“Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.” Acts 2:41, 42.
GOD AT WORK! Go forward in faith
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The believers who were saved in the Forteau/English Point area and those in L’Anse au Loup, were for the most part faithful and growing in the Lord. As they heard the word of God taught to them, and realized how important it was for them to base their life and faith on the word of God, they were baptized and gathered to the name of the Lord. The first meeting place on English Point was in a portable hall that was made permanent. It was there the breaking of bread commenced and later a larger hall was built. There was some open opposition as the word spread along the coast from place to place, that a new religion has come and the preachers are breaking up homes and communities. As it became obvious that there was an on-going and permanent work that was established, a tension grew between those who just wanted a religion, and those who God saved by His grace.
Then when a baptism by immersion took place out in the open, tension turned to animosity and open opposition. One Sunday afternoon when the “M.G.M.” came back to the coast, they went to L’Anse au Clair on the boat to have an open-air meeting. A number of believers went along for the ride on the boat, and to hear the Gospel themselves. For some reason, a man was provoked by others to get in a dory and row out toward the boat with his shotgun. Mr. Doug Howard was preaching at the time, when the man in the dory fired some shots at the loudspeaker horns and blew a couple of good- sized holes right through them. The actual sound comes from a driver in the middle of the horn and the metal around it was too hard for the pellets to penetrate, so Mr. Howard just kept on preaching. When the man in the dory went ashore and got a rifle, and fired some shots toward the boat, it was agreed that the time had come to close the meeting and go back to Forteau Bay.
As long as the men on the “M.G.M.” came, preached and then left the area, the religious leaders and those who were opposed to the Gospel didn’t mind. However, when it was clear that a permanent work was being established, and that became obvious when believers were baptized by immersion, that was a different story, because the major religions had control of the churches through “spiritual advisers” who had parishes which paid their salaries and contributed financially to the headquarters of the various religious denominations.
All of this was new to Mr. Campbell so he was often in contact with Mr. Harris when he got in a bind over some matter that he didn’t know just how to deal with. Mr. Fred Holder came to help in the work there, and as other workers in other places became aware of the new work on the Labrador, interest grew and some others came to help George Campbell from time to time. Interest in the work that was opening up in Labrador, created interest and a desire to participate in a new work, on the part of others who heard about what the Lord was doing there. Some men came to help George Campbell in the winter of 1957.
Bert Joyce, who was living on Prince Edward Island with his family, was getting more and more reattached to the Newfoundland and Labrador work; especially Labrador. With that in mind, he got an airplane to use in the work in that area, and flew in during the winter to help George. “Do you have a place you want to go?” was his question. With the airplane on skis there were not many places that were unreachable in the winter. “Yes, to Red Bay,” was George’s quick reply.
There were people from Red Bay who had married in L’Anse au Loup, and people from L’Anse au Loup who were living in Red Bay. So, they flew to Red Bay and had meetings there, although there was some opposition. Mr. Alan Moores was sick but his heart was in the Gospel. When the two young preachers visited him, he told them, to not get discouraged. God was going to work in Red Bay, and the main interest would be up in the bottom of the bay. The night Mr. John Layden was saved, the first one in those meetings; was the night Mr. Alan Moore died. God was at work!
Bert Joyce became convinced that the Lord wanted him and his family to move to Red Bay, so in the spring, summer and fall of 1958, there was a lot of building going on. A hall was built in L’Anse au Loup and a house was built in Red Bay. The English Point assembly was meeting in a portable hall, and now, amidst serious opposition, a 20 by 40- foot hall was built in L’Anse au Loup. Some brothers from Ontario came after one of them provided and then shipped down material to build a Gospel Hall. He and some other men came down to help build it. It was an unusual type of building made of tongue and groove pine 2x4s that were put up vertically with plywood between the inside and outside boards. So, the walls were over four inches thick.
There was a great deal of opposition when the bulldozer came on the land to level off the place for the building. In fact, men came and were ready do battle to stop the hall from being built. God’s grace and spiritual power overcame the problem, and the hall was able to be built rather quickly and then a house for the Joyce family in Red Bay. God in His great mercy, saved at a later time, one of those men who was in serious opposition to the Gospel and particularly the building of the hall. For several years that hall was used, but by the mid-1960s, it was obvious more space was needed to accommodate the increase in numbers of those who attended the meetings.
