Conflicted Colony: Critical Episodes in Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland and Labrador 9780773599505

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Preface

conflicted colony

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Preface

Conflicted Colony Critical Episodes in Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland and Labrador

kurt korneski

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

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Preface © McGill-Queen’s University Press 2016 isbn 978-0-7735-4779-7 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-4780-3 (paper) isbn 978-0-7735-9950-5 (epdf) isbn 978-0-7735-9951-2 (epub) Legal deposit second quarter 2016 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% postconsumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Financial support was also received from the Memorial University of Newfoundland Publications Subvention Program. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Korneski, Kurt, 1975–, author Conflicted colony : critical episodes in nineteenth-century Newfoundland and Labrador / Kurt Korneski. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. isbn 978-0-7735-4779-7 (cloth). – isbn 978-0-7735-4780-3 (paper). – isbn 978-0-7735-9950-5 (epdf). – isbn 978-0-7735-9951-2 (epub) 1. Newfoundland and Labrador – History – 19th century. 2. Newfoundland and Labrador – Economic conditions – 19th century. 3. Newfoundland and Labrador – Social conditions – 19th century. 4. Newfoundland and Labrador – Politics and government – 19th century. I. Title.

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Preface

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Contents

Maps

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Acknowledgments Introduction

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1 The French, the Americans, and the Making of a “Riot”: The Fortune Bay Dispute, 1878 15 2 Troubles down North: Unsettling Settlers in Hamilton Inlet, 1871–1883

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3 Which Road to the Future? Social Unrest, Landward Development, and Eastern Perspectives 71 4 Place and Resistance to the “Government of St John’s”: The St George’s Bay Dispute of 1889–1892 101 5 More French Shore Problems: The Lobster Controversy on Newfoundland’s Treaty Coast, 1890–1904 131 Conclusion 153 Notes

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Bibliography 207 Index

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Preface

Newfoundland and Labrador Source: Map produced by Charlie Conway, Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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viii Illustrations

Hamilton Inlet, Labrador Source: Map produced by Charlie Conway, Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Preface

Acknowledgments

This book has been several years in the making and owes its existence to the support of many people and institutions. I completed parts of the research with the support of the Community-University Research for Recovery Alliance and Too Big to Ignore: Global Partnerships in SmallScale Fisheries Research – sshrc-funded projects headed by Barb Neis and Ratana Chuenpagdee respectively. I gratefully acknowledge the financial and other support I have received through my participation in these projects. In addition, I received grants from Memorial University’s Smallwood Foundation and the Institute of Social and Economic Research (iser). Most of the questions at the core of each chapter began as puzzles that emerged as I sifted through primary materials originally collected for other projects. Despite an increasingly corporatized university system, with its heavy administrative focus, commercialization strategies, impact factors, and output metrics, the Smallwood Foundation and iser continue to support curiosity-driven research. Grants from these agencies enabled me to travel to Winnipeg and to the National Archives of the United Kingdom. It would have been impossible to write this book without that research funding. In addition, this book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Earlier versions of some sections of this book have appeared in Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, Labour/Le Travail, and the International History Review. I acknowledge, with thanks, the permission to present material from those journals here. I also thank the editors and readers who provided much useful advice and feedback in the drafting of those earlier works.1

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Throughout the writing and researching of this book I have also benefited greatly from the assistance and advice of the staff at a variety of research libraries and archives. These include the staff at the Baker Library at Harvard University’s business school, the National Archives of the United Kingdom, and Library and Archives Canada. Thanks are also owed to Melanie Tucker, Emily Gushue, Allan Byrne, and Charles Young of The Rooms: Provincial Archives Division. Chris Kotecki and Rudy Martinez provided invaluable assistance in my efforts to navigate the materials at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. Debbie Andrews, Donna Doucette, Colleen Field, Jackie Hillier, Glenda Dawe, Jane Deal, Deanna Matthews, Sharon Thompson, and Carl White of the Centre for Newfoundland Studies also provided excellent support and advice, often bringing to my attention materials I might otherwise have missed. Dave Bradley, Tanya McDonald, Kory Penney, Meghan Critch, and Heather Wareham of the Maritime History Archives provided similar advice and assistance, and I extend a warm thanks to them as well. Jonathan Crago, editor-in-chief at McGill-Queen’s University Press, was enthusiastic about this project when I first described it to him in 2013. Since then, he has continued to be supportive, helpful, and professional throughout the review process. I extend a warm thanks to him and to the rest of the staff at mqup. I also sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers who provided detailed, rigorous, and always constructive criticisms and suggestions. Finally, I have had the support of a large number of friends, colleagues, and family members throughout the researching and writing of this volume. I am fortunate to have the continued support of my siblings – Nick, Teil, and Mariel – and of my father, Keith. Sean Cadigan and Jeff Webb read earlier versions of the manuscript in part or full. I thank them for their generosity, critical interest, and suggestions. Robin Whitaker also commented on earlier versions of parts of this work. I worked out many of the ideas that are integral to this book through countless conversations with her. I thank her for her support, encouragement, and patience. Calvin Hollett is also owed a debt of gratitude. He not only pointed me to sources he had uncovered as a part of his own research, but also entertained regular conversations about history and old books, all of which have contributed to my thinking about Newfoundland in the past and present. Mike O’Brien and Chris Youé are also due special thanks. Over the years both Mike and Chris have graciously assisted me in my efforts to come to terms with the history and historiography of the British Empire. I have also benefited from

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ongoing dialogues with Adele Perry, Ryan Eyford, Don Nerbas, Scott Matthews, Dimitri Panagos, Karlo Basta, Michael Kirkpatrick, James Hiller, Shannon Ryan, Richard Mackie, Bill Miles, Matthew Byrne, Oscar Moro, Jennifer Selby, Kelly Blidook, Vince Walsh, and my colleagues in the Department of History at Memorial.

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Introduction

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Tractarianism and Bishop Edward Feild

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1 Introduction

Philippe and Susan Messervey established a household at Sandy Point, St George’s Bay, on Newfoundland’s southwest coast in the later 1780s. Philippe, a fisherman from Jersey, was initially based in Fortune Bay on the island’s south coast. In the late 1770s or early 1780s, he had migrated west, where he met and married Susan, the eldest child of John and Fanny Dennis, two of the earlier settlers of the southwest coast. 1 Around the time that the Messerveys made their home in St George’s, agreements between the French and British governments profoundly altered the circumstances in which they and the Dennis family operated. While the French government had ceded the island to Britain in 1713, officials ensured that subjects of the French Crown retained rights to fish from and dry their catch on a section of the Newfoundland coast. The “French” or “Treaty” Shore had originally extended from Cape Bonavista to Point Riche on the western side of the Great Northern Peninsula.2 In the decades after 1713, the British periodically suspended and reinstated French rights in Newfoundland as the two powers intermittently waged war against one another. Following one such suspension during the American Revolution, the two governments redrew the boundaries of the treaty shore. From 1783 on, it began at Cape St John on the island’s northeast coast and included the eastern and western sides of the Great Northern Peninsula and the entire west coast down to Cape Ray.3 This reconstitution of imperial borders meant that the French Shore now encompassed the region that the Dennis, Messervey, and a few other early settler families occupied. And, if Philippe, Susan, and the others were unaware of French-British negotiations as they transpired, they soon felt their effect. After the 1783 agreement, the French navy evicted the Dennis family from their St George’s Bay home, forcing

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them to relocate to Codroy Island a few miles to the south.4 These interventions were no doubt deeply unsettling. Fortunately for the two families, however, French surveillance on the coast was sporadic. In the later 1780s Philippe and Susan Messervey set up their home at Sandy Point, and the Dennis family rebuilt a short distance across the water at Barrachois Brook.5 Not long after, the threat of French interventions halted altogether, as the British suspended French rights to the island when the two powers went to war once again in 1793. When the British reinstated French rights to the west coast in 1815, the two families no doubt again worried that the French might force them from the area. This time, however, the French accepted the settler population, partly because their numbers had grown significantly and removing them would have been difficult, and partly because of the nature of French rights in the region. The French could only occupy the coast seasonally; in their absence, the facilities they constructed and any equipment they left behind were vulnerable to theft, vandalism, damage, or loss by other means. Having settlers on the coast was useful, for French fishing captains could employ them as caretakers to ensure that small boats, nets, salt, and other goods left behind would be in good order when the fishing crews returned. Having to carry less equipment back and forth meant that the captains could maximize the amount of fish they took back to Europe in the fall. It also allowed them to bring extra supplies from France, thereby bolstering profits from fishing by trading with west coast residents.6 By the early nineteenth century, residents of the French Shore may have been relatively safe from expulsion. Nevertheless, French claims to the west coast continued to shape settlers’ lives in a myriad of ways. While the rest of the island came under the jurisdiction of a colonial government based in St John’s after 1832, residents of St George’s and other parts of the treaty shore would not be granted representative institutions until the end of the century. Nor did residents of the treaty shore unequivocally come under the laws of the Newfoundland government until 1904, when the French relinquished their claims as part of the Entente Cordiale. Not until after the turn of the twentieth century did residents gain secure title to the lands they cultivated, the homes they lived in, and the buildings, wharves, and other facilities they constructed to pursue the fisheries.7 For the mostly eastern-based professionals and merchants who dominated the Newfoundland House of Assembly, this situation was unacceptable. Especially as the nineteenth century wore on, some claimed that the imperial government was sacrificing the interests of its own subjects to avoid conflict with a rival power. Meanwhile, residents of the west

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coast were left in a “howling wilderness,” denied the rights and political institutions of “civilized peoples.”8 While residents of St George’s and other parts of the treaty shore sometimes complained of their situation, from their perspective, colonial politicians’ views and concerns were mostly unfounded. The idea, for example, that the west coast was a lawless frontier because the colonial government had no jurisdiction over it was simply untrue. Residents of the coast devised their own informal systems of rules that governed the use of land and other resources. While naval officers who patrolled the coast seasonally served as justices of the peace, residents of St George’s also appointed and respected the authority of their own peace officers.9 Moreover, for the Messervey and Dennis families, the indeterminacy of life on the French Shore had its benefits. The lack of formal title to property meant that established merchants from the east and other parts of the island were reluctant to set up shop there. That reluctance provided opportunities for ambitious men like Philippe Messervey and Susan’s younger brother Phillip Dennis. Both men built up substantial businesses trading through Halifax and eventually established themselves as some of the principal men in St George’s Bay.10 For such men and their later nineteenth-century heirs, life at the border of British and French empires, combined with a shifting set of ecological conditions and commercial networks, underwrote a distinctive system of social relations that, in turn, instilled in them a sense of place. These networks, circumstances, and sensibilities were vital to the history of St George’s and to the history of relations between residents of that bay and other locales. Some elements of the Messervey and Dennis families’ lives and the circumstances in which they operated are familiar. Earlier scholars, mostly interested in the history of officials and officialdom, have studied the basis and nature of French claims to western Newfoundland in the nineteenth century. They have also provided detailed examinations of colonial politicians’ views and concerns relating to those claims.11 Other aspects of the St George’s situation are not as well appreciated or understood. For example, we have a limited appreciation of how the practical meaning of formal agreements and overlapping claims and commercial networks on the island figured into the lives and imaginings of differently positioned populations. We also have only a cursory understanding of the informal systems of governance and related means of enforcing rules among members of the community. We know little about how settlers’ sense of place shaped their relationships with external powers. Finally, we have little insight into the kinds of politi-

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cal movements and perspectives that emerged in this and other parts of the island among the settlers who lived near, and depended on, distinct ecological settings, and who occupied different positions in a shifting web of diplomatic and commercial relations. As the cases of the Messervey and Dennis families show, moments of crisis can illuminate aspects of history that are often hard to discern. Accordingly, my account in this book is advanced through a series of linked studies, each centred on one or several related instances of conflict, upheaval, or controversy. These episodes provide a means of gaining insight into the lives and thoughts of those like Philippe and Susan Messervey. For various well-known reasons (for example, pervasive illiteracy in the past and the predilections of those who build archives), the available source materials make it easier to learn about some people than others. The voices of those in marginal positions in particular have often been muffled and even silent. In periods of conflict or upheaval, it was more likely that at least echoes of such voices would force their way into such standard documentary evidence as newspaper reports and debates in the House of Assembly. Meanwhile, magistrates, naval officers, and other authorities charged with keeping the peace responded with special inquiries and royal commissions. Their reports often include lengthy transcripts of interviews conducted with a range of people involved in or affected by upheavals. These interviews can provide detailed information about the episode at hand and about the more general circumstances in which working people and others operated and the concerns and views they held. Moreover, the very nature of such episodes makes them useful in understanding the history of an array of social actors, especially those in marginal positions. After all, popular conflicts partly arise out of the widely held conviction that accepted practices, norms, or general understandings of justice and fairness have been violated.12 Such instances are, as Sally Falk Moore notes, “diagnostic events” – episodes that draw attention to and provide insight into those more general views, expectations, and beliefs.13 If analyzed carefully against a broader history of political, economic, and ecological change, such crisis moments can serve as lenses through which to see social relations in a particular locale. My purpose is partly to contribute to an already rich literature on the social and cultural history of Newfoundland and Labrador.14 But I also bring that established literature and my own research on such topics into dialogue with the already mentioned investigations of imperial policy, formal politics, trade, and diplomacy. 15 Doing so broadens,

