Farewell to a Newfoundland Friend

 

 

                         Lewis Wheaton --Wednesday, May 6th, 1936 - Thursday, October 19th, 2023023

'Tis the season of our lives to hear far too regularly about the deaths of acquaintances, friends, and family members. In truth, having spent decades in congregational ministry that reality has existed for a long time and so often meaningful conversations rise up out of the past.

When we were in Newfoundland during September we visited a couple who were raising four tweens and teens in one of the five outports I served after ordination in 1980. We spent time in their home regularly then, and visited at least at dozen times through the decades, both there and in the various Ontario communities we lived in. Our children came to know them and appreciated their warmth and hospitality. 

They were vital people when we first met them yet we had to spend time with each separately during this recent visit, Julia in a nursing home because of a stroke, Lewis in the hospital because of a serious fall. They celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in the summer but they were told that they couldn't be reunited in the nursing home because of their different medical needs. Aging and institutional limitations can be cruel. 

Lewis was lucid and ready for a chat when we visited him in Gander hospital, just down the hall from where our son, Isaac was born. We discussed the cod fishery this year, unusual sightings of tuna in the waters near their outport community, the blueberry crop, and his passion for hunting moose. 

He was almost legendary in his ability to navigate through the bush and on the water and he served as a guide for hunters from the US and the mainland for years. Because of his confidence and skill we had many adventures over time to islands and remote places, spotting whales and puffins, hearing about communities long gone. There was a semi-feral quality to him, a different intelligence and way of being which isn't common anywhere anymore.  As a young man he had worked briefly in a factory in St. John's but he would shake his head and say "you could plant me there, but I wouldn't take root." 

Lewis had a limited formal education but he was a life-long learner.  He avidly read about a variety of subjects and loved to discuss them. I found his enthusiasm refreshing and also a tad overwhelming at times -- he could talk for hours and he stated his opinions emphatically!

Lewis was the first person to express his convictions about the declining cod stocks, years before the moratorium in 1993. He was convinced that allowing the longliners and trawlers to mine the sea was a political decision, not based on good science or conservation goals, and he was right.

Julia and Lewis also had a huge vegetable garden, with hardy fruit trees and berry canes around the edges, and they helped us establish a garden at the manse. He would haul kelp from the landwash which he eventually rototilled into the rocky soil. Neighbours would shake their heads at the piles of rocks they picked out of the garden and their labour-intensive efforts to enrich the soil when it had become so easy to just purchase vegetables from a shop. Why work so hard?  Yet everyone admired the quality of their produce and often bought potatoes, carrots, and strawberries from them because they tasted so much better. They bottled and stored a winter's worth of what they needed. 

When we would visit through the decades, Ruth and I would often stand in the quiet at the edge of the garden, looking out to sea. It was a spiritual experience, downright Edenic, although created by the sweat of their brows.  

In a couple of days Lewis will be planted in the cemetery of the community he lived in most of his life. His obituary begins "Lewis Wheaton has gone to that eternal hunting, fishing and and berry picking land of the world beyond this world." 

I'm so grateful that we had a prayer together before we said goodbye in September. 

God, bring comfort to Julia and the family in the midst of their loss.