by Greg Malone
Major Peter Cashin’s predictions of a warm welcome were fully realized. The reception in Ottawa was in every respect the opposite of the poor treatment meted out to the Newfoundland delegation in London:
On the evening of June 24th the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable W.L. Mackenzie King, gave a dinner at the Country Club in honour of the Delegation from the National Convention of Newfoundland which arrived in Ottawa earlier the same day to commence discussions with the Canadian Government regarding the possibility of federal union of Canada and Newfoundland. The guests at the dinner included the Right Honourable L.S. St. Laurent, Secretary of State for External Affairs, and other members of the Cabinet who will meet with the Newfoundland Delegation, the leader of the Opposition in the Senate, the leaders of the Opposition parties in the House of Commons, the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth countries and a number of Government officials.
… Mr. Bradley thanked the Prime Minister most sincerely for the warm welcome which he and his associates had extended to the Newfoundland Delegation and he said that ever since the delegation had arrived on Canadian soil they had been greatly impressed with the friendliness and goodwill of the Canadian people.2
The dinner was a grand affair, almost worthy of visiting royalty, and all for “little Newfoundland,” which until six years earlier had not even rated a diplomat. The next day, as the discussions began, there were more speeches and another line-up of top Canadian officials led by the prime minister and including top cabinet ministers Louis St. Laurent (External Affairs), J.L. Isley (Justice), Dr. J.J. McCann (National Revenue), Douglas Abbott (Finance) and Frank Bridges (Fisheries). Scott Macdonald, the high commissioner to Newfoundland, was present, as well as Lester Pearson, R.A. MacKay, Paul Bridle, Mitchell Sharp, Dr. Hugh Keenleyside and numerous other Canadian officials. On the Newfoundland side, besides Gordon Bradley and J.R. Smallwood, the Newfoundland delegation included Gordon Higgins, Charles Ballam, the Rev. Lester Burry, T.G. Ashbourne and F.W. Crummey.
The huge imbalance in expertise, resources and authority between these two official groups immediately created a fundamental problem with the process. This ad hoc group of delegates from the Convention, whom Smallwood called “clod-hoppers” compared to the Canadian officials, were supposedly there to inquire, to ask questions only. They specifically had no power to negotiate. Yet unofficially they were there to negotiate the Terms of Union that Canada would offer to the governor in Newfoundland. These terms would then be voted on in a referendum. Officially the terms of 1947 remained unnegotiated, a simple spontaneous offer from Canada which kept the Newfoundland delegation in Ottawa for over three months as they asked questions that were carefully framed not to appear as negotiations. Facing this compromised group from Newfoundland was the seasoned government of Canada, with all the resources of its departments and institutions behind it. The Canadian officials had all the authority they required to negotiate and deal; the delegation from Newfoundland had none. As Albert Perlin had written, “The thing is absurd. It was absurd from the beginning. One wonders if it were ever intended to be anything else.”
The British knew the process was seriously flawed. Just four months earlier Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, the high commissioner in Ottawa, had written in a secret memo to Lester Pearson: “The Dominions Office is very anxious that no Delegation from the Convention should assume the stature of a negotiating body.”3 They reserved that right for themselves until it suited them otherwise. Clearly, the group that should have been sitting down with the Canadians in the summer of 1947 was a delegation from the responsible government of Newfoundland, elected by the people of Newfoundland, and with all proper authority to negotiate with the Canadians on an equal basis.
In Ottawa, all the departments of the government of Canada were thrown open to the delegates from Newfoundland. It was a long way from the cold shoulder in London that April. And it was to prove a much more drawn-out affair. Paul Bridle reported to Pearson on recent conversations with Clutterbuck, who was in constant contact with External Affairs officials in the capital:
We have some reason to believe that the Newfoundland delegation are in no hurry to conclude their discussions at an early date and that one reason for this may be that certain members of the delegation feel that it would be to the advantage of the confederation group if the referendum were delayed until next spring. Sir Alexander said that he thought that there might be something to be said for this. The time-table presently in the mind of the Newfoundland Government (i.e., having the Convention’s recommendations in the hands of the United Kingdom Government by August 1st) seems to him to be crowding the whole business to some extent. He thinks there might be risk in presenting the question for decision at an early date because this would mean a snap judgment which might easily be an unfavourable one.4
Clutterbuck was now on board to promote the new timetable devised by Scott Macdonald and J.R. Smallwood. This wily Newfoundlander had emerged as the master salesman for Confederation, and he knew he required more time to make the deal with the people of Newfoundland. In the middle of a very hot July, with talks going nowhere and the Newfoundlanders waiting on Canada’s pleasure, Lester Pearson gave this candid and undiplomatic assessment of the status of the delegation to the press corps on Parliament Hill: “The Newfoundland delegation has no power to agree or promise anything.” Then he dropped the bombshell: “Canada would prefer to negotiate with an elected government to forestall any possibility of future complaints by Newfoundlanders that they had no voice in the actual negotiation of terms.”5
Pearson’s remarks were reprinted in the St. John’s Daily News. Scott Macdonald was furious. Bradley threatened to return home over the slight to the delegation, and Smallwood had to employ all his powers of persuasion to keep him in the Canadian capital and prevent a total breakdown of the process. Pearson had expressed the deep divisions within the government over policy on Newfoundland. It was the last time he would do so. St. Laurent, Howe and Pickersgill swung into action, and Mackenzie King recorded in his diary on July 18 that St. Laurent had reminded him “of the value it would be to my name and to the future to have Newfoundland come into Confederation while I am still P.M.”6
St. Laurent’s appeal to vanity, glory and posterity had the desired effect. At a special Cabinet meeting to deal with the crisis, King agreed that the talks should take on the status of negotiations and ultimately produce concrete terms of union. But that was not permitted by the terms of reference for the National Convention. No one seemed to be clear about the muddled process, largely because the participants were again improvising and defining the parameters of the “discussions” and “negotiations” as they progressed. The unlawful “negotiations” were conducted in an atmosphere of official denial entirely inappropriate for the scale and importance of the issues involved.
