Photographer Brian Atkinson says the people of Miramichi 'never pretend to be something they're not. They just are.' He captures this quality exquisitely in his new book 'Miramichi: River of Character.' Story by Kate Wallace; photography by Brian Atkinson

Brian Atkinson has travelled to more than 60 countries in his 20-plus years as a professional photographer. Still, he can get just as excited shooting people who live little more than an hour's drive from his home near Woolastook Park, outside of Fredericton, as he can for an assignment in rural Nicaragua or at a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

His latest book, Miramichi: River of Character, proves that enthusiasm.

The project got its start about two-and-a-half years ago, when Atkinson asked his contacts across the province for story ideas for a piece for Canadian Geographic.

Of all the suggestions Atkinson received, Miramichi native Terry Power's idea of photographing the hardy men who ice-fish for smelt on Miramichi Bay was his favourite.

"So I went out there," Atkinson says. "It was 25 below, the wind was howling across the bay, no place to hide, it was brutal. By noon-hour I was freezing."

The men had a little shack where they would go to eat and warm up.

"They'd been boiling tea all morning, there was white bread and baloney sandwiches with ketchup, and it was the best food I ever ate in my life."

The pictures Atkinson took that day, of big nets of silvery smelt, men's arms caked in ice, three generations pulling in the haul, were "unbelievable," he says.

"Most people now don't work in those old, traditional ways. We're all at computers or in offices, and so to get a chance to photograph people doing more traditional things, whether it's here or in Africa or in Latin America, I just run to that kind of stuff."

Atkinson had been to the Miramichi before, on assignment in Chatham and Newcastle and to shoot salmon fishing pictures for tourism campaigns.

"I grew up on the Prairies, where the rivers all dry up come August, so it's a whole different atmosphere for me."

When Power offered to introduce Atkinson to more people along the Miramichi, he jumped. It wasn't long after he started shooting they realized they had the makings of a book.

The project grew to include images of loggers who work with horses and other people who are preserving a bit of local history, such as Bernie Colepaugh, who runs a one-room museum near Renous and collects local lore. There are also stalwarts of the local music scene, including Bill Mullin, founder of The Miramichi Country Music Opry, and fiddling legend Matilda Murdoch. The octogenarian musician says she never gets tired of playing, and still sometimes fiddles into the wee hours if a jam is still in session.

"She's one of the sparks in that whole book," Atkinson says. "She just sets it off really well."

Others of its 27 subjects include lobster taxidermist John Bethel, a.k.a. Captain John; model shipbuilder Robert Squarebriggs; and Mike O'Reilley, who runs Ben's, the legendary lunch room his father opened in 1937. Ben's has "burgers and steamed hot dogs and that's it," Atkinson says. "And no swearing."

When the photographer first spoke to Mike about being part of the book, he wasn't sure the younger O'Reilley was keen.

"The next thing you know, he's got us in his little office, which is behind the counter, and he's showing us all this stuff, these receipts from the '30s, the '40s and '50s, from when his dad owned it."

The book's back cover image is a shot of Ben's after dark, the late-night crowd spilling onto the sidewalk out front. Atkinson took the image after stopping to pay a quick afternoon visit to Terry Power, en route to another assignment.

"We went in for a couple beers at four o'clock, and he kept me there till three in the morning. So that picture was taken with my little camera, late, late at night, and somewhat unexpectedly. But there's what Ben's is all about."

While the people Atkinson photographed for the book come from different backgrounds, Atkinson says they share a common character trait.

"All of these people, none of them think they're special, you know? They're just, 'I'm just Mike, so why are you photographing me?'

" 'I'm just Mike.' 'I'm just Billy Mullin.' And yet each one was pretty darn cool."

That aw, shucks authenticity shows itself in the pictures, he says.

"If you go to a city - Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary or even Saint John or Fredericton - when you're photographing people, they act for you or they do things for you. The Miramichi people, they would see the camera and go, 'OK, that's a camera.' And then they would go back to whatever they were doing. They didn't do special stuff for it.

"They never pretend to be something they're not. They just are. And that's fairly refreshing."

The intent was never to paint them as provincial eccentrics, though.

"The title of the book is Miramichi: River of Character. We didn't want it to be River of Characters. Because these aren't strange people. These are just people with character. And that was the main thing all the way through."