Introduction

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deepens, and clarifies our understanding of the processes by which Newfoundland became an integrated dominion in the British Empire. In the pages that follow, I delve into a “riot” in Fortune Bay in 1878, disputes over salmon posts in Hamilton Inlet, pro- and anti-railway disturbances on the Avalon Peninsula, a dispute over herring in St George’s Bay in the early 1890s, and a controversy over the lobster fishery on the island’s west coast. I have selected these particular cases for two main reasons. First, most represent regions where several foreign powers had rights and regularly operated. Focusing on these different locales allows insight into if and how the distinctive imperial networks and diplomatic arrangements and associated commercial relations shaped social developments and identities in different places over time. Second, earlier scholars have already considered topics central to these conflicts, if not the conflicts themselves. They have done so because they rightly viewed those episodes and/or the themes with which they are connected – negotiations over the fisheries, colonial development policy, the French Shore issue, Anglo-American relations – as central aspects of the history of Newfoundland. Examining this well-travelled historical terrain allows insight into how a different angle of approach may alter and enrich our understanding of the period. This study engages with a variety of literatures including social and cultural history, environmental history, imperial history, and the “new” diplomatic history, among others, and in the ensuing chapters I note my debts to many of the talented scholars working in these subfields. Recent works on the history of borders and borderlands are, however, especially important to this book’s organization and to the narrative that links the different case studies. Borderlands history traces its roots to early twentieth-century historian Herbert Bolton (one of Frederick Jackson Turner’s protégés) and his studies of the “Spanish borderlands” – the present-day American southwest.16 Bolton intended his studies as a challenge to his mentor; Turner posited that a single westwardmoving frontier – the meeting point between “savagery” and “civilization” – was the key source of American civilization.17 Bolton responded that there were multiple contact zones. According to him and many of those he trained, North America had been at the intersection – the borderland – of the Spanish, French, and British empires. In each zone, the interrelations between “savagery” and different Europeans powers produced a different sort of North American civilization, all of them important for the American nation.18 Historians have continued to work on the history of borderlands since Bolton’s time, though they have reformulated the approach in

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ways that reflect key subsequent developments. In particular, since the 1960s, historians have persisted in focusing on the history of imperialism, though they have moved away from apologizing for it. Rather than understanding borderlands as meeting points between “savagery” and “civilization,” these scholars view them as “spaces in between” – regions in which overlapping national, imperial, and other territorial claims have produced a measure of indeterminacy that, in turn, allowed for distinct economic, cultural, political, and social relations and arrangements.19 This version of borderlands history has appealed to scholars working on virtually every region of the globe.20 Its popularity reflects a range of recent historical developments that have drawn attention to questions of territoriality: the increasing velocity and volatility of the global economy; the growing importance of non-state actors (for example, transnational corporations and religious fundamentalists); the breakdown and reconstitution of national boundaries in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union; the advent of extranational political and economic bodies (for instance, the European Union and nafta); and the persistence of the nation state in a postcolonial and more thoroughly globalized world.21 It also speaks to broader historiographical developments since the mid-twentieth century. The approach, for example, meshes well with historians’ aims, especially since the 1960s, to provide “histories of society” sensitive to working people and other groups outside of formal political and diplomatic circles. It refocuses attention away from administrative centres, whether national or imperial capitals, and from negotiations on high, to the everyday lives and relationships of people, rich or poor, outside of officialdom. At the core of the field are the contradictions, incompleteness, and contingency of social categories and processes, and therefore the approach complements poststructuralist and postcolonial analyses that have stressed similar themes.22 Newfoundland and Labrador are ideally suited to borderlands analysis. For most of the region’s post-contact history, few Europeans viewed the island and portions of mainland North America to its north as anything other than a base for a seasonal fishery. Except in times of conflict, no single power sought to monopolize it. Instead, fishers from other British North American colonies, along with France and the United States, all had rights to fish off of the island and Labrador, and to use the beaches and land-based resources necessary for their trade. While this system functioned well throughout most of the eighteenth century, the same geopolitical developments that had disrupted life in St George’s Bay led to economic and demographic changes on the island

Introduction

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that would eventually upset that stability. Indeed, the conflicts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries made mass settlement viable for the first time and set the stage for the development of a colonial state. Key officials in that state planned to secure a prosperous future for themselves and their counterparts by asserting control over the island and its fisheries.23 Nineteenth-century Newfoundland, then, was an archetypal borderland: a space where changes in the relative authority of different imperial, national, and indigenous claimants to territories shaped the lives, opportunities, and identities of a large number of people – be they neighbours of the Messervey and Dennis families in Bay St George, residents of Fortune Bay on the south coast, or fishers and trappers in Labrador. Analyzing Newfoundland and Labrador in this period as a borderland opens up new dimensions of our general understanding of the history of the island and portions of the Labrador Peninsula to its north. In particular, the detailed case studies at the core of this work shed new light on the process of state formation in Newfoundland.24 Historians of later nineteenth-century Newfoundland have long examined Newfoundland’s formal political and diplomatic history.25 The nature of nineteenth-century Newfoundland history made such scholars aware that Newfoundland’s boundaries had been contested. They were also cognizant of how those occupying key positions in the colonial state struggled to secure an envisioned political, social, and economic future by establishing sovereignty over a clearly bounded geographical space. A careful examination of those outside of officialdom, and those in other parts of the island and Labrador, builds on those insights by adding additional aspects of a complex story. Broadening the focus to include working people in and around St John’s, for example, reveals that such people not only had different concerns and perspectives from the professionals and merchants who dominated the Newfoundland legislature but also that such individuals influenced the content and viability of formal policies drafted by elite officials. Shifting the focus to other parts of the island shows that the Messervey and Dennis cases were not unique. Instead, imperial and national claims to spaces and resources intersected in specific ways to produce very different sensibilities, identities, and commercial and social relations among differently situated residents of Newfoundland and Labrador. Other scholars have rightly emphasized the important disagreements and conflicts between the Newfoundland government and the British, French, American, and Canadian governments. This study shows that the history of nineteenth-century Newfoundland was also

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rife with inter- and intra-regional antagonisms and schisms, and that those divisions and conflicts were at least as important as more familiar disputes between the Newfoundland government and external powers to the history of Newfoundland in this period. Exploring these cases localizes the imaginings of colonial politicians and the political and economic projects associated with them. It reveals that strikingly different interests, and even different imagined borders, existed in other parts of the island and in parts of mainland North American under the jurisdiction of the Newfoundland government. To realize their aims and to make their imagined boundaries actually inform social, economic, political, and cultural systems in Newfoundland and Labrador, then, the architects of Newfoundland’s colonial state had to overcome alternative views and the formal and informal political movements and the social practices and commercial relations in which they were rooted. In Newfoundland as in other locales, state building involved what John Torpey has described as the “embracing of populations.” Colonial officials attempted to “surround” and “take hold” of the people and spaces they viewed as subject to their rule.26 The colonial government’s “Newfoundland position,” then, expressed a late nineteenth-century program of internal colonialism exerted from St John’s. If a focus on borderlands opens up new insights into Newfoundland and Labrador history, a careful examination of the island and portions of the mainland to its north can also contribute to the way we approach the history of borderlands more generally. The cases addressed here contribute to this subfield in two main ways. First, although Newfoundland existed as a separate state with the same political status as Canada from 1832 to 1933, studies of borderlands in the era of nation-building pay little attention to the island and to Labrador. Indeed, among recent volumes on North American borderlands, only Brian Payne’s study of the fisheries considers Newfoundland and Labrador at all.27 Examining Newfoundland and Labrador, then, fleshes out our understanding of key aspects of the movement from “borderlands to borders” in North America.28 It also stands as a reminder. Borderlands scholars emphasize the importance of exploring and explaining, rather than assuming, the boundaries that have come to exist. Taking this idea seriously means accepting that current borders have a history and that their location and meanings often were the result of contestation and struggle. We also have to recognize that borders may cease to exist or may dramatically alter in meaning over time. Newfoundland reminds us that states truly are contingent and that historicizing borders involves not only areas in which boundaries have persisted but also those where states have faded from view or changed meaning.

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The study’s second contribution to borderlands history is more conceptual in nature. In recent years, borderlands scholars have expressed concern over the local orientation of their field. Critics have suggested that the approach encourages a narrow parochialism.29 This study reminds us that what we heuristically describe as “macro” and “micro” or “local” and “global” scales are fundamentally integrated and mutually constitutive. Economic, ecological, social, cultural, political, and diplomatic structures on a “macro” scale are fundamental to the development of the specific economic, ecological, and social relations and related identities and subjectivities that constitute the backbone of a sense of “place” or “region.” Those sensibilities, in turn, are key to the rhythm of social life and to the way history unfolded. Given that the broad web of relations that produced a sense of place inevitably changes, it is not surprising that the sense of place itself – and any initiatives, impulses, and political and economic projects associated with it – may ebb and flow, fade, or cease to exist altogether. The fading or extinguishing of such sensibilities amounts to the dimming or even disappearance of important elements in the making of history. Focusing on “critical episodes” provides a strategy for identifying and teasing out the foundations of long-term if ultimately contingent constellations of institutions, identities, and economic and ecological relations integral to the “structures of feeling” we call “place.”30 This study provides a strategy for identifying and exploring how place matters, while at the same time understanding the particularities of specific locales as parts of, and as speaking to developments in, a broader totality of relations. Each of the five chapters that follow provides a detailed examination of one of the case studies and locales introduced above, with insight into the broader process of state formation in Newfoundland gained along the way. Chapter 1 examines the Fortune Bay dispute of 1877–78. Analyzing this event through the lens of recent methodological and theoretical approaches reveals a great deal about the lives and changing relations of the population of portions of the south coast. In particular, it shows that social cleavages within Fortune Bay were essential to the dispute. It also, however, underscores that different positions within international commercial and imperial networks produced very different sensibilities among residents. One of the colonial government’s key aims from 1832 on was to limit competition in the offshore (also called the “bank”) fishery. To do so, officials forbade foreign fishers from taking baitfish, a resource essential to their operations, in Newfoundland waters. They also attempted to cut off the supply of bait from Newfoundlanders by prohibiting all trade between foreign fleets and residents of the island. The south coast, however, was a long way from

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St John’s, and promulgating laws was easier than enforcing them. Not long after the British reinstated French fishing rights in 1815, a trade grew up between residents of the south coast and the French, who used as a base for their bank fisheries the two small islands of St Pierre and Miquelon just off the coast. A substantial number of people in Fortune Bay and adjacent regions grew affluent through this exchange, and many more procured at least part of their subsistence by it. When the colonial government set out to end competition in the fisheries, then, they were frustrated by international treaty agreements, but they also met stiff resistance from their own residents, for such restrictions jeopardized the arrangements on which inhabitants of Fortune Bay had come to depend. The difficulties the colonial government encountered in its attempts to control and manage the bank fishery, combined with a falling off of the island’s shore fishery in the later nineteenth century, produced two broad responses. Not long after colonial officials experienced their first setbacks on the south coast, they attempted to compensate for their inability to lay claim to the bank fishery by expanding north into the shore fisheries off of the coast of Labrador. Slightly later, they began to focus increasingly on schemes of landward development. In focusing on the interior of the island, a region that they unequivocally controlled, they hoped to escape treaty agreements and local resistance that confounded their earlier efforts to control the fisheries. Chapters 2 and 3, respectively, deal with conflicts over salmon posts in Hamilton Inlet and pro- and anti-railway upheavals on the Avalon, to provide details about the history of social relations in these regions. These chapters also offer insight into the formulation of the colonial government’s post-1850 development strategies, along with some results. Chapter 3 shows how the expansion of the colonial state northward destabilized the system of relations established under the Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc) as residents of the region attempted to use the authority of the colonial government, and particularly its court system, to challenge merchants’ and traders’ claims to fishing areas. In doing so, the chapter explores the effects of colonial officials’ efforts to formalize their rule over parts of Labrador, and provides insight into the social system that had previously emerged out of the day-to-day negotiations between merchant firms and planters, and particularly with hbc officers. Persisting resistance to the Newfoundland government’s efforts to assert itself on the south coast in the wake of the Fortune Bay Dispute, combined with declining catches in the shore cod fishery and difficulties arising alongside bulk buying and selling in the later nineteenth

