NL after the oil boom and hydro bust #nlpoli

Newfoundland and Labrador Historical Society

George Story Lecture and Annual General Meeting

Marine Institute - Hampton Hall

The Return of History?

Newfoundland and Labrador 

after the Oil Boom and the Hydro Bust

Dr. Jerry Bannister

April 30, 2020

Building on the themes established in A river runs through it (2012), Dr. Bannister will explore the changing roles of history since the province’s economic downturn. 

He will trace patterns in political culture and collective memory from the Williams era to the present day, as the province experienced the end of triumphalism and the return to a politics of loss. 

In discussing the causes and consequences of the Muskrat Falls crisis, he will examines the ebb and flow of Newfoundland nationalism over the past 20 years. Is this province breaking with its past or returning to its 20th century narrative?

A graduate of Memorial University and the University of Toronto, Dr. Jerry Bannister is an associate professor of History and Acting Director of the Marine Affairs Program at Dalhousie University.   

Born and raised in Newfoundland and Labrador, he is a past member of the Executive of the Newfoundland and Labrador Historical Society.

Recent books:

• Elizabeth Mancke, Jerry Bannister, Denis McKim, and Scott See, eds., Violence, Order, and Unrest: A History of British North America, 1749-1876. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.
• Melvin Baker, Jerry Bannister, and Christopher Curran, eds., Essays on the Legal History of Newfoundland and Labrador. St. John’s: Law Society of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2019.
• Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan, eds., The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012
• William R. Keylor and Jerry Bannister, The Twentieth-Century World: An International History. First Canadian Edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

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Two solitudes - the pdf version #nlpoli

This is an article I wrote a couple of years ago for The Dorchester Review. (Volume 6, Number 1,  Spring/Summer 2016.  I posted about the piece when it came out but now you can buy buy the whole issue online,  subscribe, or download the pdf of "Two solitudes" at academia.edu)

"Newfoundland and Canada, separate countries for so long, exist as two solitudes within the bosom of a single country more than 65 years after Confederation. They do not understand each other very well. Canadians can be forgiven if they do not know much about Newfoundlanders beyond caricatures in popular media, let alone understand them. But Newfoundlanders do not know themselves. They must grapple daily with the gap between their own history as it was and the history as other Newfoundlanders tell it to them, wrongly, repeatedly."

For those who are interested,  I've got an article in the latest edition of The Dorchester Review on Newfoundland nationalism in an era of transformation. 

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Escape Hatch #nlpoli

Historian Gerhard bassler's new book from Flanker  examines efforts by the Government of Newfoundland to develop local industry by recruiting immigrants from Germany, Latvia,  and Austria between 1950 and 1970.

Based in large part on interviews Bassler conducted for other research on Germans in Newfoundland,  this is a personal account of the men and women who came to Newfoundland and who, in many instances, stayed despite their initial impressions of the place and its people.

Bassler documents each of the industries created and, as such, this is a welcome companion to Bassler's biography of the architect of the program - Alfred Valdmanis - as well as Doug Letto's Chocolate bars and rubber boots.

Escape Hatch is available in book stores or online from Flanker.

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Two Solitudes #nlpoli

"Newfoundland and Canada, separate countries for so long, exist as two solitudes within the bosom of a single country more than 65 years after Confederation. They do not understand each other very well.  Canadians can be forgiven if they do not know much about Newfoundlanders beyond caricatures in popular media, let alone understand them.  But Newfoundlanders do not know themselves.  They must grapple daily with the gap between their own history as it was and the history as other Newfoundlanders tell it to them, wrongly, repeatedly."

That's an excerpt from " Two solitudes,"  my thoughts on Newfoundland, Canada and the Great War.  You can find it in in the latest Dorchester Review  now available.  [Available as a per issue purchase]

Check it out.

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Through a glass, darkly #nlpoli

Imagine that Newfoundland history is enclosed inside a gigantic room.  Inside the room everything is pitch black.

