O my Canada, O my Newfoundland!
Jul. 20th, 2012 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmIsn't it disconcerting when you find, at an advanced age, that you've been ignorant of a really basic fact in a subject about which you're supposedly reasonably well informed? I like geography and history, and if North America isn't exactly my area of special knowledge I'd still have expected to have heard that Newfoundland was, within living memory, an independent country. But until I happened to read it today, I had no idea.
Was I alone?
[Poll #1855055]
Have you had any similar ignorance depth-charges go off recently?
Was I alone?
[Poll #1855055]
Have you had any similar ignorance depth-charges go off recently?
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 08:20 pm (UTC)Cabot 1497
Newfoundland circus off the bottom end of the M32
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 08:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 08:50 pm (UTC)Back to your lair, Canadian wolf!
Date: 2012-07-20 08:20 pm (UTC)Re: Back to your lair, Canadian wolf!
Date: 2012-07-20 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 08:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 08:53 pm (UTC)No need for dismay, unless it be at the general wickedness of humanity. Everywhere has some version of those jokes, hence also Canada.
On the other hand, it may be the circles I move in, but I've not heard anyone tell an Irish joke for a long time. On the other hand, Norfolk jokes (which have a degree of overlap) are now common currency.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 08:36 pm (UTC)I learned both of these facts from friends of mine at Yale who were from Newfoundland; I might have run across the information otherwise, but it probably wouldn't have been common knowledge.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 08:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 10:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 08:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 10:37 pm (UTC)Also, until playing Scrabble a while ago, I thought "drinse" was a word. Portmanteau of drench and rinse, I think. Or drink.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 07:58 am (UTC)If "drinse" wasn't a word before, we can make it one!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 10:42 pm (UTC)"Independent country", though - that may be too strong. When exactly Canada (and Australia, New Zealand, et al) became independent countries is an open question. 1867, the year of Canadian confederation, is not correct. Most scholars today plump for the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, but as a marker of political independence that's retroactive, and earlier than would have been seen at the time.
And this establishment of legislative equality didn't stop Newfoundland from giving up its self-government in 1933-34 and reverting to a colony governed from London, which it retained until it became a Canadian province in 1949.
But if you were talking about the (white) dominions of the British Empire before 1934, yes, Newfoundland would have had an equal place on the list with the others. (South Africa was one too in those days.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 08:08 am (UTC)As far as I can gather, Newfoundland's independence was a victim of the Depression, an unusual fate.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 12:23 pm (UTC)Even in Canada, a sense of the country as an independent nation, and not merely a self-governing British dominion, only began to dawn during World War 2. Canada didn't appoint its first separate Foreign Secretary until 1946.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-23 09:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-20 10:45 pm (UTC)---L.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 02:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 08:02 am (UTC)News to me too.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 09:17 am (UTC)Until I took an MA in medieval French, I didn't know that the crusaders had succeeded in winning a foothold in their Holy Land. I'd assumed such a crazy ptoject was doomed to failure, that they went off, fought for a bit and came home. Clearly all my information on the subject came from the story of Robin Hood...
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 09:38 am (UTC)That's the trouble with history: some of the obviously ridiculous things turn out to be true.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-21 06:19 pm (UTC)