The Badger Riot Read Free

Bridey had been married for three years and still the couple had no children. Ned was constantly trying to persuade Bridey to move inland, describing Badger as a fine place to live, with a bright future. So, although it meant leaving her family behind, Bridey pulled up roots and moved to Badger in the fall of 1927 to be near her husband.
    The young couple rented a small, two-bedroom house down by the River. The rent was cheap, and when spring came they found out why. Every year, extreme cold temperatures caused the ice in the River to wharf up. Having no other place to go, the water rose up over the banks and into the town of Badger. Some years the ice was worse than others, and 1928 was a bad one. Most houses had already been raised up a few feet to try to avoid the flooding, but that winter had been particularly cold and the ice was thick.
    The flat land near the River had flooded first, and the day before, Bridey had stood in her doorway watching with alarm as the water rose. Being from Bonavista Bay, she had never seen a flood before, but Ned kept assuring her that the house was high enough and the water would not come up over the steps. But he’d been wrong, and now she was in a canoe headed to dry ground.
    That evening Ned met up with Bridey, and along with the other displaced people, they spent the night sitting in the waiting room of the railway station. This was the Sullivans’ first experience with the floods that the native Badgerites endured so stoically.
    Strategically placed dynamite did its job and next morning the water had gone down. There wasn’t too much damage done to the little house, but Bridey was not content to stay there any longer.
    â€œNed,” she said, “I can’t live here like this. I can hardly sleep for worry that the house is going to flood again. Every morning when I puts my feet to the canvas I swear I can still feel that cold water.” She shivered as she said this, although they were sitting in the kitchen and the wood stove was blasting them with heat to dry up the damp floor.
    Ned agreed with her and started the search for another place to live.
    He found a house for sale Up the Track, the name given to the railway track area at the west end of Badger going up toward the Gaff Topsails. The land started to rise there, on its thirty-eight-mile ascent to the top of the Topsails plateau. Neighbours told Ned that the flood water never reached in that far, so his Bridey and her trunk would be safe. In time they got used to the trains that ran by on the track just twenty feet from their door. Bridey didn’t care if the whistle of the train coming down the grade at all hours in the night woke her from sleep as long as she wasn’t waking to water on her floor.
    The house had been built by one of the train conductors who was being transferred to Bishops Falls and was looking to get it off his hands. It was a white-clapboard two-storey with four bedrooms upstairs. The kitchen was large and heated by a wood stove, with agrate cut in the ceiling to allow the heat to go upstairs. Off the kitchen were a parlour and another bedroom. Bridey liked the house immediately and they soon moved in. To be extra sure, she had Ned bring the trunk upstairs and put in the largest room, which was to be their bedroom.
    As the summer was drawing to a close, Bridey became pregnant. They had just about given up thinking they would ever have a child, and Ned credited their move to the new house as to what did the trick. Their first child, Assumpta Jennifer, was born in May of 1929.
    The Mi’kmaq midwife, Missus Annie Drum, brought her into the world. “Well, Missus Sullivan, your first child has a caul over her face.”
    Bridey was exhausted from straining and pushing. “What? Is she all right?”
    â€œShe’s wonderful, my dear. A lovely little redhead, she is. Don’t worry; I’ll pass her to you when I get her cleaned up. I s’pose you knows, do you,