Every now and again,  someone opens the door and goes inside the room to take a look at an event somewhere in the past.  They don’t have much in the way of light to help them see.  When they get to whatever spot they are looking for, they take a picture and bring out with them to tell the rest of us the story of what they saw in the dark room.

If you had hundreds or even dozens of people going in and out of the room,  after a while you might build up a really clear picture of all the stuff inside.  Unfortunately,  only a few people have gone in.  Some of them have come out with nothing more than sketches.  Some of them brought cameras and a couple had the sense to get short movies.

For anyone who wants to understand what happened in our collective past, you can see what kind of a problem there is.  Not only have we only had a handful of people go in, a lot of them go to the same place over and over again.  In some cases,  people interested in the local history don’t even go into the room  any more. They just describe to us the sketches and out-of-focus snapshots taken by others.

The Great War and Newfoundland Political Memory #nlpoli

“It is sobering to think,”  historian Sean Cadigan wrote in the Telegram on Tuesday, “that the memory of the casualties of war has been used partially for later political purposes for almost a century.”

Cadigan was recounting the history of the ceremony on July 1 that started in 1917 to mark the anniversary of the battle in which hundreds of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians died in a few short minutes.

It is possible that, in the process of "remembering," we may be in danger of forgetting the real aspirations of the men of 1916 when we gather on Memorial Day tomorrow.

Sobering though it may have been,  Cadigan had no trouble using the corpses at Beaumont Hamel for his own purpose and that is where we begin. 

Identity Crisis #nlpoli

Newfoundland is changing, Michael Crummey writes in the Newfoundland nationalists’ newspaper, the Globe and Mail.  House prices are climbing in St. John’s.  There are plenty of expensive restaurants around and people to eat the food and drink the wine sold there.

“But,”  says Crummey,  “while oil execs tuck into their gourmet fish, much of rural Newfoundland is falling deeper into a crisis that began with the cod moratorium in 1992.”

The whole province – Newfoundland and Labrador – is changing.  There is a difference between the changes around the provincial capital and the rest of the province.  Crummey says that a “generation from now,  what it means to be a Newfoundlander will be something altogether different” from what he calls the traditional Newfoundland of “isolated, tightly knit communities that relied on the fishery and each other for survival.”

All true stuff.  The place and its people are changing.  The problem with Crummey’s commentary is that he gets his timescales wrong and misidentifies the root of the change and its implications.

Shapes and sizes #nlpoli

The Duke of Connaught,  Governor General of Canada and uncle of King George, visited St. John’s in the middle of July, 1914.  During his visit,  he officially opened a new park in St. John’s and inspected the paramilitary groups that formed the basis of Newfoundland’s defence plan in the event of war,  of just the sort that was on the horizon in July 1914.

As part of imperial defence preparations in the decade and a half before,  the Newfoundland government had participated like all the parts of the British empire. At the 1909 Imperial Conference,  Sir Edward Morris had committed officially to organize soldiers for local defence and potentially service in addition to the Royal Naval Reserve division created around the time of the Boer War at the turn of the century and maintained by the Newfoundland government at a cost of 3,000 pounds sterling annually ever since.

The Newfoundland force would draw its men from the paramilitary brigades like the Legion of Frontiersmen,  the Armed Lads’ Brigade in Twillingate, King Edward brigade in Harbour Grace, and the religious groups like the Church Lads’ Brigade, the Catholic Cadet Corps,  the Methodist Guards, and the Newfoundland Highlanders, representing the Presbyterian Church.

In the event, the British government signalled the imperial governments to adopted the precautionary stage of the country’s defence plan on July 29, 1914.  Newfoundland did so.  The Admiralty mobilized the Royal Navy the same day and on July 30,  the governor in St. John’s formally forwarded a telegram to the commanding officer of the naval reserve division in St. John’s to “hold in readiness” for a call-out.  That word came at 4:00 AM local time on August 2, in a message sent through official channels in the name of the secretary of state fro colonies (Harcourt) to the governors of colonies with naval reservists. 

