Baltimore's Mansion Page 6

  At a crucial point in the Convention, Brown rose and, while making a passionate speech opposing Small wood’s motion to send a delegation to Ottawa to find out what Canada would offer a confederated Newfoundland, took from his pocket a “document” and, waving it about, declared that if he were to reveal its contents, not a single delegate or Newfoundlander would vote for Confederation. Just on the verge of revealing the contents of the document, Brown collapsed, all six feet four of him, onto the floor in front of his desk. He had a massive stroke. In the confusion that followed, as delegates rushed to his aid and ambulance attendants arrived, Brown’s Document somehow disappeared.

  “No trace of it was ever found,” my father said, adding that Brown never did recover from his stroke to the point that he could think or speak clearly enough to make anyone understand what was in the document.

  My father seemed to think the disappearance of the document was no mystery, given that Smallwood and Bradley were sitting closest to Brown when he collapsed. But what was the document? What information did it contain? What could have had the effect that Brown predicted, could have caused all Newfoundlanders, even declared confederates like Smallwood, to turn their backs on Confederation? They speculated endlessly about it. The Home Office. Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King. Britain’s man in Newfoundland, Governor MacDonald. The “Commissioners Three,” as my father called the three British members of the Commission of Government appointed to rule Newfoundland after the country’s brush with bankruptcy in 1934. Joe Smallwood. All these names came up in their speculations. The document might have been part of some conspiracy-revealing correspondence between some or all of these.

  And there was the stroke itself, so eerily timed to cut Brown short just when he was on the brink of revelation. One could hardly blame the confederates for his stroke, but still… My father shook his head and everyone lapsed into silence as if in wonderment at what might have been had Brown not had his stroke and Brown’s Document not disappeared. I could just see the great figure of Brown falling with a kind of tragic grace, splendidly laid out on the floor still clutching the document that might have saved us, the document whose contents he alone was privy to and that somehow in the next few seconds disappeared.

  There were many possible explanations, of course, which they begrudgingly proposed and then discounted. Brown had merely been exaggerating for effect — the document was probably inconsequential. But Brown was not known for stooping to such tactics. And he was no fool. He would have known better than to discredit himself in such a manner. Was it possible, then, that just seconds from a massive stroke, Brown was experiencing some sort of pre-stroke delusion, his brain already suffering its effects? But he had been, however animated, quite lucid while making his speech, and had correctly followed parliamentary procedure when he rose to speak against Small wood’s motion.

  Perhaps in the certainty of being assured that she was wrong, Aunt Eva wondered if the whole thing might have have been an act of divine intervention, if God had stepped in to save the confederates just when their cause was about to be destroyed. It was the consensus that while it was impossible to say what God’s purpose was in striking down poor Brown, it had most certainly not been to advance the cause of Joey Smallwood. Then, in a contradiction of this assertion that went unnoticed or ignored, it was observed that Brown’s stroke, the loss of the referendum, Confederation were the acts of a God whose ways were inscrutable to man, apparent injustices that in fact were part of some divine plan so grand in its benignity and scope that for mere men to inquire into it was pointless. Why could God not have given Brown a few more minutes? We would no more know the answer to that question than we would know what was in the document.

  The fact was that Brown’s Document had divine intervention written all over it, if one believed in such a thing. They did, or were at least capable of suspending their disbelief in it from time to time. And so Brown’s Document was a problem. It stood on the one hand for the nagging, never-to-be-spoken-aloud notion that their side was in the wrong, that Brown’s stroke was a sign of God’s disfavour with the cause of independence. On the other hand, it perfectly embodied their abiding sense of grievance, of having been hard done by, cheated for all time out of what was rightfully theirs by unseen human hands.

  “Brown’s Document” was a phrase that invoked for me the world view of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, that the true king was always in exile while some pretender held the throne, that the honourable, by virtue of their being honourable, must always lose. Brown lay on the floor, his long journey to the vale of Avilion begun, having suffered, like King Arthur, a grievous head wound from which he could not recover.

  It was not Malory my father was thinking of, but another poet. My father, as in the years to come he would often do when the two of us talked about such things, quoted Yeats’s poem “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing,” which Lady Gregory told Yeats was her favourite poem and that she pitied the poor “friend” mentioned in the title. After Lady Gregory’s death, Yeats revealed she was this friend. My father recited it as a tribute to the Major: “For how can you compete,/Being honour bred, with one/Who, were it proved he lies,/Were neither shamed in his own/Nor in his neighbour’s eyes?”

  As the party wore on, they moved from one referendum story to another. They got a lot of mileage out of Newfoundland’s having become a part of Canada on April Fools’ Day and would not suffer anyone to argue that induction day was in fact March 31. The induction ceremonies were originally set for April Fools’ Day 1949, it having occurred to no one at the federal level that this might not be the most appropriate of dates until Joey Smallwood brought it to their attention. The date was then, at the eleventh hour, “changed.” In fact, it was too late to really change it, since all sorts of ceremonies had already been set for April 1 on Parliament Hill, but Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent amended the Terms of Union by which Newfoundland joined Canada to read that Newfoundland would join the Dominion not immediately after midnight but “immediately before the expiration of March 31, 1949.” Thus were Newfoundlanders robbed of an infinitesimal fraction of a second of independence and by that same infinitesimal fraction of a second supposedly spared the humiliation of having to commemorate their joining the Dominion on April Fools’ Day. All the ceremonies in Newfoundland and Ottawa took place on April 1, however, and many people, especially those descended from anti-confederates, still consider April 1 to be induction day.

