The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies

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Prologue: Our Lady’s Boobies


https://goo.gl/maps/FZF1ARzpPgv

See those islands on that map? The ones marked with the tack, north of St. John Island, off the coast of western Newfoundland? Yes, those ones. On any map of the area, if those islands are mentioned at all (for example, in Ordnance Survey maps), they will be noted as the Twin Islands. On their own, they’re a beautiful spot – apart from a few buildings used by the few remaining fishermen who try to make a living in an industry while some of the fish species are under a moratorium, the islands are better known to sailors as a navigational waypoint. For the tourist trade, though, they are known by a very different name, with an equally colourful story to tell. It’s easy to understand why.

Before he made his name out in the Pacific Ocean, Captain James Cook had mastered his craft in North America, where he initially started out as a naval officer before moving onto surveying Nova Scotia’s coastlines. During the 1760s, he focused his cartographic expertise on Newfoundland. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 had finally placed all of Newfoundland under British control, and in 1699 the English Parliament had passed King William’s Act (officially “An Act to Encourage the Trade to Newfoundland”) – which tried to regulate the fishery trade, yet holds the distinction of being the first piece of legislation specifically aimed at The Rock. With Britain finally getting more or less uncontrolled access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence (save for the French Shore and the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, a mere 6 km off the coast of the Island), there arose a need for maps of the Newfoundland coastline, which attracted Captain Cook. His maps, published in 1767, were in use for nearly a century and a half because of their accuracy and attention to detail.

However, there was one mere detail that got changed in those maps. In his journal, Captain Cook referred to those islands as “Our Ladies Bubies”. When the maps were finally published, to the disappointment of the hot-blooded segment of the British population, the name had been changed to their current designation as the “Twin Islands”. When tourism really took off in the 20th century, in response to the curiosity some tourists had with the bizarre and offbeat names that dot the country – as well as the fondness for British humour – that peculiar entry in Captain Cook’s journal was revived. Thus was born the legend of “Our Lady’s Boobies” and the modern fascination of all things Newfoundland in a tourist industry focused on its natural beauty.

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It has been 519 years since John Cabot’s first voyage out into the North Atlantic to points unknown. This also marks 433 years since Sir Humphrey Gilbert formally claimed The Rock for England and Queen Elizabeth I, 303 years since the Treaty of Utrecht made that claim on Newfoundland official, 192 years since Newfoundland was officially declared a colony (long after most British colonies in North America), and 161 years since Newfoundland attained responsible government. Most importantly, it has been 118 years since Parliament passed the Government of Newfoundland Act, 1898, which made Newfoundland a direct part of the United Kingdom. This longevity of history highlights what some scholars have noticed a striking continuity in Newfoundland between the past and the present. Just outside St. John’s, one of the UK’s most modern and dynamic cities, are many coastal communities, known as outports, where families have eked out a living based on catching fish for centuries. In Labrador and Ungava, beneath the pre-fabricated structures comprising many Northern communities and the hydroelectric projects which have transformed the landscape, are Aboriginal peoples who try to practice the same lifestyle as their ancestors did centuries ago, while also driving around on ATVs or snowmobiles and talking on cellular or satellite phones. The past is also the present here.

We have a general tendency to view Newfoundland and its associated Mainland regions of Labrador and Ungava in isolation; that the forces of exploration and colonization that affected the rest of North America simply did not apply to Newfoundland. Studies of British history also ignore their outer-most region and focus on events in Great Britain and Ireland since they are more “accessible” to the general public. This was not the worldview of many British people back during the Age of Exploration, when peoples of all nationalities came to Newfoundland to fish off its shores, or in the case of Lord Baltimore and the Pilgrims as a temporary sojourn before moving elsewhere – to Maryland and Massachusetts, respectively. The history of Newfoundland is no more or less British than the history of England itself, and is just as colourful. Yet Newfoundland is often times seen as another world, where things have barely changed and its people speak a strange dialect of English. It might as well be either a separate country altogether, or at least a province of Canada.

In reality, Newfoundland did not exist in isolation. True, the colonization process was different from and more difficult than other English and French colonization efforts in North America. True, at times the economic history of the Island almost seems to remain the same for centuries on end. But Newfoundland had long been part of the North American and European worlds, and at times has even been at the centre of those worlds. Through its Aboriginal peoples, living and extinct, Newfoundland also forms part of the great mosaic of diversity that distinguishes the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere, with their variety of languages, cultures, traditions, economies, and shared history of contact with Europeans – for both good and evil. These days, Newfoundland also serves as the UK’s bridge to North America, thanks to Newfoundland becoming the only British colony that directly became part of the UK, and as such it cannot live in isolation.