Before the spring conference of 1961, Mr. Harris made contact with Mr. Theodore Williams of Chicago and asked him if he would come to Labrador for the conference. Mr. Williams was thrilled to do so as he had an interest in that work since 1956 when the boat was first mentioned at Vancouver. He was a very interesting preacher and had come through a lot of hardship in his life. He had a Master’s degree in theology, but was a practical man who knew what it was to suffer for the sake of the Gospel. He had been preaching in a large church in Detroit, Michigan when he met Mr. Louis Hoy. Through visiting with Mr. Hoy, he began to see the difference between a New Testament church that is like a living organism, and the religious group of which he was a part, which was an organization. He paid a high price to “go outside the camp, bearing His reproach, but was a faithful Gospel preacher and teacher of the word of God until he died at age 91. Mr. Hoy was the grandfather of Tom Hoy who has been to Labrador a couple of times. Mr. William’s visit to the Labrador coast was a special time to him as well as to people who heard him preach there. The Gospel Hall in L’Anse au Loup was packed with people at that time.
At the 1962 conference which was held on the Easter weekend, the 20x40 foot hall was so full of people that when the seats were all filled right from the front wall to the back including the platform so there was only room for the preacher to stand (he couldn’t move without stepping on someone), chairs were set in the aisle from front to back. The first part of every Gospel meeting was open to testimonies from the brothers from different assemblies. At that conference some of the men stood up on their chairs to speak so they could be heard all over the building because there was no way they could get to the front of the hall.
People from Red Bay and other places came on dog teams, so around the hall there were dog teams separated from each other by quite a few feet. Every now and then a dog fight would start outside, so some men would jump up and got out to deal with the problem. There would be a whole lot of loud yelps and then whimpers and soon they dogs would settle down again. Looking around outside all you would see of the dogs were white bumps of snow where they were lying covered over with snow and their noses under their paws. I can recall walking with Bert Joyce through L’Anse au Loup one night when it was calm and cold, and he howled like a dog. Almost instantly all around us dogs jumped out of the snow and began to howl. Within minutes it seemed like every dog in L’Anse au Loup was howling. Bert grinned, “That’s the Labrador Band!”
The last night of the conference, another snow storm came, so the conference continued another two days. People didn’t travel heavy in those days. Only a few very fundamental things were brought along, and people stayed in each other’s homes and had a lot of happy times singing hymns, talking together and just enjoying the blessings of Christian fellowship. That year, Robert McIlwaine flew there in a Piper Cub that he had been using in the seal fishery. Over the years he came quite often to help in the work as an able Gospel preacher and a practical minister of the word of God.
The small Pentecostal church Mr. Mitchell had built in Red Bay wasn’t being used, so arrangements were made to buy that building for a Gospel Hall in Red Bay. Bert Joyce and George Campbell had to fly to St. John’s to deal with that matter because the buildings of that group belong to a central authority, and they had to make the final decision as to whether to sell the building or keep it. It served the assembly that was formed in Red Bay until the 1970s when new and larger building was built near the original location.
Late in 1958, the Joyce’s moved to Red Bay and made their home in that place for fifteen years. The “M.G.M.” was used back on the Labrador coast that summer, although there was a lot of ice in the straits until July. In fact, the boat was just able to get to the coast, and then the ice came in behind so they were stuck there for quite a few weeks. But God has His ways of working and the outcome is according to His will. Later in the summer they traveled down the coast to Square Islands and Charlottetown. Also, they went to some places not too much farther north.
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That winter Bert and George went by plane to Charlottetown to have a few nights of meetings, and then the weather closed in so they had to stay longer than they intended. As George was preaching at the end of one meeting, a big man got up and started coming forward towards him. George thought there was going to be a fuss, so he stopped preaching and said, “Let’s pray.” When he opened his eyes after praying, that man and others were down on their knees in front of him wanting to be saved. By those two men not hesitating to go forward, God showed that He was still working and has continued to work there. God was at work!
