NEWFOUNDLAND

My beloved father, Vasco H. Morais, turned 80 this August, which is why I took him “home” to Newfoundland, where he came of age during the war years and shortly thereafter, when my grandfather was stationed in St. Johns as the Portuguese Consul General. Both my mother and my wife, when I broached the subject, said, “Go. Take him back to his friends.” So on a rainy August night, Dad and I boarded the plane in Newark, arriving near midnight at the Governor’s House in St. Johns, Canada.

Earlier, I had conspired with Dad’s two dearest and oldest friends, John and Jane Crosbie, who, after an illustrious political career in Ottawa, had settled in at the Governor’s House. John Crosbie is the Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland & Labrador, his fine wife, Jane, Her Honor.

During the war years in St. Johns, my grandparents bought the family’s Newfoundland Retriever dog from Jane’s veterinarian father, and my father and Jane subsequently became fast friends. My Aunt Maria – a 1940s hottie – even dated Dad’s friend, the charismatic John Crosbie, who later, after he married the love of his life, Jane, went on to become the famously competent, colorful and principled politician who held every major cabinet post in the conservative Clark and Mulroney governments of Canada.

Dad had not seen his old friends in several decades.

Pretty fine stuff. That first night we stayed up with the Crosbies until 2AM, drinking highballs and hooting with laughter. (Sign of age when you realize your parents’ friends could just as well be your friends.) The following evening, while John Crosbie was off doing God’s and the Governor’s work, Jane Crosbie – smart, warm, with a deliciously salty sense of humor – held an elegant dinner in Dad’s honor and invited in the friends of his youth (Peter Outerbridge, the Hutton brothers, and John Perlin.) In every photo of that evening, Dad looks blissfully happy, as he deserves to be. But here below is my favorite photo of Dad enjoying himself regally with his dear friend, Jane Crosbie (in white,) surrounded by several giggling women. Priceless.

But the joy had not run its course, for his buddy, John Crosbie, had generously invited Dad to fish with him at the Rifflin’ Hitch Lodge on the Eagle River in Labrador. Dad is a world class fisherman, and fly fishing for salmon is the great theme of his life, stitching together the various chapters of his journey through Europe and the Americas over eight decades. Here the grand old man, the Contented Fisher King, back in Canada, siting on his throne…

…before returning to the river ….

..to fish alongside his old buddy, John Crosbie.

My wife, when trying once to recall the fisherman’s wish of good luck (“tight lines”) as I headed out to fish, cried out lustily, “Stiff rods!”

I couldn’t have said it better.

Stiff rods, Dad. Stiff rods.