Taylor Parsons of Trout River

The Kingpin of Trout River is what Ella Manuel called him. As she said, “There  weren’t many jobs Taylor Parsons couldn’t turn his hand too, including pulling teeth in  the absence of a nurse, but the job he liked best was one that took him into the  mountains.  

"Once a mining crowd come out here, wanting to go up the Gregory Plateau.  They asked me the way, but I told them 'I won't let you go up there alone. Suppose a  fog come in, you could get lost in no time.' So I went with them, and sure enough a fog  come in. But I knew that country like the back of me hand, so I was going along, up the  brook, feeling my way, when one man behind me called me to stop. He said an older  feller was way behind, and we ought to wait. So we did, and by and by up he comes,  puffing and blowing, and he said to me 'When you're over forty, you won't find this  walking so easy.' And I said 'Well, sir, I'm fifty-nine me next birthday.'"

Taylor could do an ordinary day’s work, then walk to the plateau or, if it was  winter, snowshoe, make a fire in the cabin for his employers, cook a meal, bed them  down and put everything to rights before he slept. He has forgotten nothing that he  heard from prospectors, mining engineers and promoters. He is sure there is "millions of  copper" deep in the Gregory Plateau, but he doesn't expect to live long enough to see it  mined. Just as well, for Taylor ambles through the unspoiled woods, looking for signs of  caribou and moose, occasionally bagging a ptarmigan.

And what yarns he told. "Many's the time I've seen the steamer come in the  middle of the night, anchor off the cove and send the mail ashore in a lifeboat - seas  beatin' in, rain coming down and maybe high winds. And I'd have to put on me clothes  and haul the mail sack into the house, ‘cause we ran the post office then. Then the wife  and me would put on the kitchen fire and dry out the letters in the oven. The wife used  to get that anxious, ‘specially when the old age pension cheques came - every three  months or so and about $25 each - in case the salt water would wash off the names. 

“T'was awful sometimes, women coming home from hospital - and babies too - and we'd have to get them ashore somehow. On our backs, if they weren't too big, and  seas coming in over our long rubbers and running down our legs. No wonder that when  we finally got the road in, we all went crazy buying chrome tables and dining room  suites and all that kind of stuff. Some different from luggin’ stuff in on your back from the  life boats. But you know, I went over to the East Coast once and I didn't like it one bit. All closed in, like, and you couldn't see the water, not like here, where I can sit in me  kitchen and watch the breakers roll in." 

TAYLOR PARSONS: (1898-1982) survived the slaughter of Beaumont Hamel in the  First World War, returning to Trout River to marry Elsie Crocker, the first postmistress  there. For 56 years Mr. Parsons provided “faithful school board service to the children of  Trout River,” and often had to walk through the Gulch to attend meetings in Woody  Point. He was President of Royal Canadian Legion Branch 45, the first Chair of the  Trout River Clinic Committee, and the first Chair of the Community Council formed in  1965.