That and, of course, the river.

"I think the river and the history really binds them all together," Atkinson says. "It's not like they're really isolated from the rest of the universe, but they all have a real strong tie to the river, it is important to everybody."

Along with the book's many subjects, the project grew beyond Atkinson and Power to include a number of other contributors, including Wade Hallihan, another Miramichi local who helped come up with subjects; David Adams Richards, the renowned author from Newcastle, who wrote the preface; writer Joanne Cadogan, who penned the text that accompanied Atkinson's photos; and designers and editors at Goose Lane Editions and MC² Marketing, who co-published the volume.

Despite the many hands on the book, "it stayed pretty true to form," Atkinson says.

"I'd never been on any project before where so many people just cared about it so much."

From the initial feedback he has gotten, that the book captures the spirit of the Miramichi, he is optimistic it can find an audience beyond the region - and even the province.

"Lots of books in this world, novels you read, are set in some small locale in Russia or Europe somewhere, or even in Africa, so you don't know the place, but there is something universal in it," he says. "And I think that this one, because it captures real, honest people, I think that, in itself, is enough."

A book launch took place Thursday night in Fredericton. The initial launch June 9 was, of course, in the Miramichi.

"It was pretty well packed," Atkinson says. He reckons he signed more than 100 copies of the book that night.

The event was attended by many of the book's subjects, who had received personal copies of the edition, hand-delivered by Terry Power.

"So that night they started passing around the books they had to each other, and everyone was signing everybody else's book, it was like a high school grad book, right?" Atkinson says.

"It was so cool. So finally, I grabbed a book and got as many signatures as I could."

Kate Wallace covers the arts for the Telegraph-Journal.

The following is the introduction by David Adams Richards from Miramichi: River of Character.

In the evening, the water has its own language - there is no one from here who hasn't heard it - there is no one on the Miramichi who hasn't recognized it as their own, though it speaks in a thousand voices.

It may whisper to you at the corner of a run on the nor'west, or call you gently on a sou'west turn, near a pool on the Renous - along the shore at Escuminac, or where the Bay Du Vin moves, its brown, golden water flowing on a June day in the sun.

Some have stared at its green clear depth on the wharf at Burnt Church, or near the last bell buoy in the bay, alone in the deep autumn along some rocky shore, or watched the rain mist web against it on the Acadian coast.

At times when we come upon it - through the woods, we say: "There, listen?" And stop; hear it moving surely, independent of all the trouble of the world, in the green-leafed hidden valley down below.

It has power to move us long before it is ever seen.

It always has.

Don't laugh.

As true as the hand of God, it leads us.

At times it even saves us, if we listen long enough.

As a child, I listened to the bay at night, heard ghosts in the wind, tasted salt water in the small, stunted trees.

I listened as a boy, too, along the tree-lined Bartibog and far upriver, where the water washed through the caverns and granite cliffs on a blue-orbed day in late July.

Perhaps when we were children, we listened more - and better - to its callings.

Perhaps we keep coming back to it, though so many of us have gone so far away, to hear its voice.

I have travelled most of my life.

I have been here and there around the world.

Sometimes, I have asked myself: How do you go home? Sitting in places so far away and foreign to us all.

And then I realized - We only have to close our eyes to know.

To know what? Well, that we have taken it with us.

That we have taken it with us, even to the vast and uncompromising corners of the world.

To Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach on that terrible day, or dark Korea in l951.

And even then - even then, so deep it is within us, we carry some long-instilled and playful remembrance of its soul.

The faces of humanity in this book tell us this, too.

That it will never leave us; that which we heard as children will be with us now and at the end.

We can take this book and carry it far, or to our homes near the river's edge.

In a way, it is the definite and spellbinding emblem of our life.

Looking at the profiles of the people assembled here, we know this: Even if we've never once met them, we know them all.

They become the remarkable surrogates, the gentle authority of who we are.

And here's the real secret.

Despite disaster or suffering, race or creed, all - all - carry within their faces the embodiment of our river's ageless joy.

- Reprinted from 'Miramichi: River of Character' by permission of Goose Lane Editions.

The following passages, written by Joanne Cadogan, are excerpted from Miramichi, River of Character.

