Sue's Blog

Saturday, June 17, 2006

It's in us! Let it out!

On Friday afternoon I was participating in the Radio Noon Book Club. This week we were reviewing Kevin Noble's "No Man's Land". The story is a novelized account of the Battle of the Somme, (Beaumont-Hamel). Of course looking at it through a soldiers eyes and feeling, as best I can, going over the top that fateful day stirs up a lot of emotion.
The book and play are terrific and all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians should read it, especially the youth.
In either case there were eight of us in the CBC radio studio downtown and several more on the telephone from various parts of the province. We all took turns giving our opinions on Kevin's work with Anne Budgell (the host) moving us along various particulars. She also had her own opinion, of course.
The make-up of the studio guests was very interesting, including; Mike Kehoe, a fervent Newfoundlander and I believe a nationalist, if not an anti-colonialist, a woman Helen who moved here from England, a pleasant young woman from New Brunswick, a fellow who is a current member of the Newfoundland Regiment, and me a committed nationalist.
Anyway as the review moved on Mike was getting very passionate about it all. He deeply respects Kevin, as a writer, but was having a difficult time with this book because as he put it, "it smacked of colonialism". I suspect it was not the book but this growing feeling in our province - that where we are is not where we should be. Canada has been a failure and Great Britain even worse. Helen was giving the book a great review as she thought it told the story in a way she was not familiar with. She admitted her eyes have been closed by the British version of things. Helen added, "I feel the pride of Newfoundlanders in this", and she is right. Anne for her part added that Beaumont Hamel had become almost mythological and anybody who dared write about it”must show Newfoundlanders in a good way".
For me the program became much more than a book review; I was witnessing a resurgence of deep feelings of regret and in some cases welling anger at our lot. I was witnessing the emotion necessary to step back and take a long look at the path our people have taken. In many ways we have been doing that a lot lately. The comparisons to Iceland and Ireland come off the tongue now easier than ever as we realize we could have and can stand alone as a nation.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were "used" that day on July 1st, 1916 as the British Empire's human shield and sacrifice.
We have always been used that way. Our bright young men and women, leaders and the future of our nation slaughtered senselessly. We cannot rewrite history but surely we can anticipate what direction we might have taken if certain events had played out differently.
We don't have to go back too far to witness how we are seen and used by the motherland, in this case Canada. Remember 911 when planes were diverted to Newfoundland and Labrador for what some say was to protect Ottawa and Toronto from any of the carnage of terrorism.
If we look at it from an economic perspective, our fish were used for Britain in the same way Canada has used and abused the resource for trade in other goods and services. For that matter the way Newfoundland and Labrador was used as a military hub by the Americans and when no longer necessary; abandoned with god knows what pollution and poison left behind.
Bell Island, scraped of her iron ore to be processed and refined in the Maritimes in another war effort. The iron ore and minerals in Labrador for Quebec and Ontario and a few corporate crooks.
The energy flowing from the Upper Churchill fuelling the industries in Quebec and the States while we continue to suffer the loss of our people.
The time must certainly be here to rethink what we are doing and why. We must join together in Newfoundland and Labrador and become what we should have been decades ago. Successful, peaceful, and happy people with so much to offer the rest of the world; after we find ourselves and our rightful place.