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century, led to a substantive shift in focus for architects of the colonial state in Newfoundland. Such men had little appetite for the anticipated acrimony and possible expense of further pressing their claims to regions under hbc influence. Indeed, by the 1870s, politicians from across the political spectrum concluded that the best path forward was an escape from the fisheries altogether, and their focus shifted increasingly to the development of landward resources. Chapter 3 explores how the social history of the Avalon Peninsula shaped the colonial government’s landward development policy. It highlights that even while colonial officials often presented a unified view to residents of regions outside of eastern Newfoundland, the Avalon was far from homogeneous. Other historians have ably demonstrated that class, gender, and ethno-religious distinctions were important to this region. This chapter illustrates important ways that place – and especially one’s orientation to the city or the country – also shaped popular perspectives on development policy. Eventually, popular support on the Avalon helped to ensure that the government would pursue a rail-centred strategy. Proponents of this debt-heavy, state-centred strategy, which sought to bind the interior and western parts of the island to the east as a resource hinterland, became the face of the east to many residents of outlying regions. Colonial politicians may have believed they would have less difficulty claiming the interior and western parts of the island than they had faced in their efforts to manage the fisheries. Here too, however, they encountered considerable resistance. Treaty agreements that gave the French rights to the west coast were, of course, one obstacle to expansion. Yet residents of the territory that colonial officials sought to control were also by no means agreeable to a future with what they often called the “government of St John’s.” Chapter 4 elaborates on some of the themes touched on earlier in the discussion of the Messervey and Dennis families by examining a dispute over herring in St George’s Bay. This dispute differs somewhat from some of the other cases considered here. As with the upheaval around Hamilton Inlet, historians have directed comparatively little attention to the history of St George’s Bay and the dispute of the early 1890s. Considering it, however, allows insight into what was the most important hub of settlement and commerce on the west coast in the nineteenth century. Moreover, even if historians have not written extensively about the dispute or other aspects of the history of St George’s, they do tend to presume much about the situation in the area. Echoing nineteenth-century critics, historians have suggested that French rights interfered with obtaining clear title to property and with the establishment of electoral

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districts and judicial institutions thought typical for “British peoples” in this period. Such scholars have suggested that this situation was unjust, undesirable, and anachronistic and have looked at the means by which colonial officials sought to end it.31 Examining the history of St George’s indicates that political representation was not a major concern for most residents, who, in conjunction with naval officers who visited the area, devised a system of rules and enforcement that functioned well. Far from an expression of dissatisfaction with these circumstances, the upheaval in the early 1890s was an outgrowth of a deeply rooted ambivalence among many Bay residents about exchanging the commercial, social, and legal systems they had developed for the authority of the colonial government. Indeed, they not only had reservations about coming into the orbit of the colonial state but also put forward and sought to formalize boundaries that they believed better reflected their orientation to mainland North America and to Nova Scotia in particular. The final chapter focuses on the lobster controversy on Newfoundland’s west coast to provide further insight into how place figured into the process of state building in nineteenth-century Newfoundland and Labrador. The resolute resistance that the colony’s leading merchants and political figures faced in St George’s Bay was important. After all, that region was the most populous and economically important part of the west coast at the time. Yet in the west as in the east, there was no homogeneity, and residents of St George’s did not speak for all residents of the treaty shore. Settlers on its more northerly parts occupied different sorts of commercial and ecological spaces. Analysis of a wellknown controversy over the lobster fishery, an industry integral to many of those residents’ livelihood, offers insights into the shifting views and strategies held and pursued by differently situated residents of Newfoundland’s west coast in the last years of the nineteenth century. It shows that residents had quite distinct interests, and they pursued them, often aligning and realigning themselves with various actors on the treaty shore as social, diplomatic, economic, and ecological circumstances changed. Such conditions sometimes fostered alliances between residents and the merchants and politicians from St John’s. These alliances were, however, highly unstable; their existence depended on their continuing to serve the distinctive nexus of relations through which residents of the coast came to understand and sustain themselves.

Tractarianism and Bishop Edward Feild

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1 The French, the Americans, and the Making of a “Riot” The Fortune Bay Dispute, 1878

Early in 1878 a crowd of fishermen gathered on a beach in Long Harbour at the head of Fortune Bay on Newfoundland’s south coast. The fishermen demanded that crews working for several schooners from Gloucester, Massachusetts, remove from the water the seines they had deployed in their herring fishery. When several of the crews refused, members of the crowd seized and destroyed the gear. The skirmish, known to British and Newfoundland observers at the time as the “Fortune Bay dispute” and to Americans as the “Fortune Bay outrage” or “riot,” is familiar to historians. Most have viewed the conflict as rooted in local dissatisfaction with changes in the ways that Americans conducted their fishery in the Bay. In previous years the Americans had either purchased herring, or hired local residents, many of whom owned their own seines, to catch herring for them. In 1878, however, the Gloucestermen, exercising rights granted in the Treaty of Washington (1871), set out to catch their own fish. Historians of the dispute generally argue that in doing so the Americans violated local custom which said that communities in the Bay ought to control and reap the benefits of exploiting resources adjacent to their communities. According to this view, the rising was not unusual at the time. Instead, it was part of a wave of such conflicts in Newfoundland and in Canada. Most who have examined the dispute have used it as a lens through which to view Anglo-American relations and colonial politicians’ efforts to influence international agreements and negotiations governing the fisheries on which the economy of the island and usually their own fortunes heavily depended.1 Others have presented it as an exemplary illustration that formal and informal rules were integral to the operation of the fishery, that these different codes of conduct were distinct and often in-

16

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compatible, and that frequently informal codes determined the actual practice on the ground more than formal ones.2 There is much to recommend these interpretations. They highlight important causes and consequences of the episode and provide insight into the origins, operation, and possible conflicts between different and coincident regulatory regimes. Yet reports conducted at around the time of the dispute suggest that there is more to the episode. Many of those who deployed the offending seines, for example, were from Fortune Bay. If the matter were simply one of local fishermen expressing dissatisfaction as a foreign fleet strayed from accepted practices in the fishery, how do we account for local collaboration with American crews? Moreover, numerous reports indicate that the crowds opposed not just American seiners but seining in general, whoever carried it out. Again, if this were simply a matter of local versus foreign fishermen, why would the crowd target Newfoundland vessels as well as those from Gloucester? These inconsistencies point to the fact that the hostilities of 1877–78 were about more than divisions between local residents and American crews. Instead, the explosive situation reflected a more general social crisis in the Bay. The roots of that crisis lay in shifting divisions and alliances among residents of Fortune Bay and between Bay residents and settlers in other parts of the island, all of whom adjusted to a broad set of changing economic, ecological, and diplomatic circumstances. From early in the nineteenth century, settlers in Fortune Bay and other parts of the south coast lived in an area that the French used as a base for their offshore (or “bank”) fisheries. The region was also of longstanding interest to residents of neighbouring British colonies and to American fishermen and traders. Residents took advantage of the commercial opportunities that accompanied living in such a zone of intersecting influence. They traded extensively with the French and the Maritimers and, somewhat later, the Americans as well. While such commercial linkages suited residents of Fortune Bay well, the mostly St John’s– based merchants and professionals who dominated the House of Assembly were deeply dissatisfied, especially with the trade with the French. From their perspective, this trade was harmful for two main reasons. First, it was illicit and, as such, those engaged in it did not report to the colony’s customs officials. In doing so, they denied colonial officials revenues essential to sustaining the operations of the government. Second, the French used the herring they purchased as bait. In supplying foreigners, and especially the French, with a local source of bait – a necessity for the offshore fishery – Fortune Bay residents but-

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tressed the position of one of Newfoundland’s main rivals in the island’s staple trade. When the extensive trade between the French and south coast residents became clear to colonial politicians a few years after the establishment of representative government, officials immediately passed laws to prohibit it. They soon found, however, that the weakness of their recently founded state, combined with the refusal of south coast residents to comply with the laws it passed, meant that there was no change in long-established practices. Indeed, the main effect of the Newfoundland government’s early efforts to assert control over what its members imagined as their southern border was to intensify an oppositional regional solidarity among residents of Fortune Bay. This broadly based refusal to comply with colonial law essentially nullified government efforts to use its control over local matters to assert control over and exclude competitors from the Grand Banks, then one of the richest fishing grounds in the world. After mid-century, however, declining catch rates in the shore cod fishery and in the bait fishery, and increasing disparity among fishermen in Fortune Bay, created social tensions and potential allies for the colonial government. Some small-boat fishermen in and around Fortune Bay believed that increasingly large numbers of schooners equipped with seines threatened their access to herring, which was essential to them as a trade item and as bait in their cod fishery. Such fishermen solicited the aid of the colonial government to limit seining. When their appeals failed to stop the seiners, the small-boat fishermen eventually resorted to direct confrontation. The otherwise inexplicable divisions and anti-seining sentiment evident on the beach in Long Harbour in 1877–78 reflected the efforts of this group. The colonial government, small-boat fishermen, American fishing captains, and south-coast based schooner owners all vied to shape the social and diplomatic arrangements that would emerge after the dislocation. Ultimately, the schooner owners, drawing on long-standing solidarities, were able to persist in the trade on which they had long depended. While that victory assured some residents of Fortune Bay and nearby areas a prosperous future, for colonial officials it underscored that they would, at least in the short term, be unable either to secure their southern border or exert control over the bank fishery. The standard view of the Fortune Bay dispute is straightforward. According to most scholars, in mid-December 1877, some twenty-two Gloucester vessels anchored just off Tickle Beach in Long Harbour, a

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long, narrow inlet at the head of Fortune Bay. They joined a substantial fleet of Newfoundland schooners that had already assembled. Their arrival would not have surprised residents of the region; American schooners, mostly from Gloucester, had travelled to this part of the island to procure herring during all the preceding twenty winters.3 The Americans had generally enjoyed peaceable relations with south coast residents, and the first part of the 1877 winter fishing season was no exception. This generally amicable situation soured on 6 January 1878. On that day, the crews of two vessels owned by John Pews and Co., the Ontario under Captain Peter McAuley, and the New England under the command of John Dago, employed enormous machine-knit seines that had become increasingly common in the US mackerel fishery.4 After the crews had corralled approximately 2,000 barrels (about 400,000 pounds) of herring, the American captains noted that a large crowd of fishermen had gathered on the shore. Several spokesmen among the assembled fishermen demanded that those working the seines release their catch and cease fishing. When the crews hesitated, some of those on the beach put off in boats. Once again they commanded the seiners to stop fishing and release the fish in their nets. When their demands were unmet, the Newfoundlanders took matters into their own hands. They released the fish and proceeded to seize, cut up, and burn one of the seines. Incensed, the Gloucestermen left the coast for their home port with a fraction of their normal cargo of fish. On reaching Massachusetts, they launched formal complaints through their political representatives, which ultimately led to a diplomatic dispute between the British and Americans that continued on into the twentieth century.5 According to most scholars, the dispute between American and Newfoundland fishermen was rooted in changes in the ways Americans conducted their bank fishery and in revisions to the agreements governing British North American fisheries. In terms of fishing methods, the most significant departure was the increasing prevalence of bultows in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Known by a variety of names, bultows were essentially long, buoyed fishing lines with baited hooks at regular intervals.6 For most of the period prior to their introduction, schooner crews had fished with handlines (usually two to four lines per crew member) from the deck.7 For a time, fishermen had cast off in dories with multiple handlines, allowing them to cover more of the fishing ground with more hooks. By the early to mid-nineteenth century, they revised this practice, trading their handful of hooks for the several hundred or even several thousand attached to each bultow.8 As

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Jeffrey Bolster, Brian Payne, Matthew McKenzie, and others have pointed out, the introduction of this gear did two things. It buttressed profit margins by greatly increasing catch rates in an era of declining returns.9 It also created an enormous demand for bait. To be effective, each of the many hooks affixed to the main line of each bultow had to be baited. According to these scholars, the south coast of Newfoundland, long renowned for the enormous shoals of herring that migrated to it each year, became a point of interest for American schooner captains either looking for bait for themselves or looking to sell bait to others in New England ports.10 Historians of the dispute generally agree that for about two decades after the Americans had begun regularly making trips to the south coast for herring, both US and local fishermen were satisfied with the trade. The problems of the winter of 1877–78, they suggest, arose as the British and American governments altered arrangements governing access to the coast as part of the Treaty of Washington (1871). With the exception of a brief period around mid-century, when a reciprocity agreement allowed Americans freer access to British North American waters, US fishermen had operated under the Convention of 1818, an agreement negotiated in the wake of the War of 1812. While an earlier treaty had given the Americans broad-ranging rights in Newfoundland and off other British North American colonies, the 1818 convention restricted access to waters within three miles of the shore, and to the shore itself, to three specific areas – the south and west coasts from Ramea to Quirpon Islands, portions of the coast of Labrador north of Mount Joly, and the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence.11 Under the Treaty of Washington, US fishermen gained freer access to inshore fisheries in Newfoundland in exchange for the ending of US tariffs against some Newfoundland products. According to earlier accounts of the Fortune Bay dispute, friction between Americans and Newfoundlanders and other British North Americans emerged when the Americans attempted to exercise their rights under the 1871 treaty. In this view, 1877 was a key year because the Americans were aware that the recently concluded Halifax Commission had forced their government to pay a million dollars for access to colonial waters. Emboldened by this knowledge, they brought enormous seines to the coast that year, intending to fish for themselves.12 Doing so, rather than purchasing bait from Newfoundlanders or hiring local fishermen to catch bait for them, these scholars contend, caused tremendous upset and eventually a violent outburst. The Fortune Bay dispute, historians have maintained, was a particularly violent example of a more general tendency that grew

