Shipwrecked On The S.S. Bruce

James S. Young

Sidney Bond Young left Twillingate Island to go to the mainland for work. The year was 1911. His son, James S. Young of Twillingate, tells the story of his father's trip aboard the S.S. Bruce, a passenger ferry on the Gulf.

FATHER WAS BORN IN 1894. He always got very seasick. He'd throw up until he couldn't stand up in the boat. That was the reason, at seventeen he left and went up to Toronto.

He had a half-brother, a construction foreman, living up in Toronto, and that's where he aimed to go. Father worked at that until he got enough money to change jobs and get in with the police.

He went with the Ontario Metro Police and remained with them for ten years, during which time he rose to the rank of Sergeant. At the time he was stationed in Windsor and it was here he accepted a position with General Motors as an assistant plant engineer. He remained with GM for the next thirty-one years until retirement in 1958.

Father was gone for years before he returned. He was seventeen when he left and he didn't come back until Come Home Year, 1966. He died at age 95.

I was born in Twillingate, Newfoundland. I left Twillingate for Toronto on March 17, 1911, aged seventeen, with my parents' blessing. My half brother Louis Gillett, who lived in Toronto for seven years, begged my parents to let me come to Toronto.

We had to go by motorboat from Twillingate to Lewisporte, then by train to Port aux Basques. We left there at 11:30 P.M. on a steamer, S.S. Bruce, March 23, to cross the Gulf of St. Lawrence for North Sydney.