The Badger Riot Read Online Free PDF Page A

by many white people. Her own family didn’t seem to share that view. Maybe it was because of the relationship Mam had with Ralph’s mother, Missus Annie, who had delivered all of Mam’s children. After ten years of baring her private parts to the Mi’kmaq woman, Mam probably felt a kinship with her. Little Ralph had often followed along behind his mother, playing out around the door with the Sullivan children while Annie Drum went and busied herself with the birthings. Ralph and Phonse were buddies. Phonse was a bit younger than Ralph and seemed to hero-worship him. The two boys were in and out of the house all the time.
    One time Missus Crawford had a birthday party for Vern. Jennie told Vern that he should ask Ralph. Vern was somewhat in awe of Jennie’s bossy ways, and he agreed without question. Poor Missus Crawford: she hadn’t realized that some parents would take it as an insult to have an Indian in the room. So, to please the grown-ups, she told Ralph to sit in a corner and wouldn’t let him play any games. It cut into Jennie’s heart to see it. When the time came to eat, she took her food and some for Ralph and went and sat by him.

    As a member of a small Mi’kmaq community, Ralph’s life, growing up among the white, race-conscious people of Badger in the 1930s and ’40s wasn’t easy. There were the A.N.D. Company personnel and their families – the contractors, scalers, drivers – and then there were the Mi’kmaq. Somewhere in between were the merchants, the doctor, the postmaster, the Newfoundland Ranger, the telegraph operator, and the Newfoundland Railway workers. Two or three of the merchants were Jewish who, while friendly to everyone because of their businesses, usually socialized among themselves.
    Ralph recognized at an early age that the high-toned A.N.D. Company families were only too glad to get him to saw up firewood,cleave splits, shovel snow and pay him a quarter for it, but never invite him into their houses. “Here, young fella, have a glass of syrup and a sweet biscuit. No, no, don’t come in. I’ll pass it out to you.”
Just as though I was a dog,
thought Ralph.
    Then he was invited to Vern’s birthday party. He knew Vern never saw any difference in himself and Ralph, but the grown-ups certainly did. Ralph was made to feel like an outcast because he was Mi’kmaq.
    Ralph never forgot what young Jennie Sullivan did that day. They had known each other since they were about four years old when they played in the mud together. To him she was just another silly girl, but after Vern’s birthday party he saw her differently.
    Jennie was the same age as the two boys, and even at eleven she was tall and beautiful. Ralph, on the edge of puberty and full of his grandfather’s stories, thought she looked as a Beothuk woman would look. Her skin was light with a sprinkling of freckles, but he imagined a Beothuk’s to be darker. Or maybe it wasn’t. Grandfather said the Beothuks smeared so much red ochre on themselves that no one really knew how light or how dark their skin was anyway.
    At the party, Jennie got two plates of potted meat sandwiches and snowballs and two glasses of Purity syrup and came to sit beside him. She passed him one of the plates and a glass. “Here, Ralph. What odds about that crowd over at the table. Let’s eat over here.”
    As they ate, she chatted to him about school. Ralph was awestruck by her. She wore a green dress that showed off her long red hair. He was afraid to look at her straight-on, but, out of the corner of his eye he could see that she had bumps where her breasts would be one day. She smelled good too. Clean and sunshiny, like the wind in summer.
    Vern had to stay at the table where the parents and the other kids were. Ralph saw Vern looking at them and knew he was wondering what they were saying to each other. People said Jennie and Vern Crawford would marry when