Ben’s Lunch Room When Ben O’Reilley opened Ben’s Red and White Canteen – later Ben’s Lunch Room – on Water Street in Chatham on July 1, 1937, he didn’t know he was founding an institution. Ben’s quickly became the hamburger and hotdog hangout for St. Thomas University students and the CFB Chatham crowd. It was perennially popular on race day, before and after the hockey/baseball game, following Saturday errands, after weekend clubbing, and before going home after a long absence.

“Ben used to call it the crossroads of America,” says Mike O’Reilley, who took over when his father retired in 1977.

Even Mike, who started out in charge of french fries at age 11, didn’t understand Ben’s iconic stature until 2007, when he closed the restaurant for two months to travel. “Some people got really mad and told me never to do that again,” he says.“One woman just opened the door and said,‘What’s the idea? I may not come often, but I want this to be here when I want a hamburger.’” Perhaps the public’s intense response sprang from something beyond Ben’s tradition of serving tasty food.“There’s been a no-swearing rule since day one, and people respect it. I’ve had people complain we should post a sign, but there’s no need. That’s just basic good manners,” Mike says.

Customers still say please and thank you, and many make Ben’s the backdrop for their graduation, wedding, and reunion photos.“I run it day to day, but I feel I’m a caretaker and it’s the public that really owns it.” While Ben’s rarely goes on the road, when the legendary Rolling Stones performed in Moncton, Michael O’Reilley was among the vendors serving the eighty-five thousand fans who attended.

The stand became a meeting place for Miramichiers and other Ben’s enthusiasts. “There was something so perfect about it,” one fan said,“having a Ben’s burger and watching the Rolling Stones.”

Jimmy macLeLLan, haRoLd FaiRLey, FRancis smith and BiLL GRiFFen The roots of the lumbering tradition along the Miramichi run as deep and long as the river itself. For Francis Smith, Harold Fairley, and Jimmy MacLellan, it goes back at least four generations – sometimes five – to great and great-great-grandfathers who either worked in the woods cutting and transporting trees or ran the sawmills the lumberjacks fed. While today’s cutting and milling operations are highly mechanized, these men like to keep a hand in the old-fashioned methods, partly in support of the Central New Brunswick Woodmen’s Museum in Boiestown, and partly in tribute to their stalwart forefathers.

Jimmy MacLellan says most lumberjacks went into camp in the fall, when they concentrated on cutting down as many trees as possible. “They finished cutting around Christmas, and after Christmas they started hauling to the mill.” All three men, along with their friend Vernon Dunphy, are skilled in the use of crosscut hand-saws. The trick, they say, is to pull the saw, not to push.“A team caught on to that awful quick,” Jimmy MacLellan says.“You could cut pretty fast as long as you kept the blade sharp.” Keeping the blade sharp involved filing the teeth, a job which generally fell to one member of the crew who sharpened eight to ten saws a day.

The men who went into the woods were strong in every way. They did hard, physical work, and they spent long, lonely months away from family and friends.“They were pretty rugged,” Harold Fairley says.“Everybody came out lousy in the spring. They worked in the same clothes pretty much all winter long, there wasn’t much opportunity to bathe, and they slept 10 to 12 to a bed,” he says, his nose wrinkling as he imagines the smell. As one of the founding directors of the Woodmen’s Museum, Francis Smith is proud of the role he’s played in preserving the memory of these hardworking men and the equipment and methods they used. He knows if he and his friends stop practising the older arts of lumbering, they will be lost. He also wants people to remember the contribution horses made to the growth of the lumber industry.“ Horses hauled the men and the groceries and other supplies into camp, they plowed and watered the road, and they yarded the logs,” says Francis Smith.“Horses were very important to lumber operations.”

Harold Fairley and Jimmy MacLellan still keep horses, five apiece, though theirs are larger and not nearly as industrious as those that worked alongside early lumberjacks. Their horses are put to work only occasionally, turning over soil in the spring, reenacting old lumbering practices for special visitors, and travelling to exhibitions in the summer.