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Conflicted Colony

out of local residents’ reluctance to relinquish the monopoly they had formerly held over the resources adjacent to their communities. This interpretation has merit. After all, there is much evidence that similar sorts of disputes erupted not only elsewhere in Newfoundland but also in Cape Breton.13 Additionally, testimony of fishermen indicates that changed fishing practices caused dissatisfaction among some fishermen in and around Fortune Bay. However, this reading is unsatisfactory in two ways. First, it does not account for aspects of the events of winter 1877–78 for which there is much evidence. For example, historians have presented the matter as a conflict between Americans and Newfoundlanders. Yet observers at the time noted that many of those who tended the offending seines were in fact residents of Fortune Bay.14 Second, historians have largely ignored aspects of the dispute that these same contemporary observers found important. In particular, even while Newfoundland fishermen reportedly deployed their own seines and hired on with Americans to work the large seines that were central to the upheaval, some local fishermen opposed seining altogether. In fact, most of the American captains complained that local fishermen had set gill nets so as to obstruct any effort to seine, and that they had, through great effort, placed huge, sharp boulders in the waters just off the beach so as to tear up any seines that might be deployed there.15 In part, the hesitancy to deal with these aspects of the dispute may result from the scarcity of testimony and other documents dealing with the immediate upheaval that would explain them. Refocusing attention on the local context over a longer period of time, however, reveals that changed American practices were not the only cause of hostility. Instead, in proceeding as they did, the Gloucester captains seemingly unwittingly made themselves the target of hostilities, the roots of which stretched back well before 1871. To understand these hostilities requires placing the dispute within a longer history of changes in the economic, political, and ecological circumstances of Fortune Bay, and, to a more limited extent, of the south coast as a whole. The south coast of Newfoundland was one of the earliest points of interest for Europeans who began travelling to the island in the sixteenth century. Within a few years of Cabot’s famous voyage, French, Basque, Spanish, and Portuguese vessels regularly came to this part of the island to fish and barter.16 All but the French withdrew from the trade by the end of the century, though they did not have free rein. Even though they sent the largest contingent of ships to the south coast (and to Newfoundland generally) by the last third of the sixteenth century, they now

The Fortune Bay Dispute, 1878

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shared the island with the English, who had begun coming to the island in large numbers.17 From the late sixteenth century through to the twentieth century, these two powers remained the dominant forces in the island’s fisheries, though their centres of operation, and the nature of the fishery more generally, changed dramatically over that time. Throughout much of the seventeenth century, the south coast was mostly the preserve of the French. In 1662, the French crown sought to strengthen the position of its subjects in the region by building a fortified colony at Plaisance.18 The French remained the dominant presence on the south coast until 1713, sometimes using their colony as a launching point for raids on English settlements on the Avalon. At that time, the French ceded control of the island to the English in exchange for the right to continue a migratory fishery under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht. This arrangement remained in place until the late eighteenth century when, in the wake of the Seven Years War, the French obtained two islands, St Pierre and Miquelon, just off the south coast; from then on they used the two islands as a base from which to prosecute their fisheries and other industries.19 After the French abandoned Plaisance, the population of the south coast was thin. A few French settlers persisted, as did a small number of Beothuks and a group of Mi’kmaq men and women who travelled to the coast as allies of the French.20 It is difficult to determine exactly how large the settler population on this part of the island was between the Treaty of Utrecht and the end of the Seven Years War, as large numbers of annual migrants and residents stayed for a winter or two before returning to Europe. It is clear, however, that there was some settlement, for when Captain James Cook visited this region in 1775, he noted settlers at seven places in the region, including at Fortune, Grand Bank, and Harbour Breton.21 Moreover, there were merchants operating on the coast after the French abandoned the region, for Cook also noted that Clark and Young of Poole had taken up at Harbour Breton, the location they had chosen after being forced to leave St Pierre when the British ceded the islands to the French in 1763.22 The nature of settlement and of economic and social life in the region becomes clearer toward the end of the eighteenth century. The fortunes of the south coast were broadly similar to those of many other parts of Newfoundland. A scarcity of topsoil, a cold, wet, short growing season, limited boreal forest, and scanty mineral resources meant that the south coast was comparatively ill-suited for either agriculture or the development of industries outside of the fisheries.23 For much of its post-contact history, Europeans saw this area in the same way they

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Conflicted Colony

viewed a great many other parts of the island: it was a place from which to catch and dry cod, and the majority of those who travelled to the south coast and elsewhere did so as members of migratory fishing crews. Then, in the late eighteenth century, Britain found itself embroiled in a series of wars. During this period of conflict, transatlantic travel was more treacherous than usual, the price of fished spiked, and Newfoundlanders were freed of French and American competitors. The precariousness of transatlantic travel and the unprecedentedly high prices for fish made significant settlement of both fishermen and representatives of mercantile firms desirable for the first time.24 In the decade following Cook’s visit, there were a number of merchant firms other than Clark and Young in the area for brief periods.25 By the 1780s, however, two main firms supplanted Clark and Young and the others. As early as 1780, Nicolle and Co., a Jersey firm, had set up a few miles away from Harbour Breton at Jersey Harbour.26 In 1784, Robert Newman and Co., hitherto an Avalon Peninsula–based operation, established branches at St Lawrence, Little Bay, and Burin before moving headquarters to Harbour Breton in 1816. The establishment of these two merchant houses provided a source of settlers. Here as in other parts of Newfoundland, many of those who started out as servants of a merchant firm sometimes preferred to establish their independence through developing households on the island.27 Moreover, the merchant houses provided supplies and access to markets, both of which sustained those who arrived in the region via other channels. Thus, while the number of people living in permanent, independent households in Fortune Bay did not exceed one hundred before 1786,28 the population had swelled to approximately 3,000 by the time of the first government of Newfoundland census in 1836. Thereafter it increased steadily from almost 3,500 in 1857, to just under 5,400 in 1869, to about 6,000 around the time of the Fortune Bay dispute.29 The establishment of merchant firms on the coast was instrumental in facilitating a thriving cod fishery and in increasing the number of settlers. Soon after a significant number of people established themselves in the region, however, settlers also developed a flourishing trade in fish other than cod. And, while Nicolle and Co. and Newman and Co. traded a variety of species, much of that trade did not register on these companies’ ledgers. The unrecorded trade, mostly in herring and other baitfish, involved a diverse set of actors. There was, for instance, exchange between the south coast and the French at St Pierre. Vessels from the United States occasionally travelled to the coast well before the development of a large and regular commerce in the 1850s.30 For

The Fortune Bay Dispute, 1878

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example, Americans who had established a sea cow (walrus) fishery off of the Magdalen Islands in the later eighteenth century also ventured to the south coast of Newfoundland.31 In the early nineteenth century, whaling vessels out of Nantucket regularly stopped off at Harbour Breton, their crews sometimes even serving as labour for planters – a term used to distinguish permanent settlers who owned boats, stages, flakes, and other necessary gear and facilities to conduct the fishery from those who migrated to work as employees – based at that location.32 Such periodic contact meant that the region was known well enough in the United States that by the later 1830s the American firm Atherton and Thorne had set up a warehouse on St Pierre to better enable them to take advantage of the trade of the region.33 Nova Scotians, and to a lesser extent Prince Edward Islanders and New Brunswickers, also the visited coast regularly from the early nineteenth century.34 The Maritimers were at the core of a massive trade in which fish shipped from Newfoundland went to Halifax and, from there, often to the United States and the Caribbean, where it fed plantation labourers.35 Additionally, some of the more affluent residents of Fortune Bay appear to have made the leap from independent fishers to small traders around mid-century. It is somewhat difficult to come to grips with who all of these traders were or how important they were, for official monitoring of the coast was minimal until well into the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, they do appear in reports and reminiscences about the region.36 For most of the nineteenth century, the most important trade on the south coast outside of that with Newman and Nicolle was that between residents of the region and Maritimers and the French. The commercial arrangements with the Maritimers raised few eyebrows as they were mostly a legitimate and lucrative business from which residents profited and the colonial government earned revenue. The French case was somewhat different. Several British acts prohibited trade between the French at St Pierre and Miquelon and residents of the south coast.37 Yet the south coast Franco-Fortune Bay trade was important early on. Indeed, when Edward Wix, an Anglican missionary, visited the region in 1835, he noted that residents from Fortune Bay to Port aux Basques wore French clothes, ate French food, and decorated their houses with French goods.38 While Wix’s observations are revealing, developments at about the time he visited the region bring into clearer relief the extent and nature of the trade, as well as the different orientations and interests of south coast settlers and their counterparts in St John’s. The year after Wix’s trip to the island, the Newfoundland government, which had

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Conflicted Colony

only been established a few years earlier, received a petition from George Lake and other “respectable planters” from Fortune Bay. These residents sent a petition to the legislature praying that the government prevent the French from taking baitfish in the Bay. Newman Hoyles, a leading St John’s merchant who represented the district of Fortune, presented the petition to the House of Assembly.39 According to him, the planters were perturbed that the French had recently begun to catch enormous quantities – the fishermen estimated five hundred tons a season – of caplin in Fortune Bay using seines. The fishermen claimed that “such a quantity of caplin had been caught by the French Vessels visiting the Bay … that few if any are now ever found in several parts of the Bay, where within the memory of the oldest Inhabitants the caplin scull had never before failed.” As a consequence, fishermen “living at the head of the said Bay,” who primarily fished from shallops (thirty to forty foot vessels, sometimes partly decked) could not “procure sufficient Bait to prosecute the cod fishery.” According to Hoyles, if the practice persisted, it would deprive residents of their livelihood, and he, on behalf of Lake, asked that “the House … take such measures as may be deemed requisite for the prevention of the evil of which the Petitioners complain.”40 Other members of the colonial government accepted Hoyles’ recommendations and immediately established a select committee to inquire into the claims made in the petition. On conducting interviews with the key planters and other “respectable residents” in the region, the committee found that the petitioners’ complaints represented only a “small portion of the injuries likely to be sustained by the Inhabitants of the District.” Indeed, in the same year that petitioners put forward their complaints, “upwards of 300 sail of French banking vessels” had visited Fortune Bay.41 This phenomenon alarmed colonial politicians. In part, their alarm may have reflected genuine concern for the petitioners. It also, however, spoke to the more general concerns and aims of members of the colonial government. The central reason the island had become appealing for mass settlement was that during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries British fishermen had a monopoly in the fishery, and they received unusually high prices for their catch. Newfoundland’s politicians were well aware that the stability and vibrancy of their colonial state depended heavily on the fishery. According to them, the incursions in and around Fortune Bay not only threatened the livelihood of the disgruntled planters but also posed a threat to the colony as a whole in two ways. In the early nineteenth cen-

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tury, the French were key competitors for Newfoundland merchants in European markets. These rivals could only maintain an extensive bank fishery, and hence supply those markets, if they had access to bait. Taking bait from Newfoundland deprived some residents of the south coast of this essential item and also undermined the ability of Newfoundland merchants to monopolize one of the richest fishing grounds off of Newfoundland. Moreover, according to them, this trade prevented the growth of a robust colonial state. After all, Newfoundland’s main source of revenue was import duties. The trade between the south coast and St Pierre bypassed customs collectors and therefore denied the colony the revenue that would otherwise have been earned from a legitimate trade with Nicolle, Newman, or any other British or Newfoundland traders operating in the region.42 Colonial politicians, then, claiming to act in the interest of “all residents of this island,” passed legislation – the Act to Prevent Encroachments of Aliens in the Fisheries of this Island, and for the Further Protection of Said Fisheries – that forbade French vessels from fishing off or trading with residents on the south coast. Politicians also requested that the British deploy whatever naval vessels might be required to end the trade between the south coast and St Pierre and to protect the rights of British subjects.43 The British sent naval vessels to the coast to investigate the situation the following year. When the captains arrived, they learned a great deal about the historic trade between the French islands and the south coast. Despite imperial prohibitions against it, exchange between people of the two regions seems to have existed almost from the time that the French reoccupied the area following the Seven Years War.44 Initially, however, that exchange did not only or primarily consist of bait, for French crews had mostly procured their own supply from the waters just off their own islands. Instead, the trade seems to have mostly involved game and wood, as both trees and fresh meat were in short supply on St Pierre and Miquelon. In the early nineteenth century, however, bait grew in importance as the demand for it outstripped what could be acquired off St Pierre.45 The growing French demand for this commodity was linked to the gear types the French employed in their bank fishery. In the late eighteenth century the French began experimenting with bultows.46 While the Americans later adopted the practice, the French alone used them extensively at this early date.47 The number of such devices increased significantly by the early nineteenth century, partly because the French government offered subsidies (what Newfoundland politicians would later call “bounties”) to help revive the French bank fishery after the end of the Napoleonic wars. As colonial