It was during the spring of 1959 George Campbell came to the assembly I was a part of in Oregon and told of the work going on in Newfoundland and Labrador. We had opportunity to talk again. I had been saved three months after him in a Gospel series held in a town a few miles from our home. The tape recording of some testimonies of people in Labrador was of great interest to me and to others in our assembly. His recorder was a small battery powered one that had only small reels, but the message on those small reels was very large. God was at work!
As a result of that visit Mr. Campbell had in 1959, Andrew Bergsma went back with him and helped him in Gospel work on the Labrador coast for over a year until August of
1960. Mr. Bergsma was a very personable man and loved to visit people in their homes.
He was never stuck for words and would always get a Gospel point across in his conversations. While he was on the Labrador coast, he had quite a number of nightly Gospel meetings for several weeks at a time. Some he had with George Campbell and he had at least one with Bert Joyce in Red Bay. Stan Linstead in L’Anse au Loup really liked Andy’s preaching and his open and blunt way of talking to him personally. But for all the preaching he had heard since the Gospel preachers went there, Stan didn’t get to Christ until about a week or less before he died 60 years later.
That summer the crew of the “M.G.M.” went to Charlottetown and while they were there, built a small Gospel Hall. Mr. Ernie Dellandrea was one of the men on the boat that summer, and he was a skilled carpenter. So, he headed up the work on the new hall. At a later time, he went back and built a small house for those who came to stay in. The Campbell’s lived in it during the winter of 1961-1962. Most of the people of the village were out at Square Islands fishing during the summer, so the men on the boat would travel out to Square Islands for the Lord’s Day and have meetings and visit while people stopped fishing. Most of those people would not bring in their haul of fish on the Lord’s
Day. They would make a last haul late Saturday night, and as soon as they could after midnight on Sunday, they would head out to pull their cod-traps. It was not unusual to hear the “putt, putt, putt,” of motor boats in the dark during the time when the fish had struck.
The “M.G.M.” crew would go in the bay to Charlottetown to work on the hall again on Monday morning. It was warmer in the bay then out where they were open to the Atlantic Ocean, but the mosquitos also liked the warm weather, the calm winds and preachers’ blood. Some of them worked with netting all over them. By the end of the summer, they were quite ready to go back to other work, but the Lord had them there where He wanted, when He wanted. On the way back to Corner Brook, the “M.G.M.” stopped at Daniel’s Harbour to visit the ladies from Square Islands-Charlottetown who had married the three men from that community. Clarence Perry and his wife had moved back as they had a growing family and some of their children were of high school age. They were well received by the three sisters who lived there but their husbands were all away working in the woods cutting wood for Bowater’s pulp and paper mill in Corner Brook. So, they were only there for one night and part of a day.
(#14 on stick #45) Clarence Two men from Daniel’s Harbour on the west coast of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, Ralph House and Clarence Perry, went north one winter to trap as there was a good price for fur right after the war. Both of them ended up marrying one of Mr. Alexander Campbell’s daughters then, and Edmond Perry of Daniel’s Harbour married another one at a later time. Ben Powell was also married to one of his daughters. Ralph and his wife went back to Daniel’s Harbour but Clarence stayed on, and he and Ben Powell started a sawmill at the bottom of the bay, about twelve miles inland from Square Islands.
There was a lot of untouched forest there. They could get logs, saw them into lumber and make a boom to take them out to where the lumber could be loaded onto boats, and it was all done in the one place. The mill-work prospered and so Clarence and Margaret his wife, and Ben and Effie, his wife, built homes not far from the mill. Soon other people from small scattered places around the bay began building near them, and they soon had a real community. Ben and Clarence decided to call the new village, Charlottetown, after Clarence’s mother, Charlotte, and Ben’s older brother Roland, was living in Charlottetown, Bonavista Bay. Roland had been trapping in Labrador and Ben had gone north to trap with him, a number of years before.
During the winter it is easier to haul logs out of the woods on sleds, so they worked there most of the time, except when the fishing was really good at Square Islands. Then the people moved there for a few summer months. Charlottetown became a business center for that part of the coast, and soon people considered Charlottetown home rather than Square Islands, Triangle or other places in that bay.
