Our type of poverty
Paul Sparkes: Everyone was poor during those times
In mid-may I put together a column headlined “The poorest in North America.” My inspiration was a chapter in J.R. Smallwood’s 1979 book “The Time Has Come To Tell.” Our first provincial premier wrote, “the unforgettable thing about Newfoundland for most of the years before Confederation ... is that we were poor. We were a poor people, a poor country; the poorest in North America.” And the British peer Lord Ammon wrote in the mid-1940s that here you could find “some of the worst housing conditions in the Empire, if not in the world.”
If only half-true, these were sobering descriptions.
As Smallwood described the tenuous nature of our main economic driver, the fishery, I was able to resurrect a few supporting comments: deprivation in the outports in the 1930s, the paucity of our home environments ... linoleum instead of carpets ... the prevalence of tuberculosis and the consequences of being nutritiondeprived and soon. A couple of weeks later I received a long and thoughtful email from a reader who argued that we were not so poor as we were made to look. The writer’s argument was that we portrayed as bleak as possible in the mid to late 1940s in order to convince us to jump willingly into Canada’s embrace. The suggestion was that war had shown Britain and Canada the value of our strategic airspace — an advantage that should fall to no other country.
The email added that in reference to the ’30s and postsecond World War days, “the fact is that everyone was poor during those times and we were just average amongst them.”
It might be argued that Smallwood could be selective in his history when it was necessary to embellish the story of the fight for Confederation. He could have argued that we knew abject poverty. He could omit references to anyone who did well in logging, or in the fish business. They would be in the tiny minority, anyway.
Quite recently I came across a copy of Smallwood’s statement to Canada (so to speak) on the occasion of Confederation. In last week’s column I gave some of the descriptions of Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders courtesy of the April 1, 1949 issue of The Ottawa Journal. So now, here’s some of what J.R.S. wrote in that same issue. He described what it was like here up to the point when he carried us across Canada’s threshold:
‘Poverty stalked our homes’ “A poor fishing season,” Smallwood wrote, “or a break in world markets, and poverty stalked our homes. For other sources of income are limited. I first realized this when I worked among the fishermen in the desperate 1930s. For these were years I shall never forget and which, I earnestly pray, will never be visited upon human beings again.
“I saw many of the finest fishermen in the world reduced to death’s door by malnutrition,” Smallwood wrote, “hobbling about with beri-beri. I saw children stricken with rickets. I saw women age ten years in a single year.
“In my work organizing the fishermen into a union, I ate with them, slept and lived with them, fished with them. I saw countless men better than I slowly starving to death with that awful hunted, puzzled, impotent look in their eyes. These were the days when a third of our whole population starved on a dole of six cents a person a day. And even that was more than the government could afford, in face more than it had. I saw good, honest men in the government struggle vainly to cope with those disasters”...
By the way, six cents in 1930 would be about equivalent to $1 today.
Smallwood continues: “I grew to hate the very thought of Newfoundland reverting to Responsible Government as an independent nation. For I feared it would lead again to destitution and vain struggle.
“Few nations have encountered — and survived — suffering and hardship that have faced the Newfoundland people. For 452 years they have fought against injustice and oppression...
“Against these odds, all the courage in the world couldn’t make our small, independent nation genuinely independent or self-supporting. We should have joined Canada 80 years ago. We would be much further ahead if we had. It has been a costly lesson ...
“It is important to recognize that while confederation will raise our standard of living, it will not automatically solve our basic problem which is the development of a more diversified economy...
“We Newfoundlanders don’t want to become a glorified Canadian poorhouse, a sort of genteel ward of the state. We don’t want to be a “drag” on Canada. We realize we can’t live on family allowances and other social security payments alone...
“This is big job. Newfoundland’s major difficulties in the past resulted primarily from our too great dependence upon our fisheries — the salt-cod fishery in particular. Outside of St. John’s, and with the exception of two big paper mills and several large mines, we have practically no industry.
“As this indicates, the fisheries are the life-blood of our economy. When the catch is good, and the markets are firm, everything is fine. But fishing, at best, is hazardous. And so are our salt-cod markets in the lowincome Latin American and European countries. The result has been our low standard of living.”
Does it sound like Smallwood was exaggerating?