Letters to the Editor Franc Joubin had it straight

Apropos my recent Odds ‘n’ Sods memoir anecdote (N.M., May 30/88), about “Black Angus,” my critic Eric Ascroft (letter, Northern Miner issue of June 13/88) has reason for his confusion, exceeded only by my own.

Angus’ finger was chopped off below the middle knuckle of his left hand, in Zeballos, Vancouver Island, beside the Pioneer shack in that community which served as our operating clinic. Pioneer Mines of Bridge River had nothing to do with the “fingering of Angus,” and was an embellishment of The Northern Miner’s rewrite editor.

Yet this subject remains of interest. Last Saturday I received a collect phone call from Fishy Hollow, N.S., to this effect; “I’m Nancy and Angus’ sister-in-law. I heard the same doctor, the very next day, sewed the end of the cut finger back onto Angus, but I don’t know where.” I briefly considered the suggestion, “On his lower abdomen, perhaps?” but felt this matter was getting out of hand so held my peace. Franc R. Joubin Toronto, Ont. Editor’s note: We plead guilty to having taken some editorial licence with Joubin’s story, and mislocating the scene of Black Angus’ trial. As Joubin says, Zeballos, where it did happen, is on Vancouver Island, but we mistakenly located the action at the Pioneer mine at Bridge River, which was in the B.C. interior about 150 miles or so north-northeast of Vancouver.