Three books for Christmas #nlpoli

Top Choice 

Where Once They Stood is arguably the most significant work on modern Newfoundland and Labrador political history in more than 30 years.

The fact that it has been largely ignored in popular conversation in this the 70th anniversary year of Confederation is an affirmation of its significance.

Raymond Blake and Melvin Baker Decisively repudiate decades of mythology about Confederation.  The show that voters fully understood the issues at stake in both the 1869 election and in the 1948 referenda.

Baker and Blake argue that women were instrumental in determining the outcome, in 1948, believing it provided the best opportunity for their children.

Invisible no more

James Candow's new history of the Royal Newfoundland Companies in the early and mid- 19th century fills an important gap in both the military and political history of Newfoundland at a crucial time in its history. 

The two histories are intertwined, culminating in the election riots of 1861 when members of the Royal Newfoundland Companies opened fire on a crowd of rioters, killing three and wounding others. The political compact that grew out of that election shaped Newfoundland politics and society into the twentieth century and continue to echo today.

"In The Invisibles, James E. Candow provides the fascinating back story of the Royal Newfoundland Companies while enhancing our understanding of the role they played in Newfoundland history and the lives of our communities."

The Invisibles is an inadvertent companion to Baker and Blake's examination of Confederation. 

A new Robert Bond biography 

Jim Hiller's biography of Robert Bond brings together elements of the story of Newfoundland's best known pre-Confederation prime minister that have been scattered through other works over the past four decades.

Hiller succeeds in his goal of placing Bond in the proper context of events during his political career while providing a fair assessment of the man and his performance.

Bond served in or led administrations through the 1890s and the first eight years of the 20th century. It was, as the ISER blurb describes it, "an era filled with challenges that still resonate today."    

Bond is most commonly associated with external affairs, primarly the struggle to negotiate free trade with the United States, to bring an end to the French Shore, and, generally, to deal successfully with imperial powers in London whose priorities could vary greatly from those in Newfoundland."

While we are still waiting for fresh eyes to look at Newfoundland's external relations from the 1890s through to the Great War and the early 1920s,  Hiller provides as thorough and fair treatment as one may find of one of the main figures in Newfoundland history and the time in which he lived.

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Seven Days of Books in One #nlpoli

The seven books from my part of the book challenge, with each described by the respective publisher's blurb:

1.  The myth of the strong leader by Archie Brown.

Archie Brown challenges the widespread belief that 'strong leaders', dominant individual wielders of power, are the most successful and admirable.

Within authoritarian regimes, a collective leadership is a lesser evil compared with a personal dictatorship. Within democracies, although ‘strong leaders’ are seldom as strong or independent as they purport to be, the idea that just one person is entitled to take the big decisions is harmful and should be resisted.

Examining Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping and Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair amongst many others, this landmark study pinpoints different types and qualities of leadership. Overturning the popular notion of the strong leader, it makes us rethink preconceptions about what it means to lead."

Heretics and Believers

Peter Marshall's Heretics and believers:  a history of the English Reformation from Yale University Press (2017) arrived as a belated birthday present on Friday past.  It's proven to be well worth the wait.  

As the official blurb describes it, "Peter Marshall’s sweeping new history—the first major overview for general readers in a generation—argues that sixteenth-century England was a society neither desperate for nor allergic to change, but one open to ideas of “reform” in various competing guises. King Henry VIII wanted an orderly, uniform Reformation, but his actions opened a Pandora’s Box from which pluralism and diversity flowed and rooted themselves in English life.

With sensitivity to individual experience as well as masterfully synthesizing historical and institutional developments, Marshall frames the perceptions and actions of people great and small, from monarchs and bishops to ordinary families and ecclesiastics, against a backdrop of profound change that altered the meanings of “religion” itself. This engaging history reveals what was really at stake in the overthrow of Catholic culture and the reshaping of the English Church."

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2016 in books #nlpoli

1.  Brand Command by Alex Marland.  The book that political marketing and communications academics will be quoting for a while to come.

2.  Observing the outports by Jeff Webb.  An accessible examination of the role the new university, its professors, and students played in the social and economic changes in Newfoundland and Labrador during the first 30 years after Confederation.

Two copies at Broken Books by the war memorial.

3.  Beating against the wind by Calvin Hollett. On one level,  a history of a theological dispute among Anglicans in Newfoundland 150 years ago but on another a book offers greater insight into the country and the people who built it. History from the ground up.

In the interest of full disclosure, Hollett is no close relation relation but a key figure in the book - Thomas Edward Collett of Harbour Buffett  - is my maternal great-great-great grandfather.

4.  Conflicted colony by Kurt Korneski.  A study of five conflicts that broadens and deepens our understanding of Newfoundland in the 19th century by applying a new lens to our view.  Far from being culturally or politically homogeneous,  Newfoundland in the 19th century was a frontier where diverse groups formed and reformed relationships in a constantly changing environment.

5.  Sweat equity by Chris Sharpe and AJ Shawyer.   This is the story of how the Commission government and the new provincial government after 1949 first recognised the desperate need for decent housing and then tried to meet the need using the resources available.

