The Diaries of Howard Leopold Morry - Volume 17

This book represents the seventeenth volume of what will ultimately be twenty-five volumes in a series of verbatim transcripts of the diaries of Howard Leopold Morry, written by him starting in 1939 and concluding with the last known volume in 1965.

Howard was a raconteur and oral historian cast in the same mould as dozens of other men and women in Newfoundland in those days who carried forward the history of the small outport villages in which they lived. In many cases, their knowledge, gained by word of mouth from generation to generation, is our only record of the events that took place in these tiny villages for many decades and even centuries.

Howard was 54 years old when he took up pen or pencil to write the first of his many diaries in December 1939. What motivated him at that time was the belief (wrong, as it fortunately turned out) that he would not live much longer, as a result of a bad heart condition resulting from diseases he endured during his time in the trenches in Gallipoli, on the Somme and in Ypres during WWI. He was worried, and in this he was justified, that many of the stories of the old days that he faithfully retained would be lost forever if he did not record them in writing. The younger generation even then had lost interest in such things and the race of community oral historians of which he was one was coming to an end.

In his diaries, he spoke of his own personal experiences, at home in his youth and in his later years, his adventures in western Canada as a young man, and overseas with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in WWI. But he also recorded observations on the significant and insignificant (to most historians) events of daily life in a small outport village on the Southern Shore of Newfoundland in the early to mid-1900s. And he also recounted events from the history of his village as passed down to him by earlier generations of oral historians.

The current volume is in large measure comprised of reminiscences. In the first nine pages, Howard is either retelling events of his own youth or anecdotes which were told to him and which is passing on to readers without judging the credibility of the stories. He also takes time to frequent his reader with terms common in Ferryland in the past but seldom heard in this day. Although this section was dated July 12, 1957, the information imparted was not specific to that time period.

Then, in a section dated August 3, 1957, but which Howard could have written at any time in his life, in the largest part of this diary, some 92 pages, Howard returns to familiar territory - his experiences overseas in WWI.

Finally, this diary concludes with twenty five pages recorded seven years after the rest of the diary which are much like the first 9 pages of the diary, recording old reminiscences and stories and transcribing an early historical document pertaining to Ferryland, but also giving us some insight into Howard's travels in Scotland and i...