Ambulance Driver

Arthur Clarke

Arthur Clarke was born at St. Thomas, Conception Bay. In his youth he fished with his father before finding work outside his home town. At Bell Island, he eventually was hired as a driver of the ambulance, in those days, a horse and cart.

I WAS SENT TO BELL ISLAND when I was seventeen years old. I got a job down in a little mining pit called 44-40. Then I went to another surface pit, where I carried on for years. From that I got a job down in the East Barn, shovelling snow for the big bosses.

One day I was asked to go teaming horses. I went down just for the day. When I had the day in, the boss told me to come back the next day. He said, "Half the boys down here won't take the horse you got because they're afraid of it."

The horse was called Ben. When I would back in for coal, he would start to dodge off somewhere. I began to give him extra oats at the start, and another handful when I finished. After a while, that horse never moved. All the rest of the crowd were afraid for their lives of him. After that, whenever I went in the barn, he would bawl out to me. He knew my scent.

That's how I got in the barn. Dinner hours most of the boys used to go home. If anyone had an accident, I would go to wherever there was trouble.

I used to be a doctor, chauffeur, and undertaker. Not just me. Some of the other boys there in the barn did the same thing. Sixteen of us worked there.

After a while, they got a square wagon for an ambulance. It was all open. It puts me in mind of those chuck wagons you see on TV sometimes.

They had a horn on the outside of the barn. You could hear it all over the place.