Part of Newfoundland’s distinctiveness can be traced back to its geography. Rich in natural maritime resources but almost barren in terms of landward resources, the triangular-shaped Island of Newfoundland is the end result of tectonic and glacial forces which stripped the Island bare of most usable resources. Much of the Island, including the Long Range Mountains, are an extension of the great Appalachian Mountains system and thus shares similar characteristics to other mountainous regions, which severely limits the potential of agriculture. Across the Strait of Belle Isle into Labrador and Ungava, both regions are extensions of the Canadian Shield and thus share similar characteristics with most of its large neighbour to the west, south, and north. A great example of the distinctiveness of Newfoundland’s geography is located at Gros Morne National Park, located at a fjord but which is held as a great example of plate tectonics in action.

While its weather is often unpredictable, climatologists and geologists have been able to pinpoint the entirety of the region as either tundra or taiga, sharing similar polar, subarctic, or ocean-influenced humid continental climates. Its weather is shaped by its location where the Labrador Current and Gulf Stream converge, giving the Island its distinctive fog. At the convergence point is the Grand Banks, long one of North America’s richest fishing grounds and currently an area exploited for its oil and natural gas resources, and control over this area has long been a point of contention throughout its history. Small wonder that in Newfoundland’s national anthem, three of its four verses make direct reference to the region’s geography. Also, too, the more unusual customs procedures in Newfoundland compared with the rest of the UK. Whereas British customs procedures are usually straightforward and no different from most of the world, due to its sensitive ecology the Island’s customs procedures are comparatively more invasive and go well beyond what travellers would normally expect, to prevent any invasive species, plants, or soil from making their entrance. Bag inspection, both by machine and by hand, is routine, as is sending any vehicles through a car wash (which, as might be imagined, is well appreciated by travellers).

Despite this limited potential for settlement, humans have been making a living here ever since people crossed the land bridge over the Bering Strait, dependent as they were on the sea for their livelihood. This determination to live in an area that would otherwise have deterred people from potentially living here in the first place has influenced the way of life of most Newfoundlanders, and it is to their endurance that when Europeans crossed the Atlantic, or Aboriginal peoples across the Strait of Belle Isle, they actually survived at all. This can be assumed from the very interesting place names that dot the landscape, including more unusual ones like Come By Chance, Random Island, the Port au Port Peninsula (itself a stronghold for Newfoundland’s French-speaking community), Happy Valley, Eastmain (a Cree settlement in Ungava), and the ever-popular Dildo. If humour is the grease that keeps people going, than certainly Newfoundland needed plenty of it, and it shows.

So, how did Newfoundland become part of the UK in the first place? Harken ye now to a tale of something wonderful from both The Rock and The Big Land …

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And so begins my quest for a TL project that I’ll finally take to completion. Thanks to Simon and Thande for providing the main impetus for it, to several others (particularly jotabe1789) when I originally conceived it as something entirely different (and, I promise, I’ll eventually get to it!), and also to Brainbin for making sure it all comes out all neat and tidy.

I’m actually very excited by this. No, it does not follow the other trends elsewhere, but is more old-school. On the other hand, I hope you’ll like what will come next. Newfoundland is one of those topics that is outside my comfort zone, and I know that most are not familiar with that speck of land off the coast of mainland Canada with humourous and sometimes very suggestive place names, so I hope that this will help just one bit. As always, constructive criticism is very much well appreciated – and I will definitely need it at times, because I’ll honestly admit there will be areas that I draw a blank on.

All in all, tis’ an interesting journey, and one I'm glad to share with you.

Source: Photo by Duleepa Wijayawardhana, from Memorial University's Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage web site, <http://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/colonial-building.php>



Section 1: The Most Distressful Country That Ever Yet Was Seen

During the 19th century, the problems facing Newfoundland seemed almost insurmountable to anyone with at least an inkling of what was happening there. After centuries of limited settlement devoted largely to exploiting the fisheries, and intermittent use as a battlefield at several points during the previous century, Britain’s oldest colony would confront a whole new set of challenges. The migratory fishery died with the Napoleonic wars, so a new breed of fish merchant came to the fore, with at least the promise of local control over the fisheries. Yet even that came to nought; the St. John’s fish merchants end up in the same situation as the West Country merchants that preceded them – albeit with a new system based on credit, reducing many fishing communities to an equivalent of peonage. Effective governance of the colony proved to be elusive, between the continuance of the French Shore and American treaty rights to the fisheries on one hand, and the basic neglect of other regions on the other. [1] At stake was Newfoundland’s survival and future – without any base of survival outside the fisheries, there was basically nothing.

