What I Am Reading: "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" by Wayne Johnston

Let’s get this out of the way first: this novel has a terrible title. I selected this book because I am traveling to Newfoundland at the end of this month, and I wanted to familiarize myself with the island through its literature. I found a list of the great Newfoundland novels, and was pleased to find that one of them concerned itself with politics.

The novel is historical fiction, or perhaps historical biography, centering on Joey Smallwood, who led Newfoundland into confederation with Canada after WW2. Newfoundland, a British colony, was stripped of its rights of self-governance in the mid-1930s as a result of financial mismanagement. After the war’s burst of economic prosperity and the subsequent empire-wide drive toward decolonization, a convention was called to select Newfoundland’s future government. Smallwood, a union organizer and popular media figure (broadcasting as “The Barrelman” a show promoting Newfoundland pride) was the only candidate to be elected as a proponent of confederation with Canada.

I am getting ahead of myself: the political content is mostly in the second half of the book, and is of decidedly tertiary concern. The primary concerns are to explore and revel in the geographic, political, and cultural uniqueness of Newfoundland, and to make a character study of Smallwood through his relationship with Sheilagh Fielding, a curmudgeonly journalist. Fielding and Smallwood are the participants in a mysterious and multilayered scandal when both are at prep school in the nineteen-teens, and the fallout from this scandal defines their lifelong (fictional) relationship. This may not illuminate the real Smallwood, but it does give the book it's human foundation.

Smallwood did not see a steady rise through the political ranks. In fact, he spent the bulk of his career as an utter failure. Coming from a poverty-stricken background, he left school as a result of the aforementioned scandal, blowing his one shot at respectability. He adopted socialism, not as a strong ideologue, but as the best way he could see to improve Newfoundland; and (cynically) because there was no other option for advancement available to him other than the politics of poverty. He tried to live as a socialist journalist in New York, and returns in failure. He did make a successful effort to unionize railroad linemen, famously walking the rails in the winter. However, his efforts to parlay this into a political career are unsuccessful, as his subsequent attachment to Liberal party PM Richard Squires are treated dismissively by the latter, and Squires’ career went down in flames anyway as a result of corruption and the depression (taking Newfoundland down with it). After this, Smallwood traveled the coast to unionize extremely remote fishermen. He struggled in the newspaper through the depression before finding some success with his radio show.

Even during his actual political rise, opportunistically centered around the champion-less confederation, Smallwood was not a success. The convention actually voted against including confederation as an option on the forthcoming referendum, but the British authorities overruled them. After a bitter and hard-fought election, confederation won narrowly, and Smallwood was the man of the hour, bringing to his people the benefits of the Canadian welfare state. In less than the last hundred pages, a few scenes (nothing comprehensive) from his decades-long career as first Canadian Premier of Newfoundland are shown. The book is narrated in retrospect, as at some (very occasional) points his future policies, such as forced depopulation of redundant areas, are alluded to.

More important than his actual biography is the evolving love-hate relationship between Smallwood and Fielding. Fielding does everything from save Smallwood’s life during his unionization efforts to ridicule his government in her newspaper column. The chapters are interspersed with Fielding’s acerbic history of Newfoundland, recalling tales of colonial oppression that strike me as similar to those retold in New England. This work is contrasted with the (apparently real) D.W. Prowse’s exhaustive history of Newfoundland, a tome of great importance within the text itself. Fielding’s ironic interludes can be a bit confusing, as (not knowing much of the colonial history) I could not always tell when she was actually praising a deal or praising one ironically,

Despite Smallwood’s opportunism and grandiose ambitions, he is depicted as understanding the true character of Newfoundland. It is said several times that he wants the people to live up to the promise of the land itself, the unique geography on a grand scale. This is complicated by the fact that the land is so inhospitable, and does not provide its denizens with the resources necessary to prosper. Smallwood is opposed in the referendum by those who want to see Newfoundland as an independent nation, those with perhaps grander dreams but less of a feel for the land. Despite this, he believes in Newfoundland's potential, after experiencing it's wildernesses and barrens, it's frozen coastline and grubby docks. This belief is why he, as premier, puts stock in many foreign mountebanks and their crackpot schemes to bring industrial prosperity.

If anything, these meditations on the land and on the common people that Smallwood encounters (and relies upon for his eventual victory) could probably have been divorced from the political angle, and the story could have been centered around an entirely fictional couple and their psychosexual drama. But Smallwood in the end must perhaps serve as his peoples’ messiah, as he is the one to know their place in the world. Despite the character focus, the two leads are still somewhat inscrutable, and perhaps just beyond the level of normal human comprehension. The awesomeness and potential of Newfoundland, however, comes through very clearly.