Launched from a Trinity Bay shipyard in 1945, the early years of the Newfoundland schooner Norma & Gladys encompassed the shipbuilding tradition, the Labrador floater fishery, and coasting. She was purchased for a floating museum by the Newfoundland Government in 1973; her legacy soon included blunder, cover-up, mutiny, a stowaway, and perhaps, the coast of a sealing captain.
In 1975, Canada’s External Affairs appointed Norma & Gladys as a roving ambassador to promote fisheries management within a 200-mile coastal limit. But she was unseaworthy: Clarenville Shipyard had installed the wrong masts and her original round-the-world itinerary was scrapped.
After being ravished by the Newfoundland media, she lifted her skirts and caught the winds blowing east. Forgivingly, she nevertheless promoted Canada and Newfoundland to 78,900 visitors in 19 European ports, to return with her virtue restored, her signal flags flapping like a hundred gypsy scarves on the breeze.
Sold to the highest bidder, she started her final voyage on October 27, 1984, and never returned. Today she rests on the bottom of Placentia Bay.
Here is the story of her early obscure years, and the saga of her 22,000 mile voyage, set against the background of Newfoundland’s favourite blood sport: partisan politics.

In 1905, Mi’kmaq prospector Matty Mitchell found a strange rock in Sandy River, running into Red Indian Lake, Newfoundland. This rusty brown and yellow outcrop was rich in sulphides of lead, zinc and copper, but it took twenty years of scientific advancement before the secrets of the complex minerals were unlocked. In 1926, the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company signed a pact, establishing one of Newfoundland’s richest mines at the sire they called Buchans.The Lucky Strike Glory Hole and the underground mines were not the only legacies that Buchans left to Newfoundland. As soon as the mine and mill had begun production, the pioneers turned to recreation, turning and iron ore shed into an ice arena, and the town became famous for its hockey team, climaxing in the “Glory Days” of senior amateur hockey in Newfoundland, when The Buchans Miners hockey team cross-crossed the province in pursuit of sports glory.Here is an account of the Buchans miners – the underground drillers and the hockey players – told by a Buchaneer who worked as a prospector and in the underground mines.Garry Cranford is the author of the bestselling book, Newfoundland Schooner: Norma & Gladys, and co-author of Potheads & Drum Hoops and From Cod to Crab. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

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