The sudden death of Minister of Fisheries Bridges caused the federal government to delay formulating its final offer of terms to the delegation. Mackenzie King feared a possible reaction in all three Maritime provinces—Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick—to any terms being offered to Newfoundland, especially now that Bridges, the Liberal government’s direct link to the New Brunswick premier, had gone. They feared that if the terms offered were known, they would become the subject of political debate during the New Brunswick by-election. So the delegates waited in Ottawa over the summer as the prime minister arranged a hasty by-election in New Brunswick.
Smallwood was pleased with the delay, but the Convention and the local papers back in St. John’s were becoming restive and suspicious as to what kinds of discussions or even forbidden negotiations were taking the delegates so long. They seemed to have been swallowed up by Ottawa. The High Commission office in Newfoundland reported nervously to External Affairs:
The St. John’s Daily News, the Grand Falls Advertiser and the St. John’s Observer’s Weekly continue their attacks on confederation and on the discussions now taking place in Ottawa. The Daily News repeats its cha
rge that the pro-confederate members of the delegation now in Ottawa are deliberately endeavouring to prevent a referendum this fall to “railroad” confederation through in a referendum next year, thus avoiding the danger of placing the issue in the hands of a duly elected Newfoundland government.
… The Grand Falls Advertiser also refers to an address which Major Cashin apparently made in Grand Falls recently and endorses a number of statements said to have been made by him, among them “that there is a plot afoot to stall the referendum and place the country on the auction block with the U.K., Canadian and Commission Governments in cahoots” and that the people should ignore the convention and present a National Petition to the British Government demanding the “fulfillment of 1933 pledge”—restoration of Responsible Government.7
In spite of the problems that the delay was causing the Convention in St. John’s, the Canadian government felt it had no choice but to suspend talks and hold the delegates until, as External Affairs stated, “the Cabinet included an elected representative of the Province of New Brunswick. Meanwhile, this would permit the minister of finance to discuss, during his forthcoming visit to the United Kingdom, the disposition of Newfoundland’s sterling debt with the U.K.”8
And so the summer continued, with significant allegations and threats as the Newfoundland delegates continued to wait on the Canadian government’s agenda and its further secret negotiations with the British. In St. John’s the remaining delegates demanded that Bradley, as chairman, reconvene the Convention so they could continue with business, but he refused. As August gave way to September a group of delegates from the Convention sent an angry telegram to the delegation in Ottawa, charging that members had exceeded their terms of reference by participating in detailed negotiations and demanding that they return home. Bradley replied that they had kept discussions within the terms of reference laid out, and the delegation sat tight. Bradley was pushing his authority to the limit and, by refusing to reconvene the Convention, he was probably overstepping it.
Newfoundlanders were not the only ones who were suspicious of the real motives behind Canada’s moves towards Newfoundland. Russell Cunningham, the CCF opposition leader in Nova Scotia, alleged that “vested interests” favoured Confederation because it would “eliminate” a dispute that he felt was imminent between Newfoundland and Quebec over ownership of the iron-ore deposits on the boundary between Labrador and Quebec.9 It was generally understood in Canada and Newfoundland, as well as in Great Britain, that Canada wanted Newfoundland for Labrador, and that if it could get Labrador without taking Newfoundland it would. As Julian Harrington, Lester Pearson’s friend at the US Embassy in Ottawa, noted: “Newfoundland as a tenth province without Labrador and its iron ore would have little political or economic sex appeal to Canadians.”10 The position of the Quebec government was well known:
Premier Duplessis predicted the annexation of Newfoundland would result in everlasting squabbles because half the people on the island were not agreeable to joining Canada.… He compared the entry of Newfoundland into Confederation to the admission of a new member into the household without consulting the members who built the house. The Federal Government was paying millions for the 10th Province whose people would benefit without cost from social legislation, transportation services and so on, at the expense of the other nine provinces.”11
By then the Newfoundland constitutional situation had drawn notice from the American press as well. The Chicago Tribune charged that 80 percent of Newfoundlanders wanted to join the United States but that the Newfoundland National Convention was being prevented by Britain from seeking terms of union from the south. The citizens of Newfoundland, it said, would do well to vote for responsible government and then sue for statehood with the United States.
