The Speares

Living the life in Gravenhurst



Newfoundland
The Rock




It's a common misconception that the ice age ended some ten thousand years ago. Firstly, it was 11,700 years ago; secondly, it wasn't the ice age, merely an ice age. Thirdly, of course, it hasn't ended. People often use the term Ice Age when they really mean Glacial Period, specifically the last one. Our current ice age is the Quaternary Glaciation, and it has seen as many as thirty glacial periods so far. In addition to the Quaternary, there have been at least four other entire ice ages in Earth's history, starting some two and a half billion years ago. The Quaternary is ongoing though currently in an interglacial period which may be artificially extended due to the efforts of humans. The latest glacial advance in our current glacial period ended abruptly during the Bølling-Allerød interstadial around 14,700 years ago. But then, equally abruptly, it resumed during an extreme cold event called the Younger-Dryas (named after a wildflower which thrives in glacial sediments) starting about 12,900 years ago and lasting 1,200 years. This event saw temperatures in the northern hemisphere largely plummet (although some rose) and a quite sudden resurgence of glaciers. Since the Younger-Dryas doesn't fit neatly into the roughly 100,000 year glacial cycle, it has been assumed that some catclysmic event triggered it; some say a huge rock blew up in the air over North America, while (most) others say an inconceivable volume of fresh water suddenly discharged into the North Atlantic and shut down the currents that bring warm southern waters northwards. We'll explore this theory some more another day, but for now it suffices to say that the Younger-Dryas eventually sorted itself out and here we are today having margaritas on the deck even though it's still March. So anyway, all of this is an unnecessarily long-winded explanation of why, when I say that Newfoundland largely escaped the ice age, that you can know that the statement is wrong on any number of levels.

It is true that the Laurentide ice sheet, which covered most of Canada, and all of Labrador, only really covered the very tip of the northern peninsula in Newfoundland. That's because Newfoundland was already covered by its own ice sheet. That ice sheet was so thick that it compressed the land down and outwards, creating many valleys as it went. After the ice retreated then two things started to happen: the sea level rose and so did the land level, the land level rise outpacing the sea level rise so that today, you can find beaches and the ghosts of marine critters well above sea level. And lots of fjords. But almost no indigenous mammals.


Since the island has been periodically scoured by ice over the aeons the only things that can legitimately call Newfoundland home are things that swim or fly long distances. These include bears, lynx, foxes, weasels, otters, at one time wolves, beavers, muskrats, voles, hares and bats. And birds. Maybe bugs. And that's about it. Anything else has been introduced by people, who started showing up when the ice started retreating 9,000 years ago.

They were the Maritime Archaic people, people who hunted marine mammals in the sub-arctic. They lived in longhouses and weirdly-shaped structures with no roofs that make more sense when you picture them with an overturned boat as the roof for the winter months. Their currency was chert - a slightly inferior form of flint. Chert can be used to make tools such as knives and it can also make fire if you know how. So chert, and perhaps items made from chert, was an excellent choice of currency for the long distance trade they engaged in.

Over time, the weather changed; sometimes getting colder and sometimes getting warmer. This caused an ebb and flow of the people who could live here. To the north, on the mainland, the Inuit, who had dogs and larger weapons, were better adapted to the extreme cold and so they became the dominant people. To the south, on the big island, Maritime Arctic people gave way to Dorsets, who in turn gave way to Beothuks. And these were the people who welcomed the Europeans.


In 1001, according to the sagas, Leif Ericson made an epic journey, landing in three exotic places. He landed first in Helluland, then in Markland, and finally in Vinland. These are thought to be Baffin Island, Labrador and Atlantic Canada, respectively. Sagas aside, there are the remains of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows dating to this period.


Next up were possibly the Basques. They came from a region of the Pyrenees in what would today straddle a bit of Spain and a bit of France. They travelled extensively and were the first commercial whalers, as is evidenced by the bill they gave the Abbey of Jumiège in 670 A.D. It was for forty casks of whale oil and blubber, likely for the purpose of powering lamps. Whale oil was much superior to wax, being almost smoke free. It is entirely possible that the Basques followed the whales to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, making stops in Newfoundland enroute.

Somewhere in there the Portuguese showed up. History gets on firmer ground by the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Portuguese maps started including the Terra do Bacalhau, the Land of Codfish, west of the Azores. By the time the English showed up, or, at least, Venetians on an English boat, Newfoundland was awash in French, Breton, Basque, Portuguese and who-knows-who-all who were here for the fish and the whales.


Over the years the British sort of took over the place and it became the Dominion of Newfoundland, not at all a part of the Dominion of Canada (that's still our official name by the way). But a series of setbacks to the dominion, both emotional and financial, saw them needing to join a larger country. The choices were Canada or the U.S., as Britain was no longer interested in an empire. Neither were they interested in the States taking over one of their colonies. So by various means they saw to it that never happened. The choice for Newfoundlanders, then, was the status quo or joining Canada.

Major Peter Cashin was the leader of the Status Quo party. He wanted Newfoundland to continue as its own dominion and warned that joining Canada would mean Newfoundlanders would "take on a burden of taxation, the like of which they nor their fathers have never known".

Joey Smallwood was a journalist and radio show host who promoted confederation with Canada as a means of giving Newfoundlanders "a half decent chance in life". He lost the first referendum by a narrow margin, but there were three options on the ballot - Status Quo, Confederation or Commission (independence of a sort, with Britain governing). This muddied the vote somewhat, so a second referendum was held with the clear choices of Status Quo or Confederation. Joey won that one by a slim margin and became the first premier of Newfoundland, one day after Newfoundland became a part of Canada, on March 31, 1949.


Not everyone was happy. Not everyone is happy. Yet only one possible question remains. Is ye a screecher? To which the obvious answer is: Indeed I is me old cock. And long may yer big jib draw!

And there's no place I would rather be than here in Newfoundland.