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Conflicted Colony

officials regularly complained, the subsidy of eleven francs per quintal of cod was equal to the total value of the product itself.48 Such generous incentives led French merchants, mostly from Dieppe and Bayonne, to invest heavily in huge square-rigged brigs, shallops, which they nested on deck, and large numbers of enormous bultows, some of which were reportedly two to three kilometres long and held four to five thousand hooks.49 These vessels, which Jeffrey Bolster has aptly described as “ruthless fishing machines,” required an enormous quantity of bait.50 Increasingly, then, the income that Fortune Bay residents earned through their trade with the French centred on baitfish (primarily caplin and herring) and other marine species (for instance, squid, clams, lobster, snails, and sea worms) that could serve this purpose.51 Captain Thomas Bennett, one of the naval officers sent to investigate matters on the south coast, also discovered that, despite their claims, Hoyles and his counterparts in the House of Assembly did not speak for all residents of the island. Indeed, his inquiries revealed that “many of the respectable persons about Fortune Bay, who were extremely active in getting up the Petition” of the previous year, “were themselves deeply engaged in the Caplin trade to St Pierre’s [sic].”52 In fact, it appears that George Lake and many other residents of the south coast were unaware that what had become a normal and essential part of economic life in their region violated any act at all. Thus, when Bennett sailed into St Pierre, there were eleven south coast vessels in port ready to trade. To Bennett’s surprise, their owners “did not attempt to disguise the fact.”53 Moreover, when he explained to residents of the coast (including Lake and some of his fellow petitioners) that the trade violated both imperial acts and the local legislation their petition of the previous year had partly inspired, he found that the restrictions were both “unexpected” and “unpalatable to them.”54 What Lake and the others objected to in 1835 was not the French presence in general but the introduction of seines. Their concerns about these devices were linked with the predominant mode of fishing in the Bay. Most of these men then fished from shallops using handlines for cod and cast or gill nets for bait.55 In their view, the seines overexploited caplin, thereby jeopardizing the cod fishery in two ways. The comparatively limited range of the vessels from which the fishermen operated meant that their success hinged partly on whether bait and cod travelled to them. The seiners, the fishermen believed, removed a key source of bait on which they themselves depended. They also believed that many of the cod in the area moved into the Bay in pursuit of shoals of baitfish that migrated there at different times of the year.56

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Subsequent studies suggest that these observations were accurate.57 If the seines scooped up a large portion of the baitfish that travelled to a particular part of the Bay, it was likely that the density of cod would also be reduced. Moreover, when the French moved in with their seines, they could procure enough bait without trading with local residents. What the petitioners wanted, then, was to limit seining, thereby ensuring their own place in a viable bait and cod fishery in the future. In alerting colonial and imperial authorities to the Franco-Fortune Bay trade, Lake and others did limit the French incursions. Indeed, British officials’ exchanges with their French counterparts, combined with surveillance from the British navy, seem to have ended French seining altogether. Yet these men created other problems for themselves as well for subsequent generations of south coast fishermen. In drawing attention to their trade with the French, Lake and the others brought periodic harassment onto themselves as they persisted in what was an illegal but for them vital exchange. Throughout the nineteenth century, colonial politicians regularly launched into diatribes against the illicit south coast trade and the foreign competition it sustained. Hoyles and others continued to see the French bank fishery, which the trade in bait made possible, as a threat, as he and his counterparts found it difficult to compete with heavily subsidized French fish. They also saw the trade itself as a hindrance to the colony as the illicit trade in goods not only undermined legitimate merchant operations on the south coast but also deprived the colony of the revenue that might otherwise have been collected through import duties. According to them, this fishery was not merely an irritation but a main cause of the colony’s depressed economic state in the decades after 1832.58 After 1836, colonial officials pursued a number of strategies to limit the illicit south coast trade. Initially they requested that the imperial government defend their rights as loyal subjects. The British sent several naval vessels to the island each year and occasionally seized a vessel or interfered with illegal trading. The population of the south coast was, however, spread out over dozens of small harbours and inlets, many often shrouded in fog and separated from St Pierre by only a few miles of ocean. Controlling such a dispersed population required a significant number of patrol vessels. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, naval ships in Newfoundland were few in number, only on the coast seasonally, and assigned to Newfoundland as a whole.59 Their effect on the trade, then, was slight. In the view of Alexander Milne, one of the naval officers assigned to Newfoundland in 1840, it was “quite a vain attempt for the Captains of H.M. Ships employed on the fisheries

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even to check, much less to suppress, the contraband trade.”60 With an increasing emphasis on free trade and “empire on the cheap” in the metropole, it was unlikely that the British would pay for increased surveillance.61 Nevertheless, Milne suggested that the colonial government might establish their own fisheries protection service. The naval captains, then, could “afford assistance to whatever system the … Government may adopt.”62 Milne’s advice coincided with the establishment of a select committee to investigate obstacles to a Newfoundland bank fishery. That committee restated long-standing concerns about the ill-effects of the illicit trade in bait on Newfoundland’s south coast, and colonial politicians entered into discussions about how to establish a system of colonial cruisers to thwart this exchange.63 Like imperial officials, these men also hoped to acquire such a service inexpensively. The 1840s were less than prosperous years for the colony. No matter what the long-term benefit might be, colonial politicians worried that the immediate expense of a south coast patrol might be prohibitive in the short term.64 To overcome this limitation, they amended an existing act that regulated the inspection and export of pickled fish. Formerly, the act had primarily been designed to ensure that Newfoundlanders did not export an inferior product that could damage the reputation of herring from the island in the international marketplace.65 In 1845 the government imposed a duty of two shillings and six pence on every barrel of bulk herring exported from the island. The revenue thus raised would be used to defray “the expense of procuring and maintaining suitable Revenue Cruisers for the protection of the British fisheries and revenue.”66 In ensuring that no illicit trading occurred, the colonial government would not only maximize revenue but also strike a blow against their French competitors by denying them a vital source of bait. A few years after the amendments came into effect, disappointment and complaints about them spurred the colonial government to strike another select committee to inquire into the effect of the 1845 act. The committee found that one of the main results of the measures was to end a vibrant, legitimate trade in herring between residents of the south coast and residents of the neighbouring British North American colonies, particularly those from Nova Scotia. Hugh Hoyles, a St John’s–based lawyer and the son of Newman Hoyles, was committee chairman. The younger Hoyles, who had replaced his father as the representative for Fortune, reported that before the amendments “the average quantity of Herring … annually exported from Fortune Bay alone amounted to from fifteen to twenty thousand barrels.” The duty,

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however, made the trade unprofitable for the Nova Scotians, and “in the winter of 1845, immediately after the passing of the Act, but two small vessels were engaged in exporting Herring in bulk from Fortune Bay … and since that time the trade has been wholly discontinued.”67 The trade with the Maritimes was important for a range of fishers on the south coast. For some, it supplemented earnings from the cod fishery. For others, in areas where the cod fishery had never been particularly good, it accounted for a considerable portion of their income. The end of the legitimate trade meant that many people in the latter group were “reduced to a state bordering on starvation in consequence of their being deprived of the Herring fishery.”68 Rather than limiting illicit trade, then, the revised act actually encouraged it and further strengthened an associated oppositional regional solidarity among residents of Fortune Bay, as those placed in desperate circumstances remedied their situation by trading with the French. Although in the first year that the act was in effect the colonial cruiser seems to have had some impact, by the second year “the supply of the French islands was kept up … in the same manner as before the passing of the Act.” This general refusal to accept either the colonial government’s legislation or the authority of the revenue cruisers meant that the main group harmed by the act were Newfoundland merchants and other licit traders. Moreover, while the cost of employing the schooner for two years was nearly £1,200, the total revenue collected amounted to just under £400. Given that the act was a net drain on colonial coffers, and that it had “been productive of very serious local injury, unattended with any general good,” the committee “unhesitatingly recommend[ed] that … such parts of it as lay a duty upon Herring exported in bulk should be immediately repealed.”69 For the colonial government, ending, or even seriously disrupting, the south coast herring trade was difficult. Indeed, government was limited in its ability to compel residents to comply with colonial law at all. Utterances against and efforts to limit the bait trade in the first decades of the nineteenth century only made residents of the region more resolute in their determination to continue the trade on which many had come to depend and from which some profited immensely.70 The extent of this opposition meant that the south coast was not effectively under the colonial government’s control up to the later nineteenth century. Indeed, while for a few years after Lake’s petition the French were reluctant to appear on the south coast for fish, bait, and other supplies, by 1850 naval captains noted that the French were regularly landing near Burgeo to dig clams and routinely visited other

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parts of the south coast, including Fortune Bay. What is more, most fishermen encouraged them to do so. In fact, many residents were happy to let French crews take their own bait and other supplies so long as they did not interfere with residents’ own supply of bait, and as long as they still traded with local fishermen.71 Not long after the Newfoundland government launched its first effort to police the coast directly, however, splits began to appear in the relatively united front that residents had earlier presented. This change had less to do with government initiatives or strategies than it did with changes in the south coast fishery. At about the time that the Newfoundland government launched its first effort to police the coast directly, a number of observers noted that punts – small (approximately twenty foot long) boats – were replacing shallops as the most common vessels in the fishery.72 Others have noted this shift and have taken it as evidence that the Fortune Bay fishery was primarily a small-boat affair after mid-century.73 This view is true to an extent; most fishermen in the Bay, and for that matter in Newfoundland, did fish from small vessels. It is, however, important not to separate the Fortune Bay fishery from developments all along the south coast and elsewhere on the island. The increasing prevalence of punts did not signal the end of large boats in Fortune Bay. Instead, it marked the point at which their origins and the nature of their participation in the fisheries of the region changed. At the same time that shallops became scarce and punts more numerous, another class of vessels – small schooners – became more common on the south coast. According to historians and contemporaries, most of these vessels were in the thirty to sixty ton range.74 Their origins are somewhat unclear. It may be that the increasing unpredictability of the fishery encouraged prosperous Fortune Bay planters to invest in schooners or possibly to build modified and slightly enlarged shallops for longer voyages. As Jacob Mountain, an Anglican missionary who visited Habour Breton in the later 1840s, noted, for several years prior to his visit, declining catch rates had forced fishermen in shallops to travel further afield to access richer fishing grounds.75 Captain Milne’s report lends force to this hypothesis, for he noted in 1840 that residents of Fortune and Lamaline had begun to build small schooners so they could fish in St Mary’s Bay to the east.76 Schooners would have been a safer and more effective means of conducting this fishery. It is, however, virtually impossible to determine the exact timing or reasoning behind the increasing interest in such vessels. It is also hard to trace the number of them operating in the area with precision,

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for there are no annual records of the number and size of vessels operating in the Bay. Census records indicate only the carrying capacity of particular boats.77 Schooners would have been included under the category “30 quintals and upwards,” but so could have a range of other vessel types. Moreover, because planters and merchants throughout the island increasingly invested in larger vessels, even if we did know the number of such vessels that existed in Fortune Bay throughout the nineteenth century we still could not be sure that only those vessels fished in the Bay. After all, part of the purpose of investing in schooners was to travel further afield. Thus the connection between a vessel’s home port and its area of operation was not as strong as it was for smaller vessels, and there is abundant evidence that a large number of vessels from elsewhere on the island participated heavily in the Fortune Bay fishery after mid-century.78 While increasingly common after 1840, the number of south coast– based schooners rose substantially after 1850. In part, this increase had to do with declining catches of cod. Key sources on returns in the fishery may seem to contradict this notion; census returns, for example, indicate that cod catches in the Bay grew from 36,000 quintals in 1836 to nearly 90,000 quintals in 1869.79 They also indicate increases in all of the years between those dates, levelling off at just under 90,000 quintals for several years following.80 Such figures, however, are deceptive. When we calculate production on a per-household basis, the trend is significantly different. In 1857, for example, the average catch per household was 118 quintals.81 In 1874, the next year for which there is data, that number had declined to 107 quintals per household.82 Ten years later, it had dropped by over half to just over forty-six, and seven years after that, plummeted even further to a mere thirty-one quintals per household.83 When calculated per person employed in catching and curing fish, a slightly different picture emerges. In this scenario, the number of quintals per person rose from fifty-two in 1857 to fiftyseven in 1874. It then fell to just over twenty-five in 1884, and from there rates of catch fell further to just over eighteen quintals per person in 1891.84 Whichever calculation we accept, the basic trend is the same. While the total amount of fish rose, the increases were not distributed evenly among the population but were predicated on the introduction of more intensive gears. A Captain Brown who visited the island in 1871 suggested it was possible to make a direct link between the gear a fishermen employed and his class standing. As he explained, “the seine is the engine of the rich, the bultow of the middle, and the

