The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (57 page)

“God help Newfoundland,” Cashin said upon departing.

“God helps those who help themselves,” Lord Addison said.

It was next decided to send a delegation to Ottawa for “exploratory discussions” as to what Confederation with Canada would mean for Newfoundland. Bradley and I headed this delegation — a few non-elected officials went with us — and it, too, got off to a bad start.

It was June and there was a heat wave in Ottawa, which so reminded Bradley of the time when he was swaddled that all he could do was lie abed in the Château Laurier begging me not to make him go outside. I was frantic that unless we did
something
in Ottawa, Britain would replace Bradley and me with someone who had at least an outside chance of getting Confederation on the ballot paper.

I asked Bradley if he might consider not wearing longjohns beneath his clothes or wearing a suit less likely than one made of Harris tweed to bring on heat prostration. Bradley consented and accompanied me to Woolworth’s on Sparks Street, where I bought him six pairs of boxer shorts, Bradley standing beside me at the checkout counter and telling me that our mission was futile, that Confederation would never be placed on the ballot in the upcoming referendum, and even if it was, it would be overwhelmingly rejected and we should therefore catch the next east-bound train.

Unfazed by this prognostication, I bought Bradley a linen suit. For the first time in his life, he wore short underwear and a suit not made of tweed. Though these changes afforded him some relief, he still lolled about Ottawa, constantly and profusely sweating, all the more so, for some inscrutable reason, in the air-conditioned buildings in which we at last met the Canadian delegates, who, it was clear right from the start, planned to do everything they could to help me sell Confederation to Newfoundland.

Day after day for three months, Bradley sat beside me, continuously mopping perspiration from his brow, his face, his neck, tugging on his collar, drinking water by the jugful. I wrote home
to the convention that “Bradley is making a fine impression on the Canadians and I must confess that I am proud to have him as our chairman.”

I briefly met with Liberal prime minister Mackenzie King, who told me he was about to retire from politics and would very much like to crown his career by bringing Newfoundland into Confederation with Canada and be remembered as the man who completed the long-ago-predicted dominion that would run from sea to sea. King’s heir apparent, Louis St. Laurent, was just as openly in favour of my cause, though he kept assuring me that Confederation would happen only if asked for by the people of Newfoundland. “You’re a Liberal, of course,” said St. Laurent. “I mean, they tell me that you are.” I assured him that I was and would be for all time.

Clearly, the question in all of their minds was to what degree my appearance and rough edges belied my shrewdness and ability, for the sight of me never failed to raise an eyebrow on the Hill. Bradley was of more importance to me than, before leaving for Ottawa, I had imagined he would be. He was tall, well-dressed, well-educated, well-schooled in the social graces. I think a hybrid of Bradley and me would have reassured the Canadians that their cause was in good hands.

Suspicions were rampant back at the convention in Newfoundland as to why our visit to Ottawa was dragging on so long. Demands were made daily that we come home and tell the other delegates what we had been up to. What we were up to was securing a detailed draft of the Terms of Union with Canada, which I had no more authority to do on behalf of Newfoundland than a randomly selected citizen of Portugal.

When we arrived home, Cashin accused us of being traitors. I replied that we had at least done better in Ottawa than he had in London. Outside the chamber, he threw a punch at me, which I dodged, then grabbed both of his wrists and fell backwards onto the floor. When Cashin attacked me, I was inhaling on a cigarette, and
even as we were lying there on the floor, I blew smoke up into his face, so enraging him that it took several men to drag him off me.

Field Day, October 19, 1947

Yesterday, at the National Convention, Peter Cashin quoted from a document signed by Newfoundland and Britain in 1933 in which it is stated that “a full measure of responsible government will be restored to the colony when it is once again self-supporting.” Why, in light of this, Cashin demanded to know, are we even having a National Convention? Why, now that Newfoundland is again self-supporting, has this restoration not taken place? Is this not a violation of the agreement? Is this not treachery?

To this question, Smallwood proposed the following analogy. He likened Britain’s promise to Newfoundland to a father who promises to give his son House A when he turns twenty-one. The son turns twenty-one. The father says, “You can have House A. Or, if you like, you can have House B or House C. The choice is yours.” Where, as Smallwood asked, is the treachery in that?

Cashin countered with what we shall call the Cashin Analogy, though it was a mere derivation of Smallwood’s: The father promises to give his son House A, just down the street from his, when he turns twenty-one. The son turns twenty-one. The father says, “You can have House A, or you can have a room in a house that you have never seen five hundred miles away from here, though it’s a marvellous house and I’m not just saying that to get rid of you. The choice is yours.”

Thus began what members of the National Convention are already referring to as “the Night of the Analogies.”

Smallwood fired back an amended analogy: Choice of shack or splendid room in splendid mansion, take your pick.

Cashin countered: House you own versus room you rent.

The amendments continued. The other delegates watched in open-mouthed silence as these two giants of debate went at it.

The house analogy exhausted, they moved on to horses.

Smallwood: Nag versus Steed.

Cashin: Newfoundland Pony versus Show Horse you have to board in someone else’s barn.

The hours passed, darkness fell. Smallwood sucked on lemons to ward off laryngitis. Still they went at it.

Smallwood (briskly): Leaky dory versus berth on ocean liner.

Cashin (wearily): Self-owned dory versus berth on the Titanic.

About midnight, those delegates and radio listeners who were still awake may have noticed that while Smallwood’s analogies were becoming more succinct, Cashin’s were becoming more long-winded and laboured.

Smallwood (crisply): Tricycle versus train car.

Cashin (groggily): Used but independently owned and operated automobile that, though it could use some fixing up, still runs versus the last row of seats at the back of a bus whose rear shock absorbers would be lucky to survive the slightest bump and would certainly be no match for the kind of potholes that occur on roads in Newfoundland between the months of March and May.