G.L. Magann at the Canadian Embassy in Washington drew Ottawa’s attention to this item from the U.S. Congress:
The Preliminary Report Ten of the House Select Committee on Foreign Aid (The Herter Committee) contains a suggestion that “some participation in Labrador iron ore deposits might be allocated as security against any U.S. loan to Britain. It is further suggested that present deliberations regarding Newfoundland’s political future might be made the basis of negotiations in this respect. It clearly assumes that Newfoundland, which owns Labrador, is “a colony of Britain and not a Dominion.”12
Britain, however, had already agreed to turn Labrador and Newfoundland over to Canada as a way to settle its war debt:
Mr. Magann concludes his letter by pointing out that the Herter Report, which speaks of the “astonishing results” in terms of possibilities of repayment which might be produced by a systematic review of world resources on the above basis. Mr. Magann says he would think that this proposal with regard to Labrador’s resources would excite other and more lasting emotions than astonishment on the part of Newfoundlanders.13
For a while in September it had looked as if the delegation to Ottawa would return to St. John’s empty-handed. Still deeply conflicted, Mackenzie King was relieved at the prospect and mused in his diary: “It may be infinitely better to have nothing done until Newfoundland has a responsible government of its own.”14 The prime minister had expressed this wish before—and he would again. By then, however, Smallwood, working round the clock with Pickersgill, had come up with terms that seemed acceptable to both sides. He was now the lead man of all the committees, having demonstrated the prodigious knowledge of the Canadian federal system he had acquired on jaunts to Ottawa while still farming pigs in Gander. Finally by October, with the by-election in New Brunswick over and another Liberal MP from there safely seated in Ottawa, the discussions were concluded and the delegates were free to return home. The proposed terms were sent on later to the governor, who was and remained the government of Newfoundland up to the moment the Canadians took over.
The Convention reconvened in St. John’s on October 10. A resolution to censure Gordon Bradley and the delegation to Ottawa for their overlong sojourn had been planned, but Bradley anticipated their action and, after a dramatic speech denouncing “certain members,” he suddenly announced: “This Convention is now without a Chairman.”15 Harold Horwood, Smallwood’s old confederate partner, described the scene: “Pandemonium broke loose, led by Joey himself, who tossed papers into the air and kept shouting across the floor that the Convention was no longer in session. To emphasize the point he lit a cigarette and started to blow smoke around the hallowed chamber.”16
Reports of the unruly behaviour in the Convention convinced many that it would be unwise to “turn our government over to that crowd,” and some began to look more favourably on Confederation. Ironically, it was Smallwood who was the ringleader of the bad behaviour that turned the Convention into a farce, and it would be his group that, through Confederation, would take over the government of the new province. The Daily News concluded that the whole business of the National Convention was futile:
To make matters worse the persistence of one member of the Convention diverted it from its main purpose so that for the last year it has seemed as if the whole reason for the Convention’s existence had been to examine the complex issue of union with Canada which it is wholly incompetent to do on a proper basis because of its limited powers of enquiry and its lack of authority to negotiate. In the spate of political dissension thereby created, to which aggressive tactics of the delegate from Bonavista Centre contributed, it has become impossible to give objective study to anything.17
In the aftermath of the debacle at the Convention, John B. McEvoy, Jim Halley’s law partner and another Confederate, was appointed by Governor Gordon Macdonald as chairman to replace Bradley. Scott Macdonald was pleased and reported the news to St. Laurent. On October 29, 1947, Mackenzie King finally sent Canada’s proposed Terms for Union with Newfoundland to the governor:
My dear Governor … I am now in a position to advise you regarding the arrangements [terms] which the Government would be prepared to recommend to Parliament as a basis for union.…
I feel I must emphasize that as far as the financial aspects of the proposed arrangements for union are concerned, the Government of Canada believes that the arrangements go as far as the Government can go under the circumstances.…
The Government of Canada would not wish in any way to influence the National Convention nor the decision of the people, should they be requested to decide the issue of confederation. Should the people of Newfoundland indicate clearly and beyond all possibility of misunderstanding their will that Newfoundland should become a province of Canada on the basis of the proposed arrangements, the Canadian Government, subject to the approval of Parliament, would for its part be prepared to take the necessary constitutional steps to make the union effective at the earliest practicable date.18
Sir Alexander Clutterbuck’s report to the Dominions Office on the delegation’s visit to Ottawa and the “negotiations” there was very enthusiastic:
Some difficulty was naturally encountered owing to the fact that the Delegation was empowered only to seek information and had neither the authority, nor indeed the qualifications, to enter into negotiations with the Canadian Government. This difficulty would no doubt have been felt more acutely if the Canadian Government had adopted a less forthcoming attitude; as matters turned out, however, it cannot be said that the interests of Newfoundland suffered in any way on this account.… In sum the terms proposed amount to a very generous offer.19