  Neither at home nor at school was anything made of either of the rivals for the title of “anniversary of Confederation.” Far from knowing what day the anniversary fell on, I didn’t know there was such a thing. The day had no name, as far as I can remember. The government did not officially proclaim it “Confederation Day” or something similar, as you might expect, though it was called that by confederates. Anti-confederates, when forced to refer to it, called it “induction day.” The difference was that confederates saw Confederation as something we had done, while the anti-confederates saw it as something that had been done to us.

  When it was getting late, after a lot of drinking had been done, and most of the children had taken up vantage points in the front room to watch the ever more entertaining grown-ups, the time came for performances. Inhibition and the ability to relate or follow such arguments as my father had been making had each declined at about the same rate. The grown-ups started shouting names of people present, nominating them, until a consensus was reached as to who should take the first turn.

  Someone shouted “Art and Wayne,” which was the call for a catechism, and everyone applauded. I had to be coaxed from under the piano, where I was lying on the floor beside my brothers.

  My father sat on the couch, I stood facing him and he began. I had only the vaguest understanding of what followed, having memorized it more or less phonetically.

  HIM: How would you assess Joey Smallwood’s record since Confederation?

  ME: I would demur, unless at my throat a knife was h
eld, or at my head a gun.

  HIM: Assuming one or both of these conditions to be met?

  ME: I would enumerate his blunders one by one until the intervention of senility or death.

  HIM: A thumbnail sketch might be extracted at less cost?

  ME: The cost, though less, would still be dear.

  HIM: Could you do him justice in a single sentence?

  ME: Death by hanging.

  When we finished, there was loud applause. After several others took their turns singing songs, it was deemed to be time for Uncle Harold to recite “Fling Out the Flag.”

  The Union Jack and, after 1965, the Canadian flag, stood in the corner of the school lobby, though never unfurled, as though in token, minimal observance of some provincial regulation. The only unfurled flag was Newfoundland’s Pink, White and Green. It hung from the wall above the lobby doors, and it was about this flag that “Fling Out the Flag,” the unofficial anthem of Newfoundland, was written in 1888 by Archbishop Howley, eighteen years before Sir Cavendish Boyle wrote his more famous “Ode to Newfoundland,” which eventually became the official anthem.

  The Pink, White and Green was a merging of the Pink and the Green that had taken place in 1843. The Pink, a pink flag with a green fir tree, was the flag of a group of well-established Roman Catholics in St. John’s who referred to themselves as “natives” because they were born in Newfoundland and to differentiate themselves from newly arrived Irish immigrant Roman Catholics like my ancestors, whom they referred to as “The Bush-borns” and who flew a green flag with the harp of Brian Boru to represent their group.

  There was a great deal of animosity between the two groups, especially after the “natives” formed the Native Society and excluded from its membership anyone not born in Newfoundland. In February of 1843, a wood-hauling contest between these two groups ended in a brawl in which, as one newspaper reported, “a good many heads were broken.” The cause of the brawl was their failure to agree on which group had hauled the bigger pile of wood.

  Peace between the natives and the Bush-borns was brought about by the archbishop who advised the two groups to join the Pink and Green together to form one flag, half pink, half green. They could not quite bring themselves to do that, but instead inserted a bolt of neutral white between the two colours.

  As Harold did not know the music, he could only recite “Fling Out the Flag” as a poem. Glass in one hand, cigar in the other, face flushed, he launched into it without warning, and all conversation stopped.

  “The Pink, the Rose of England shows,

  The Green St. Patrick’s emblem, bright,

  While in between, the spotless sheen

  Of St. Andrew’s Cross displays the white.

  Then hail the pink, the white, the green.

  Our patriot flag long may it stand.

  Our sirelands twine, their emblems trine,

  To form the flag of Newfoundland!

  Fling out the flag, o’er creek and cragg,

  Pink, white and green, so fair, so grand.

  Long may it sway o’er bight and bay,

  Around the shores of Newfoundland!

  Whate’er betide our ‘Ocean Bride’

  That nestles ’midst Atlantic’s foam,

  Still far and wide, we’ll raise with pride

  Our native flag, o’er hearth and home.

  Should e’er the hand of fate demand

  Some future change in our career,

  We ne’er will yield, on flood or field

  The Flag we honour and revere!

  Fling out the flag o’er creek and cragg,

  Pink, white and green, so fair, so grand.

  Long may it sway o’er bight and bay,

  Around the shores of Newfoundland.”

  “Fling Out the Flag” was greeted with applause, which had not died down when Harold launched into “The Lament for Newfoundland,” published in the St. John’s Daily News on April 1, 1949. Teary-eyed before he even started, he declaimed:

  “On this day of parting, sad nostalgic thoughts arise,

  Thoughts to bring the hot tears surging to the Newfoundlanders eyes,

  Thoughts that bring to mind the story of the struggles of the past,

  Of the men who built our island, nailed its colours to our mast.