It was not as if anyone tried. For those who looked to develop the Island along agricultural lines – among these were those famous Vikings from Greenland – prospects were severely limited. Throughout Newfoundland’s history, the Board of Trade – backed by powerful merchants based out of Devonshire, Dorset, and Hampshire – had tried to discourage permanent settlement on the Island, only to see that fail. Moreover, with access to the fisheries a major issue, Newfoundland became yet another staging ground for the rivalry between England and France; with the arrival of the Irish in the 18th century (mainly from the southeast of that country), elements of the old rivalries were transposed into a local version of the same contemporary sectarian tensions that plagued Ireland. Up until the American Revolution, Newfoundland’s fisheries more or less thrived, with strong ties between the Island and New England; when the United States broke away, Newfoundland fell into economic crisis. Some decided that Newfoundland should have more control over local affairs; this was not the view of Westminster, which thought that Newfoundlanders were too “immature” a settled population to be demanding such things. After all, the Government had tried reforms of their own – the 18th century saw the creation of a proper functioning judiciary; the early 19th century saw the Governor become a year-round position. As far as British politicians were concerned, the Islanders should have been contented with all the attention being lavished upon them by Westminster.

But with the end of the migratory fishery, and with the total embrace of the Industrial Revolution and the Act of Union with Ireland, Newfoundland usually did not register on the conscience and psyche of Britain. Had things gone differently, Newfoundland might have followed the same political trajectory as the rest of British North America, including its own version of the 1837-1838 rebellions which led to reforms throughout the region (after all, many areas of Newfoundland, particularly in the West, had strong ties with Canada and the Maritimes). Yet because the capital and the areas of the Island where the Government was absolutely sure of control were located in the East, and because much of the population still retained more-or-less recent origins from England or Ireland, Newfoundland was more in tune with the rest of the UK than with its own regional neighbours. Indeed, some of the early leaders of Newfoundland’s reform movement had ties to Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic emancipation movement, and in 19th century Newfoundland sectarianism was a major problem, infecting much of society – especially its politics. It was sectarian issues, for example, that led to a compromise among the various Christian denominations – Catholic and Protestant – regarding education, creating the denominational system (based on Ireland’s national schools) which in the 20th century became one of Newfoundland’s sources of embarrassment. Still, for the most part, sectarianism was largely the rule for much of the 19th century – generally, Catholics or Methodists supported the Liberals; Anglicans or other Protestant denominations (especially those which were associated with the Orange Order), supported the Conservatives. [2]

The 19th century was also the period when local politicians, particularly in the Liberal Party, decided to attempt to implement what some scholars have called a “landward development” policy, in defiance of Newfoundland’s geographic realities. In large part, this was because Newfoundland rejected Confederation with Canada (with many of the arguments for and against Confederation naturally carrying sectarian overtones) and its politicians decided that it would be its equal, with its own industrial development strategy. When Newfoundland’s politicians asked for its own legislative assembly and responsible government, the British government was reluctant due to the lack of an agricultural base outside of the fisheries which could sustain the colony, particularly in case the fisheries disappeared. A large part of the industrial development strategy, as a result, was to prove that belief wrong, and Britain’s eventual granting of responsible government to Newfoundland was predicated on arguments that Newfoundland did have such an agricultural base.

Such fervour towards industrializing Newfoundland was the basis for one of the most colossal failures in Newfoundland’s history. The 19th century witnessed the expansion of the railroad and train travel becoming an affordable means of transport, and it was in Canada’s experience of the railway that made the Colonial Building [3] take note. Rail was the means which unified Canada as a nation, and the transcontinental railroad in particular held the same allure many Americans had towards Western settlement. To the Government of William Whiteway, Newfoundland’s Premier from 1878 to 1882, a similar trans-insular railway would not only be the unifier of Newfoundland, but would be the main promoter of economic development in the interior. Among the people promoting the use of railways was Sandford Fleming, the man otherwise credited with inventing the notion of time zones (using Canada as his guinea pig) as well as engineering much of Canada’s transcontinental railroad, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), who saw the railways as a means of unifying the Empire. He did some surveying work in the late 1860s, and after eight years of works to calculate the cost laying down rail at $24,000 per mile. Although such costs could be reduced by making it a narrow-gauge railway, it was still too high. Whiteway still went ahead with the project anyway, despite the jaw-dropping costs that the Government would have to bear.

The railway project encountered a lot of opposition during its brief existence. The British government was the first to register opposition by denying St. John’s a loan – in fact, no funds would come from Britain, either from private sources or from the Government – which would be used for the railway. While proponents of the railway tended to characterize their opponents – mainly the St. John’s fish merchants – as being a major obstacle to progress, in part thinking that the ocean was all that Newfoundland needed for transport, the merchants had a point in their opposition when they balked about the expense and feared it would lead the colony into bankruptcy. Basing their experience upon earlier projects carried out in the name of progress – the telegraph, for example – the outports were also forthright in their opposition to the railway project. Even the Governor was opposed to the project, though he was more worried about the influence of American capital on the process. Eventually, Whiteway found no backers for his project, not even American investors [4], and in the end forced to abandon it and call a general election in 1882. His Liberals lost the election, one that still contained sectarian overtones, replaced with Robert Thorburn and his Conservative Party.