One school boy used to come to the mill after school to watch the men saw logs into lumber, and seemed to be fascinated with the whole enterprise. The big flywheels on the engine gave extra power to the belt that turned the saw, and he like to get as close as possible to the action. Clarence told him often to not get too close, but one time, curiosity got the best of him and he got too close. The sleeve of his coat got caught in the belt that goes around the flywheel and he started flying around and around until his arm was twisted off.
The closest nurse and hospital were at Mary’s River and the bay was frozen. The rivers and brooks were starting to open as the days were getting longer and could not be crossed by dog team. The weather was quite cold so that might have been a help in keeping the bleeding slower than normal and the bandages they put on were soon frozen quite hard. Clarence knew he had to do something, so decided to go the twelve miles to Square Islands by dog team, and see if the drift ice was far enough off from land that he could get a motor boat in the water and travel by water to Mary’s River. When he got there, the ice was in on the land. He launched a motor boat at the edge of where the water should be, and then wondered what he could do.
He told me, “I always believed in God, but I didn’t know Him. Now I had nowhere else to turn. There was nothing else I could do. So, I went up on the hill and stood there and prayed to God. ‘Please God, slack the ice so I can get this boy to the hospital.’ Mr. Goff, before I got the boy in the boat and the engine going, the ice had slacked enough that I could go along between the shore and the ice, and I got the boy to the nurse at the hospital.”
That boy lived, and then made his home in St. Anthony for many years, and worked at the Grenfell Hospital there. Clarence and Margaret Perry moved back to Daniel’s Harbour on the Northern Peninsula, where he got work cutting pulpwood in Bowater’s Woods. When the highroad was being built down the Northern Peninsula, Clarence got work driving a dump truck hauling ballast for the road. One day when the road had reached Belburns, he had a full load on the truck he was driving and after crossing the bridge over the brook and going up the other side, he began to shift gears up, but one gear was stripped. When he put his foot on the brake to stop, the brakes also went, and he began to roll backwards down the hill he had just climbed. At first, he wasn’t too concerned because he thought he would just roll across the bridge and be stopped by the hill on the other side.
When he looked in his rearview mirrors, he saw the bridge was filled with children who had just got out of school. Without hardly a hesitation he turned the wheel and the truck rolled off the road and turned upside down in the creek with Clarence injured in the cab. He managed to get out but his back was seriously injured, and he lived with the results of a broken back and all that kind of pain for the rest of his life.
Sometimes in our lives, we have plenty of time to make decisions, but there will be some that we have to make in a second. What a person is in their character, comes out when those kinds of choices have to be made quickly. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” It wasn’t too long after that happened that the Lord reached and saved him. We will address that at a later time, but for now it is important to know that a person can be a good-living citizen who thinks of others and does them good, and still be lost. There has to be personal faith in Christ in order for a person to be saved from their sins.
Clarence knew he was what the world calls, a good person, and he thought that was what would make him acceptable to God. He had made a great effort to save the life of a boy who lost his arm. He had been injured himself in order to save the lives of a group of children who were on a narrow bridge. It sometimes is hard for people who think of others so kindly, to realize they need the Saviour themselves.
The Holy Spirit of God saved him shortly after, and fitted him to be one of the elders of the assembly of believers at Parsons Pond. He had such an interest in the Gospel, that he wanted the Gospel preached in Daniel’s Harbour on a regular basis. He and some other brothers in that community sawed lumber and with the help of others from the assembly at Parsons Pond built a Gospel Hall just behind Clarence’s house. For quite a number of years, those believers in Daniel’s Harbour preached the Gospel there every Lord’s Day and also had a midweek meeting.
Ben Fishing and trapping were important to Ben Powell, and consequently he became quite famous in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, when he wrote a series of books about his experiences in in the forests of that part of Labrador. The Lord saved his wife and some of his children, and he too professed to be saved.
It is important for those engaged in the work of the Lord, to never lose sight of the value of precious souls. It lends weight to one’s preaching as well as bringing the light of God to the dark souls of the lost. An assembly without vision for outreach and the Gospel in other places as well as their own area, cannot survive for more than two or three generations of believers. There is a “historical drift” (the title of a book), that comes to every work if we are not convinced of the need of outreach and “the regions beyond.”