Myrle Vokey, an educator who created Newfoundland’s famed Screech-in ceremony as a way to give people a sense of belonging, died on Saturday at the age of 85, after a road trip and a night out for his 58th wedding anniversary.
Mr. Vokey’s lively Screech-in performances began in 1974 as he was travelling the province for the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers’ Association. The ceremony has since become a well-entrenched tradition, now mainly aimed at visitors to the island who hope to kiss a cod, dance a jig and become honorary Newfoundlanders.
“He viewed Newfoundlanders as a family, and it was his strong desire to have us all feel like we had a seat at that table, and that we were all part of the same magical cultural development that seemed to be going on at that time,” his daughter, Krista Vokey, said in an interview.
“Dad tried, and I think succeeded, in celebrating the resilience, strength and unique humour that Newfoundlanders – Irish, English, Scottish Newfoundlanders – all have.”
Myrle Vokey created the famed Newfoundland Screech-in ceremony as a way to celebrate the island's unique humour and culture, and to make everyone feel welcome.HO/The Canadian Press
Myrle Vokey was born in 1939 on Bell Island, a nine-kilometre-long land mass just off the community of Portugal Cove, northwest of St. John’s. He loved Bell Island, and even after he moved away from his home, he’d take anyone who came to visit him on a Bell Island tour, his daughter said.
He became a teacher entirely by accident. When he signed up for Memorial University in St. John’s, he ticked the box next to “education” because an education was what he hoped to get from the school, Krista Vokey said. He was bewildered to then find himself in classes where he was learning about how he might teach one day.
He was working as a physical education teacher in Corner Brook, N.L., when he met his wife, Marilyn, in 1960. He took a job as the teachers’ association’s director of professional development in the early 1970s, which took him to “every nook and cranny” in the province where he led sessions and gave speeches, for locals and people from away.
He wanted to find a way to unite the people in his audiences so he developed the Screech-in after discussions with his father about rituals fishermen would perform to anoint someone as an honorary Newfoundlander, his daughter said.
She said when her father performed a Screech-in, he would wear his oilskins, play music, teach a few Newfoundland expressions and then have members of the audience kiss a frozen cod fish that he had brought along with him.
He created the ceremony at a time when disparaging jokes about Newfoundlanders were still popular, feeding stereotypes that Newfoundland was somehow beneath the rest of Canada. On the island, a cultural renaissance grew, and artists such as Gerald Squires and the band Figgy Duff challenged those notions. Mr. Vokey’s Screech-in was part of that response, his daughter said.
He performed the ceremony much as it is now carried out in pubs in downtown St. John’s. He’d put on a set of oilskin rain gear, play music, teach a few Newfoundland expressions and then have the audience drink a shot of Screech rum and kiss a frozen cod fish, which he had brought along with him.
“Is you a screecher?” he’d ask his audience. The proper response was, and still is, “Indeed I is, me old cock. Long may your big jib draw.”
For anyone still clinging to Newfoundlander stereotypes, Mr. Vokey’s Screech-in got the last laugh, his daughter noted.
“Did you do a dance? Did you kiss a fish?” he would ask. “Yes,” his audience would respond.
“You did all that?” He would fire back. “And you think Newfoundlanders are stunned?”
Mr. Vokey’s son, Keith, took up the tradition and began performing Screech-ins at Christian’s Pub in St. John’s. There is even a Screech-in ceremony in the hit Broadway musical Come From Away, which is set in the central Newfoundland town of Gander.
Bob Hallett, co-founder of the traditional Newfoundland rock band Great Big Sea, posted about Myrle Vokey’s death on social media Monday, calling him a “heck of a character.”
“It’s not everyone who gets to invent a tradition, and do it so well a whole province buys into it,” Mr. Hallett wrote.
Krista Vokey said her father performed his last Screech-in about a year ago, for his two grandchildren who live in Ontario.
He began to feel unwell this month during a trip to Gander to see Come From Away, and to visit the community of Greenspond, where his wife’s family is from. His daughter said he refused to go to the hospital until he’d gone out for his 58th anniversary supper with Marilyn, and then slept in his own bed.