One of the mental exercises carried out at the Newfoundland Historical Society's 50th anniversary symposium on Newfoundland's entry into Confederation in the spring of 1999 was a poll on the matter of entry with the same set of alternatives. In that poll, without the political pressure brought to bear by the original circumstances, the assembly voted somewhat mischievously in favour of Responsible Government While it would be difficult to read the result as much more than an interlude of nationalistic yearning, it did reopen the vexing question of what might have occurred had Newfoundland arranged itself at finish line on the long road to Confederation, made some encouraging gestures, and refused to cross it. With J.R. Smallwood set on the margin, who would have led the ensuing government? Indeed, who would have been elected to the House of Assembly? What alignments would have occurred with foreign countries?
To this day, it is deliciously amusing to ponder who among the existing élite of the province might now be employed as, say, ambassador to Ireland? (Richard Cashin?) Who might occupy the office of high commissioner in Ottawa? (Clyde Wells?) This kind of amusement serves as a reminder that Newfoundland and Labrador as a collectivity displayed at the time of Confederation many of the elements associated with nationhood: a lengthy recorded history, cultural tradition, distinctive linguistic traits, folk songs, folk tales, and above all a sense of place. "This is a country [sic] in which we have developed very distinctive peculiarities," declared Smallwood at the National Convention in 1947. "We have our own traditions. We have our own folklore. We have our own folkmusic. . . . We have got a distinctive culture all our own . . . ." The inhabitants of Newfoundland and Labrador could justifiably claim such distinctions, but ironically it took Confederation itself to bring about what is sometimes regarded as their "renaissance," a flowering of cultural expression similar to those taking place in newly independent countries the world over. In particular, it produced a body of literature not unlike what was produced throughout the British empire after 1945, a literature broadly linked to the transformation of colonial society.
This series of readings at the National Library of Canada examines some of the ways in which writing about Newfoundland and Labrador participates in the process of self-imagining, ways in which a variety of literary forms have served to project identity and a sense of community within the Canadian cultural landscape. For apart from its geographical and political formations, Newfoundland and Labrador is (to borrow Benedict Anderson's term) a community "imagined," a product of its own writers, soldiers, politicians and public functionaries. Throughout the world, new political transformations, especially newly independent colonies, have found ways of symbolizing identity. A similar process has occurred for the past fifty years in Canada's newest province.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, the process has involved the founding of Memorial University (also 50 years old), the conservation of linguistic and musical traditions, the visual representation of the landscape, a revival of community theatre. New writing by Newfoundlanders, both at home and abroad, has been enormous, and it would be impossible to summarize what has occurred in prose alone. But perhaps the four titles chosen for this series will raise questions about the role of literature in the provincial consciousness. Wayne Johnston's Colony of Unrequited Dreams (1998) is the latest of a series of Newfoundland novels to examine networks of national affiliation and the construction of historical memory. Though its chief protagonist is "Joseph Smallwood," the central preoccupation is Newfoundland itself, its self-consciousness and its political impotence. David Macfarlane's Danger Tree (1991) is an attempt by an Ontario writer of Newfoundland heritage to come to grips with his family's place in the world by linking it to a defining episode of the colony's history: its participation in the First World War and the annihilation of its young men. White Tie and Decorations (1996), the letters of a colonial administrator edited by Newfoundland historian Peter Neary, makes plain the financial and social deprivations which brought renewed claims for an alignment with Canada. And in No Holds Barred (1997), John Crosbie, one of the new political élite, traces from the inside the political transformations brought about by Confederation both provincially and federally. All four invite us to contemplate how change occurs and how perception is related to textuality.
Ronald Rompkey
Department of English
Memorial University
For Further Reading
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1983.
Byrne, Pat. "The Confluence of Folklore and Literature in the Creation of a Newfoundland Mythology within the Canadian Context," in Jørn Carlsen, ed., Canada and the Nordic Countries in Times of Reorientation: Culture & Politics (Århus, Denmark: Nordic Association for Canadian Studies, 1998), 55-77.
Duley, Margaret. "Glimpses into Local Literature," Atlantic Guardian, 13, no. 7 (July 1956): 20-26.
Gwyn, Sandra. "The Newfoundland Renaissance," Saturday Night (April 1976): 38-45.
O'Flaherty, Patrick. The Rock Observed: Studies in the Literature of Newfoundland. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979.
Overton, James. "A Newfoundland Culture?" Journal of Canadian Studies, 23 (1988): 5-22.
Rompkey, Ronald. "The Idea of Newfoundland and Provincial Arts Policy Since Confederation," Newfoundland Studies, 14 (1998): 266-81.
Whiteway, Louise. "History of the Arts in Newfoundland," Newfoundland Government Bulletin 3-14 (January-March 1953): 3-13; 16.
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