  Those who lost the fight for freedom have the greater pride this day,

  Though their country’s independence lies the victim of the fray.

  They have kept THEIR faith untarnished, they have left THEIR honour high,

  They can face the course of history with a clear and steadfast eye.”

  By the time Harold was finished, tears were streaming down his face. Likewise the rest of them, my father, Uncle Jim, my mother, Aunt Eva, Marg, all enjoying themselves immensely, it seemed to me.

  “Well spoken, Harold, my son,” my father said, his tone more consoling than laudatory. Uncle Dennis cried but was consoled by no one but his wife.

  Then we sang “The Ode to Newfoundland,” which most Catholics, in spite of their affection for “Fling Out the Flag,” were quite fond of, for the only mention in it of religion was a non-denominational God.

  “We’ll have ‘The Ode’ now, Harold, if you please,” my father said. Harold sat at the piano, and while he played, we sang.

  “‘As loved our fathers, so we love/Where once they stood we stand.’”

  Next came a toast to Charlie and Nan, proposed by Harold. “To Charlie and Nan,” they said.

  My father raised his glass but did not drink. A few minutes later he put down his glass, slipped away from the party and went out to the back porch, closing the door behind him. I thought no one else had noticed until Uncle Harold, as if in mimicry of my father, took the same path through the guests as he had and went out to the porch. Looking out the kitchen window, I saw them go down the steps and walk halfway across the yard.

  I went out to the porch, eased open the storm door. I watched them from behind a wooden column on the steps. My father leaned over, his hands on his thighs as if he had been sick or was about to be. Harold put one hand on my father’s back and looked off into the darkness as though embarrassed. My father, I saw, was not sick but crying silently, as if something inside him had brimmed over without warning. His shoulders heaved, tears fell unchecked from his eyes onto the pavement. He shook his head from side as if he could not account for his inability to stop either of these developments. I heard him say something, heard the words “never” and “too late” and presumed that it was still the referendum that was on his mind.

  “I know, my son,” Uncle Harold said, “I know.” “My son,” he called his brother, and my father often called him that.

  “You don’t know,” my father said. “Something happened. On the beach. The day I left for college. Something happened.” My father said something else but I could not make it out.

  “I don’t think so,” Harold said.

  My father spoke, again inaudibly, his tone insistent as if he were repeating what he had said last and this time Harold, as if chastised, did not reply.

  “Never mind,” my father said. “Never mind, my son. I’ve had too much to drink, that’s all.” Across the road from Harold’s house was a small lake that we called the Pond. I could not see it, but when a breeze came up, I smelled the mint weed on the shore and heard the faint lapping of the water. It was a warm summer night. I had not been up this late before, let alone outdoors at such an hour. It seemed to me that this must be the stuff of night, furtive exchanges like this between adults about things whose existence they could not acknowledge in the light of day.

  I was sure that my father’s sorrow did not proceed from politics. Never. Too late. I could think of nothing that would never happen, nothing for which it would forever be too late.

  Finally my father straightened up and rubbed his eyes with the back of his arm, exhaled loudly, cleared his throat. He put his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky as if to signal by the scrutiny of distant stars th
at his thoughts had once again turned outward.

  “I can’t go back in now,” he said. “I’ll walk home.”

  Our house was just up the road from Harold’s. Harold watched him for a while as he went down the driveway and began to make his way up the road. When Harold turned to come back, I went inside.

  “THEY MIGHT BE phasing out the train,” my father said, looking up from his paper one night in the fall of 1968. After Confederation, the railway had been taken over by Canadian National Railways, CNR, and now they were considering replacing the train with a less expensive fleet of buses.

  Buses were an option because the first trans-island paved road had been completed in 1965. My father said the only reason people used the road was to see what pavement felt like and they would soon grow tired of it.

  My father was one of many people who tried to save the train.

  It was decided there would be a “trial period” from December of 1968 to May of 1969 during which both buses and trains would run across the island in a competition to see which would draw more patrons.

  It was as if some feeble ghost of the referendum of 1948 had been revived. There was once again to be a kind of referendum. Patriotism would tackle pragmatism, the old Newfoundland the new Newfoundland, one last time. You could vote for the former by buying a train ticket, for the latter by buying a bus ticket. A Save the Train association was formed. There was talk it would be led by Peter Cashin. It was not.

  The patriots soon had a slogan: Ride the Rails and Beat the Bus. Ads exhorting Newfoundlanders to do just that soon appeared in all the papers. The CNR countered that the price and duration of a cross-island bus ride were less than half those of the train.

  My father told me that the train invoked pre-Confederate Newfoundland as nothing else could. The journey itself was as important, if not more so, than the destination. The train was designed to be lived in, not just ridden. You could not walk about on a bus as you could on a train. There was no bar on a bus. There were no tables spread with impeccably white and creased linen, no silver cutlery or crystal glasses, no one at your beck and call, happy to attend to your most eccentric needs.