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hook-and-line of the poor class of fishermen.”85 Declining catches appear to have been a problem at the time Jacob Mountain visited the area in the early 1840s. This early decline was probably connected to increased fishing pressure as the number of settlers in the area grew. After mid-century, broader climatological changes likely compounded the effects of this increased pressure on resources. Recent research suggests that there was a period of global cooling from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century; sometimes called the “little ice age,” this era was punctuated by particularly cold intervals in the 1650s, 1770s, and 1850s. As Bolster has pointed out, scientists posit that especially cold water diminishes reproductive success in cod. Given the cooling trend during the years around mid-century, the coalescence of increased fishing pressure and declining fecundity among cod may have produced the conditions about which many of the island’s residents complained.86 In any event, on the south coast as in other parts of the island, the strategy among the better-off planters appears to have been to extend the intensity and range of fishing to maintain or enhance their status as independent operators in a context of declining returns.87 The growth in the south coast schooner fleet also had to do with changes in the herring fishery. After 1850, the French and the Americans were increasingly important buyers of this fish, with the Americans becoming a more pronounced presence especially after the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 allowed them greater access to British North American waters. Vessels from both countries travelled to the coast for bait in the spring and summer. The main difference between fishing crews from France and the US was the kinds of bait they procured. French vessels returned to Fortune Bay periodically, taking whatever was abundant at different parts of the season. When they first arrived in April, they bought herring. On returning from their first trip to the banks, they purchased mostly caplin. For their third and final trip, they used primarily squid.88 The Americans preferred herring, as they claimed it stood better on hooks. They procured their bait on the south coast so long as there was herring there to purchase. As the fish migrated to the west, however, the Americans tended to follow them.89 The addition of the American trade no doubt itself helped to encourage growth of a schooner fleet. The expanded opportunities of the American trade would have been appealing to those looking for alternatives to the cod fishery. Also important to the expansion of the fleet, however, was a second American fishery that took place in winter. Part of the purpose of this fishery was to procure herring to take to New England, where it would be sold to banking vessels and to those en-

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gaged in the shore fishery off of Massachusetts.90 Shore fishermen in Massachusetts reportedly needed the herring because stocks of baitfish off of their own shores thinned dramatically over the late nineteenth century.91 For the offshore vessels, the idea was to head to the banks ready to begin fishing immediately rather than having to spend the first part of the trip trying to procure bait. Yet only about a third of the Americans’ winter catch went for bait: the rest was sold as human food. In the earliest years of the trade, the American fleet mostly supplied slave owners in the south and Irish fish peddlers in New England. Later, however, the fish became “a favorite article of food” among both “the laboring classes of the larger cities” and the agricultural workforce. As an inexpensive and wholesome food, fish helped to fuel the bodies of working people from Washington in the south to Chicago in the midwest as the United States entered the industrial age.92 The fact that the US winter fishery was predominantly a food fishery was significant. US crews seeking herring for both bait and food markets required large fish, and they required that they be frozen fresh. They needed large herring because food processors would only buy the larger fish. They needed frozen fish because they sold their product as both food and bait. Generally about two-thirds of the catch went for human consumption, and this was the preferred market as fish sold to processors yielded a higher return than that sold for bait. The proportion that went to different markets could, however, vary. Rather than trying to guess which market would take most of their fish, then, these fishers preferred to freeze and stow only high-quality larger fish that could suit either market, and to sell first to processors and later to fishermen.93 Both ecological and climatological rhythms made Fortune Bay a logical focus for American fishermen supplying these markets. The northwest Atlantic herring stock consisted (and still consists) of a number of relatively discrete sub-populations. These sub-populations move from deep to shallow water, concentrating in different regions and bays at different times of the year to spawn, feed, and overwinter. Some regions, for example, the Bay of Islands and Bonne Bay, were primarily overwintering areas, with the fish being present from October to May.94 Others – for example, St George’s Bay – were exclusively spawning areas. Fortune Bay served as both a spring spawning area and an overwintering area, and there were, in essence, two massive migrations of fish into the region. In mid to late December, enormous shoals of larger, fatter fish, which contemporaries referred to as “bank” or “Labrador” herring, moved into the Bay.95 They remained there until the spring. As these

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fish left the bay, another group of thinner and smaller fish known as “shore herring” moved in to spawn. 96 The fact that the larger herring were in the Bay in December meant that the Americans, who arrived at about the same time as the herring, could use the cold weather normal for that time of year to their advantage. They caught herring – or, more often, employed Newfoundlanders to catch them – and the crews laid the fish out on scaffolds made of lumber the Americans picked up at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, enroute to Fortune Bay.97 After the fish froze in the open air, the crews stowed it the holds of the awaiting schooners with ice procured from St Pierre and the south coast. Once they had a full cargo, the schooners carried the herring back to New England where they either sold it to fishermen and food processors based on the coast or loaded it onto refrigerated rail cars and sent it into the interior.98 The introduction of this winter fishery encouraged investments in vessels and in gear.99 To obtain a fresh frozen product that satisfied American consumers, fishermen needed to remove the herring from the water alive or very soon after death, for they otherwise quickly spoiled and/or became discoloured.100 Fish caught in gill nets could lie for many hours before being retrieved. Moreover, even if they were removed from nets soon after capture, if the weather was too warm to ensure a quick freeze, the fish would be unsuitable for sale. Fish enclosed in seines could be kept alive for a longer period, thereby allowing fishermen to wait for optimal freezing conditions.101 While there were some schooners based in Fortune Bay by the late 1840s, then, the number of such vessels equipped with seines increased rapidly over the 1850s and 1860s.102 By the 1870s there were over three hundred vessels in the south coast fleet.103 While a portion of the fleet were constructed by their owners or brought in from elsewhere, some were also likely built at Marystown (then known as Mortier Bay) where the demand for schooners fuelled a small shipbuilding industry.104 The use of these vessels began to change the nature of the fishery and of trade in Fortune Bay. For instance, whether they invested in the vessels to become traders, or whether they traded because they had the capacity to do so and needed to secure a return on the considerable outlay of capital for their vessels, schooner owners further reinforced and enhanced their social position by taking on the role of middle men between fishermen and merchant houses. These men could trade the larger quantities of fish they procured, either through fishing or acting as collector boats, for supplies for their own use and for trade with those confined to smaller vessels. Some of these early schooner owners may

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have acted as agents for Newman or Nicolle. The former company in particular had a long-standing practice of sending trading vessels as far as Cape Race. As planters invested in schooners, they may have taken over parts of this trade. After mid-century, however, the tendency was to compete with the established firms. Thus, by the 1870s, a Mr Penny had supplanted Newman and Co. at Pushthrough and Great Jervais Harbour in Hermitage Bay. He built up his business by acquiring comparatively inexpensive goods from Canadian vessels and St John’s establishments.105 However, the owners of such vessels soon began trading with merchants at St Pierre as well.106 The French merchants were interested not only in bait but also cod, for they added the Newfoundland fish to their catch to receive the bounty their government paid for each quintal. They also offered goods at a low enough rate that the traders could undercut the established south coast firms. At Harbour Breton, Newman and Co.’s long-time base of operations, a particularly brazen trader set up shop as early as 1850. He proceeded to offer staple goods such as flour at a lower rate than either Newman or Nicolle, a source of great irritation to the Newman’s agent there.107 With the fishery itself, perhaps the most substantial change was an increased take of herring on the coast. With the larger vessels and the new gear, schooner crews were able to fish more intensively than before over a larger portion of the coast. However, the increase was also linked to the more focused fishery the seiners ushered in. Before these vessels became common, for most fishermen herring fishing was one part of the round of seasonal activities – which also included other bait fisheries, cod fishing, hunting, cutting timber, gathering, and gardening – all of which contributed to the survival of fishing families.108 Even those planters who had shifted almost entirely to the bait trade before there was a significant fleet of schooners on the coast tended not to focus on only one species. But with heavy investment in gear specifically tailored to herring, a growing number of fishermen sought ways to get a return on their outlays. Increasingly, then, the seiners supplied not only the Americans but also the French at St Pierre. As a result, the trade with St Pierre became far more competitive than it had been. And, while the trade with St Pierre could accommodate some of the larger seiners, as the number of such vessels increased, their owners soon found themselves vying for a limited market. By the later 1860s, as the arrival of the French brigs neared, schooner owners began catching as much bait as possible. When the French arrived, the schooners raced to collect a cargo together and get to St Pierre as quickly as possible. An early arrival

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ensured that they could sell their catch, and obtain the optimal price for it, as after a large number of vessels with full holds were waiting to unload at St Pierre, the price per unit of bait declined.109 The schooners also encouraged a variety of wasteful practices. For example, crews generally discarded the considerable numbers of smaller fish unintentionally caught in seines, sometimes leaving several miles of the fishing grounds blanketed with dead herring.110 The Americans’ insistence that the winter herring they took on board meet an exacting standard also resulted in significant discarding. Sometimes the Americans took less than a quarter (an estimated sixteen to twenty out of one hundred barrels) of fishermen’s catch.111 And while the increased emphasis on herring, as opposed to cod, periodically resulted in the oversupply of the St Pierre market from middle of the nineteenth century on, the expanded number of seiners exacerbated the problem.112 If the herring arrived before the French fleet, schooner owners often used their seines to pen the fish (a practice known as “inbarring”).113 When they got word that the French were nearing St Pierre, they then caught the fish and took the catch to market as quickly as possible. While effective in containing otherwise mobile fish and ensuring that other crews did not catch them, inbarring could be enormously destructive. If fish were confined for an extended period, high rates of mortality resulted. There were cases of entire coves full of fish dying in this way. While the practice was destructive at any time, contemporaries thought it particularly devastating in the spawning season, for it destroyed not only the fish enclosed but future generations as well.114 Additionally, as an expanding fleet outstripped demand, vessel owners who arrived late to St Pierre, or who arrived with a cargo deemed undesirable, often simply dumped it and headed back to the fishing grounds in the hopes of better luck when the bankers returned to replenish their supplies later in the season. Observers at the time estimated that by the late 1860s Newfoundland schooner owners on the coast discarded 20,000 to 30,000 barrels (4 to 6 million pounds) of herring each season – as much as half their catch.115 As the numbers of seiners on the coast increased, catch rates declined. Indeed, in these years herring failed to appear in some parts of Fortune Bay and nearby localities on the south coast, something that, according to the oldest residents of the community, was hitherto unknown.116 There is no question that the pressure on herring stocks increased immensely over the last half of the century. It is, however, difficult to say with certainty that this was the primary cause of the decline. As Joseph Taylor and others have pointed out, not only is it difficult to determine

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the abundance of fish and other marine species in the past but climate change, natural disasters, and other developments could be important determinants of their numbers and fecundity. With herring in particular, temperature and current fluctuations could affect migration patterns.117 It is possible that the fish did not appear in their traditional haunts because changes in water temperatures associated with the more general cooling trends of the period altered migration patterns. Information about such factors is too spotty to allow a detailed analysis of how they may have affected fish behaviour or reproduction. What is apparent, however, is the effect of the decline on local fishermen. For schooner owners, increased competition, limited markets, and declining catch rates were worrisome developments. As each year passed, concerns about a lack of herring, rather than a lack of market, increasingly came to predominate. Some observers welcomed this development. For instance, T.R. Bennett, a merchant and resident of Habour Breton since the early 1850s, had been watching the fishery carefully. He suggested that the increasing economic difficulties the seiners faced should assuage the annihilation of herring stocks.118 Overcapacity in the fishery and the incredible waste that had become common would, he suggested, “cure itself in a very few years, for many fishermen, as their seines wear out, will not have or be furnished with the means to renew them.”119 Some schooner owners responded to the changing situation by fitting out for different marine species – especially squid – that could serve as bait. Others began fishing for cod on grounds further removed from their homeports.120 Indeed, while government subsidies introduced in the later 1870s encouraged the further expansion of the island’s offshore fleet, a large number of early south coast banking vessels were refitted herring seiners.121 As one long-time Burin resident noted, many of the “principal people engaged in this fishery laid their foundations upon the French trade in the past.”122 For small-boat fishermen, the declining herring catches were a cause of great angst. As the 1845 efforts to control the fishery revealed, a range of south coast residents had come to depend, often heavily, on the herring fishery. The trade with neighbouring Britons, focused mainly on providing enslaved and indentured workers with food, had primarily been in lower-quality herring procured through a gill net fishery, as small boat fishermen could afford that relatively inexpensive gear. As herring numbers fell off, it became more difficult for poorer fishermen to procure herring for the Maritime, southern US, and West Indian markets. Also disconcerting was that the victory of the northern states