Smallwood, alternately smoking cigarettes and sucking lemon wedges, pressed on. Finally, the Night of the Analogies ended at three-thirty in the morning.

Smallwood (peremptorily): Motel versus top floor, Château Laurier.

Cashin began to croak out an analogy involving the Newfoundland Hotel, then crumpled to the floor. Smallwood informed the Newfoundland people listening that Mr. Cashin
had succumbed, then proceeded to list a further fifty unanswered analogies while Cashin lay there helplessly prostrate.

Smallwood, who as we stated in an earlier column is endorsing Confederation only because he believes his support to be the kiss of death to any venture, may someday regret defeating Cashin so convincingly, but now it merely seems to him that he is putting up a good front.

I gradually won over more delegates to the idea that Confederation should be an option in the referendum. Even so, most of them were still opposed to Confederation and were concerned only that it be seen to be rejected democratically.

Thirty-eight days remained before the final adjournment of the National Convention. I spread rumours that I was near collapse, in the hopes that this would provoke a reinvigorated attack that would win me the sympathy of the public. Fearful, however, of just that, that they would be blamed if I suffered some sort of breakdown, the independents let me speak uninterrupted for thirty-four of the remaining thirty-eight days. The independents used — wasted — their four days denouncing the record of the Commission of Government, believing the commission to be the only real rival to independence.

It seemed they were proven right when a resolution to include Confederation on the ballot was defeated 29-16. I denounced the twenty-nine as dictators, to which they retorted that they were democratically elected to cast their votes as they saw fit. The National Convention adjourned for good. A lot of people, though I was not among them, believed Confederation to be dead.

Britain, as I expected, ordered that Confederation be included on the ballot, overriding the findings of the National Convention, which had been Britain’s idea in the first place.

Field Day, April 25, 1948

June 3, Referendum Day, is drawing near. Smallwood still believes himself to be the other side’s best hope of winning.

His attempt to alienate supporters by wearing bow-ties and double-breasted suits in public has backfired. He is now being referred to in the papers as “the nattily dressed” Joe Smallwood.

The confederates have started up a newspaper called the
Confederate
. The independents have started up a newspaper called the
Independent
.

Smallwood is trying to keep the level of debate in the
Confederate
as low as possible. The
Confederate
recently ran a cartoon showing the Grim Reaper holding a sign saying “Vote for Responsible Government,” his cloak bearing the words “Graft, Hunger, Dole, Disease.” To Smallwood’s dismay, the
Independent
responded with a cartoon showing a donkey with “Newfoundland” stamped on its hide straining to pull a cart loaded down with boxes marked “Taxes.”

But he has calculated how he can best earn the ire of Newfoundlanders. He warns us against excess of pride, talks of Newfoundland’s “backwardness” and “seaminess” in comparison with the rest of North America. It seems to be working. The message has been confused with the messenger.

At a recent rally, a large number of independents who pretended to be confederates so as to get close enough to him to lay hands on him barely missed their chance when his supporters intervened and he wound up escaping while spread-eagled on top of a car.

“What this movement needs is a martyr,” Smallwood screamed as the car pulled away, only realizing too late that people would think that by “this movement” he meant Confederation.

Smallwood again painted an uncomplimentary portrait of Newfoundland while broadcasting live on radio just the other day. He had to point out he was broadcasting live and give his location five times before a mob of independents finally surrounded the station and dared him to come outside. He was just about to do so when the ’Stab arrived and the crowd dispersed.

Smallwood has begun to second-guess himself, wondering if even by
secretly
supporting a cause he predisposes it to failure.

Sitting in the Grumman Widgin, we shouted to one another above the deafening drone of the plane’s propellers. Looking down I saw demarcated, as I never had before, whole peninsulas, whole bays and lakes. I wished we could fly high enough so that I could see the island whole, all of it at once in its map-drawn shape, a single entity, no longer composed of many parts, but one distinctive, discrete shape among the many that comprised the world. We drew a map of Newfoundland with the plane, drew its coastline perfectly to scale. We circumnavigated the island counter-clockwise, land always on our left.

I remembered my other trips around the island. The seal hunt. Crossing the barrens endlessly by train. Sailing the south coast with Andrews, the headlands looming over us. The nights I spent lying in bed in some cliff-perched house on the southwest coast in winter.

Travelling by plane, I was not lulled into the usual mute, inert wonder by the landscape. It was possible, at least for as long as we remained aloft, to believe that I really had found the “something” I could do that would match the land itself, which had seemed an impossible-to-meet obligation until now. I hoped I would at last be free of Fielding and the nagging tug of the past, my pointless preoccupation with things as they were not and never could have been.

And that moment in New York when I had chosen love, then lost my nerve.

Though I told myself, while flying over the island in that plane, that I had come to my senses in that room, not lost my nerve.

We landed in the harbours of as many of the little islands and settlements as we could. The north and northeast coasts were still iced in, which made landing easier. Whole populations trooped out across the ice to meet us. It was more difficult in the ice-free harbours, for there was nowhere to land except on water, and the plane, while I stood on the pontoon and clung to the strut with one hand and held a loudspeaker in the other, bobbed up and down. The people lined the shore to listen while the pilot every so often put the plane into reverse to keep us from wrecking on the rocks.

What a strange sight the landing of the plane must have been for the people in the outports. From a distance, there comes the sound of an engine, an airplane engine, that of a Grumman Widgin that flies low across the harbour. From a pair of megaphones attached to the undersides of the Widgin’s wings comes Joe Smallwood’s voice, loud enough to be heard above the noise the engine makes: “Citizens of Lamaline, this is the Barrelman, this is Joey Smallwood; I have come to speak to you about Confederation, I repeat, Confederation.”