Taming the wilderness of Labrador
A.A. den Otter, a professor emeritus of history at Memorial University, has written a most helpful collection of essays tracing the European — primarily British — drive to conquer nature in Canada during the early years of settlement.
Those who know Northrop Frye’s theory of the Bush Garden are probably familiar with many of the opening observations den Otter makes with regard to “the long held view that the natural resources of the wilderness must be developed for the benefit of humanity,” but it is helpful to have the broader picture laid out with specific references.
Most of the early immigrant writers viewed civilization as encompassing “literate knowledge, formal education, advanced science and technology as well as arts and literature,” with “a justice system, a representative government, a well-defined social structure and etiquette, a capitalist economy and great cities of commerce” tagged on.
The wilderness, on the other hand, was viewed as desolate, disorderly, brutal, frightening and, above all, wasted on the savages who inhabited it.
The aim of settlement, according to most 19th-century British politicians and missionaries, was to use technology to tame the wilderness, exploit its natural resources, Christianize and assimilate its inhabitants and “transform it into seats of civilization and centres of great moral movements.”
Den Otter expands upon this theme by citing the works of a variety of authors, including the Strickland sisters Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Trail, missionaries William Mason and Robert Rundle, aboriginal converts Henry Steinhauer and Henry Budd, and various others.
Perhaps the most interesting essay is on the Ojibwa visionary Peter Jones, who held contradictory hopes of maintaining Ojibwa tradition while encouraging conversion and settlement.
Den Otter also looks into the Red River settlement and rebellion at some length, examining the Sayer trial and the 1857 “Gradual Civilization Act” that took control of aboriginal lands and put it entirely into the hands of government administrators, thus ensuring the powerlessness of aboriginals to determine their own futures.
If such a book does not seem relevant to the average Newfoundland or Labrador reader today, think again.
What Kathy Dunderdale is really saying about the hydro development at Muskrat Falls is that unused resources benefit nobody, and Labrador must be hauled kicking and screaming into the 21st century at any cost.
Uncut trees, undammed rivers and unmined minerals are all valueless and a sinful waste of resources. The only good wilderness is a tame one, such as a well-controlled park through which we can build hydro lines.
Imagine, if you can, that Louis Riel was not hanged but was allowed to take his rightful seat in Parliament, but then decided that the capitalist economy was “the progressive and desirable force leading to moral, economic, political and social advancement” for his people.
Imagine that instead of using his position to fight for Métis rights, he used it to establish joint ventures with industrial subcontractors. Imagine that he changed his name to Peter Penashue.
This is the situation den Otter is dissecting. The names of the players have changed, but the game is the same.
When den Otter writes of the 19th-century developers that, “The colonists could not grasp that their hosts did not consider the land a commodity to be bought and sold for profit,” it is all too easy to read it as, “The Newfoundlanders did not grasp that Labradorians did not consider the land a commodity to be bought and sold for profit.”
Except that, unfortunately, some did, both then and now.
“Civilizing the Wilderness” is a timely reminder that if you don’t know your history, you are doomed to repeat it.
Glimpse of history
“Wooden Ships and Iron Men” is a small book, about 75 pages of text supplemented by photographs, maps and other apparatus, so it is unfortunate that the first page I opened had two typos and an incorrect citation, because it has a certain charm.
The work tells the story of a schooner built in Chance Cove in 1935 with financial support from the Commission of Government. The ship apparently sailed splendidly, but the fishing was bad and the days of the schooner were already waning by the time she hit the water, so her working days were relatively brief.
Within 15 years, the “Fronie” was rotting on a beach. However, the family who built her took great pride in the schooner’s performance and she became the focus of many amusing and illuminating anecdotes, many of which appear in this joint father and daughter memoir/history.
“Wooden Ships and Iron Men” is a small snapshot of a particular time and place, including a 20-page diary of a summer trip to Labrador in 1945. Many of the diary entries are only a sentence or two in length, but the whole vividly sums up the uncertainty of life in the Labrador fishery, with uneven catches and dangerous weather.
It’s hard to realize now how cut off the fishermen of those days were from life ashore. The bombing of Japan that ended the war in the Pacific appears only in the heading “Black Monday” on the Aug. 13 entry of Bill Rowe’s diary, almost a week after it happened. Fish catches were still being measured in barrels, not tons.
“Wooden Ships and Iron Men” may be a small book, illuminating only a tiny piece of 20th-century Newfoundland history, but it contains the kind of humanizing detail that makes history come alive, and is worth the few hours it takes to read.
What Kathy Dunderdale is really saying about the hydro development at
Muskrat Falls is that unused resources benefit nobody, and Labrador must be hauled kicking and screaming into the 21st century at any cost.