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in the American Civil War signalled the end of a substantial part of the trade in plantation food.123 Declining catch rates were less a problem for seine owners, as they could hunt the fish, and their more intensive gears brought a significant return, at least in the short term. These devices were, however, costly, and, as James Winter, magistrate for Habour Breton, explained, increasingly the income from the herring fishery went “into the hands of a few comparatively wealthy residents.”124 The small-boat fishermen’s distress around herring was also connected to declining catch rates in the shore cod fishery. One of the key points of contention for these fishermen was how to respond. Some advocated adopting more intensive gears, particularly bultows and jiggers.125 Many others objected to the new gears. In fact, fears that they might lead to a long-term decline in the stocks led fishermen in Habour Breton, Burgeo, Lamaline, and Little St Lawrence to prohibit the use of these gears in waters near their communities.126 While local laws had no official sanction and their violation carried no official penalty, as naval captains visiting the coast pointed out, fishermen in the communities did sometimes mete out violence to those who broke the rules.127 For them, the decline in baitfish was also significant for the cod fishery. They viewed the matter much as George Lake and his counterparts had several decades earlier: the quantity of cod on the coast was smaller than it would otherwise have been, for at least some of the fish that frequented the coast appear to have followed the movement of the baitfish. And with no bait, many fishermen dependent on hook and line could not catch cod even if they were present. As Captain Brown, a visitor to the coast in the early 1870s, noted, hook and line fishermen increasingly had “little or no chance” of sustaining themselves.128 To make matters worse, throughout the 1850s and into the 1860s, a potato blight periodically removed what was a staple in the diet of many south coast residents.129 Many went hungry and in extreme cases some died from want.130 While the desperate fishers did not cast blame on anyone for the potato blight, the increasing difficulties in the fishery was a another matter. Seiners could have caused the decline in bait, or it might have resulted from a combination of seiners and changes in climate. For that matter, a totally separate development might be responsible. But the declining catches occurred at the same time that the new gears and vessels became more prevalent. Fishermen blamed the one on the other and sent petitions to the colonial government asking that some measure be taken to stop the destruction of herring.131

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There were already laws prohibiting the offending practices. Concerns about seining out of season and inbarring off the south coast and in the herring fishery off of Labrador had inspired the legislature to pass an act in 1858 to protect these industries.132 But without enforcement, the act had little effect, and the persistence of damaging practices in the herring fishery and additional concerns about similar practices in the salmon fishery led to a new act in 1862. The 1862 act banned inbarring altogether on the south coast, forbade seining between 20 October and 12 April, stipulated that the mesh of all nets used in the fishery must be at least two and three eighths of an inch, and prohibited all fishing for export within one mile of the coast between Cape Chapeu Rouge (near St Lawrence) and Point Rosey (about fourteen miles north of Garnish) between 20 April and 10 October. To enforce these rules, and to assist naval authorities already patrolling the coast in their efforts to enforce treaty agreements governing the fisheries of this and other regions, colonial officials began hiring schooners of their own. Their captains had the power to detain, impose fines on, or seize the vessels and/or gear of fishermen who violated the law.133 Colonial government officials concentrated their energies on Labrador, believing that efforts there would have more effect than on the south coast, where they had routinely come up against widespread refusal to comply with colonial law. Soon after promulgating and distributing handbills explaining the law, however, magistrates in Fortune Bay found reason for optimism. In 1863, for example, James Winter reported to Robert Carter, the colonial secretary, that fishermen in the region were informing on one another. As he put it, “private intimation has been given me, that many persons are now illegally employed in the use of herring seines (to the great distruction [sic] of herring) in the bottom of this Bay.” There was little he could do about it, however, as he had “no power at command to check, or hinder, or bring these persons to justice.”134 Three years later, Winter’s successor, a Mr Birkett, echoed his predecessor’s views. While the 1862 law went unheeded in Harbour Breton, and while there was considerable dissatisfaction with the practices that had developed in the fishery, it was “impossible effectually to enforce the law without the service of an officer specially charged with the superintendence of its provisions.” It was, Birkett further noted, “necessary that he [the officer] should be provided with a steamer for the purposes of moving from place to place on the coast during the season when the action of the law is most required.”135 Birkett’s report arrived

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at about the same time that the Chamber of Commerce of St John’s urged a similar course of action.136 The communications caught the attention of Governor Musgrave, who, on 28 February 1866, formally requested that the House provide the necessary funds to fit out a colonial cruiser to police the region.137 The House consented the following day, appointed a superintendent of the herring fishery, and began regularly leasing schooners to patrol the south coast.138 At least some of the schooners used in the Herring Protection Service came from Newman and Co., whose agents were only too happy to lease vessels both for the income it brought and for the promise of a restriction of the trade that threatened their viability on the coast.139 Indeed, Newman’s agents were well aware that diminishing returns on the south coast had forced their rival, Nicolle and Co., into bankruptcy a few years earlier.140 The effectiveness of the service in regulating the herring fishery, however, was limited. Around the same time that residents of the south coast requested the patrols, the colonial government undertook a campaign to extend its formal authority into parts of coastal Labrador. Unable to sustain a fleet of enforcement vessels in both the north and the south, officials limited the southern operations to a few weeks after 1 April. The cruisers’ main function was to prevent schooner crews from seining before 11 April, the earliest date stipulated in the 1862 act. For most of the year, then, the trade was unregulated and went on much as it had before. The other problem was the intransigence of schooner owners and crews. Such men had a different sense of the fisheries and of the environment than their small-boat counterparts. Their larger vessels allowed them to exploit resources over a much wider area. Not confined to the water immediately adjacent to their communities, they saw ecological changes though a different lens. The Lake family illustrates well how perspectives changed with the acquisition of the larger boats. Earlier, George Lake had taken a leading role in getting up a petition to stop the French from seining in Fortune Bay. Several decades later, when he and his son, John Lake, now schooner owners, were interviewed on the matter of the fisheries, the elder Lake’s perspective had shifted. Far from averse to seining, he now argued that “there would be no danger” in deploying the gear. As he explained, if herring were scarce around Fortune Bay, there was no problem, for in the preceding decade or so, he had regularly fished about 100 kilometres down the coast at Ramea and seen no depletion in stocks: “I have been there … for more than ten summers. I have used seines there, and without doubt herring were

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more plentiful last year than ever.” Once the champion of the cause of small-boat fishermen, now that Lake had become a seiner himself, he saw the environment and resources in ways that reflected the greater range afforded by his more capital-intensive vessels.141 Lake and the other schooner owners on the south coast were not happy to see the arrival of patrol vessels. Such men, noted Henry Camp, commissioner of the Herring Protection Service, refused “to acknowledge any will or law but that which emanates from themselves.”142 Approaching one of the vessels usually brought forth a torrent of “vile and abusive language.” Moreover, when he and his crew attempted to seize gear, their efforts were often frustrated. In 1873, for example, Thomas and Edward Madigan of Lamaline were fishing near Burgeo with a seine a day before they were permitted to do so. When Camp approached and made known his intention to seize the seine, the two fishermen informed him that he “had ten men’s lives to take” before he would get it.143 Similarly, when he approached two other Lamaline fishermen named Collins and Halley in the same vicinity, they dared him to come nearer. When he took them up on their challenge, manoeuvring his boat to seize the seine, the schooner crew intercepted him with their skiff and punt, preventing him from accomplishing his goal.144 The events of early 1878 must be understood against this backdrop. As the seiners continued their work, the problems that fishermen had earlier complained of only worsened. Cod landings continued to increase up through the 1860s, largely owing to the use by some fishermen of more intensive gears. While many in the region continued to disagree about whether such gears ought to be used, by the 1870s resistance to them had lessened. James Erskine, a naval captain who visited the coast in 1875, noted that even in south coast communities where the gear had been banned, fishermen were getting “over their superstition against the use of bultows.”145 Even so, the total catch for Fortune Bay declined and would continue to do so for the next several decades. Fishermen continued to complain about the seiners who, contrary to the law, hunted for baitfish all along the coast without regard for closed times. Frequently the seiners swept in and netted whole shoals of fish, thereby depriving of bait those confined to small boats. In areas just outside of Fortune Bay, herring ceased to appear in places where they had always done so, even if they had never been especially abundant. Such shortages meant that fishermen from as far as Burgeo

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and LaPoile were compelled to go to Fortune Bay to buy bait.146 Moreover, even in some areas where herring was historically abundant, catches fell off to such a degree that punt fishermen had to buy bait from seiners.147 Overall, those who had a long acquaintance with the south coast perceived a dramatic decline in the fisheries. As Camp noted following his service on the coast in spring 1877, “I am 42 years in Newfoundland, and I have seen short catches and low prices, but I never saw things look so gloomy as at present. Fish is scarce, but bait is scarcer.”148 These ecological changes and the post-1850 reorganization of the fisheries on the south coast combined to produce a difficult situation. If the seiners were not stopped, some observers believed, “the people must be taken from this district or starve for want of bait.”149 Others predicted a different outcome. According to Phillip Hubert, the magistrate at Habour Breton, fishermen on the coast grew increasingly agitated as their neighbours or residents from nearby settlements continued to violate colonial law and threaten their livelihood by sweeping the shores near their communities clean of bait. During the 1875 season, fishermen throughout Fortune Bay lost considerable time after the herring seiners did their work. Hubert explained to Receiver General J.J. Rogerson, “The fishermen desire that the bait near these settlements be left for the fishermen’s use.” He had also heard that a great number of them were at the end of their patience: “the fishermen say there will be much violence among them, if those who haul for the French try it again.” There were, according to the fishermen, “plenty of coves between Lamaline and Fortune; where they [the schooner crews] are at liberty to haul whenever the bait is there, without taking it from the poor fishermen.”150 In winter 1876–77, just over a year after Hubert warned of mounting tensions in the region, four American vessels sailed into Fortune Bay carrying enormous seines.151 At about 250 fathoms long and 35 fathoms deep, the nets were twice as long and three times as deep as those previously used on the coast.152 The Americans deployed such devices largely because, like others along the seaboard and in the Bay, they had experienced declining catches of herring and other baitfish – not only off their own coasts but off the Maritimes as well. Fortune Bay had been a refuge of sorts for a time. Yet, as catches declined to disastrous levels by the mid-1870s, American fishermen could no longer procure full cargos by purchasing from residents using smaller, locally owned seines.153

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The introduction of the formidable new gear “greatly excited” different residents of the Bay for distinct reasons. For small-boat fishermen who objected to seining near their communities, it made little difference whether the seines were owned by neighbours or by schooner owners from Gloucester; the result was the same. Seine owners from Fortune Bay and the areas nearby also objected to new gear. In part this was because the large seines promised, as other scholars have suggested, to deprive the Newfoundland-based seiners of their trade with the Americans. Just as upsetting, however, was the Americans’ threat to the trade with the French at St Pierre. In using the larger seines, the Americans were able to procure more fish than they needed; they began selling bait to traders at St Pierre in the spring of 1877 as a way of making their voyages to the south coast even more profitable. The St Pierre traders were happy to have the bait as the French fleet too had been having difficulty securing enough bait from traditional sources.154 The American schooners returned at the end of 1877 with additional seines, at least six in total.155 Not surprisingly, Newfoundland-based seiners were no happier about the large seines late in the year than they were in the spring, and just as many small-boat fishermen in the area objected to seiners in general. When we take this latter group into account, along with their concerns and their responses to the increasingly desperate circumstances in which they found themselves, much of the evidence that is difficult to account for becomes easier to understand. One of the most important insights gained in placing testimony about the dispute within this longer view is that it is by no means reasonable to speak of a general “Newfoundland view” or “response” to Americans fishing, or much else for that matter, on the south coast. While all residents of the region experienced declining catch rates over the second half of the nineteenth century, diverse economic and social positions underwrote distinct means of relating to the non-human world. Some fishermen had invested heavily in schooners and seines, while others remained confined to smaller vessels. The hostility between these two groups was not new in 1877–78. The appearance of even larger seines on the coast would itself have worried many of these residents. Indeed, it pressed a large number of fishermen, already made desperate by declining catches, beyond the breaking point. As Mark Bolt, one of the small-boat fishermen in Long Harbour, put it, “if these large Americans seines are allowed to be hauled, it forces me away from this place.”156 When the Americans moved in, then, they drew the ire of

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the south coast–based schooner captains whose livelihoods they imperilled. But both groups felt the wrath of local small-boat fishermen for whom all seiners, whatever their origins, were anathema. The result was a confusing and multi-sided struggle. The violent outburst of late 1877 and early 1878 produced a diplomatic crisis between the American and British governments that lasted for several decades. It also drew the attention of members of the colonial government. Although members of the House of Assembly in St John’s perhaps hoped that the potentially far-reaching results of disputes on the south coast might lead to greater naval surveillance, and with it the possibility of effective policing and meaningful enforcement on the island’s southern border, this outcome remained elusive. Even in the Fortune Bay dispute, not all of the poorer fishermen were united. While some protested against what they believed was the cause of declining catches in the waters off their communities, others appear to have seen the American vessels and south coast–based seiners as a means of compensating for that state of affairs. Thus, the dispute was not simply between Americans and Newfoundlanders, nor between different classes of Newfoundland fishermen; it was also among poorer residents of the Bay. Such people had long provided much of the labour for the Americans fishing on the coast. For them, the nationality of those who paid their wages was less significant than an extra source of income as other means of survival disappeared. And while it may seem problematic to say that working people on the coast both embraced the opportunity to work American seines and resisted them, there is no contradiction here. Such people had long responded to declining prospects in the fisheries in various ways. The reason that the question of bultows gained the reputation of being an “age-old problem” was that fishers differed over whether they thought responding to declining catches by increasing fishing capacity was wise. When faced with increasingly bleak prospects in the herring fishery, then, some took advantage of short-term gains by working even more intensive gears. Others, viewing such strategies as inimical to their long term well-being, continued to oppose their counterparts on the shore in 1877 as they had for the preceding forty years. After the dispute of 1877–78, the same divisions persisted, and schooner owners on the south coast, drawing on long-standing solidarities among themselves and those they often employed, continued ignoring colonial laws and pursuing the trade on which they had built their fortunes and on which they continued to depend.

