Newfoundland: British, not Canadian, until 1949

Holy shit! I keep stepping in Fail!

I will remember that about Newfoundland not being a Maritime. I thought that all the Anglophone provinces east of Quebec were called such. OK, Atlantic Provinces.

I didn't like The Shipping News, either. Couldn't place my finger on it, but there was something disagreeable about the way the book made me feel. Kind of creepy...though I suppose that was the point.

 

Good post, In Exile. I'll admit I never gave two thoughts about Newfoundland before this thread, but you make it sound like a damn interesting place.

 

I posted this on the 9/11 thread a few months back. Worth a read here for those who haven't seen it.

http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2002/10/strangers.html

 

When I retire I hope to have a place up there. My parents were going to, so my mother could be around her family, but unfortunately they both passed before they had the chance.

I've never known anyone to regret a visit there. But go in the summer (winter is not so cold and snowy but incredibly damp) and if you go out in the hills, be prepared for black flies and daily temps that can range from upper 50s to near 90. Look up photos of Cape Spear - easternmost point of North America. Where I grew up in the US we used to enjoy the notion that Newfoundland was about halfway to Ireland. Drove up there a couple times as a kid, my father basically driving non-stop for almost four full days, before the interstate, with a nine-hour ferry ride on day three.

And learn to drink rum. By the bottle.

 

HC does a great Newfie accent.

There's another fabulous book (likely out of print) called "Wake of the Great Sealers" by Farley Mowat and printmaker David Blackwood whose art captures the life, mythology and culture of he outports of Newfoundland

 

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=212888&title=Provinces-in-Peril

This post reminded me of this daily show clip. I guess Samantha Bee had a similar upbringing.

 

That was beautiful, Huggy. Missed it the first time. Thanks.

 

I love the Newfies! There's a butt load of them here in Mimico. I did an opera with a tenor from Newfoundland who loudly announced during a discussion of whether it was almost time for our lunch break that he was "hungry enought to eat the arse off a low flyin' goose". How do you not love people who come up with shit like that?

 

This is how we learned history in my good Catholic schools.
We learned about Britain and France up until 1776, when we started learning about America. Whereupon, Europe pretty much disappeared, from Napoleon until WWI, unless you count that little dust-up with Spain in 1896. Russia existed only as the place that sold us Alaska until the godless Commies took over.
Eurocentric, my ass.
It wasn't even that.

 

"The plane people" is perfectly Newfoundland.

 

So, it's Ohio of Canada?

 

JR and HC didn't get me quite drunk enough to bring out the accent, otherwise I'm sure they would have testified already.