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ST JOHN’S BOOK LAUNCH:
Newfoundland Rhapsody: Frederick R. Emerson and the Musical Culture of the Island
By Glenn David Colton
Thursday, June 26th, 7-9 pm
Bally Haly Country Club
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In Newfoundland Rhapsody, Glenn David Colton explores the life and career of Frederick Rennie Emerson (1895-1972), a dynamic presence in the cultural and intellectual life of Newfoundland and Labrador for much of the twentieth century. Colton discusses Newfoundland society, Canada’s emerging arts scene, and the international folk music community to offer a new lens through which to view the cultural history of twentieth-century Newfoundland and Canada.
“A thorough and contextualized examination of Emerson, his life, his creative work, and his family, Newfoundland Rhapsody is an important contribution to Newfoundland and Canadian studies that will appeal to both popular and scholarly audiences.”
Philip Hiscock, Department of Folklore, Memorial University
The following Newfoundland Rhapsody excerpt looks at the island’s entry into Confederation in 1949 and how it was received by Emerson and the general public through folk music.
The shortcomings of the Commission of Government in Newfoundland were soon overshadowed by the outbreak of the Second World War and the dramatic economic and social transformation that resulted. While the War exacted an immeasurable human toll in lost lives, the economic benefits for Newfoundland were undeniable. By 1943 healthy budget surpluses were reported, owing in large measure to increasing demand for local exports such as fish, paper, iron, and copper, while employment levels stood at record highs. An influx of US military personnel accompanied the establishment of major facilities at St John’s, Argentia, and Stephenville, and the concurrent influx of American culture would leave a lasting legacy that forever changed the face of Newfoundland society. Under the auspices of the USO, American entertainers such as Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry, and many others performed in Newfoundland, while the composer/conductor John Williams would later join the list of distinguished American musicians stationed on the island in the postwar era. Some US servicemen – notable among them pianist Ralph Walker and music educator Leo Sandoval – remained in Newfoundland to pursue musical careers while an emergent tradition of homegrown big band orchestras (such as those of Chris Andrews, Micky Duggan, Al Felix, and others) enlivened local dances and social events.
In autumn 1945, the British government announced that a national convention would be elected the following year to make recommendations on Newfoundland’s political future. After nearly two years of tumultuous debate in which Commission of Government or a return to Responsible Government emerged as the two dominant options, a motion by Joseph R. Smallwood that Confederation with Canada be placed on the ballot in a referendum was soundly defeated. Smallwood, who had arrived at the convention with an eclectic resumé that included stints as labour leader, journalist, radio host, and pig farmer, was one of the Confederates’ most ardent supporters and soon became their acknowledged leader. Undeterred by the momentary setback, he launched a bold attack campaign against the Responsible Government side and sought a petition to have Confederation added as a third option on the ballot. With nearly 50,000 Newfoundlanders signing the petition, the British government consented and the Confederation option was added to the referendum ballot. On 3 June 1948, the referendum was held and although Responsible Government defeated Confederation by a narrow margin, a second referendum was deemed necessary since neither side emerged with a clear majority. In the run-off referendum that ensued (with Commission of Government dropped from the ballot), Newfoundlanders voted by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent in favour of Confederation. On 31 March 1949, Newfoundland became Canada’s tenth province and Smallwood ascended from relative obscurity to become Canada’s last father of Confederation and Newfoundland’s first premier.
The momentous verdict polarized the population and is still hotly debated today. While the many complex political issues surrounding Newfoundland’s entry into Confederation are well beyond the scope of the present volume, the extent to which prior negotiations between the British and Canadian governments may have influenced the outcome of the final referendum remains a topical subject of scholarly debate laden with intrigue and conspiracy theories. As with many defining moments in Newfoundland history, the event spawned a potpourri of responses in song (mostly of an anti-Confederate bias); many of these, in turn, were resuscitated from the long-dead Confederation debate of the 1860s. Songs such as the “Confederation Song of 1869” (quoted in James Murphy’s 1902 compilation Songs and Ballads of Newfoundland) and the similarly inspired “Antis of Plate Cove” (quoted in the first edition of Gerald S. Doyle’s Old-Time Songs and Poetry of Newfoundland, 1927), struck a resonant chord with proponents of Responsible Government, for whom the strident verses acquired anthem status. Arguably the most famous was the “Anti-Confederation Song” with its defiant proclamation: “Hurrah for our own native isle, Newfoundland! / Not a stranger shall hold one inch of its strand! / Her face turns to Britain, her back to the Gulf. / Come near at your peril, Canadian Wolf!” The song was immortalized in the second edition of Doyle’s widely circulated Old-Time Songs and Poetry of Newfoundland (1940) and, ironically perhaps, in Fowke and Johnston’s Folk Songs of Canada (1954) and Fowke’s Canadian Folk Songs (1973).
Yet behind the defiant rhetoric and cries of lost nationhood was a Newfoundland that was, in many respects, far better off than it had ever been. Union with Canada brought with it the security of old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, family allowances, and, by the 1960s, universal healthcare – an undeniably higher standard of living that must have seemed improbable at best a decade earlier. Perhaps the most dramatic transformation occurred in the field of education, where Memorial University College was transformed from a collegial campus of 300 students into a modern university with a generous scholarship and bursary program and skyrocketing enrollment that exceeded 10,000 within a few years. For Emerson, a staunch advocate of Newfoundland independence, it was a bittersweet occasion, yet one not without opportunity. In a letter to Grace Butt some fifteen years later, he echoed the sentiments of many Newfoundlanders of his generation in recounting the conflicting emotions the event engendered, a poignant mixture of hope and promise for a brighter tomorrow coupled with nostalgic reminiscences of a life (and nation) left behind: “I was brought up to feel that Confederation was inevitable and, having a Canadian mother, I couldn’t have anti-Canadian feelings, but, like Charlie Hunt and so many of us felt at the time, I resented Newfoundland being part of a ‘deal’ between England and Canada and also being accepted by such a small majority vote. However, the years have shown the economic advantages and I expect most people now accept a fait accompli with satisfaction – but ‘the joy that we were’ has gone. If that is difficult to put into words it is something one can definitely feel. And it was a good thing.”
Within a few years, Emerson had become an influential cultural ambassador for Newfoundland in Canada, staking a claim for Newfoundland music on the Canadian agenda and bringing his passionate advocacy of the subject to a new audience. At the request of Smallwood, Emerson represented Newfoundland as a member of the first Canada Council for the Arts from 1957 to 1959.
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