Under Thorburn, for the next seven years attention was focused on the fisheries, and by extension the outports and their problems. As with the previous Hoyles and Carter Governments, when those Governments tried (and failed) to get Newfoundland to join Canada despite massive opposition, despite the sectarianism of the election the Thorburn Government maintained what was known as the “denominational compromise” whereby Governments would include representatives from all major religions, Catholic and Protestant, and thus help to progressively diffuse tensions. [5] It was the maintenance of this compromise, and the extension of the compromise to other areas in public life (e.g. education and health care), which helped Newfoundland avoid many of the more serious issues which defined sectarianism elsewhere in both North America and the UK itself. Furthermore, the Government finally (and belatedly) approved conservation measures for the fisheries and established a fisheries commission which would oversee their implementation, even as its real governors maintained their more commercial focus. The commission would also engage in research in fisheries conservation and in the ecological impact of the fisheries (already noted by the newspapers at the time). The Thorburn Government also encouraged more modest road construction, which historically had been a focus for sectarian patronage, by centralizing authority in St. John’s, continuing the compromise into new areas. Yet efforts by Thorburn to implement a more comprehensive fisheries policy were overwhelmed by British and French opposition, and the existence of the French Shore continued to be a major irritant to Newfoundlanders. The fisheries policy was overwhelmed not only by poor catches but also that the catches turned up poor quality fish, which made Newfoundland progressively less competitive. Sensing that the focus on the fisheries as a means for developing Newfoundland was not working, Whiteway and the Liberal Party returned to power in 1889. Not only was the railway project back on the agenda, but also something else was on Whiteway’s mind.

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OOC Notes

[1] It was that regional ignorance that led to the arrival and large-scale influence of the Moravian Church among the Inuit in Labrador. For the most part, the Government basically ignored Labrador, despite gaining authority over The Big Land in 1809, unless it was absolutely necessary. So St. John's was more or less happy for a church to do the dirty work for them - and apparently the Inuit easily went along with it.

[2] There were exceptions, of course – well-off middle-class Catholics tended to support the Conservatives at times, for example.

[3] The Colonial Building is (well, was) Newfoundland's legislative building, used here as an analogue to Whitehall or Westminster when dealing with British politics, or the Hill when dealing with Canadian politics.

[4] This is the POD. In OTL, a group of New York finance people (with questionable finances) eventually won the contract for Whiteway’s beloved railway, yet the Newfoundland Railway Company went bankrupt in 1884. Thus beginning Newfoundland’s perilous historical trajectory it took today.

[5] That seemingly minor detail is a secondary POD. The surface is only barely scratched for the 1882 election when sectarian overtones are mentioned – in fact, the whole election was heavily sectarian, with Thorburn the leader of a “Protestant rights” party within the conservative tradition, called the Reform Party, after the Conservative Party eventually collapsed. In TTL, however, the idea of the denominational compromise is so strong that Thorburn can't ignore it - the lesson of Whiteway's first Government, which was you could ignore the compromise at your peril.

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Special thanks to Brainbin for keeping everything in order.

This is one of two posts which will hopefully help to give some background to the whole enterprise of Newfoundland becoming fully British. The next post will come some time between the 5th and 8th of April. This month is going to be wicked busy – in fact, I’ll be lucky to do any posting at all. The next post actually comes between two events coming up – on one hand, a Pink Floyd tribute band; on the other hand, the local philharmonic orchestra. After that the next post will come between the 18th and 20th of April – between a Gordon Lightfoot performance on one hand, and a bunch of naked magicians from Oz on the other. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking – but apparently we might not see much since they stand behind a box during the whole thing.) And that’s before we get to one week where we have our beloved educational concerts with the Philharmonic, where we have to get 2,000 kids out of and 2,000 kids into the theatre in 15 minutes!

Overall, I hope you are satisfied with tonight’s update. As always, constructive criticism is always appreciated. In this case, much of this post is very similar to, if not based on, OTL, so for now it could serve as a basic summary of Newfoundland history. There’s plenty of other resources out there if you’re willing to read it in more detail, and let me say this – it’s fascinating. At least up until the late 18th century, the Island’s history is positively downright insane. It’s one of those things I should have been taught in school, since it embodies a lot of the stuff one expects when reading stories of the high seas – including its more than fair share of pirates, and the supposed sightings of mermaids in St. John’s Harbour. (Seriously. I wish I could make up stuff like that.) Hope to see you around next time!