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How did Newfoundland Join Canada? | Life after Confederation
485 Plays1 year ago
In 1948, the people in the British colony of Newfoundland faced a choice. They could become an independent country within the British Commonwealth. Or, they could vote to join Canada in Confederation. In this special series of episodes we travel to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to interview four prominent Newfoundlanders about their memories of the Confederation debate, and ask if they think Newfoundland made the right choice when it joined Canada. In Episode 3, Life after Confederation, our guests discuss the consequences of Newfoundland's big decision.
Guests: Former Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells, artist Kathleen Knowling, writer Bernice Morgan, and former federal MP Richard Cashin.
Host: Canada's History magazine senior editor Kate Jaimet
Art:"Malcolm Rogers' house is towed by a 40hp motor boat from Fox Island to Flat Island during resettlement," Newfoundland, August 1961. Photographer: Bob Brooks. Library and Archives Canada, National Film Board Fonds. Copyright expired.
Sound credits:
"Ode to Newfoundland" – licensed under Creative Commons – wikimedia - https://en.wikipedia/org/wiki/File:Newfoundland_and_Labrador.ogg
"The Red River Jig" performed by Alex Kusturok, licensed from the artist
"The Gloom of my Soul" by Harpo Marks, licensed from PremiumBeat.com
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Transcript
The Emotional Confederation Debate
00:00:03
Speaker
Confederation is the Civil War. Like the South never forgot the Civil War. There's people in Newfoundland never forgot the Confederation Battle. Everybody had an opinion. I mean, some people actually argued about it and thought about it. And there were people who left home in a rage and slammed the doors. I presume they reconciled with their families afterwards. But it was really emotional.
1948 Referendum: Independence vs. Confederation
00:00:31
Speaker
In 1948, the people in the British colony of Newfoundland faced a choice. They could become an independent country within the British Commonwealth, or they could vote to join Canada in Confederation. Confederation was the best thing that happened to us. The only one who didn't sign the agreement was a man called Chess Crosby, because he felt it was unfair. And I think he was probably right.
00:01:00
Speaker
I suppose we were fortunate. My God, we could have become like Cuba. The subsidiary of the United States, you know. What happened after the referendum? How did life in Newfoundland change? And did Newfoundlanders make the right decision?
From Dominion to Canadian Province
00:01:17
Speaker
This is the third episode in our Stories Behind the History special series on why and how Newfoundland joined Canada.
00:01:33
Speaker
In the first two episodes of this series, we discovered how Newfoundland went from a North Atlantic fishing station to a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire. And we saw how self-government was lost after Newfoundland sank deep into debt due to railway construction and the heavy costs of the First World War. We found out how the Second World War brought prosperity to the island and renewed calls for self-government, which led to a popular referendum.
00:02:03
Speaker
After a fiercely fought battle of rhetoric, the majority of Newfoundlanders voted to join Confederation. And on March 31, 1949, Newfoundland became Canada's 10th province.
Reflections on April Fool's Day 1949
00:02:16
Speaker
For this special series, I travelled to St. John's, Newfoundland
00:02:20
Speaker
to interview former Premier Clyde Wells, best-selling author Bernice Morgan, artist Kathleen Knowling, and former federal MP Richard Cashin about their memories of pre-confederation, and to ask them if they think Newfoundlanders made the right choice when they joined Canada.
00:02:42
Speaker
You've gone to request that you remain seated with your seatbelt securely fastened until the captain has turned off that seatbelt sign and it is safe to stand on your feet. On behalf of the quarter team, we thank you for playing with us. We wish you a wonderful evening here at the Snowy St. Johns.
00:02:58
Speaker
In my memory, it was April the 1st, April Fool's Day. The financial year ends in the March, so we had to come in on April Fool's Day. And it wasn't a holiday because people were really afraid there was going to be riots. I think the authorities thought there was no holiday. In my memory, it was rainy and foggy, which it probably was. And I seem to remember that some people had black ribbons tied out under the door now.
00:03:29
Speaker
Now, there might have been some rejoicing, but I don't remember that feeling. I remember a feeling of sadness.
Should Newfoundland Have Been Independent First?
