Chapter 23
New France

He had heard the stories as a boy, on long winter nights around the stove. He could see his mother bottling goat meat. The jars glinted in the lantern light. His father was the story-teller. His mother half listened, to be sure he got it right. The stories came from her father.

William had not gone far in school. But he knew about the old battles on his own South Side Hill. He knew how the French came to take St. John's from the English just two hundred years ago. His people knew the name of the man who led them. Not out of a history book. But because they belonged to the place where the story happened.

"D'Iberville," his father would begin. He loved to say the full name. "Pierre le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville. It was the winter of 1696 he sailed with his men from Placentia."

William's mother added salt to the meat. "They walked, Jeremiah. D'Iberville made his men walk. The French had tried sailing in that fall. But the English put guns near Chain Rock and chased them back. Who was the first man who led the French?"

"It was de Brouillon," William's father said. "Do you want to tell this story, or will I?" He always said that. He'd spit a gob of tobacco in his bowl. William's mother crumbled home-grown herbs into the jars as he went on with his story.

He told how d'Iberville had a strong face, with creases in his brow and cheeks, and dark eyes. He said you wouldn't think a man with such soft eyes would kill so many men. He told how the English never dreamed men would walk from Placentia.

"What were they fighting for?" William and his brothers and sister would ask. "Land," his father said. He talked as if he could see the land. Crowberry barrens with sea-wind blowing gold grasses. "Land and fish."

He told them the English never meant to stay in Newfoundland. To them it was just a lonely place. Good for fish in summer and nothing else.

"The English just saw money in cod," he told his children. "But the French dreamed of a New France."

When his father said "New France," William felt a thrill. He still felt it now, here among the tall stones. "New France" meant a chance to start fresh. Leave all failures in an old country, and sail to a new-born land. That was what d'Iberville's men had wanted. That was what any man would long for...