© 2015, Hilda Morrow and Steve Bartlett
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing program.
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any requests for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Cover Design by Todd Manning • Layout by Joanne Snook-Hann
Printed on acid-free paper
Published by
CREATIVE PUBLISHERS
an imprint of CREATIVE BOOK PUBLISHING
a Transcontinental Inc. associated company
P.O. Box 8660, Stn. A
St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador A1B 3T7
Printed in Canada
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Morrow, Hilda, author
First in line : the incredible life of Leonard Stick / Hilda Morrow and Steve Bartlett.
ISBN 978-1-77103-030-4 (pbk.)
1. Stick, Leonard, 1892-1979. 2. Soldiers--Newfoundland and Labrador--Biography. 3. World War, 1914-1918--Newfoundland and Labrador--Biography. 4. Great Britain. Army. Newfoundland Regiment, 1st--Biography. 5. Legislators--Canada--Biography. 6. Newfoundland and Labrador--Biography. I. Bartlett, Steve, 1968-, author II. Title.
FC2173.1.S75M67 2014 971.063'3092 C2014-901358-2
St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, 2015
For David, Marnie, Jim and Andrew
– Hilda
For Liam and Stella
– Steve
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Leonard Stick’s Postcards to His Wife From His African Tour, July 26, 1954-September 19, 1954
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Leonard Stick
PROLOGUE
My father, Leonard Stick, was quite reserved and never boasted about his lifetime achievements. As a father he left most of our upbringing to our mother. He worked at his various careers, Mom ran the home.
He seldom talked about his war experiences, but his two photo albums tell their own story. When talking to W.B. Tucker who served in India in World War II, they were comparing stories and experiences. (This was in the late 1960s.) Walter Tucker suggested to Dad he write of his experiences. Dad’s reply, “Who would believe me?” That was Dad’s way. He could not write about himself.
He was a good father, doing what he could for us. If we were interested, he included us in his recreational activities, especially trouting, or spending a day in the country and having a “boil-up.”
We are all very proud of him and all that he did in his life.
Hilda Morrow
INTRODUCTION
The realization came in April 2012 while walking the trenches of Beaumont-Hamel.
“I’ve got to do something to remember the Newfoundlanders who fought here,” I told myself.
As a journalist and writer, the best, most obvious way to remember the Newfoundland Regiment was to write something.
But what? A lot has been written and said about the Blue Puttees. What could I do that was different?
A few months later, Creative Book Publishing’s Donna Francis asked me to come into her office.
She showed me a manuscript. It was about Leonard Stick, the first man to sign up for the Regiment in 1914.
Knowing I wanted to do something relating to World War I, Donna asked me to have a look at it, to see if I was interested in co-authoring a book on Stick with his daughter, Hilda Morrow.
I read Hilda’s manuscript with great interest.
“This is the project I’ve been looking for,” I soon concluded. “There’s not much written on him, and Stick lived an amazing life.”
Hilda and I soon met and the project began.
But right in the middle of it, I took on a new job, one with a whole different set of demands.
At first, the new gig took my focus away from the book, but after a few months, researching and writing the life of Leonard Stick became a great escape.
Perhaps because it was so challenging.
Stick may have lived a large life, with incredible claims to fame, but he left little reflection about what he had done or where he had been.
I dug up whatever I could, and using Hilda’s manuscript and Stick’s personal records, I began piecing his story together.
Eventually, after so much time thinking about Leonard Stick, after spending so many late nights scratching my head, I began feeling like we were old friends.
I wish I could have met him and asked about so many things. The Somme? The Newfoundland Rangers? Confederation?
Thankfully, though, I did have the good fortune to meet his daughter Hilda and write this book with her. She’s been a wonderful partner on this project. My hope is others will read our work and acknowledge her father as a noteworthy figure in this province’s history.
Steve Bartlett
1.
