“Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, ‘Be not afraid, but speak, hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city.’ And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.”
GOD AT WORK! In the city
(Picture #45 on #45) (#16 on #45) Mr. Harris became concerned that there should be a work begun in the capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador, and so went to the city to find a place to board, as well as a place to preach the Gospel. When the WW2 ended, there were quite a lot of empty buildings in different parts of the city that hadn’t developed too much past Cashin Avenue except for gravel roads leading in different directions where there were homes built along the sides of the road. Blackmarsh Road went one direction. Mundy Pond Road and Empire Avenue went westward and also Freshwater Road. The main entrance to the city was on Topsail Road. Between Munday Pond Road and Empire Avenue, was Pennywell Road and a lot of open space. Herb Harris was able to get a piece of land there to put a tent on for Gospel meetings.
In June of 1946, Herb Harris and Doug Howard put a tent up on Pennywell Road in St. John’s and put an ad in the paper inviting people to come to the Gospel meetings to be held there. A young man named Albert Barbour was reading the paper and saw the ad. He and his wife attended that first meeting with another couple and after ten days of attending each night Albert was saved. His wife was saved a couple of days later. It is interesting to learn how God reaches precious souls. Sometimes there are quite a few things that lead up to that particular time. The Holy Spirit works in His own time and way.
Edgar and Jemima Barbour who lived in Newtown, Bonavista Bay, had four children: Raymond, Elizabeth, Albert and Anita. He had traveled to the Labrador fishing along with all of the other family members. But he was also a good carpenter. He suffered with a sickness called pernicious anemia. In the early-1900’s he moved with his family to Curling on the west coast of Newfoundland to work on the building of the Bowater Pulp Mill. He finally got too sick to work and died at a fairly young age. Jemima was from Brookfield and her maiden-name was Gaulton. She told me she was saved as a girl of 16 when some fishermen from another bay came down the Bonavista North shore and had cottage meetings in homes during the winter. It was in one of those meetings in the off- season and in a house meeting, she understood that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son cleansed her from all her sin.
After her husband died, she had a very hard time meeting the needs of the family. Her widow’s allowance was 6 cents a day or around $1.80 a month. Obviously there had to be other means of getting a living. Raymond worked wherever he could. He was a teenager when his father died. Albert dropped out of the fourth grade and went to work too, to help make a living for the struggling family. On fishing boats, two boys would equal a man in working for their share of the catch. The boys would load schooners with sand by hand to take to builders in St. John’s. In the winter they would go into the country with a hand sled with a sail on it, and a dog to help pull the load. They would cut wood and bring it home for the year’s supply, however as the years past they had to go farther each year to get wood. Sometimes in the winter, ducks would fly along the shore and cross some land where telegraph wires ran. Some ducks would run into the wires and the Barbour boys, along with a lot of others, would get the ducks and take home for food.
The fishery was conducted on the Labrador, from schooners that left out-ports like Newtown, and went in the spring to various bays and islands along the Labrador coast. “A room” was a special place where a skipper could put out his cod-traps and claim that space for himself for the summer. A crew of men was determined by the size of the boat. Some crews would have shacks built on shore where they could sleep and eat. Sometimes a woman would be part of the crew and she would cook the meals for the crew of men.
One summer, Albert Barbour who was really only a boy, was on a schooner owned by another Barbour family, and was injured by lifting too much. The muscles of his chest were strained and he had to be sewn up in canvas like he was wearing a corset. He was not able to work, so some time later, he caught a ride on another schooner that was full of fish earlier than the one he was on, and was on the way home. The winds were favorable and high so the schooner moved along at a good speed. It was loaded down and the water would often come right over the deck as the ship moved along. Late one rainy, windy night the helmsman saw cliffs right ahead of the boat and all hands were called up to try and bring the boat around without wrecking it on the rocks. The motor boat, called a trap- skiff, was cut off because it was hindering the turn. Sails were adjusted to the best angle and then the skipper called for all hands to pray. Albert prayed that if God would get him out of that alive, he would try to find God.
God, in mercy, did preserve his life and the schooner never wrecked on those rocks. The problem was there was enough iron in the rocks of the “Iron Bound Islands” to draw the compass on the boat away from the right course. When Albert got back to Newtown and, keeping his promise to find God, went to the front after a church service in the United Church and made a public confession. However, he did not become a Christian then, although he thought he was. The profession of salvation lasted only until he went to the seal fishery later and got into things he knew were not right. He did not have the Holy Spirit inside to give him the life of God needed to live as a Christian should.
Albert Barbour was quick on his feet, so hopping from pan to pan of ice out where the “patch” of seals was, didn’t faze him much. Each man had a bag of a mixture of oatmeal and raisins to chew on as food while they were getting the seals. The gaff had a hook on one end so they could pull an ice pan close to jump on if necessary. The handle of the gaff was long enough to generally span two pans of ice so if the man fell in the water, he would have a way to pull himself up onto the ice, or wait until someone else pulled him up.