00:03:38
Speaker
This is writer Bernice Morgan. And all of that might be my imagination, but that's the feeling I remember.
00:03:48
Speaker
because a lot of people thought they were going to be, Newfoundland was going to be independent again, it was going to be a country, it was going to be. That's right. And a lot of people had the feeling that if we were to decide to join Canada, even people who thought it might be a good idea, thought we needed a period of independence between having a dictatorship, which was what the commission government was, and Confederation, where we would have gotten back on our feet,
00:04:17
Speaker
and voted in a more balanced way.
Post-Confederation Changes and Challenges
00:04:24
Speaker
My father-in-law
00:04:29
Speaker
always said that the group of people who took over and rushed us into Confederation would not have existed if it hadn't been for the First World War because so many of the educated, articulate people who would have guided us were killed. What changed after Confederation? What do you remember having changed?
00:04:52
Speaker
Damn little. For me, my father, who was a carpenter, kept on doing the same things. We lived in the same house. You know, we had the same textbooks, went to the same school, we had the same denominational system, saw the same American movies on Saturday, could order things from Sears without
00:05:13
Speaker
paying tax on it, dozens of small businesses closed up. You know, I walked around with my husband one time before he died around St. Johnson. He could point out places, you know, small businesses like Tinsmiths, clothing stores, mattress factory, printing shops, shoe manufacturers, tobacco manufacturers, they all closed.
00:05:38
Speaker
Was that because people could buy duty-free from Canada? That's right. A tobacco factory here in St. John's is a condo now. Couldn't compete with imperial tobacco, so they ended up closing down. But a huge number of offices and office jobs were opening up because when I came out of school, I got a job at Central Mortgage and Housing.
00:06:07
Speaker
which was just opened a branch here. So there was a lot of government jobs. They weren't for the same people who had closed down because they had skills that were not applicable or they were older. But there was a lot of, for the young people, there were things opening up.
Was Confederation Inevitable?
00:06:26
Speaker
When you look back, do you think it was the right decision?
00:06:32
Speaker
I wish we could have made it under more, less duress. I wish, but I think that that's to think that that kind of thing could have happened without an orator like smallwood and without
00:06:48
Speaker
underpinnings of manipulation. I don't think it happens anywhere in the world. So I think it was inevitable that it would happen. I have really bad, bitter feelings about what happened to the fishery and to many other things, the forest, the mining. What we've become here in Newfoundland
00:07:12
Speaker
is exporters of raw material. We export raw material which means we export jobs and we import the finished product and that can only be sustained as long as we have a good communication and chips coming in and out. If it's cut off as we discovered in COVID, as Canada in fact discovered in COVID because Canada is becoming more and more of the same kind of
00:07:34
Speaker
offshore, bringing things in. If you don't make things inside your own country, there are times when you are going to be really shortchanged and in terrible emergency. But here we don't make, we make almost nothing. And do you think that would have been different if you thought it remained independent? It would have been different if we'd had a good government, which is a dream.
00:08:00
Speaker
I think that the fact that there's a federal government as well as a provincial government does install a certain degree of checks and balances into the political system. Huge amount of bureaucracy and payoffs and things, but also a certain amount of let's not do that or let's think about it twice. We rarely think about it twice, of course, but our history is just terrible. It's just
00:08:29
Speaker
graph the mistakes and I do think that the federal government might control, put a little bit of sanity into the system sometimes, also bail us out occasionally.
Economic Vulnerabilities and COVID
00:08:44
Speaker
So on the whole, the right decision or not, you sound really ambivalent. I am ambivalent. Yeah. I am very ambivalent. And maybe that makes sense. I mean, maybe there are pros and cons, right? In the perfect world, you know, but it's not a perfect world and people are manipulated and bribed in every situation.
00:09:08
Speaker
So in a perfect world, what would a perfect world have been, do you think? A perfect world would have been that we would have had five or ten years of independence with some intelligent government and someone who knew debit from credit.
00:09:24
Speaker
and controlled our resources. And if we had to sell them, sold them to the highest bidder, not gave them away, as Smallwood gave them away, absolute chaos. But that's not going to happen. You don't see that anywhere. I suppose we were fortunate. My God, we could have become like Cuba, the subsidiary of the United States.