The old city was ablaze. A small fire that started at a barn near the corner of Freshwater and Pennywell roads was spreading rapidly across St. John’s, ripping through every structure in its wake. Firemen had little water and subsequently no luck stopping the inferno. Their efforts were tangled by a string of errors and obstacles. A water tank near the barn had not been refilled after a training exercise and water pressure was low. Earlier in the day, the water in the neighbourhood had been shut off for city crews to lay pipe. The firefighters had also forgotten their axes and were unable to slow the fire by knocking down buildings in its path. Weeks of dry weather and strong winds only fanned the flames — and the destruction.
Panic spread faster than the fire. People scurried away from the blaze with their valuables. Some put their belongings into churches, confident — mistakenly so, in many cases — the stone structures would stand up to the flames. While some tried protecting what they had, others started taking what wasn’t theirs and began looting downtown shops. Boats moored at St. John’s harbour were untied and moved away from the wooden wharves, which were quickly igniting.
By the next morning, the fire had finally burned out. It was a dawn of destruction, with the daylight revealing the smoldering aftermath of the worst fire in the history of a city flattened by flames on numerous occasions, mostly recently 1819 and 1846. Most of the east end, including the just-looted commercial district on Water and Duckworth streets, was burned to the ground.
Among the lost structures were the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, the Supreme Court and the police station. The Newfoundland Savings Bank also sustained heavy damage.
The Reverend Moses Harvey went for a walk that day and later wrote, as quoted in the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador’s internet version: “It was heart rendering. Nothing visible for a mile from Devon Row but chimneys and fallen and tottering walls.
“Where yesterday stood the homes of 15,000 people, there were only ashes and debris, or walls and chimney stalks, ghastly in their nakedness. The wrecks of the fanes [temples] of religion stood out, [their] broken walls pointing heavenward, as if in mournful protest against the desecration that had been wrought.
“And the poor inhabitants, where were they? It made the heart ache to see the groups of men, women and children, with weary, blood-shot eyes and smoke-begrimed faces, standing over their scraps of furniture and clothing — some of them asleep on the ground from utter exhaustion — all with despondence depicted on their faces. They filled the parks and grounds around the city.”
Almost 70 per cent of St. John’s had burned. Three people were dead. An estimated 11,000 were homeless. Property damage was about $13 million, of which only a fraction was insured.
Leonard Stick was five months old at the time of what history now calls The Great Fire of 1892. The infant lived with his family on Victoria Street, a downtown lane on the edge of the fire’s path. While he would never remember the blaze or leave a record of what he or his family endured that day, July 8, 1892 was a baptism by fire for him. It was the first of many major events Leonard would encounter over the next 87 years.
2.
Leonard Tretheway Stick was born in St. John’s on Sunday, February 7, 1892. He was the fifth of eight children of James Robbins Stick and Emma Colton Knight Stick.
The couple also had two children die in infancy.
The big news in St. John’s at the time of Leonard’s birth, judging by an editorial appearing in The Evening Telegram February 8, was the lack of respect fish merchants were showing fishermen (some would argue this issue still hasn’t been resolved, 123 years later).
“The first or great leading quality in a Newfoundland fish merchant ought to be scrupulous honesty,” the paper charged.
But news was different back then. A short item on the same page as the editorial read: “An amiable young gentleman in a leading office got up this morning an hour earlier than usual and left by train to meet his affianced coming from the second city. Their greeting was joyous, and they returned this evening, each pleased with the other. Are the outport young ladies to capture nearly all our dashing young gentleman?”
James Robbins Stick was likely seen as a dashing young man himself when he steamed to Newfoundland from Cornwall, England, to work as a dry goods clerk (or draper) with Marshalls on Water Street. He later became a buyer with the Royal Stores, another Water Street shop. The latter job allowed him to travel back and forth to his home country, where he’d visit his sister Bessie.
While James worked, Emma was a homebody who took care of their large family. Besides Leonard, there were Joseph Patrick, Matilda (May), Emma, James Robbins (Rob), Beatrice Robbins, Edward Moyle Tregaskus, and Ralph Tynes.
The names were very British and so was their religion. The Stick family belonged the Church of England and attended services at the Anglican Cathedral, a structure so severely damaged by the 1892 fire that it took more than 10 years to restore. (It is now a National Historic Site, considered one of the best ecclesiastical Gothic Revival structures in North America.)
The Collegian