Don't Tell the Newfoundlanders

by Greg Malone

  I will discuss this matter more fully with you when I see you in Ottawa.12

  J.B. McEvoy had articled in Burchell’s law office in Halifax as a junior lawyer, and R.A. MacKay, the special assistant to the under-secretary of state for external affairs, had been McEvoy’s political science professor at Dalhousie Law School. MacKay had already begun to court his former pupil in June 1945, looking for recruits to support Confederation in the coming campaign in the National Convention. MacKay wrote about that visit:

  Top Secret. Mr. McEvoy … is solicitor for most of the leading Water Street merchants and apparently also for the Bowater Pulp and Paper Company.… He is a forceful and effective public speaker among Newfoundland audiences. Mr. McEvoy, I should judge, has real capacity as an organizer and leader of a movement.… [He] would I think, be more than willing to take a stand and organize a group to lead a movement for federation.… Mr. McEvoy hinted that he and his friends could find enough funds for a vigorous campaign in support of federation.13

  The announcement of the coming National Convention created a dilemma for the people of Newfoundland. At that time, most of the people qualified to serve on such a body, whether they favoured the Commission of Government, responsible government, or confederation as the solution to Newfoundland’s situation, believed that any step away from sovereignty, such as entering Confederation with Canada, could be taken only by a duly elected government representing the people of Newfoundland. This group included former high commissioner Charlie Burchell. Almost no one thought it correct or legitimate to include Confederation on the ballot paper of a referendum. All the major players, with the notable exception of the delegate from Bonavista, Joseph Smallwood, believed that the return of responsible government was a necessary first step to Confederation. But even beyond that condition, the majority believed that the institution of the National Convention itself, with its dubious terms of reference and lack of real power, was an unacceptable interference in the process and constituted an abrogation of the guarantee initially made to Newfoundlanders when their local legislature was suspended.

  To concerned Newfoundlanders such as C.E. Hunt, Albert Perlin, and many others on both sides of the Atlantic, Attlee’s National Convention represented a fundamental breach of the Newfoundland Act of 1933, with its promise that, “as soon as the Island’s difficulties are overcome and the country is again self-supporting, responsible government, on request from the people of Newfoundland, would be restored.”14 The wording of that document specified clearly that it was responsible government that would be restored, not representative or provincial or any other form of government, with the legislature in St. John’s, and all the sovereignty and power that had been suspended in 1933. The only flexibility the British had was in the timing of this restoration. For Newfoundlanders awaiting the fulfillment of a contract long overdue, terms that were once clear were now unclear, and what was once guaranteed—responsible government—had now become just another option. It is fair to say that, in December 1945, Newfoundlanders felt the constitutional ground shift beneath their feet.

  The extent to which these constitutional and nationalistic concerns weighed on Newfoundlanders, even those most sympathetic to Confederation, was the first and greatest obstacle to the schemers in London and Ottawa. Their anxiety is revealed in MacKay’s disingenuous reply to McEvoy in February 1946: “I was … perturbed that you and your friends feel that the constitutional convention is the wrong procedure and … alarmed that you all seem unanimous against taking any part in it. I know it is rather galling to many Newfoundlanders to have the Dominions Office take such a patronizing course.”15 The Canadians knew the device of the National Convention was not so much patronizing as paternalistic, and they were anxious, even desperate, for it to be accepted by Newfoundlanders as the constitutional process. MacKay concluded his pitch to McEvoy with this plum: “Those who may show up as political leaders in the Constitutional Convention will in all probability be the leaders of Newfoundland under any new regime.”16 That new regime could only be Confederation, for what other regime would MacKay be promoting on behalf of Canada’s Department of External Affairs?

  No doubt promises of senatorships and other considerations of personal power moved some to accept the device of the National Convention. Everyone recognized, however, that Britain held the only legitimately constituted authority and that those who did not participate in the process already established would deny themselves any say or influence in the future direction of their country. The National Convention, though deeply flawed, was the only option. Inevitably, then, prospective delegates were persuaded to participate. As things turned out, however, participation proved to be a strategic error. In Jim Halley’s words:

  That spring, in May 1946, I was approached by J.B. McEvoy with an offer. The previous summer I had worked in his law office as a student. Now he asked me to leave law school and come to work there full time. The Governor, he said, wanted him on stand-by to run as a Delegate for the National Convention. He would be busy with the Convention, and needed help to run the office.

  I knew that in McEvoy’s office I would see everyone, all the major players, Gordon Bradley, Joey Smallwood and the Confederates, Ches Crosbie, Major Peter Cashin, champion of Responsible Government, the British Governor, Gordon Macdonald, and the Commissioners, and the agents for the British and Canadian governments. I would have a front row seat for this historic constitutional event. It was an offer I could not refuse.

  So I said yes, and I saw it all. I saw the letters from Ottawa go across his desk from MacKay and others. I didn’t read them but I saw them and his dealings with Smallwood. We knew what was going on but we didn’t think they could pull it off. We thought Newfoundland would defeat them and Confederation. But we were wrong.

