Knitting for NONIA has helped Newfoundlanders for more than a century
Who knit ya?” It’s a popular expression in Newfoundland that basically asks: what are your antecedents? Who are your parents?
It usually refers to people, of course.
But the story goes that once upon a time a woman bragged about how she’d knit her stove. And she was absolutely right. In a way. She got the money to purchase the stove by knitting for NONIA, a non-profit organisation started just over 100 years ago to help the people in the outports of Newfoundland.
The population of Newfoundland has always been scattered. In the period following World War I there were just 263,000 people in the British colony, mostly living in the 1,300 small fishing communities that dotted the island’s 9,600-kilometre coastline. Almost completely isolated, they had little access to either cash earnings or medical care. In 1920 the infant mortality rate in St. John’s, where hospitals and doctors were available, was nonetheless a shocking 146 per 1000 live births. The numbers were much worse in the outports and disease, tuberculosis in particular, ran rampart.
To do something to stop the terrible toll, Lady Harris, the wife of the governor, and Evelyn Hiscock, a nurse at the General Hospital in St. John’s, started the Outport Nursing Committee, designed to bring some sort of medical care to outport communities. Lady Harris travelled to England to recruit six nurses whose salaries would be paid by the government. It didn’t work out very well. By the end of the nurses’ two-year contract, three had married and one had suffered a breakdown. No one was contracted to replace them and when her husband’s term of office expired in 1922, Lady Harris returned to England.
That might have been the end of a worthwhile experiment if Lady Allardyce, the wife of the next governor, hadn’t taken up the cause with enthusiasm. In January 1924 a meeting of the Outport Nursing Committee was convened with the prime minister acting as chair. The enthusiasm of the many attendees led to the formation a few months later of NONIA, the Newfoundland Outport Nursing and Industrial Association. The purpose of the new organisation was explicitly to encourage industry in the outports as well as help to attain medical aid for the communities.
Handknit, decorative mittens are very popular items made by the NONIA women.
Lady Allardyce believed that the organisation could be self-supporting and used the knitting cooperatives of northern Scotland as a model for how things could work in Newfoundland. She obtained samples of Scottish garments, patterns and wool and brought them to Fortune Bay. The women there started knitting and produced marketable items that could be used to earn both income for themselves and money to contribute towards the salary of a nurse.
More nurses were recruited, and the women of the outports knit to support them. Between 1921 and 1934, there were centres in operation throughout the country, which were responsible for distributing wool and instructions, returning the finished products, and distributing the payment to the knitters. It was hoped that each committee would be able to cover 75 per cent of a nurse’s salary.
Things didn’t always work out the way it was hoped. Reading between the lines there were clearly problems in one nurse’s initial posting when she was moved to Bonne Bay because “there her work and inspiration are warmly appreciated”. Nurse Myra Bennett, one of the original NONIA nurses and something of a folk hero in Newfoundland, wrote in her diary that “After I had received a number of cheques for $75 a month, I politely told Lady Harris this would not add up to the correct total of $1,000 by the end of the year. She said simply that while no one was trying to cheat me, there just wasn’t the money to pay what I had been promised.” Nurse Bennett went on to work without pay for another 10 years.
Nonetheless the new organisation could be considered a success. By July 1925 there were 615 workers in 35 centres and in its first year, revenues of $25,000 ensured that the nurses were paid and the knitters received more than $5,000 for their goods. There was even enough money left over to recruit more nurses. In 1934 the government took over health care and the responsibility to pay for nurses and nursing stations was taken out of NONIA’s hands. Nonetheless the industrial side of the organisation continued and knitters across the country—later the province—carried on knitting for NONIA.
There are currently around 130 NONIA knitters. Amongst their number is Yvonne Sheppard, who lives in the tiny outport of Bristol’s Hope (population 300 or so). She moved there as a teacher about 70 years ago and never left. The lively 87-year-old reports she has been knitting for NONIA for 32 years.
“I started after my husband passed away. I saw an ad in the paper. I had to send them a sample.” She’s clearly amused by the idea. Though she may have only been knitting for NONIA since the late 1980s, she’s knit for as long as she can remember.
Sheppard learned to knit from her mother, and she’s passed the knowledge down to her three daughters. One of them, Linda Abbott, nods and rolls her eyes as her mother speaks, affection beaming out. She remembers being able to knit a pair of socks before she even started school (although she reckons she might have had help with turning the heel). It doesn’t sound like not learning to knit was an option.
Abbott doesn’t knit for NONIA (so far) but it’s not uncommon for the tradition to be passed down. Florence Rose has been knitting for NONIA for 28 years. “My mother knit for NONIA and she got me started. I used to do the bands for her sweaters.”
According to Keelin O’Leary, NONIA’s manager, “We don’t ask knitters how old they are when they start but we recognise long term knitters with an award; and we’ve had a few with more than 70 years of knitting. We have some young ones in their 30s, and all the way up.”
One of the more recent recruits is Cindy Miller, a payroll supervisor with the city of St. John’s. She’s been knitting for NONIA for about five years. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t know how to knit and she and her mother both knit for NONIA. “I have to be doing something when I’m watching TV,” she says.
Looking into the future none of the women can envision a time when they’ll be willing to hang up their knitting needles. “I just enjoy knitting,” says Sheppard. “I live alone and I have a lot of time on my hands. I just can’t sit doing nothing. NONIA provides me with the wool and I’ll keep knitting as long as I can.”
“I have no intention of ever stopping,” Miller says firmly; and she doesn’t just mean knitting, but knitting specifically for NONIA. The big advantage in her mind is that not only does she always have a project on the go, but it’s a worthwhile one. She appreciates the fact that her creations are both useful and valued. “I’m not buying patterns and wool just to make something. You’re doing your hobby and not just doing another blanket to put on the shelf.”
Funnily enough, or perhaps just indicative of how people take something they’re used to for granted, the articles are much more prized by tourists and others from away than they are by native Newfoundlanders. “Tourists happily pay $200 for a sweater” says O’Leary. “There’s a big demand outside the province—because a lot of locals think their nan can knit that, so why pay $20 for mitts.”
The knitted goods are not just valued for the craftsmanship that goes into them but also for the personalisation of the work. O’Leary says that they have introduced a system whereby each item has a tag attached telling where the woman who knit it lives. That small connection makes the products even more special. “Lots of people love the idea that someone in Lewisporte is knitting a sweater for them,” she says. A map of the province displayed in the store in downtown St. John’s has pins and a tag carefully marking everywhere there’s a NONIA knitter. One lone pin indicates the spot of a knitter in Nova Scotia. She must have moved there from Newfoundland after she became a NONIA knitter since only residents of the province need apply.
Recently a statue was unveiled on the grounds of Government House in St. John’s to celebrate NONIA’s centenary. The bronze piece by Morgan MacDonald shows a woman in a rocking chair knitting whilst her granddaughter carefully holds her ball of wool and watches intently. Though meant to capture the spirit of NONIA with an homage to an earlier era the piece is still timely. The patterns have changed over the years. Kitten bonnets are no longer made of angora and the iconic four caribou that used to feature on so many sweaters over the years have been retired. Nonetheless, somewhere on the island or in Labrador a woman is teaching a child to knit, and possibly also knitting herself a new microwave.