1867: A Missed Opportunity?
00:10:01
Speaker
So in the end, when you look back, was it the right decision that the Newfoundlanders made in that vote in 1948? The only mistake we made we should have done in 1867.
00:10:13
Speaker
That's Richard Cashin, and he is, of course, talking about the original Canadian Confederation of 1867 that brought together Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Newfoundland had participated in one of the Confederation conferences at that time, but had chosen not to join. What changed after Confederation?
Social and Economic Benefits of Confederation
00:10:36
Speaker
The social benefits were big, of course. They were born as old age pensions.
00:10:41
Speaker
all those programs. That was an immediate change that affected people. And then we have the government of Canada taking over certain of the responsibilities that would have been Newfoundland's and they had money. So the whole thing was very beneficial. And who gave us Confederation? The women. Why was it the women who gave us Confederation? Two reasons. Generally they're smarter.
00:11:11
Speaker
OK. And the baby boomers and all that. And also they're the ones on the front line. They had to worry about what was happening in daily lives. Remember they had to bring up children? Where the hell were the husbands? Working in Labrador? Where the hell it was? Were there any negatives? Were there any people who didn't benefit from it? There was always the odd one of them. And then in the 70s, these things happened with young people.
00:11:41
Speaker
I used to call them the rubber booters. They thought, well, Newfoundland should have been independent. And I remember once being in a pub. Now my, my late wife's family, of course, was confederate, of course, and her uncle was a priest who was confederate. Of course, she had traveled around with her father
00:12:10
Speaker
into these desolate little spots. I remember once in this pub, the Duke of Dockers, we used to have a good gathering. And my wife was meeting me there. And this, one of the romantics said, oh, here comes your wife, I'd like to meet her. I said, if you talk that crap, you better have a jock strap on. Because she wouldn't tolerate that. Is there still a Newfoundland independence movement?
00:12:40
Speaker
If there is, it's in the head of one or two people. I don't think there ever was. There was never nothing serious. There were a few people that talked about it, you know, but that was probably inflamed by a few too many rounds.
00:13:07
Speaker
What changed for your family, if anything, after Confederation? First of all, not very much changed. After Confederation, we did expand. We started the first supermarkets in Newfoundland and eventually sold out to Loblaws. That's Kathleen Knowling. Her family owned the department store, Ayres and Sons. Then what happened? And it wasn't actually Canadian. It was things like
00:13:37
Speaker
Walmart coming in that kind of thing and then Sears came in you know the bigger stores came in and of course they could out of bias and we gradually we moved from downtown we sold the premises downtown and moved to church and square and expanded the supermarkets and
00:14:04
Speaker
And we did very well. We did very well. So the changes were not immediate after Confederation? No. Things like the clothing factory and the shoe factory and things closed down pretty soon. But for a long time, Doc Martens were produced around the bay in Carbonere, I think. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. And then finally they closed down too.
00:14:28
Speaker
changes happen. Do you think it was the right decision overall, looking back? Well, I think it was the right decision done in the wrong way. Okay. Let's vote for independence, get our House of Assembly, then we'll debate Confederation with Canada. That's the way to think about it carefully. I think we probably would have voted to join Canada. I think we would have made a tougher bargain, which I think we should have
00:14:56
Speaker
made it tougher bargain. Joey never bargained.
Impact on Local Businesses
00:15:00
Speaker
He kind of, you know, this was his big triumph. And the only one who didn't sign the agreement was a man called Chess Crosby because he felt it was unfair. And I think he was probably right. Well, what do you think Newfoundland should have gotten that it didn't get? I don't really know enough about it. I think we would have had more protection for our fishery. I think we would have had
00:15:27
Speaker
possibly more investment in some kind of infrastructure. You see, Central Canada has been pretty brutal to the Maritimes. Are you from Central Canada? I am from Ontario. I confess. Well, when ships landed in Halifax, that Halifax was very prosperous. And the ship, the goods went up to Central Canada, now with St. Lawrence.
00:15:54
Speaker
The ships sail up, they bypass Halifax, they bypass the Maritimes, they bypass Newfoundland. And I think that perhaps the Maritimes, I
Economic Stability and Union Benefits
00:16:08
Speaker
wonder if perhaps the Maritimes shouldn't unite.