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Late Summer Reading #nlpoli

From the University of Toronto Press:

"The years after Newfoundland’s confederation with Canada were ones of rapid social and economic change, as provincial resettlement and industrialization initiatives attempted to transform the lives of rural Newfoundlanders.

"At Memorial University in St. John’s, a new generation of faculty saw the province’s transformation as a critical moment. Some hoped to solve the challenges of modernization through their rural research. Others hoped to document the island’s 'traditional' culture before it disappeared. Between them they created the field of 'Newfoundland studies.'

 "In Observing the Outports,  historian Jeff A. Webb illustrates how interdisciplinary collaborations among scholars of lexicography, history, folklore, anthropology, sociology, and geography laid the foundation of our understanding of Newfoundland society in an era of modernization. His extensive archival research and oral history interviews illuminate how scholars at Memorial University created an intellectual movement that paralleled the province’s cultural revival."

Contents

• Introduction 
• Chapter One: Viewing the Universe Through Newfoundland Eyes: The Dictionary of Newfoundland English 
• Chapter Two: Writing History 
• Chapter Three: Herbert Halpert and Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland: Collecting Folklore
• Chapter Four: Cat Harbour: Anthropologists in Outports 
• Chapter Five: Peopling of Newfoundland: Mapping Cultural Transfer and Settlement
• Chapter Six: Communities in Decline: The Study of Resettlement 
• Conclusion

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labradore's Labrador #nlpoli

For your summer reading enjoyment, here are five books on Labrador, courtesy of the always helpful Wallace McLean at labradore:

Elizabeth Goudie, Woman of Labrador

Originally published in 1973, Woman of Labrador is Elizabeth Goudie's enduring and candid story of her pioneering life as a trapper's wife in the early 1900s. She was left alone much of the year to rear eight children while her husband worked the traplines. Independent and resourceful, Elizabeth fulfilled her multiple roles as homemaker, doctor, cook, hunter, showmaker, and seamstress for her growing family. In the span of her eighty years, she witnessed radical changes to Labrador.

More Newfoundland books you should read #nlpoli

Yesterday you got Jerry Bannister's five books on Newfoundland.

Today you get an eclectic list from your humble e-scribbler:

1.  Jeff Webb,  The Voice of Newfoundland: A Social History of the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland, 1939–1949.  This is a book about how radio helped shape Newfoundland at a crucial time in its social, economic, and political development. Grab the Kobo edition if you don't want the hard copy.

2. Consider Ray Guy:  the Smallwood years and Ray Guy:  the revolutionary years as one huge compilation of Ray Guy's political columns broken into two pieces.  Ray was a fine writer, more mythologised since his death than he was regarded through most of his life but that is often the way it is with prophets in their own land.  So many of the columns could be about more recent events.  Just the names have changed.

3.  Edward Roberts,  How Newfoundlanders got the baby bonus is a collection of columns the former lieutenant governor wrote for The Compass newspaper.  Each column is engaging, accessible, and informative.  Together they cover virtually every period in Newfoundland and Labrador history.  

4.  As a bonus,  Roberts included a suggested reading list in the back broken down by topic.  One of the books Roberts highly recommends is Jerry Bannister's The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832.  Roberts calls this one of the most important scholarly works about Newfoundland's history.  Roberts is right.

5.  John R. Martin is a retired physician who served as chief occupational medical officer for the provincial government from 1984 to 1992.  The fluorspar mines of Newfoundland: their history and the epidemic of radiation lung cancer combines the author's considerable professional knowledge and experience with prodigious research that included access to Alcan's corporate archives.

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The "new" Newfoundland #nlpoli

Every once in a while,  SRBP has featured a list of suggested books either for summer enjoyment or as in April 2006,  for anyone interested in reading about Newfoundland and Labrador.

A recent email reminded your humble e-scribbler that it was time to update the recommended list of books on Newfoundland and Labrador.  There are more than five and even more than 10 books you should read.

To get us started, here are some suggestions from a faithful support of the Bond Papers,  historian Jerry Bannister.  We'll feature some other lists as the summer wears on.

A renaissance feast for Christmas #nlpoli

Fans of politics in Newfoundland and Labrador have two excellent books that should be at the top of their Christmas gift lists this year.

First among unequals: the premier, politics, and policy in Newfoundland and Labrador is a collection of 12 essays on different aspects of recent politics with an introduction, and an opening and closing chapter by Dr. Alex Marland, who, along with Dr. Matthew Kerby, edited the collection.

Newfoundland’s last prime minister by former CBC executive producer Doug Letto is subtitled, not surprisingly,  “Frederick Alderdice and the death of a nation.”

People will  - and should - buy both these books.  They are well written and researched and represent, in their own way, two firsts in local political writing.

Summer Political Reading List #nlpoli

If you are looking for some political reading over the summer, here are a few books worth checking out.