When asked why they keep horses, they both laugh and say it’s because they’re crazy. “We don’t have four-wheelers or motorcycles, so I guess they’re our toys,”Harold Fairley says.

theodoRe WiLListon and cReW There isn’t much Theodore Williston once did that he doesn’t still do. At 77, he still cuts and piles wood to heat his Hardwicke home. He fishes. He tends his fishing gear. He plants, weeds, and harvests a vegetable garden.

He blows snow. He talks to area students and others about the Escuminac Disaster, of which he is a survivor. In fact, about the only thing he doesn’t do anymore is drink coffee or tea. His doctor told him the 20-odd cups a day he was consuming were making his heart race.

Despite a lifetime of hard work, Theodore Williston considers that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.“I started salmon drifting with my uncle when I was five years old. I had my own net. He kept an account of what the net cost and I paid it off with the salmon I caught,” he says.“In those days, when youngsters went fishing, they did so for financial reasons. When we went jigging cod, we got only a few cents a pound, but if you could end the day with $4 in your pocket, that was a lot of money.”

It was that lure of earning extra money that drew many young Hardwicke and Escuminac-area men to the sea on June 19, 1959. Theodore, at 27, was one of the youngest captains on the water that night, behind the wheel of a large, sturdy boat he had inherited from his Uncle Charlie. But the quality of his boat and gear made no difference. A freak storm hit the area, sinking 22 boats and drowning 35 men in what is still known as the deadliest hurricane in Canadian history.

“Some of the newer boats, some of the big boats, were taken.

So were some of the older, smaller boats. The sea didn’t have any choice.” Theodore, along with others, helped save several men that night, but despite their best efforts, the storm took a heavy toll: 19 women became widows, and 83 children became fatherless.

“There was people who never went back. Some said:

‘enough of this nonsense, let’s go do something else.’ A lot didn’t want to go back because they were afraid of the dead.

But most did go back,” he says, pointing out that most had to support their families.

Theodore was among those who returned, and for a time he was able to make a good living fishing lobster, oysters, scallops, clams, quahogs, cod, salmon, mackerel, flounder, smelts, and hake. But in recent years, most stocks have collapsed.

He says lobster catches are fairly good, but the costs don’t cover expenses. That makes rock crab and smelts the most lucrative fisheries remaining.

Theodore fishes smelts with his sons Mark and Ted, grandson Scott, and Anathase McIntyre. The winter fishery takes the men out onto the frozen Miramichi Bay,where more than a dozen stands of nets are strung below the ice. They use a chainsaw to make a gap in the ice through which to haul the nets. It’s bitterly cold work, often below -30 C, but Theodore says modern inner and outerwear keeps the fishermen quite warm as they haul, harvest, reset, and head off to the next net in their line. Good hauls see them reach a daily quota of 4,000 pounds of the small, sweet, white-fleshed fish.

Theodore worries sea life in the Miramichi Bay area will never rebound to previous levels. “But I shouldn’t be pessimistic,” he says.“I should be optimistic.”

As full of ups and downs as his life has been, Theodore says he wouldn’t change much. He loves his family and is as proud of the children who followed him into fishing as those who struck out to do something else. “If I had it to live over, there’s two things I’d do. I’d have a second language, and I’d learn a musical instrument. I think that’s a gift.”

matiLda muRdoch While Matilda Murdoch’s roots are f irmly planted in Loggieville, she’s always enjoyed travelling, especially when there’s music involved.“They used to call us The Galloping Grandmothers. There were three of us: Marg Scott played piano, and Roma McMillan and myself played violin. We used to go to Vermont and all over Ontario.”

Matilda met Marg Scott through her friend Don Messer, who helped set several of Matilda’s more than two hundred fiddle compositions down on paper. Matilda’s talent for music took her far ther than she ever thought it could, given her start playing by ear after listening to her family’s cylinder disk gramophone.

She’s proud of her pioneering work composing and recording two-step dancing albums to the exacting requirements of dance champion Buster Brown.“Nobody wanted to do it. I had to make up tunes as I went along, and it was a hard job. But I did it.” These and other compositions have brought musicians from around the world to Matilda’s door to play her tunes and learn her particular flourishes.

Jam sessions, many featuring her son Owen, often run into the not-so-wee hours.“I can stay as long as they want to play,” she says.“I can never say I get tired playing, thank God for that.”

– Reprinted from ‘Miramichi: River of Character’ by permission of Goose Lane Editions.