Tidal Wave: My Experience

Eloise Morris

Eloise Morris worked as a teacher and headmistress, and as a nurse and nursing administrator. After a life of work in the United States and on mainland Canada, she retired to Burin, Newfoundland.

I WAS IN ST. JOHN'S. That was in twenty-nine. I was born in thirteen, so I was sixteen. I was staying at the College residence then on Long's Hill, going to Prince of Wales. I went there part time. I was taking three years music in one for my licentiate, and taking two or three subjects at Memorial at the same time.

I remember around five o'clock in the afternoon, I was supposed to be going down to the Crosbie Hotel with Eloise Hollett who was in there with her father, Captain Tom. And I was sitting watching for them to come to the front gate.

While I was there the lights over on the pole across the street started swinging back and forth and the old pole was swinging with them. But that's all. We knew nothing about what had gone on.

It must have been three or four days before we got any news, really. My father was the United Church clergyman in Collins Cove, near Burin. I knew that he was up on high land. I mean, it wasn't going to hit that old parsonage.

We were all sent home to the south coast, about the fifteenth of December. You could go by the old Portia from St. John's. Portia used to come right around, come in to the government wharf down here (Burin).

If you were going across the harbour to Collins Cove you got in the mail boat with them and they rowed you across there.

It was after dark when we got in. I got in the mail boat and went across to Collins Cove. There was no wharf, just the blank seaboard there. Those mail boats had keels on them, so you could not get them in anywhere close.