Sable Island People

Joyce Barkhouse, Author

(February 2004)

Joyce Barkhouse, was born Joyce Killam on May 3, 1913, in Nova Scotia.  The daughter of a "horse-and-buggy" doctor, Joyce attended a two-room village school in Woodville, Annapolis Valley and went on to study at the Teachers College in Truro.  Joyce's first teaching job was in the Annapolis Valley community of Sandhill (now called East Aylesford) and she taught all subjects in a one-room school comprised of grades one to eleven. Joyce taught full-time for eight years, until she married, and found that her strength was in teaching the early grades.

Joyce came from a horse-loving family - horses in the Webster-Killam clan included Nellie, Goldie, Blackie, Molly, Mighty Maude, Lil Abner and Gem.  Her older sister Margaret (mother of author Margaret Atwood) was a keen horsewoman - she received riding tack, such as saddle and bridle, on her graduations.  Grandfather Webster was a great horse lover, and Joyce recalls how her grandfather was so furious when he encountered a man beating a horse that he jumped out of his wagon and purchased the abused animal on the spot.  He gave the horse, Blackie, to Margaret, and she nursed the poor broken animal back to glossy good health.  Another horse in the Webster-Killam family was Goldie.  She was caught in the Halifax Explosion of 1917.  Goldie belonged to Joyce's uncle Fred.  Fred's family home and flower nursery business were in the north end of Halifax, and his beloved horse lived in barn next to the house.  When the munitions ship Mont Blanc exploded, Fred's business was "blown to smithereens".  At the time, Fred was sick in bed and his wife Rose was temporarily trapped in the basement, but both survived.  Goldie, however, died in the fire.  Nellie was the first horse ridden by Joyce.  Joyce had to deliver medicine to one of her father's patients, and during the ride she learned the lesson of the "loose girth" familiar to many novice riders.

Following her marriage, Joyce lived in Halifax, Charlelottetown and Montreal, and eventually returned to Nova Scotia.  She now lives in the town of Bridgewater, and continues to spend summer days at her cherished Harbourville cottage overlooking the Bay of Fundy.

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The writings of Joyce Barkhouse have been described as reflecting a love of Nova Scotia and an interest in the "forgotten".  From an early age Joyce had been interested in writing stories.  Being the middle child between two older sisters and two younger brothers, Joyce was somewhat of a loner.  Her grandfather gave her a copy of a Baptist Church paper for children called The Northern Messenger and after reading it, Joyce thought that she could write as well, and submitted a short story.  It was accepted, Joyce was paid $1.00, and she became published at nineteen years of age.  Thereafter Joyce wrote many children's stories (secular stories, tales of adventure) for various church papers.  Her articles were also published in a USA teachers' publication, and in the Family Herald and Weekly Star a national newspaper popular in rural Canada.  While living in Montreal Joyce wrote a series about Expo 67 for the FHWS and for a California publication called Trailering Guide.

Although she had been writing for many years, Joyce did not publish a full-length book until she was sixty-one years old and a grandmother.  Her first book was George Dawson: The Little Giant in 1974.  Joyce had come across an article about Dawson in the Montreal Gazette.  She was intrigued by the character - little known, but heroic - but could find scant information about him.  Eventually, in McGill University’s Rare Old Bookroom, Joyce found a small book titled Life and Letters of George Dawson, and then met the author, Dawson's niece, Lois Winslow-Spragge, who encouraged Joyce and helped with research for the book.  In those days there was very little history written for young people.  Joyce's book about Dawson received good reviews, and was followed by books celebrating the accomplishments of two other Nova Scotians, Abraham Gesner (a geologist who developed a process for manufacturing kerosene) and Thomas Raddall (an author of historical fiction about Nova Scotia).  Raddall had worked on Sable Island as a young man, and much of the plot for his book The Nymph and the Lamp was set on Sable Island.