Remembering… or not #nlpoli

The news release that announced a provincial commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the First World War includes right at the start a picture of two couples, one older, and a small child.

The photograph is curious.

Look closely at it.

The Great War and Newfoundland Nationalism #nlpoli

This is a revised version of post that originally appeared on July 4, 2012.

___________________________________

Mark Humphries is an historian at Memorial University.  He spoke with CBC’s Chris O’Neill-Yates on July 1, 2012 about the impact of Beaumont Hamel on Newfoundland and Labrador.

Humphries does an interesting job of putting the 700 dead and wounded on that day into a larger context.  He likened it to 161,000 Canadian males between 19 and 45 years of age dying in 20 minutes today.

Then, in response to a question from Chris, Humphries turned it into a unifying event for the country.

Some Thoughts on Politics, Myth, and Identity #nlpoli

Your humble e-scribbler saw a couple of comments last week that said the NDP town hall on Muskrat Falls was a good argument against having a referendum on the megaproject.  Some people were quite badly misinformed, so the commentary went, not just about Muskrat Falls itself but about the province’s electricity supply and demand.

Those observations are surprising.  They are surprising because we’ve had two whole years of relentless marketing by Nalcor about their project.  They are surprising because the provincial government has been trying to develop the Lower Churchill continuously since 1998.  There isn’t a single year since then when the provincial government, Nalcor and before that Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro have not been trying to find some way to get this thing done.

That’s almost 15 years of relentless public discussion.  And still people don’t know basic information.

Absolutely gobsmacking, that is.  Unless you think about public discussions over the past decade or so.

Beaumont Hamel and the Newfoundland nation #nlpoli

Mark Humphries is an historian at Memorial University.  He spoke with CBC’s Chris O’Neill-Yates on July 1 about the impact of Beaumont Hamel on Newfoundland and Labrador.

Humphries does an interesting job of putting the 700 dead and wounded on that day into a larger context.  He likened it to 161,000 Canadian males between 19 and 45 years of age dying in 20 minutes today.


Then in response to a question from Chris, Humphries turned it into a unifying event for the country.

A river runs through it #nlpoli

Jerry Bannister’s paper “A river runs through it:  Churchill Falls and the end of Newfoundland history” is now available in the latest issue of Acadiensis.

The Newfoundland Flag: Great War version

For those who have been following the Newfoundland flag posts, here’s another contribution that may well surprise some people.

This is an example of the certificates sent to families of soldiers killed during the Great War (1914-1918).  A similar document for sailors killed in action had the words Royal Naval Reserve in place of “1st Newfoundland Regiment”.

The flag to the left is the familiar Union Flag. 

The one on the right is the red ensign, adopted by the Newfoundland legislature in 1904.  The red version flew on government buildings while the blue version flew on government ships.

Incidentally, a Wikipedia entry on Newfoundland and Labrador incorrectly identifies the ensign as an “unofficial commercial flag” while one on the Dominion of Newfoundland shows the ensign correctly as the official flag..

The ensign included the 1827 Great seal of Newfoundland in the fly.   The Great Seal depicts a fisherman and Mercury, the god of commerce, presenting the harvest of the sea to Britannia.  The motto is translated as “These gifts I bring thee.”

This was the official flag of Newfoundland at the time of the Great War.  In fact, you’ll have a hard time finding any official documents from the period which substitute another flag for the red or blue ensign. 

There are other examples of unofficial documents that use this flag in preference to any other.  A handbill distributed by the Fishermen’s Protective Union to praise the sacrifice of the Morey family of Boot Harbor [sic], Hall’s Bay shows the Union Flag and the red ensign.  The Morey’s had seven sons:  a total of four served with the Newfoundland regiment (2), the Royal Naval Reserve (1)and the forestry corps(1) .  A fifth had joined the American army and two others had tried repeatedly to enlist but been rejected for undisclosed reasons.