  I was a spy in McEvoy’s office so I saw how it was done, and it wasn’t done right but we couldn’t prove it then. We could not prove that what George Hawkins had said to us that day was true—until now. Now we can because we have the top-secret memoranda and other documents released by the Canadian Department of External Affairs and compiled by Paul Bridle, and what’s not there I can tell you, and I want to before I die.17

  Perhaps the only delegate with downright enthusiasm for the National Convention was J.R. Smallwood, the member from Bonavista, who had run openly as an advocate of Confederation with Canada. Having been resident in Gander since 1943, he also met the two-year residency requirement. Much has been said of this happy coincidence, with most scholars unwilling to take it at more than face value.

  Smallwood’s grandfather, David, had moved to Newfoundland from Prince Edward Island, where the family had been farmers for generations. Joey himself had a lifelong love of farming and a prejudice against the fishery, which was to prove unfortunate later in his career. He was born in Gambo, but immediately afterwards the family moved into St. John’s, where he grew up. His grandfather had acquired a boot-making establishment on Water Street, and, at the entrance to St. John’s Harbour, on the cliff face, he had a giant boot affixed, with the slogan “Buy Smallwood’s Boots.”18 It was the first thing fishermen saw as they entered the harbour. The business was a great success, and Grandfather David became the centre of young Joe’s life.

  Smallwood’s father, Charles, by contrast, was unreliable and an alcoholic, but with the help of his paternal uncle Fred, Joey Smallwood was educated with the privileged sons of the St. John’s elite at Bishop Feild College. What little money he earned from working in the gardens belonging to his grandfather and other neighbours went to buy books and magazines, which he then rented out to classmates. He was a voracious reader but always had trouble with math. Short of stature and perpetually short of funds, Smallwood was an underdog at Feild, where he acquired an envious disdain for the affluent and ruling class. It was not in his nature to go unnoticed, however, and he led several student demonstrations. His most famous campaign was a strike against the cafeteria food. The campaign slogan, “More Treacle, Less Pudding,” he
lifted out of a British schoolboy comic book. At the age of thirteen Joe was already showing signs of his grandfather’s brilliance at advertising.19

  When Smallwood left school at the age of fourteen, he had already determined that one day he would be prime minister of Newfoundland. After working for a time in the newspaper business, he left Newfoundland for New York, where he threw himself into the political life of the metropolis and felt the full force of the ideological undercurrents struggling for dominance in the world. He started as a journalist, and then became a speaker for the Socialist Party. The climax of his New York political career was the election of 1924. The Socialist Party threw its support behind the Progressive Party, and Smallwood became a featured speaker. It was a remarkable education for him, but the party was annihilated at the polls. Smallwood returned to St. John’s a skillful public speaker and a committed socialist. His concern for the working man and woman was genuine. However, as biographer Richard Gwyn states: “Smallwood was never a socialist in the theoretical sense, but a populist and an idealist by instinct, and a pragmatic politician and propagandist by nature.”20

  Back in St. John’s, Smallwood served in the Squires government and learned a great deal from his mentor about the value of personal loyalty and party control. After the fall of responsible government, he became at different times a union organizer, cooperative organizer, journalist and author, always with exceptional energy, zeal and attention. All these qualities combined to make him famous across Newfoundland in his next incarnation as the buoyant host of The Barrelman, a popular radio show. An engaging mix of Newfoundland history, songs and stories, plus mail from listeners, the show made Smallwood some real money. Then, inexplicably, he abandoned his successful radio career in 1943 and, by arrangement with the British and Canadian military installed at Gander, established a large pig farm there to feed the growing number of wartime personnel at both bases.

  Smallwood was certainly attracted to farming, or husbandry, and already had an unsuccessful pig farm outside St. John’s on Kenmount Road, which he financed with his earnings from The Barrelman. Some historians have concluded that the move was the spontaneous act of a lifelong lover of pigs. But even Harold Horwood, his fellow Confederate and biographer, allowed that “by all rules of common sense Joey should have stayed with The Barrelman until he was ready to step out into politics, but common sense was not his strong point.”21

  However that may be, most commentators on Smallwood, whether for or against him, seem to agree on one point—the man was single-minded and driven in search of his destiny. And that destiny lay in politics, not in pig farming. Smallwood never wavered in that pursuit. The idea that Smallwood would leave St. John’s, the centre of all political activity, as well as a lucrative and high-profile broadcasting career, just before the big constitutional issues of Newfoundland’s political destiny were to be decided, is psychologically unconvincing—unless that move was part of some greater political strategy.

  Some writers have asserted that Smallwood could not possibly have known of the residency requirement for elections as early as 1943. But that is not necessarily the case. As Jim Halley recalled:

  Smallwood was a “familiar” in the office of Charlie Burchell, the Canadian High Commissioner. We saw him going in and out all the time. I say “we,” but I mean Grace Sparkes, who lived across the street from Burchell on Circular Road and watched Joey going back and forth there. Grace worked for the Responsible Government League later on and went around the Island campaigning for the league during the referendum. So we presumed Joey was Burchell’s man, or one of them. And of course Burchell talked with Governor Walwyn regularly. Burchell knew about Walwyn’s insistence on a residency requirement for any elections, and he knew about the idea of a National Convention since at least the summer of 1943. But whether there was to be a National Convention or some other elected body, there was going to be a residency requirement because Walwyn was insisting on that to break the hold of the Water Street merchants and their lawyers over Newfoundland politics. There was a clash of elites there between the British and the local. The Canadians wanted the same thing as Walwyn. Like the British, they blamed the Water Street merchants for all of Newfoundland’s problems, especially for keeping Newfoundland out of Confederation in 1895.