When the weather was too bad, or the ship was stuck in the ice, about all they could do to pass the time away was sleep if they could on the seal pelts in the hold, tell stories or step-dance. Albert was always the best step-dancer, but after he had gone to the front in the church, he thought it would be a sin to dance. After a long time of boredom and being picked at by other young men to get out and dance, because “you’re the best dancer aboard,” he said, “I threw my religion overboard and stepped it out!”
There was a nice girl who lived in the community of Newtown named Sadie Way. Her father was a merchant. He had gone to Vancouver, BC years before and worked on a ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanimo, on Vancouver Island. He must’ve got some money together and when he returned, he started a business and then was able to get married to Lillian Blundon from Catalina on the Bonavista Peninsula. His business was quite successful and from that family came a dried fish plant in Newtown and later a fresh fish plant in Valleyfield. Cluney was the oldest son, then came Sadie, then Boyd, Daphne, Frank and Doris. Albert Barbour wanted Sadie Way to be his wife. How was a poor boy from a fatherless family to cross the social barrier to reach the daughter of a Newfoundland out-port business man? That was no small task because class distinction was quite prevalent and still is in many parts of North America. Albert was up to the task though and was able by force of personality, determination and humor to ultimately win the young upper-class lady. Any comments I could make about life in Newtown, Bonavista Bay and life in the “hard times” of the 1930’s, would be less than is needed to give a true picture.
Imagine working without any real assurance of getting enough returns to meet your basic needs during the long, cold winters of that North Atlantic island. Fishing on the Labrador in the summer fishery, really only paid off (nearly) debts that were incurred during the winter. Seal hunting on the ice for a month or two in the dead of winter, without assurance of getting enough money to take home, gave the only hope for some real cash money. But respect, honor, self-reliance and trust in God gave many people the character to live in a difficult place, in difficult times and come out with the skills to make their way in the modern world and succeed admirably.
In the late 1930’s and the first half of the 1940’s, the Second World War was fought in many parts of the world. Many lives were lost during that time in the North Atlantic as convoys of ships and airplanes left Newfoundland to cross the ocean. Nazi U-Boats, gales of wind, icebergs – there were all kinds of obstacles in the way of getting needed war material to Europe. Ships were sunk all around Newfoundland and Labrador in sight of land. Many were rescued by Newfoundlanders who were water-wise and knew how to deal with such elements. Newfoundlanders by the thousands went to sea in the British Navy and ships of the Merchant Marine. FROM A BAYMAN TO A TOWNIE Albert Barbour left Newtown and went to St. John’s to work on the building of Fort Pepperell. He and his brother Raymond who was nine years older, worked as carpenters in St. John’s from then on. Not long after Albert got to St. John’s, Sadie Way also went to St. John’s, and it was there she married Albert in November of 1941. The first place they lived was on Freshwater Road in a small place. Then they moved to Campbell Avenue and finally to a house on Mundy Pond Road where they were living in one part of the house and Raymond and Carrie Barbour were in the other part of the house in June of
1946. Linda June was born on June 29, 1944 the oldest of eight children that would form
the clan of Albert and Sadie Barbour. She became my wife January 27, 1965. In order of age the children born into the family after Linda were Edgar, Doris, Lillian, Elizabeth, Louise, Steven and Ruth.
In the summer of 1946, a Gospel Tent was pitched just off Pennywell Road and one Sunday evening Albert was reading the Evening Telegram and saw an advertisement to Evangelistic Meetings in a tent. He and Sadie along with his sister and her husband went to the first tent meeting that Sunday evening. He and Sadie were greatly taken with the meeting and the preachers, while the other two never went back.
Albert told Sadie after the meeting, “These men are of God,” and resolved to go to every meeting. He would leave the Mundy Pond house early in the morning to walk to work. On his way home from work he would stop at his mother’s apartment on Campbell Avenue, change from work clothes to clean clothes, go to the tent for the meeting and after the meeting he would go home to the house on Mundy Pond Road. He did this for 10 days straight, wanting more and more to get God’s salvation. On the 26th of June he told his wife he was going to be saved that day. He went to the meeting early and talked to Mr. Douglas Howard, but nothing happened. He listened to the preaching, but nothing happened. He talked to both preachers, Mr. Herb Harris and Mr. Douglas Howard, after the meeting, but nothing happened. When he got home, Sadie asked him if he was saved and he said, “No.” Just as soon as he said that, a verse came to his mind he had heard, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house,” and he understood immediately what it meant.
“Sadie, I am saved,” and standing in the middle of the kitchen floor he came into the light of God’s salvation. He was the first one who professed to be saved when brethren Harris and Howard started Gospel meetings in St. John’s. Sadie was saved a short time later through the words of Isaiah 53:5,6. From that time on, the two of them together were an integral part of the life of the assembly that meets in the Gospel Hall on Smith Avenue, not far from where the Gospel Tent was pitched in 1946. Albert served as an elder from the beginning of the work there and the Barbour home was a place where all of the people who came felt welcomed.