A poem honoring the regiment’s Roman catholic padre, Father Thomas Nangle, appeared in the August 1916 issue of the Newfoundland Quarterly. The only flags on the page are the Union Flag and the red ensign of Newfoundland.

-srbp-

Everything old is new again, fisheries version

From the New York Times, November 2, 1889, quoting a report by the Newfoundland Chamber of Commerce:

The lobster fishery has been expanded and is now a valuable factor in the exports of the colony “but it is much to be feared that indiscriminate fishing is injuring this industry.”

Then later:

A fisheries department has been organized and it has obtained a Superintendent for the work of artificially replenishing the cod stock.

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Newfoundland pre-Confederation trade, a snapshot

As reported by the New York Times, 1889

Exports:

Destination	Amount (US $)
Brazil	1,325,080
Portugal	1,198,392
United Kingdom	607,007
Spain	556,554
Canada	482,497
France	349,732
Untied States	327,925

Imports:

Origin	Amount
United Kingdom	3,265,229
Canada	2,041,044
United States	1,602,138

Interestingly enough, by the late 1940s, the United States had become the major destination of Newfoundland exports while Canada was the chief source of imports along with the United States and the United Kingdom.

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Free Newfoundland!

From a comment by Wallace Ryan on a cbc.ca/nl story:

Despite the ugly words of Canadians, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are finally closer to our dream of returning to those pre-WWI days when we were a rich nation full of promise and bravery.

I think it's time for us to reassert our nationhood and reclaim our heritage that has been sullied too long by Canadians. The only way we are to survive the demographic time bomb that threatens to make Newfoundland and Labrador second class citizens in this supposedly equal confederation is to reconstitute ourselves as an independent nation.

I'm sick of hearing our proud people maligned and mocked by our so-called fellow Canadians. I'm not a Canadian. I'm a proud citizen of the nation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Free Newfoundland and Labrador.
Vive Newfoundland et Labrador Libre!

Ah yes, the glorious days before the Great War.

Political corruption, religious segregation, poverty, disease, health care and education that rivaled anything found in a modern underdeveloped country.

Such a glorious place that a huge portion of the first volunteers were rejected because they did not meet the minimum requirements of being 5 ft 2 inches in height with a chest measurement of 35 inches.

Sheer heaven!

We must free Newfoundland.

We must free it, that is,  of such unashamed ignorance.

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Full moon and a call to arms

Justice minister Jerome Kennedy took time to call the Sunday evening talk show at the voice of the cabinet minister to lambaste Stephen Harper and the federal Conservatives.  He insisted, among other things, that the Family Feud was embraced by all Provincial Conservatives including him.

Fair enough.

It is a family feud, after all and Kennedy is part of one branch of the family doing the feuding.

In the course of his lengthy rant, Kennedy hit on a litany of supposed injustices done to Newfoundland and Labrador by Uncle Ottawa over the years.  Included among the old chestnuts was a reference to something that supposedly took place in 1931. 

Kennedy didn't elaborate.

The whole thing sounded like a call to the barricades.

But 1931?

How about Blaine-Bond, anyone?

If the Airing of Grievances is going back to 1931  - 18 years before Newfoundland and Labrador was a Canadian province - it's likely only a matter of time before the minister of justice finds some Great Injustice in a time before Canada even really existed.

And when was the last time d'Iberville's campaign in Newfoundland used for political purposes around these parts?

Generally, there had been little friction between French and English fishermen in the 1600s. There was growing friction, however, in that century between France and England, and the hostility between the two countries often spilled into Newfoundland. The winter campaign of Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville in 1696-1697, which resulted in the destruction of almost all of the English settlements in Newfoundland, was simply the most sensational demonstration of this fact. Eventually, because of military and strategic successes elsewhere in North America and around the world, the French agreed to recognize British sovereignty over Newfoundland.

There's an interesting connection in that story, by the way.  D'Iberville raided along the coast of Newfoundland until he reached Carbonear - in the district Kennedy represents - only to find the residents had taken refuge on a nearby island which they had fortified sufficiently to defend against D'Iberville's attacks.

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