  Joe would have known all that from Burchell. As a possible player on the Canadian team that Burchell was putting together, he surely would have been given any relevant information, such as a possible residency requirement, for any coming local elections. Charlie Burchell set him up out in Gander with the Canadian military and the British buying his pigs. It was a perfect match for Joe—he could kill two birds with one stone. And if the National Convention had been elected when it was originally scheduled in ’45, then Joe would just have qualified. But the Convention was postponed a year because the war in Europe dragged on and so he had to wait it out in Gander for another year before he got back to town.22

  The announcement for the election of the National Convention found Smallwood ideally situated outside anti-Confederate St. John’s in the district of Bonavista Centre, where he was already well known for his union and co-op work, not to mention The Barrelman. He campaigned with his usual single-minded determination more fiercely than any other delegate. During his residency in Gander he had become an expert on Canadian federalism, especially the benefits of the new social programs supported by Ottawa, and his campaign was an unabashed cry for Confederation. So far as Scott Macdonald and the Department of External Affairs were concerned, Smallwood was a valuable asset as a proselytizer and a salesman for Confederation, but not as the leader of the campaign. To them, he lacked the gravitas necessary for that role. They considered Gordon Bradley, the last leader of the Liberal Party in Newfoundland, a more suitable candidate, and he personally distrusted Smallwood. In 1935, when he was the magistrate in Bonavista, he had written to the Commission of Government:

  If the government has any intention of giving financial assistance to a co-operative movement in Bonavista (and I heartily support the idea) both its policy and its funds should be wholly free from the control or even the influence of Mr. Smallwood. I think he might be quite useful as a propagandist to travel about the country teaching the idea of co-operation, but as a business executive he is hopeless. No reliance is to be placed upon him where steady work or sound judgment is required. He is not stable.23

  Eventually, Bradley, McEvoy and their friends were all persuaded to set aside their constitutional scruples and stand for election. Smallwood had no such hesitation.

  On June 21, 1946, forty-five delegates were elected to the National Convention, which convened on September 11 that same year. Several weeks later Albert Perlin gave this account of their progress:

  The National Convention is a hard working body. Anyone aware of the immense amount of patient effort that is going into committee work will not need to be told that. Day after day committees are meeting for hours, discussing the particular problems before them, seeking expert evidence that will help them to marshal a full array of facts to guide them in their ultimate decisions.

  They are working under a handicap. There are no statistics worth very much. The Chadwick-Jones report summarized most of what there is and one had only to glance over that document to see what little exists in the way of reliable and basic information.

  It was thought at the beginning that there would be a great volume of highly technical and detailed information, carefully prepared and submitted by the Government. Nothing of the sort has happened.

  Its [the Convention’s] committees have no power to summon witnesses and have no funds out of which to retain counsel to assist in gathering and marshalling the facts produced by witnesses.…

  The Convention has none of these advantages or facilities. Nevertheless it is expected to produce reports on the basis of which the destiny of the Country may be decided.

  The thing is absurd. It was absurd from the beginning. One wonders if it were ever intended to be anythin
g else.24

  On October 28, exactly as Scott Macdonald had feared, Smallwood suddenly proposed that the Convention send a fact-finding delegation to Ottawa: “Resolved that the appropriate authorities be advised that the Convention desires to inform the Government of Canada of the Convention’s wish to learn the Government’s attitude on the question of Federal Union with Canada and further wishes to ascertain the terms and conditions on the basis of which the Government of Canada consider that such a Federal Union might be effected.”

  Smallwood accompanied his proposal with a passionate plea for Confederation in which he painted a very bleak picture of Newfoundland:

  The people view the future now with more dread than they felt a century ago.… We live more poorly, more shabbily, more meanly. Our life is more of a struggle. Our struggle is tougher, more naked, more hopeless.…

  We are so used to our railway and our coastal boats that we scarcely see them; so used to our settlements and roads and homes and schools and hospitals and hotels and everything else that we do not even see their inadequacy, their backwardness, their seaminess.

  We can of course persist in isolation, a dot on the shore of North America, the Funks of the North American continent struggling vainly to support ourselves and our greatly expanded public services.… By our isolation from the throbbing vitality and expansion of the continent, we have been left far behind by the march of time, the “sport of historic misfortune,” the “Cinderella of Empire.” Our choice now is to continue in blighting isolation or seize an opportunity that may beckon us to the wider horizons and the higher standards of unity with the progressive mainland of America.… I insist that as a constituent part of the [Canadian] federation we should continue to be quite free to hold to our love of our own dear land.25