The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

by Wayne Johnston

  And keen and wring their hands.)

  When spreads thy cloak of shimm’ring white,

  At winter’s stern command,

  Thro’ shortened day and star-lit night,

  We love thee, frozen land.

  (When shrouds of snow, beguiling white,

  At winter’s cold command,

  Do shorten day and darken night,

  Where art thou, frozen land?)

  When blinding storm gusts fret thy shore,

  And wild waves lash thy strand,

  Thro’ spindrift swirl and tempest roar,

  We love thee, wind-swept land.

  (When rotting sculpins line thy shore,

  When capelin swarm thy strand,

  The stench is such one hears men roar,

  “Thou reekest, wind-swept land.”)

  As loved our fathers, so we love,

  Where once they stood we stand,

  Their prayer we raise to heav’n above,

  God guard thee, Newfoundland.

  (As lived our fathers, we live not,

  Where once they knelt, we stand.

  With God nor King to guard our lot,

  We’ll guard thee, Newfoundland.)

  As Loved Our Fathers

  IT WAS ALL I COULD DO to keep myself from running to the basilica and kissing the feet of Archbishop Roche when he denounced Confederation in the Monitor, the official Catholic newsletter. The archbishop, in editorial after editorial, said that Confederation amounted to treason, a treason that would betray the men who built our country and cause the country itself to become “tarnished” by the Canadian, royalist, socialistic, dole-dependent way of life against which we could protect ourselves only through continued independence. The baby bonus, he said, was “an incentive to fornication.”

  I knew these editorials would galvanize support for Confederation among fence-sitting Protestants, who outnumbered fence-sitting Catholics two to one. The Orange Lodge distributed to all its members a letter denouncing the Catholic Church for denouncing Confederation. I myself called the Catholic Church the tail that wags the dog.

  What had seemed like just another election now began to seem more like civil war. It was as if only with the entry of the churches into the campaign did people finally realize what was at stake, only then were they convinced, or fooled into believing, that everything was. The Catholic appeal to patriotism and the Protestant call to “bring to naught” the attempt of the Catholic Church to “dominate Newfoundland” did more than just stir up sectarianism. It forced us to face our long-buried demon of identity.

  We confederates took out on the independents the shame and guilt we could not admit, even to ourselves, to feeling, and the independents were all the more fanatically for independence the more they doubted, the more tempted to join our side, they felt.

  In St. John’s, days before the second referendum, flags of every kind flew everywhere, as if bunting week had been declared. The raising of the pink, white and green on one side of a street provoked the raising of the Union Jack on the other, though it was by this time no longer clear which faction was favoured by which flag. No longer did neighbourhood vie with neighbourhood, or street with street, or even house with house. The population was as atomized as it could get. It was not uncommon to see, on the same house, one window with a poster exhorting passers-by to vote Confederation and another exhorting them to vote for independence. In houses all over the city, mealtimes were like that scene in Joyce’s book where Stephen’s aunt and Stephen’s father argue bitterly about Parnell.

  Grown-ups who knew that, unlike them, children could travel unmolested through the streets, put them up to marching in parades, beating drums and blowing horns, stalling traffic.

  One such parade in support of independence went right past our offices. There was a child on each sidewalk and one in the middle holding aloft a street-wide, slogan-bearing banner that blocked my view of the chanting horde behind them. In the rows of houses on either side of the street, grown-ups leaned from upper-storey windows, looking down as if some sort of coup by children that they were powerless to stop was under way. The children sang a verse from a song written by the “antis” in 1869:

  Would you barter the rights that your fathers have won?

  No! Let them descend from father to son.

  For a few thousand dollars’ Canadian gold,

  Don’t let it be said that our birthright was sold.

  They sang, to the air of “A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing,” a song called “The Hero of 1948.”

  Our skies above look brighter, our paper mills now hum,

  There’s iron ore in Labrador, enough till Kingdom come;

  The U.S.A. she wants our fish, the long dark night is o’er,

  So don’t surrender, Newfoundland, don’t give up, Labrador.

  A country-wide grudge match had been declared, an arbitrary means of settling old scores, old grievances that had nothing to do with politics.

  Ostensibly the wager was the future of the country. But really it was the question of who for all time could claim that they had “won.” What it was they’d won seemed not to matter, as long as the winners could feel they had been vindicated. Here was a contest that you could never live down losing and that over winning you could gloat forever.

  Spouses, brothers, sisters, parents, children, churches, unions were divided, not along religious lines and not, though they would have told you otherwise, because their politics were different.

  Throughout the second campaign there prevailed a kind of anarchic, atavistic party, like a Mardi Gras or mummer’s festival without the masks. Under the exemption, the amnesty conferred by such occasions, anything was permitted. No one gave any mind to how things would be afterwards, when this exemption had been lifted, when the issue had been settled, for it seemed at the time that the fight, having become an end in itself, would last forever.

  It is hard to convey to someone who knows how things turned out what it was like back then, when no one knew how a victory by one side would be received by the other, or what margin of victory would be acceptable.