00:16:21
Speaker
So how do you think it turned out? Like, was Confederation the right decision? Yes, the wrong decision was made in 1867. That's Clyde Wells, former premier of Newfoundland.
00:16:35
Speaker
Newfoundland was like the rest of the people in the rest of Canada, and if you go back to 1867, the rest of the people in Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, although Newfoundland was predominantly English, there were French people here, Scots and Irish, and they were the same
00:17:03
Speaker
from the same source as the people in the rest of Canada. So Newfoundland should have been there and Newfoundland is physically part of North America and is much closer to North America and has a closer connection with North America than it does with the UK 1800 miles across the North Atlantic. Why do you think it was a better outcome for Newfoundland to become a province of Canada than to go back and become its own country?
00:17:32
Speaker
We were too small a population and we wouldn't have an economic union with Canada. Trade with Canada would be barred and interfered with by customs barriers, protectionist provisions and so on. We couldn't really, we were too small an entity competing in the North Atlantic. So we became a province of Canada like every other province of Canada. That sums it up. And that's all it could be.
00:18:01
Speaker
Can you imagine the
00:18:20
Speaker
We could not have negotiated a better deal because the deal we got was that we became a province like every other province, and the British North America Act applied to Newfoundland as fully and to the same extent.
Was Confederation Necessary for Survival?
00:18:33
Speaker
What do you think drove Joey Smallwood to be so passionate and so committed to Confederation? He was an old-style liberal politician.
00:18:48
Speaker
in Newfoundland prior to suspension of self-government in 1934. And he was an admirer of Richard Squires, who was one of the last premiers, a bit of a scoundrel, or quite a scoundrel, just a bit of a scoundrel.
00:19:10
Speaker
He supported the fishermen and the labor movement. He was active in the labor movement and was a liberal, so he was opposed to the interest of the business and elite interest in St. John's. He saw that Newfoundland
00:19:32
Speaker
would not really make it on the zone again if it went into that confederation was the only sensible thing to do. And my own, despite my differences with him and he had a great bitterness toward me in the last years of his premiership.
00:19:53
Speaker
Despite that, I acknowledge that he personally has made a greater contribution to the welfare of people of Newfoundland than any other person in our history.
00:20:18
Speaker
I'm standing here on Signal Hill, looking out at St. John's Harbor on the one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. And I'm thinking that if Newfoundland benefited from joining Canada, then it's equally true that Canada benefited when Newfoundland and Labrador came aboard.
Newfoundland's Cultural Contributions
00:20:38
Speaker
Newfoundland and Labrador have a wealth of natural resources from the fisheries to offshore oil
00:20:45
Speaker
hydroelectricity, and in the energy future, wind and tidal energy as well. And I'm willing to bet that on a per capita basis, Newfoundland and Labrador have contributed more comedians and actors to the Canadian arts and entertainment scene than any other province. Think of Rick Mercer, Mary Walsh, Kathy Jones, Johnny Harris, Mark Critch, to name just a few.
00:21:13
Speaker
And it's not just that. The hospitality and friendliness of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador can only be a positive influence on the Canadian national character.
Celebrating 75 Years of Confederation
00:21:26
Speaker
So happy 75th anniversary of Confederation, Newfoundland and Labrador. I'm Kate Jamit, and this is Stories Behind the History.
00:21:37
Speaker
The Stories Behind the History podcast is produced by Canada's History Society. With special thanks for this episode to Richard Cashin, Kathleen Noling, Bernice Morgan, Clyde Wells, and Patricia and Jerry O'Brien.
00:21:51
Speaker
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a rating or a review. It helps other listeners to find us. If you'd like to read more stories about Canadian history, why not subscribe to Canada's History magazine? Our beautifully illustrated glossy magazine will be delivered to your home six times a year, chock full of interesting stories written by Canada's top historians and journalists. To subscribe to the magazine, go to Canada's History.ca slash subscribe.
00:22:21
Speaker
Our theme music is the Red River Jig performed by Alex Kustrok from his album May T Fiddling for Dancing. I'm Kate Jamot. Thanks for joining me.