A number of people were saved during those tent meetings. Mr. Harris was able to find an empty building that he could buy, not far from where the tent had been pitched. It had been a “wet canteen” during the war years, and was of a suitable size to hold meetings in. For two years Mr. Harris, Mr. Frank Pearcy, Mr. Albert Ramsay, and other men who came to help Mr. Harris, had series of meetings for preaching the Gospel and teaching new believers. Raymond and Carrie Barbour, Mrs. Mercer, Mrs. Blackwood and others were saved during those early years of the Lord’s work in St. John’s by brothers who gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Mr. Herb Harris used to leave early Lord’s Day morning and drive out to Carbonear for the breaking of bread meeting in the morning and the Sunday School in the afternoon. Then they would leave and drive back to St. John’s in time to have a Gospel meeting in the hall on Smith Avenue, just off Pennywell Road. The drive each way to Carbonear would take about two hours or more in those days. He tried to have at least one or two of the brothers from St. John’s go with him, and they learned a lot about assembly life and how to lead God’s people during those four hours with Mr. Harris in his car. Albert Barbour was received into the fellowship of the assembly at Carbonear during those two years.
In the late 1940s there were a lot of people in St. John’s who didn’t have motor vehicles, so it wasn’t uncommon for a lot of people to be walking on the streets and sidewalks of the city. The preachers who came to help Mr. Harris were, for the most part, younger men who had strong voices, and he felt preaching in the open air on street corners, was a good place for them to spread the Gospel. That exercise was picked up by the believers who we saved in St. John’s and that kind of outreach evangelism still continues. Mr. Ephraim Freake had a strong voice, so when he stepped out to preach, he would clear his throat with a “Ahem,” or two, and then say, “Ladies and gentlemen…,” and he would go right at the Gospel. He had some very significant war-stories that he had experienced that clearly illustrated the Gospel.
Mr. Harris made it a point of telling us all who preached in the open air, to keep it simple. Stick to one verse or at the most two. Whenever you speak, repeat, repeat and repeat again what you have just said. Then tell the folks the same thing again, because many will only stay for five minutes and then will move on. Meetings on Barter’s Hill were sometimes so well attended that there was a danger of traffic being blocked. Then later in the 1960s, open-air meetings were held on the west end of Water Street. Later that was not allowed so the open-air meeting after the Gospel meeting in the Gospel Hall, was held right on the waterfront.
There were times when the “white fleet” from Portugal was in, and usually there were boats from many parts of Newfoundland, mainland Canada and the world, tied up at the waterfront. The crowds weren’t there on the street, but people would listen from the short streets that came from Water Street to the waterfront. Sunday afternoons there were open- air meetings in various places from St. Phillips to The Brow. In later times, Conception Bay South has been the main place for open-air preaching.
In 1948, there were enough believers who had been saved and baptized in St. John’s to begin to function as a scriptural assembly with both men and women who were saved and baptized. Part of the reason for waiting for those two years, was that the men there were in their mid-twenties and needed to learn what it means to lead people as well as to participate publicly and speak on behalf of all the believers.
The Barbour’s stayed on in St. John’s and the weight of the Gospel work the Lord had begun there, gradually shifted from Mr. Harris to the people who lived in the city and were a part of the company of Christians who gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ alone. Mr. Harris placed a lot of confidence in Albert Barbour and knew he had the heart of a true shepherd. His advice was always considered when Mr. Harris asked for it. Albert Barbour passed away when he was ninety years old. He wife, Mrs. Sadie Barbour, is still in fairly good health at age ninety-eight.
It is important in serving the Lord by serving His people, that both husband and wife understand how important it is to be united in the work. We each have a role to fill, and although some people might think it is more important to be a spokesman for the assembly in meetings and in public responsibility, the unseen and often unrecognized work of the wives of elders have the responsibility of making things actually happen. Much of what keeps an assembly going forward is done by faithful sisters who see what needs to be done, and do it without a whole lot of fanfare and fuss.
Newfoundland hospitality was well-known in the past, and many of the Lord’s people from different parts of the province found a home away from home, when they went to St. John’s for schooling, medical help and business reasons, in the homes of those early Christians. There was very little money but a lot of heart, hospitality and Christian-love.
Regatta Day in St. John’s was usually the day when the assembly had the Sunday School picnic. Parents of the children who attended the Sunday School would often find a day at Lester’s field or some other place, about the only special day in the summer holiday. Old and young would be there and participate in the games and have a wonderful picnic dinner.
In the winter, there would be a Sunday School program at the Gospel Hall around Christmas time, where children would have a part in the program and parents and relatives would come to hear their children, and then hear a Gospel message. There a meal would be served and at the end prizes and gifts would be given out. That began nearly seventy years ago, and still continues.