  I went out with my bodyguards and my revolver in my pocket on those last few summer nights before the vote, got up in some disguise, a pulled-down hat, an up-turned collar, clothing of the sort I was never known to wear. Out of every door left open to let a cooling breeze blow through, the same din of contending voices carried into the streets. Every bar we passed was in an uproar. When the bars were shut and those men who lingered outside on the street after closing time had drifted off, we walked, the three of us, through a city that was eerily quiet.

  It was inevitable, what with me being the leader of the confederates and my parents being independents, that there would occur in the Smallwood house just such a bloodletting as occurred in houses throughout the country.

  Ours took place during a Sunday dinner just days before the second referendum. My father had recently made a point of being out whenever I came by but was ominously present on this occasion.

  I saw his toting pole in the corner of the porch and prepared myself for what I knew was coming and because of the possibility of which I had left Clara and the children home. The only other member of the family on hand was my brother David.

  We managed to get through dinner without talking much, but then my father went out on the deck that overlooked the city. We could see him through the sitting-room window. It was a warm day. The doors to both decks were open to let a breeze blow through the house. I could see my bodyguards standing on the ocean-facing deck, smoking cigarettes. My mother looked at me beseechingly, begging me to draw upon all the reserves of forbearance that I possessed.

  My father raised his arms as if to address a multitude. It was years since I had heard him hold forth on the deck. I had many times since I moved out cut short a visit the second he went out there, determined that I would never again be a part of his captive audience.

  “OLD LOST LAND,” he roared, in a voice that would
have drowned out Hines’s from a hundred yards away. My mother closed her eyes, blessed herself, clasped her hands so tightly that her fingertips went white.

  “A country that might have been but may never be because of one of mine. ONE OF MINE,” he roared, smacking the rail of the deck with both hands. “One of Charlie Smallwood’s. It galls me, Minnie May, it galls me to know that in the history books, they will record me as his father, that when they look for explanations they will point to me, as if I made him what he was. The sins of the son will be visited upon the father.”

  I stood up, stepped aside from David, who tried to block my way.

  “Whatever I am, I am in spite of you,” I said, standing in the doorway, addressing his back. He did not turn round. He was facing the setting sun and the tiered row houses of St. John’s across the harbour, the whole city looking as if it had been arranged to show off to best effect the towering basilica of St. John the Baptist, shaped like an about-to-take-flight dove with wings outspread.

  “Better to be an honourable failure,” he said to his imaginary multitude, “than a treacherous success. Better to accept what you were born to than sell your soul to get ahead.”

  “If you had accepted what you were born to,” I said, “you might have made something of yourself.”

  “I could have done great things,” he said, “had I been unscrupulous. All that ever stood between me and the big time was my conscience, which would not let me compromise myself. I bypassed many opportunities rather than betray myself or someone else.”

  I was about to reply when he turned around, strode past me and went upstairs, taking the steps two at a time as if to assure me that he was coming back. I looked at my mother, who sat there exactly as before, eyes closed, hands clasped.

  “Joe,” David said pleadingly, but before he could finish, my father came running down the stairs with the two volumes of my failed encyclopedia, The Book of Newfoundland, tucked beneath his arm. He had not spoken a word to me about the book until this moment. He put one volume on the coffee table.

  “What have we here?” he said, holding the other out in front of him, as if the better to identify it. “The Book of Newfoundland,” he said. He turned to the title page. “Edited by Joseph R. Smallwood.” He read the dedication out loud, “To my parents, Charles and Minnie May Smallwood,” then cocked his head as if to say, “Now isn’t that something?” He thumbed through the book, scornfully reciting the names he saw inside, those of famous Newfoundlanders, as if I had been taken in by them, fooled by them into thinking anyone would want to read about them.

  “Why didn’t you get one of your editorial board members to sign it for me? Sir Richard, for instance. “ ‘To Charlie. Your son and I are friends. Friends as you and I might have been had you kissed my arse.’ ”

  My mother ran upstairs to her room. While my father paused, we heard her pacing overhead, convinced, I had no doubt, that all this was her fault, that this was what came of vainglorious books.

  “I’m not in here,” he said. “The old man and Freddie and you, my first born, and God knows how many other Smallwoods are in here, but not me. Except in the dedication. ‘Dedicated to my parents, Charles and Minnie May Smallwood.’ I have thought about that a lot. Oh, yes. At night, out there on that deck all by myself, I have pondered on it. A dedication is the only way I could ever get my name into a book like this. He seeks to appease me for deeming me unworthy of inclusion in his book by working my name into the dedication. I am honoured, deeply honoured, and not at all offended as some men might be.”

  The fact that what he said about my trying to appease him was not entirely untrue did not make it any easier to take.

  “Under what heading would I have put you?” I shouted. “Noted drunks of Newfoundland? Noted good-for-nothings? Noted ne’er-do-wells? I should walk out of here and never speak to you again. I would if I didn’t think it would break my mother’s heart.”

