Sold for: $3,438

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Alberta
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 14, 2002, lot 188
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Farley Mowat, Wake of the Great Sealers, 1973, reproduced page 26
William Gough, The Art of David Blackwood, 1988, reproduced on title page for "Down on the Labrador" section, unpaginated

Mowat humorously tells Aunt Sturge's story: “I supposes 'twas a hard life, accordin’ to what they says nowadays, but it never seemed so to we. We was all into it, men and maids together. It took strong hearts and hands, but it give us strength in the doing. And ‘twas not all work and no play. By November month the year’s voyage was wound up – gear stowed away, fish stowed and shipped, schooners all laid up and gone to sleep. Was nothing for it then but to snug down for the winter. Then come the dances and socials and weddings and concerts in every place, and visiting back and forth all around the bay. Bonfire Night – some calls it Guy Fawkes Day – was always a gert time in Wesleyville, with folk from all around coming along to act out something for the big concert. Aunt Rene Sturge was the rale one! Belonged to Pinchards Bight, she did. She’d clumb onto the stage and do her skit, and ‘twould make a dogfish laugh hisself to death. She’d stand up there with a scrubboard and a bucket full of suds, and Uncle Peter Sturge’s dirty underclothes, and wash away at they, all the time carrying on about the poor old fellow, making him out to be a proper bosthoon, getting it out on he for the troubles he’d give her all year around…”

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