Joyce Barkhouse has written eight books, and her articles and short stories have been published in anthologies, school textbooks and periodicals in Canada and the USA.  For several years she wrote a self-syndicated column "For Mother and Others" which appeared in a number of Nova Scotia weekly newspapers.  Most of her writing has been for young people.  Sponsored by the Canada Council and the Canadian Children's Book Centre, Joyce has toured in Canada, talking to school children.  Beginning with her first published story in The Northern Messenger, Joyce learned her craft through experience, editors' comments and workshops.  Her working papers and related materials (1960-1998) are in the Dalhousie University Archives, and is an important collection showing the development of a writer over a number of years. 

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Until Pit Pony, most of her books had been biographies and retellings of myths - Joyce wanted to write her "own book", to create a story about horses for children.

While researching Gesner, Joyce learned that he had been shipwrecked off Briar Island while taking a cargo of horses to the Caribbean - this brought to mind the stories of shipwrecked horses cast ashore on Sable Island, and lead to a conversation with Barbara Christie about the history of the Sable Island horses (see The Horses of Sable Island, Barbara Christie, 1995).  Joyce wrote a piece about the island's wild horses for the FHWS.

While visiting her friend Marian MacDonald in Pictou, Joyce heard about young boys working in coal mines.  She recalls an account of two boys working in a Pictou mine.  Both were very frightened, and one day one of the boys was so sick he couldn't go to work, and the other refused to go into the mine without him.  On that very day there was a rock fall in the tunnel.  Joyce saw a parallel in the sad and cruel stories of both the young boys and the Sable Island horses forced to work in mines.

Joyce's love of horses, her interest in Sable Island, and her compassion for the young Pictou miners converged in the Pit Pony - but she had to set her story in Cape Breton.  As Joyce explains, Sable Island horses were not used in the Pictou mines; rather they were used in Cape Breton where many coal ore seams were narrow.  To save money mine tunnels were excavated no wider than the seam, and this resulted in narrow low tunnels that were too tight for average-sized horses.  The small Sable horses, however, could be used.  The ore seams in Pictou were wider, so tunnels were bigger and could accommodate larger horses.

Joyce spent ten years on and off working on the book, doing research and background reading, and was at times unsure about completing the work.  During a visit to Acadia University where she spoke to students about her book The Witch of Port LaJoye, she was asked what about future projects.  Joyce told the group that she was trying to write a book about boys and horses in the coal mines.  Afterwards a student approached and asked her to complete the book - he told Joyce he'd had an uncle who died in the Springhill Mine Disaster of 1958.  Pit Pony was published in 1990.

Joyce believes that an essential element of education is the rich detail to be found in a child's own local history.  In Pit Pony, Joyce educates about life in a coal-mining town in turn-of-the-century Cape Breton, but also deals with importance of education itself.  It is the story of Willie and Gem.  Willie is an eleven-year-old boy forced by family circumstances to work as a trapper in a Cape Breton coal mine, and Gem is a Sable Island mare working as a `pit pony'.  As they work together, a strong bond develops between boy and horse.  The book describes the grim realities of life for a young miner - cold, exhaustion, fear - discomforts and dangers that also affected the horses.  When Willie and Gem are trapped in the mine during a "bump" - with falling rock and timber, and choking dust - Willie must choose between escaping with Gem or saving the life of another young miner.  Willie's choice and Gem's death set Willie free - free to leave the mines and to pursue his education.  As it turns out however, Gem had been pregnant, and her foal is saved.  Many children have written to Joyce about Pit Pony.  Some strongly related to Gem and have expressed anger about her death in the mine.  Joyce explains that Willie was devoted to Gem and would not have left life in the mine without her.  In Pit Pony, Joyce attempted to express a real-world balance between Willie's future, Gem's death, and Sandy's birth.

After Pit Pony was published, Joyce received mail from mining communities in western Canada, and a mining company in British Columbia donated copies to schools in that province.  Pit Pony was named as notable by the Canadian Library Association; received the first Ann Connor Brimer Award in 1991 for "outstanding contribution to children's literature in Atlantic Canada"; and was the unanimous choice of Nova Scotia librarians to be produced as a Talking Book for the CNIB, for national and international distribution.  Pit Pony was made into a CBC-TV movie by Cochran Entertainment (1997), won three Gemini Awards, and became a 44-episode TV series.

An essay by Joyce Barkhouse, February 2004: "Gem's Story"

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