Paul West was a prof of Brian's at Memorial University when Brian was doing a degree in English and French.
Maurice Cullen, Fishing Stages, Newfoundland, c. 1911
The sensations of landing on the island long ago haunted a writer’s final memories
By Paul West | December 7, 2015
"My first teaching job carried me straight from the RAF and England to St. John’s, Newfoundland, when I was but 27. I still find my first impressions to be the overpowering ones: of fog or knocking sea. The town seemed nothing like the Oldest City in North America. It clutched and clung to the rocks like snails—perhaps the mist might have dissolved it or the sea gnawed it down. From the air it looked precarious; from the sea, as I sneaked in through the Narrows, as sheer a pair of nautical jaws as one could wish for a landfall, the effect was altogether different: still the shantytown with much rust and much gesticulating new paint, but also the settled center of a kind of commerce, silver oil tanks glittering in whatever sun there was. The harbor had the slack gape of a transatlantic Cardiff or Merseyside in miniature."
This article is a really good read. For the rest:
