Feltham Rambles

It’s a little after 1pm in the afternoon and the day has been dragging on like no other.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Newfoundland again. It has been six months since I have been home, six months since I have smelled the salt water air of the mighty North Atlantic, six months since I have seen my loved ones, six months since I have truly felt free.

The moment I touch ground on the Island I feel a sense of belonging and peace that I do not feel anywhere else on this green earth. I only hope that one day when I fly into Newfoundland it will be coming back from a vacation not going there for one…

I was born on a St. John's street,
Where all my hopes could meet defeat,
And the goals of all my friends was work in Canada;
But soon there'll come a day,
When the young will want to stay,
And learn again to rule their native land.

So, hear me Newfoundland,
It's time to make the last demand,
Gather strength against the force that will surround you;
For the wolf is at your door,
And you've kissed the mainland whore,
The time has come at last to make a stand.

We've sold our souls away,
And the price we've had to pay,
It's not too late to change the sheets we've slept in;
Though our sins have left their stain,
Now, there's nothing left to gain,
My father's pride I cannot yet betray.

We've sold our souls away,
And the tolls are still not paid,
Our children face a life of grim corruption;
So hang our heads in shame,
'Cause we have ourselves to blame,
And hearken to this call for revolution.

I was out a couple of nights ago at a local pub and noticed a guy wearing a Def Leppard T-Shirt. I would be interested in seeing a VH1, “Where are they now” program on these guys, since they went from top of the world to non-existent in about one year.

Back in my Elementary School days we had little folders to keep our music and theory sheets in and had to take them to our music classes. My friends and I decided to scribble down the names and graphics of our favorite bands on the folder, Guns N Roses, Motley Crue, Young MC, Def Leppard, etc.

I remember bursting our laughing when a classmate of ours came in one day with his folder and had Deaf Leopard scribbled down on his folder. He assured us that he had spelled it right and even looked in the dictionary for the correct spelling of the band and that we were the ones with the incorrect spelling. Funny how you remember insignificant things like this.

A few days later, my mother called me, remarking on how strongly the land of Newfoundland must capture and shape the hearts of its people, as after but a few days, it had already begun to work its magic on her. What's left now is for you, yourself to see how this astonishing pristine land will affect you.

"Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters."
- Margaret Halsey

To Kill an American

You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what an American is... so they would know when they found one. (Good on ya, mate!!!!)

An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek.

An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani, or Afghan.

An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim.

In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world.

The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need.

When the Soviet army overran Afghanistan 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!

As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.

Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best athletes. But they also welcome the least.

The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America.

Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. I've been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must.

Hitler did.

So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world.

But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

Author unknown

So many friends within the USA, Europe and even Canada have a hard time wondering why I say I will always be a Newfoundlander and not a Canadian. The following article is one of the many examples of the bigotry we receive from our fellow mainland citizens each and every day.

The general rule of thumb within the Canadian news media is that when there is no real news to report on, just put together a nonsense article making fun of the stupid Newfies and your ratings will increase. It doesn’t matter if the facts are correct or if you use trite and overused stereotypes, the narrow-minded, uninformed population of mainland Canada will swallow it up with great conceit.

Canadians remind me of the high-school bully who picks on the smarter, better looking kids to feel better about their own shortcomings and insecurities. The educated world is well aware that Canada as a country has no true identity, and very little culture (outside of Newfoundland and Quebec of course). So much time is spent trying to distinguish their selves from being a watered down version of America that it actually sad and embarrassing. The few places within the Dominion that actually do have a distinguishable culture and heritage are ridiculed at every chance, in the same mentality as the high-school bully I mentioned earlier.

Since the future merger is more or less inevitable, Canada (with the exception of Newfoundland, Quebec and perhaps Cape Breton) should just become the 51st state now and get it done and over with. The rest of us with our massive natural resources, rich heritage and proud people will moved forward with our own sovereign nation or perhaps merge with the European Union.

For the time being, we will carry on as Canada’s white nigger getting whatever crumbs our federal masters drop off from the loaf until we have the means for our ultimate separation.

The only thing that keeps Newfoundland going these days is duelling literary festivals, one on the island's west coast, one on the east coast, but otherwise identical. This distresses the one or two forward-looking citizens in the province who still hold out some hope for The Rock's future.
``How would you folks in Ontario like it,'' they gripe, ``if a couple of broken-down old newspaper hacks from St. John's decided to help you poor, unlettered souls feel like you have some reason to exist by organizing head-to-head festivals celebrating Ontario literature, one in Kenora and one in Carp, and brought along a couple of DJs from our leading oldies 'n' goldies station to emcee the proceedings?''

The implication being that something very similar has been foisted on them thanks to a couple of broken-down old newspaper columnists from Toronto who have chosen to help Newfoundland's poor, unlettered souls feel like they have some reason to exist by organizing head-to-head festivals celebrating Newfoundland literature, one in Woody Point and one in Eastport, and bring along a couple of CBC radio personalities from the mainland to emcee the proceedings.

I wouldn't go that far.

For one thing, the Woody Point festival is dedicated to the proposition that ``I's the by that writes the book, and youse the bys that reads 'er,'' while the Eastport festival theme is ``I's the by that writes the book, and youse the bys that reads 'er.''

The problem facing these literary events is the same as the province faces with all its other resources: Newfoundland is running thin on writers. Festival participants must dash back and forth, and with the famous Bullet no longer operating they are left with no alternative but to hitchhike. Because the festivals are on the same evening, and the traffic is sparse, audiences find themselves waiting as long as three days until the next scheduled author shows up.

Nevertheless, there is no shortage of colourful outport characters happy to fill in by yattering interminably about how things were before the cod disappeared, something tourists find especially charming because every word is unintelligible.

The festivals have compensated for the lack of Newfoundland writers who write in Newfoundland by expanding the criteria for participants to writers who moved to Toronto because they couldn't make a living in Newfoundland, writers who once had relatives in Newfoundland, writers who once holidayed in Newfoundland, and writers who can find Newfoundland on a map, a category that embraces writers from everywhere but Alberta.

The challenge is persuading them to travel down there, either because every word they have written will be unintelligible to local ticket-holders, or, in the case of writers who left Newfoundland for Toronto, because every member of the ``Welcome Home'' committee waiting to greet them at the ferry terminal will be a bailiff.

On the other hand, there is an abundance of appropriate material. Anybody with a word processor can turn out a Newfoundland novel. All you need to do is type, ``Bitter years — the tide kept coming in, and time kept running out,'' and you're off to the races. Since they all start the same, the ``nuance'' they're so admired for depends on how they end, which they eventually do when the writers can't find anybody else to lend them money for rum.

Whether all this means that Newfoundland has finally had it and the Confederation experiment has failed is another matter. From the very start, a lot of Newfoundlanders claimed Joey Smallwood sold them a bill of goods; what's changed is that nowadays pretty well all of us in the rest of Canada are saying, "You ain't the only ones.''

It can't have escaped anyone's notice that Newfoundland has recently gone so far as to add "and Labrador'' to its name, but if it thinks a blatant attempt like that to give itself airs is going to impress any of us sophisticated Torontonians, it is mistaken. We're all familiar with Irving Finkelman who changed his name to Irving St. Clair, C.B.

``Very classy,'' said a friend. ``But what does the C.B. stand for?''
"Corner Bathurst,'' said Irving.

Sadly, it is beginning to look as if the only practical thing for Canada to do is read the writing on the outport wall. Cut our losses. Push Newfoundland back out to sea. Let it drift away. (Obviously we'll keep Labrador; you can never have too many caribou, which Labrador does, but at least it's something.)

NEXT: Farewell to Nova Scotia.

Ah, Newfoundland. Whenever I think of its craggy shores, or its disarmingly hospitable people, a strange sense of longing builds in my mind. I was pondering this nostalgia last June, when I found myself once again sitting on a pebbly salt-water beach in Norris Point, deep inside Newfoundland's Gros Morne National Park. The flat-topped deep-orange mountains called the Tablelands looming before us, I turned to my wife, and in her eyes I saw new understanding of why exactly it was that I kept reminiscing about this place [ Read More ]