August 11, 2003
My new friend Geoff Pickering, the business whiz, says he’ll always remember the true story about how I came to recognize the power of the press. It wasn’t as an adult when I was working as a columnist at a daily newspaper, or even from being on the job as a lady publisher.
I learned the power of the press at the ripe old age of 9.
It was on Halloween night that I was taken to St. Joseph’s Orphanage on Quinpool Road in Halifax, along with my three younger siblings. My French Catholic mother had split from my Irish Protestant father. Unable to raise us on her own, she placed us in the orphanage for what she tried to explain would only be "until I can get a job and stand on my own two feet."
Because my angry mother had banished my father and his relatives to persona non-gratis status, I entered St. Joseph’s with the romantic dream of finding my father.
The drama of going to the orphanage on Halloween night was still fresh in my mind a few weeks before Christmas. We had piled into a taxicab with these little bags of treats given to us by relatives. Upon arrival at St. Joseph’s, we were promptly relieved of these bags since the nuns had decided to cancel Halloween celebrations.
Memories of the arrival were made all the more poignant when the pleadings of the soon-to-be orphans had the poor cab driver in tears. "Lady," he kept telling my Mom as we were collecting our baggage, "There’s just got to be a better way."
Every night after lights out, I lay in my dormitory plotting a variety of schemes in which I found my father, who would rescue me from the orphanage.
Each morning started with making the bed. As hard as the nuns tried to teach me--including bringing my brother Chuck over from the boys’ wing to show me he had learned how, I couldn’t get the hang if it. Bedmaking lessons kept me late for school, where the teacher began threatening to make me dunce of the day.
Finally the time was right and I was ready to make a run for it. Snowflakes were swirling when the nun took me to a fire exit, admonishing me to go straight to school. I waited until I was at the bottom of the steps of the fire escape before warning her not to expect me back any time soon.
I ran a few blocks away. My nine-year-old mind had not hatched much of an escape plan, so I merely wandered up and down the street. A shopkeeper, who spotted me began to wonder what was I was doing. Coaxing me into the store with promises of chocolate bars and soft drinks, he asked me what was wrong. This was my big opportunity to get even with those dratted nuns. My story of all their wrongdoings was greatly exaggerated. As an example, one or two nuns always stood at the door of the lavatory to make sure we washed up rather than dawdle. Their observation became letching in my long tale of woe.
The shopkeeper called newspaper reporters from the Chronicle Herald, to whom I rhymed off my many complaints.
Many hours after the reporters left, the shopkeeper not knowing what else to do, reluctantly called the police.
Shock number one was that they had no intentions of helping me find my father. As a ward of the state I would have to be returned to St. Joe’s, and worse, to a waiting Mother Superior.
The paper was now out, with full coverage of my laments on the front page.
I tried telling the police that I had exaggerated my story to the reporters, but it was too late.
As the police walked me up the front steps, I could see Mother Superior, arms folded and grim-faced.
In my imagination I could see her pulling me by the ears to a secret torture chamber.
"Welcome home, Judith Ann. Now what can we do to get along with you," is all she said.
The power of the press is a wondrous thing.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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