I was born in the 40's in the small outport of Princeton on Bonavista Bay in Newfoundland, the son of an inshore fisherman. The fond memories related here are of my younger years till age fifteen, when I left home to live in the city. A WINTER TO REMEMBER It seems every time I turn on the CBC news in recent winters, the Atlantic provinces have been buried with yet another blizzard. In St. JohnÂ’s, theyÂ’re complaining thereÂ’s no place left to dump the snow. Since I lived in Newfoundland for thirty years before moving to sunny Manitoba, there are a few dozen winters that are still vivid in my mind from my growing-up years. One such winter takes me back to the fifties when our family took the narrow-gauge Bonavista Branch Line train to visit my grandparents in Champneys, Trinity Bay. Just the day before our return home to Princeton, a blizzard roared in off the Atlantic and piled drifting snow almost to the tops of the telephone poles. On the train the following day, it was thrilling to a young boy to hear the old steam engine repeatedly straining to pick up speed to plow through drift after drift. It felt warm and cosy in our old passenger coach though. That warmth had its down side too, because the fogged-up windows, coupled with the swirling, blinding whiteness outside, meant we couldnÂ’t really see very much of the countryside rushing along beside us. At some point the terrain began to look vaguely familiar, so the next time the train shuddered to a halt we grabbed our bags and scrambled to the nearest exit. But as the train pulled away and we looked around us, our hearts sank with the realization we had gotten off at Summerville Crossing, not Princeton. Now, Summerville Crossing is “out in the sticks”, literally just the tracks crossing the highway about half way between Princeton and the outport of Summerville. No welcoming station agent or heated waiting room here, just a bare building used to store freight, or a drop-off place for Summerville-bound passengers. It saved travel time for them, but for us our mistake meant an hourÂ’s walk on an unplowed highway to reach home. To make matters even worse, we had to drag our heavy suitcases over an unending range of snowbanks, with no hope of a motorist picking us up to ease the pain. On arriving home, cold and exhausted, we stopped at the big red gate and stared open-mouthed at the drifts that reached close to the roof of our house. Later, when the shovelling was completed, it looked more like a tunnel than a path leading to our front door. Dad soon had a fire crackling in the wood stove, and before long the kitchen was warm and cosy. Mom wasted no time in getting a hot meal on the table and we all sat down to dig in. We ate almost in silence. Nobody really wanted to talk about our day; it was all rather embarrassing. In years to come, though, we often reminisced about our foolishness and had a good laugh at ourselves. But, for now, the kitchen felt snug, we were all together, and the meal was delicious; there truly was “no place like home”.   Submitted By: Hayward Prince