A4 - Friday, August 17, 1984 - ‘‘Limey”’ “‘Limie,”’ North Shore News Strictly personal by Bob Hunter AVING APOLOGIZED for using the term (which apparently), I also ought to try to should have been make my peace with the good Newfoundland women who wrote in to complain because I’d used the word ‘‘Newfie.’”’ I abase myself. Seriously. | didn’t want to hurt your feelings. But, please, gimme a chance. I thought, just because a lot of New- foundlanders referred to themselves as Newfies, 1! could too. Some of them even call themselves ‘“‘Newfs,’’ you know. Am 1 prejudiced against Newfoundlanders? Can’t be. 1 named my newest daughter Emily. Now it helped that my wife had a great-grandmother named Emily. But our daughter was in equal part named after one of the greatest women I have ever met. Emily Decker is her name. She runs a boarding house in St. Anthony at the northern tip of Newfoundland. The local folk pronounce St. Anthony ‘‘Santony.’’ | was there,for the first time, in the spring of 1976, along with a group of eco-freaks. Our mission, ta dum! to save the seals! As you can imagine, we weren’t too welcome. What looked like a lynch mob was waiting on the one _ice- impacted road outside of Santony. A couple of guys were actually waving around a noose. It looked bad for our heroes, who naturally assum- ed themselves to be the good guys. The Newfies — I’m sorry, but that’s the word that naturally came to mind — looked like a real mean lot. | mean, they killed seals, didn’t they? As it turned out, of course, only a few did. And they did it mostly because if they didn’t sign up for work as a swiler—that’s what a= guy who kills seals 1s called— they wouldn't be able to collect unemployment benefits The feds, 1{ turned out, were ac tually forcing these men into seal-bashing Unemployment had become, as the bureaucrats say, ‘‘structural "" Yet not a single guy in that crowd of angry men laid a finger on any of us Oh, they brea th taking. : Salaci Bar yelled until they were blue in the face. And shook their fists. And threatened all sorts of dire consequences if we weren't out of town in an hour. But, at heart, they were too polite, too nice, to do us any harm. And when we went to the boarding house we had book- ed, Emily Decker was there to greet us. She was a dimimutive grandmother with the kind of good cheer that just flows and flows and never seems to become ex- hausted. Neither she nor her husband—whom we all came to know simply as ‘‘Pa’”’ Decker—approved of the modern seal hunt. A lot of folks in New- foundland don’t, by the way. Never mind what the politi- cians say. Anyway, Emily Decker became the first New- foundland woman to climb into a helicopter and fly out to the ice floes to register her personal protest against the seal slaughter. body only Nikon FG Body" Simple programmed auto exposure system Nikon FE2 Body full auto of manual exposure control in a compact body body only I guess she was in her 60s. She’d never flown before. She was scared. But as I wat- ched her climb into that chopper, wearing a Six-sizes- too-big fluorescent orange Mustang survival suit, her jaw set and her eyes bright with aliveness, | was moved, to say the least. Maybe there are lots of older ladies who will defy most of their own communi- ty, take up an unpopular cause, and actually risk their lives to make a point. Zipp- ing around in_ helicopters over the ice packs in un- predictable weather isn’t the same as reguiar commercial flying. So as a salute to a great Newfoundlander, | named my daugher after her. By the way, nobody in the Decker household cared a fig one way or another about whether the word ‘‘Newfie’’ got used. | got the distinct impression they took pride from the term. However, | appreciate the point that while it is okay for me to call myself a honky, | don’t like somebody else do- ing it. So I will refrain from using the word Newfie. | ask a favor in return. 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