Tragedy in the Commons by Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan. Here’s the whole Random House blurb: 

In Tragedy in the Commons, Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan, founders of the non-partisan think tank Samara, draw on an astonishing eighty exit interviews with former Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum to unearth surprising observations about the practice of politics in Canada.

Though Canada is at the top of international rankings of democracies, Canadians themselves increasingly don’t see politics as a way to solve society’s problems. Small wonder. In the news, they see grandstanding in the House of Commons and MPs pursuing agendas that don’t always make sense to the people who elected them.

Summer Reading List

A compendium of 100 biases in the way we all think, described in easy-to-understand language, The Art of Thinking Clearly should be required reading in the provincial government these days.

Keep a pad of paper and a pencil beside you as you read this book. 

Jot down the biases you can relate to Muskrat Falls.

Try not to cry.

____________

Jamie McWhirter served with the Canadian Army in Afghanistan in 2006. A soldier’s tale is his own account of the time he spent there.

This is a touching, highly personal account that doesn’t take you anywhere except inside the author’s head. 

That’s all you’ll need to understand what he experienced, his psychological injuries, and how far McWhirter has come to be able to tell the parts of his story that are in this book.

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On the Summer Reading List

The Oprah Winfrey Book Club this ain’t, but for those who might be hunting around for something to read, consider these books your humble e-scribbler picked up recently:

• How to write a sentence and how to read one by Stanley Fish.  This may be a New York Times bestseller but this is a book aimed at writers and fans of the art of writing.

 

 

 

• Split-second persuasion by Kevin Dutton.  An accessible compilation of recent ideas and theories about how people form opinions and how others influence them.

 

 

 

 

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Show him your love…this Sunday buy a book

What with all the fuss this week about Danny friggin’ off on a plane rather than show up for a love in with his Fan Club, your humble e-scribbler got a Dunderdaleish shock when this e-mail showed up in ye olde in-box:

What better way to show how much you love him – compared to those ungrateful Tories – than to show up and plunk down some hard cash so you can have his big mug on your coffee table.

Dunno if Danny has a piece of this book action or if he’s just helping the boys out with the marketing.

Heck, it isn’t clear to anyone if the Old Man is even gonna show up for that matter.  After all, this ad may well have been drawn up before he took his latest trademark hissy-fit. What an ironic turn of events as nothing shows Danny’s nature and style than the contemptuous “pffft” he threw at his former party-mates last week.

Even if he isn’t gonna be there, show up and chat with Paul Daly and award-winning writer Russell Wangersky.  You might even want to buy the book.

And if you are so inclined, pick up Bill Rowe’s tome as well.  Tons of copies of the thing are destined for the remainder bins if you don’t.

Better idea:  bundle them up and send them off to the Tokyo electric company.  They could use the fodder to help bury that troublesome reactor.

Anyway.

Sunday.

Russell and Paul signing their books at Chapters.

Support two local artists.

See you there!

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Hansard editor pens unique parliamentary novel

 

The blurb for this novel by the former editor of Hansard at the House of Assembly says it all:

Verbatim: a novel is a hilarious and scathing exposé of parliamentary practice in an unnamed Atlantic
province. Dirty tricks, vicious insults, and inept parliamentary procedures are some of the methods members use to best represent their constituents.

Infighting about petty matters within the staff of the legislature is captured by Hansard, its recording division, complete with typos unique to each correspondent. But when the bureaucrats begin to emulate their political masters, the parliamentary system’s supposed dignity is further stripped away.

Jeff Bursey reveals how chaotic and mean-spirited the rules behind the game of politics are, and how political virtue corrupts everyone. Verbatim is an inventive and blackly humorous work that speaks to the broken parliamentary practices found across the country.

About the author:

“Jeff Bursey has worked for Hansard in Atlantic Canada for seventeen years, first as
a transcriber, and then as an editor. Born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and currently
living in Charlottetown, PEI, Jeff has only ever lived on islands.”

What others are saying:

“Jeff Bursey has written a clever, highly innovative and highly readable novel about Newfoundland, specifically modern Newfoundland politics. The satire is sharp, sometimes hilarious, the language perfectly suited to the subject.“-- Wayne Johnston, author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

Bursey’s work also enjoyed a very favourable review in the Winnipeg Free Press.

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New book by city councilor Frank Galgay

St. John’s city council Frank Galgay has a new book out this fall, just in time for the holiday season.

Here’s a chunk of the blurb from the Flanker Press website:

“The glory days of sailormen come alive in the pages of Rocks Ahead! as Galgay revisits the old northern channels where seafarers defied death at every turn.  These past few centuries, many have perished in the bitter Atlantic waters, while others have found hope among the ruins. The 30 stories within these pages span the years between 1704 and 1944. They recapture some of the most awesome and terrifying voyages any captain has ever seen, including the heroic rescue of the crew of the Merry Widow, the oil spill off Mistaken Point from the SS Rotterdam, the SS Grampian’s fatal collision with an iceberg, and many more exciting tales of doom and deliverance.”

Rocks ahead is in bookstores now or by mail from Flanker Press.

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