  David tried to intervene, but my father waved him off. “Charlie Smallwood,” he said. “Noted for nothing and therefore not noted. But you haven’t outdone the judge, if that was your intention, as I’m sure it was. What would the judge make of your book, I wonder? What would old Prowse think if he saw it on the shelf beside his own? How would the judge judge you? I believe he would tell you that people will still be reading his book long after they’ve forgotten yours.”

  “He’s … he’s drunk,” David said. My mother had stopped pacing overhead. I knew she must be listening. Her ear to the door, or even the floor perhaps.

  “He’s always drunk,” I said, looking at him but talking to David in low tones, as if my father could not hear me. “If that’s an excuse, then he’s not to blame for anything he’s ever done. He’s been drunk since before I was born.”

  I turned to him. “I’ll never speak to you again. You are no longer my father. I am no longer your son.”

  My father hurried to the sofa, and with the book still in his hand, huddled side-on into the cushions, his face averted in the manner of someone about to receive a beating that he knows he deserves, or that he provoked so his attacker would come off looking shameful.

  I stared at my father for a full minute, but he did not look back. His eyes opened and closed as if he were on the verge of sleep or collapse, suddenly sober and exhausted. He had provoked it. This confrontation was something he had long been contemplating.

  I felt a surge of perverse affection for him. Ridiculous, fearful, helpless old man. I suddenly realized how old he was, how drained of energy he was from having held forth on the deck for but a few minutes, he who had once done it all night long.

  The one thing he feared more than life was death. How he had trembled, how terrified he seemed when I threatened to disown him, as if this was the first casting off, the first severance of many that, when they ended, would end him.

  “I’m sorry, Joe,” he said, beginning to cry. “Don’t mind me, boy. You know me, boy. You know what I can get like when I’m drinking.”

  I looked at David, looked upstairs when I heard the floorboards creak.

  “It’s all right,” I said. I held out my hand to him and, smiling up at me appealingly, he took it. Though he looked as if he was putting everything he could into it, his whole arm shaking, there was no strength in his grasp. He was an old man, my father. An old man who had never had his day.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s forgotten.”

  But of course, it was not forgotten, as such things never are. I had disowned him in spirit and retracted only for pity’s sake, form’s sake, my mother’s sake. Not out of love, and we both knew it. And it was always there between us after that.

  Second Referendum Night,

  July 22, 1948

  I had done my share of celebrating. I did not trust myself to drive. Everyone I knew who owned a car was roaring drunk, even my bodyguards.

  I dared not call a cab. The driver would be as likely to kill me as to kiss me. Twice as likely, here in St. John’s. On this night, even a confederate cabbie might not want to chance having Joe Smallwood in his car.

  It did not matter; I felt like walking anyway. It was between three and four in the morning when I went outside, alone, my bodyguards let me think, or believed they had, for as I walked I knew they were behind me somewhere, I could hear them, laughing, probably too drunk to do me any good, more likely to draw attention to me than anything else. I decided I would lose them if I could.

  A few brave souls walked, arms linked, through the streets with bottles in their hands, confederates who walked right past me without giving me a second look. The streets, strewn with confetti, were otherwise deserted.

  I heard, from somewhere in the east end, a solitary, punctuating shotgun blast that echoed back and forth between the harbour hills. Earlier, guns had fired almost constantly for hours, not so much in celebration, it seemed, as in symbolic execution of the losers.

  I felt the weight of my revolver in the pocket of my jacket, and the iron ingot I had worn
in the other pocket for three months now as a counterweight, so my jacket would hang evenly. I felt the pull of both weights on my shoulders. They caused me to hunch slightly and I wondered if I would ever walk upright again. And how much longer I would need the gun.

  Everywhere, it seemed, the pink, white and green flew at half-mast. Let the old flag fall. The anti-confederates, looking out their windows the next day, must have wondered how they lost; there were so many more of them than us.

  But only in the city. Not in the outports where the antis had never been. They had been to London and they had been to New York, but they had never been to Bonavista or La Poile, and that was why they lost. Here and there the Union Jack flew at full mast.

  I knew my father was still up, though the southside hills were dark. I didn’t have to write about others any more. From now on, others would write about me. I would make history, had made it. I no longer had to write it. Yes, I knew that my father was out on the deck and that he knew that his son was somewhere in the city down below.

  I tried to imagine what the city must look like from the Brow. A couple of hours ago, it would have looked like a relief map, the confederate one-third lit up, the rest dark. But there were just a few lights now. Anti-confederates, I suspected, though I was not sure why. Keeping bitter vigil. I knew that my mother had voted for the losing side and that my father, if he voted, had done so, too, each for their different reasons.

  I walked down Bonaventure, past Fort Townshend, turned left where Harvey Road met Military Road. I walked past the Colonial Building, Government House, hurried across Cavendish Square in front of the Newfoundland Hotel, outside of which huddled a knot of men I knew were anti-confederates because of the aggrieved, subdued way they stood there, smoking cigarettes. It did not occur to them I might be him. Though I was wearing no disguise, they paid me no attention.

  By the time I reached Battery Road, I was sure I had lost my bodyguards. I felt safer here among the houses of the city poor, the fishermen who I knew had voted for Confederation.