The Badger Riot by J.A. Ricketts

all. I never thought you’d get so sick. I’m sorry.”
    Jennie listened to what he had to say. She could see that Tom had not changed in regard to his mother and waited for him to say that he didn’t believe his mother’s lies.
    But he said nothing.
    Jennie looked at him, the man she had married for better or for worse. Her eyes filled with tears.
    â€œI still love you, Tom, and I guess I always will. Your mother treated me badly from the first day I went to live with her.” He started to speak, but Jennie held up her hand. “Let me finish,please. I know you don’t believe me, but hear this. I’ll only come back to you on one condition: when you get a home for us away from your mother.” She closed her eyes. “Please go now.”
    Whenever he came to see her after that, she would get Mam to say she was in bed, resting. At first he would knock on the door a couple of times a day. Then, in a week or so, it was only once every few days. Then he stopped coming altogether.

10
    Father Kevin Murphy was parish priest of the Roman Catholic Church of Badger. His parishioners made up half the population of the town. The rest was made up of Protestant religions – United, Anglican and Pentecostal.
    Father Murphy considered that he ran a pretty tight ship. The school was well-built and clean. The convent housed eight black-robed nuns who answered to him. He liked to think of his church as a jewel. It was small, not like the big one down in Grand Falls. The altar and the pews were of warm, hand-carved wood and seemed to glow from inside with their own light. When the sunlight came through the stained glass windows, it was as if God was saying, “This is a beautiful thing.”
    He remembered coming to Badger in 1952. It was his first posting in Newfoundland. He had arrived in St. John’s from Ireland the year before and had applied for a parish with the archdiocese. Father Murphy never knew what chips fell into place for him to be sent to Badger, but he was a firm believer in the Hand of God guiding him wherever he was supposed to go.
    His first task was to set up church, school and convent, all in one area. The Church had just purchased a block of land on Church Road, prime real estate for Badger. It included a lovely big house that had belonged to one of Badger’s first merchants. It made a perfect convent for the Presentation Sisters.
    The church, with the small school attached to it, had originallystood across the railway tracks on the other side of Badger. When the church officials decided to bring it across to the new property, they left the little school where it was, as they were building a larger one on the new site. The little school eventually became Alf Elliott’s telegraph office.
    Every able-bodied man in the town helped, and religion, always a hot subject, was put aside. The men put big logs under the church and poled them along. The church moved, inch by inch, foot by foot. When they came to the railway tracks, the Canadian National Railway helped by stopping train traffic and taking up a stretch of the rails in the path of the rolling church. Linesmen had to see to the overhead wires on the poles that ran along by the track. When the church passed over, the sectionmen worked frantically to replace the length of rails for train traffic to continue.
    Once across the tracks, more logs had to be put across the railway’s big drainage ditch. Then, to get the church to its new location, it had to come across Herb Day’s garden to Church Road. Down came the back fence and the front fence. The church was eased through backward, so that when it arrived across the road at its final resting place, the entrance would be facing the road.
    Father thanked all who helped. Some came back to the rectory with him for a dram or two of rum. They were all proud of themselves for a job well done. Friendships were formed that day that had nothing to do with religions. One