from the Bristolian version of this man's name, Richard Ameryk.)
This early walk was his routine and each day brought a new awakening in his soul and sense of purpose for his return.
He felt so privileged to have been specially flown out to the Town’s Coming Home Celebrations. Today, as his mind was revisiting thoughts of the past, he found himself by the old tombstone that as a young lad he had been curious about. But unbeknown to him, another’s eyes were watching his every move from behind a nearby lace-covered window. Shanolla was thinking about her Grandmother’s secret. Not to be shared with anyone she had made her promise before she left. Not even with her own mother and father. For Shanolla it had now become a secret she wanted to avenge. She had heard her friend Gail Richards say that Richard was asking questions about the tombstone. Maybe he could be brought to help her on her own mission. Maybe they could do more for each other than they realised? Richard’s sense of peace, as if there was another guiding, benign presence within him had been disturbed however, by the suddenness of coming upon this ground. He was thrown for a few seconds. Then he started to take a good look at the old tombstone and surrounding area. In 1940, he recalled that a man had died apparently trying to save his wife and 18 month old baby girl. Only the wife survived.
As Richard was looking around, loving thoughts of his own daughter came to mind, and the anguish that the wife and mother must have lived with all her life. What ever became of her? Did she ever remarry and have more children? What’s it doing there? It still looked as incongruous now as it did all those years ago. It simply shouldn’t be there. Why weren’t they buried in Wales instead?”
Richard ap Meurig was now once again admiring the magnificent setting of Wild Bay in the awe-inspiring wilderness of Labrador, Newfoundland, Canada at the invitation of Jessica Ermgratt Shepherd, Town Mayor.
- Port Hope Simpson Wild Bay, historical fiction based on true story about one year as a v.s.o. volunteer in Port Hope Simpson, Labrador, Newfoundland, Canada 1969-70 and coming back out to The Town of Port Hope Simpson's Coming Home Celebrations in July 2002;