O my Canada, O my Newfoundland!

[steepholm]

Isn'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?

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Vikings 1000
Cabot 1497
Newfoundland circus off the bottom end of the M32

Back to your lair, Canadian wolf!

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

Surely everyone who has read James / Jan Morris knows this?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there have been - I just can't remember them!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I wanted a plain "No", which I think falls somewhere between "I don't think so, but it doesn't exactly surprise me" and "You're kidding me!"; I'm fairly sure I didn't know, but it doesn't surprise me. If that messes up the results, put me down as "I don't think so" (it's just possible someone mentioned it while telling me that the Canadian version of England's Irish jokes are Newfie jokes, and I was just too dismayed about the Newfie jokes to take in the historical background.

[sovay]

Something else, which I'll explain in the comments.

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.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Seeing as I mostly grew up in Canada, I have to fall in the "well, duh, doesn't everyone" category :) But I could also completely understand not having known that.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

What about Labrador? Was that part of Newfoundland and so separate, or separately separate, or not separate? I could look, but thought I'd ask to indicate that I do not know.

Also, until playing Scrabble a while ago, I thought "drinse" was a word. Portmanteau of drench and rinse, I think. Or drink.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"Well, duh, doesn't everyone" may be too strong, but I have known since childhood that Newfoundland only became part of Canada in 1949. I had an encyclopedia with a set of little plastic overlay maps illustrating the geographic history of Canada.

"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.)

[larryhammer]

I knew these because I read enough Canadian comics and fiction that the subject of Newfies has come up a few times.

---L.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I had no about this. But another depth-charge, as you say, that went off in my face recently was the revelation that the Ostra Post-card imprint was owned by the Biederer brothers.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I probably knew this at some point, because I read and enjoyed John Gimlette's Theatre of Fish, and he must surely have mentioned it. It doesn't seem to have registered.

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...

[joyeuce]

I had a vague idea that Newfoundland was still independent. I suppose that's what happens when you read enough pre-1949 fiction.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I have Newfie friends in the folk scene and they've always made damn sure I know about it! :o)