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The Fortune Bay Dispute has long been of interest to scholars, and for good reason. As they have suggested, it captures important diplomatic developments, and it symbolizes well the distinct and coincidental formal and informal regulatory regimes that were integral to the operation of the fisheries of the northwest Atlantic. It also, however, grew out of and is emblematic of the ways that ecological changes locally and internationally and shifting commercial practices and diplomatic arrangements combined to shape relations among residents of Fortune Bay, as well as between them, foreign fishers, and settlers elsewhere on the island. Residents of Fortune Bay simultaneously lived at the intersection of the French and British empires, in the trading and fishing area of neighbouring British colonies, and on the southern border of a burgeoning colonial state. Such individuals devised trading and survival strategies that reflected their distinctive existence in such a borderland. While some of the trading practices they came to embrace were unproblematic to colonial officials, a large-scale bait trade with the French was intolerable. Colonial politicians were closely aligned with leading Avalon-based merchant firms and often involved in them. They saw the bait trade as inimical to the interests of such firms and the financial well-being of the colony. Accordingly, Newfoundland’s politicians sought to ban the practice. Passing laws was, however, easier than enforcing them, and the main result of the first several decades of attempted interventions on the south coast was the fostering of an oppositional regional solidarity. Declining catches and disparities between small-boat and schooner fleets within Fortune Bay eventually began to split apart what had been a common front against the colonial government, and differently oriented groups in this interregional struggle were clearly in evidence in the 1877–78 upheaval. Ultimately, the schooner captains were able to persist in the practices and illicit trade on which they had built their fortunes, with the assistance of a section of the poorer fishermen on the coast. The persistence of these practices after 1878 was the latest in a line of hard lessons for the colonial government. These failed efforts were a factor in encouraging colonial officials to focus increasingly on landward resources in their economic development strategies. Important as developments in Fortune Bay in 1878 were, however, they alone did not cause the shift. The south coast upheavals occurred at about the same time as a series of disputes to the north at Hamilton Inlet, Labrador. While the two locales may seem far

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removed from one another, the disturbances in the north were an outgrowth of colonial officials’ earliest frustrated efforts to control the south coast trade. In combination, the episodes in the north and south would help to shape colonial policy for the decades after 1880. And while the southern situation is now clear, connections between the south and the north require some elucidation.

2 Troubles down North Unsettling Settlers in Hamilton Inlet, 1871–1883

Around the same time that tensions mounted in Fortune Bay, another dispute was taking shape about five hundred miles to the northwest at Hamilton Inlet. Beginning in the early 1870s, salmon fishers in the vicinity of Rigolet began to quarrel with one another and with traders in the area. The first major conflict occurred in 1871 when Nathan Norman, an Avalon-based trader who had long operated in the area, ordered his sons and a servant to break open a store in which George Pottle, a local fisherman, kept nets and other equipment essential to his salmon fishery at Jordan’s Tickle near Rigolet. In essence, both men claimed the fishing post and the exclusive right to fish the grounds adjacent to it. When they failed to reach an understanding peaceably, Norman forced Pottle from the premises. Pottle then sued Norman in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, with the court finding in Norman’s favour. About seven years after the Pottle-Norman trial, a second round of disputes erupted between fishers and traders and among fishers themselves after another Newfoundland merchant, H.J. Stabb, set up operations in the Inlet. Stabb claimed that in territories under the jurisdiction of the Newfoundland government, the fisheries were a common property resource. He encouraged those he employed and supplied to fish in any place they pleased so long as someone else had not already claimed the area in a given year by setting gear in it. In the process, he effectively instructed his employees and allies to move into territory already claimed as exclusive fishing areas under the system of claims in evidence in the Pottle-Norman dispute. And, while the Pottle-Norman conflict had mostly played out through the orderly channels of the colony’s formal justice system, this strife involved widespread confrontations, vigilantism, violence, and even death threats. Taken together, these two conflicts raise a number of questions about the colonial government, its policies, and the views and attitudes of res-

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idents of Hamilton Inlet. Why, given that the colonial government normally endorsed a system of common property relations in the fishery, did officials support Norman’s claim to have exclusive rights in Hamilton Inlet? Why did the same officials waver in their support for such a system only a few years later? And why was the second conflict comparatively widespread and intense? This chapter argues that the strife over salmon fishing grounds in Hamilton Inlet was directly linked to colonial officials’ frustrated efforts on the south coast. It also argues that the colonial government’s shifting position on the matter of rights in this fishery corresponded to Newfoundland merchants’ changing strategies in the area. Finally, it argues that the differences in the tenor of relations in the two periods of conflict reflected the different implications of merchants’ strategies within the social order that had emerged in Hamilton Inlet before the colonial government intervened in the region in the early 1860s. Prior to the early 1850s, when the colonial government experienced its first failed efforts to police the south coast herring trade, few politicians and traders took much interest in Labrador, even though the area had technically been under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Newfoundland after 1809 and of the House of Assembly from its founding in 1832. At around mid-century, however, intervention in the area gained a new appeal because it was a possible site of commercial expansion, one that could compensate for the failed efforts to secure a foothold in the bank fishery. While initially fishermen and colonial politicians focused on the southernmost parts of Labrador, by the early 1860s declining catch rates in the shore cod fishery forced them to look to the north and to consider species other than cod. Before the colonial government intervened in Hamilton Inlet, there was little in the way of formal governing apparatuses in place in the area. Nevertheless, residents of the region and British-based merchant firms – particularly the Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc) – that had established themselves earlier in the century had developed an unofficial governing regime. That order emerged over several decades as hbc officers struggled to develop a profitable trade in Labrador in the face of resistance from Indigenous peoples in the area. In this setting, exclusive rights in the fishery became part of a complex set of practices and rituals that underlay inhabitants’ standing as “civilized” peoples. In the Pottle-Norman case, the Supreme Court ultimately reinforced the existing system of rights as practised, even though doing so deviated from the colonial state’s normal practice of endorsing common property rights in the fisheries. It did so largely because the point of pressing

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north was to expand commercial opportunities for Newfoundland merchants. Norman had accepted and developed his business by accommodating himself to the order that had grown up under hbc rule. When H.J. Stabb sought to expand his operations, Norman had ceased to trade in the area. Stabb justified his encroachment into fishing areas held as exclusive claims by arguing that in Newfoundland waters a common property system prevailed in the fisheries. As such, residents’ claims to hold exclusive rights to particular grounds in Hamilton Inlet – claims that, if accepted, would have limited Stabb’s ability to establish himself in the area – were baseless. Colonial officials hesitated to defend the Supreme Court’s earlier acceptance of the system of exclusive claims, for that order was now inimical to the interests of a key member of the Newfoundland mercantile community. The colonial government’s vacillation caused much angst, hostility, and violence as residents feared not only a loss of income but also a challenge to their social standing. Ultimately, upheavals around Hamilton Inlet underscored how troublesome it might be to secure an expanded and diversified fishery in the north. Indeed, even though the indeterminacy in this northern borderland resulted from indifference to the region rather than competing claims over it, residents there were no less invested in the order they had established than those in Fortune Bay were to theirs. The disturbances of the late 1870s and early 1880s made clear to colonial officials that laying claim to the region might be expensive and difficult. That realization occurred just as colonial officials found their continued efforts to secure and control their southern border frustrated, and as merchants responded to changing structural conditions in the cod fishery. Taken together, these two issues led officials to conclude that the fisheries could not stand as the main area of investment for the island’s commercial elite, or as the main source of employment for its people. Rather than investing in policing and administering northern regions, then, colonial politicians redirected resources to landward development. In these changed circumstances, the colony’s politicians were content to collect what revenue they could from traders in the area while at the same time reverting to a system whereby representatives of merchant firms, and particularly the hbc, resumed their former functions as administrators of the region. In the summer of 1871, Henry and Munden Norman and Stephen Noel arrived at Jordan’s Tickle. Located to the southeast of Rigolet, the Tickle and nearby waterways were among the best salmon fishing areas in the eastern part of Hamilton Inlet. The two Normans were sons of

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Nathan Norman, a well-known trader and sealing captain who operated out of the community of Brigus in Conception Bay.1 Stephen Noel was Nathan Norman’s servant. The three men proceeded to break the lock off of a store in which George Pottle kept equipment essential to the salmon fishery he conducted in the area. The men then removed nets and other equipment from the store and placed the gear on the rocks just outside the building. Exposed to the elements, everything was ruined, leaving Pottle with no way to catch fish.2 Incensed, the aggrieved man and his wife travelled to St John’s to bring charges against the three Normans in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland. Hugh Hoyles, Bryan Robinson, and John Hayward served as judges in the case. Through their inquiries, the justices soon discovered that the roots of the controversy lay in questions of ownership. In part, the dispute had to do with ownership of the store.3 The question of who owned particular facilities was important, because it was tied up with the larger matter of who had rights to the fishing grounds nearby. It was common practice in the vicinity of Hamilton Inlet for those who owned particular salmon posts (meaning the buildings and other facilities essential to catching and curing salmon) also to have claims to adjacent fishing grounds.4 In claiming to own the store, then, both Pottle and Norman made claims to the fishing area as well. Indeed, it was this question of rights to spaces and resources that inspired Norman to orchestrate the seizure of the post. Pottle argued that he was the rightful owner because he built the facility and because his wife’s family had a historic association with the post.5 Norman argued that he had purchased the post from George Pottle’s father-in-law, Samuel Broomfield, in 1849 and produced a bill of sale ostensibly proving it.6 Given that Norman had a bill of sale, Pottle’s claims to own the store and the fishing grounds associated with it may seem suspect, yet the point of contention was not with whether Norman had purchased the post from Broomfield at some point but instead over what had transpired in the area since Pottle began fishing there in 1860.7 After Pottle entered the area, he constructed a new building. Norman did not contest that Pottle had constructed and used the building but claimed that Pottle had never owned it. Instead, Pottle had rights to use the building (constructed from materials bought on credit from Norman) along with other gear that Norman supplied so long as he worked as Norman’s shareman – meaning that he handed over half of his catch to Norman in exchange for the use of nets and other equipment and supplies.8 According to Pottle, Norman was either mistaken or lying. Pottle claimed that the understanding between him and Norman had been

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that Pottle would own the facility and the associated fishing grounds, and that he could fish for whomever he wished. He also claimed he had not necessarily wanted to fish for Norman, but “was forced to do so” because there was no alternative.9 In 1870, he had an opportunity to fish on better terms with a Captain Boucher, a migrant trader from Nova Scotia. When he began to fish at the post with gear that Boucher provided, Norman intervened. Neither Norman nor Pottle knew how much Pottle owed or had earned in the decade he had fished for Norman. As Pottle explained, “I don’t know how much I made … I never got an account.”10 Norman did not contest this claim. Thus, there was no way of determining whether Pottle in fact could have made enough fishing for Norman to pay for the building he had constructed It is possible that Pottle concocted the story as a means of laying claim to the property at Jordan’s Tickle. Yet the truth of the matter is less significant than the timing of his challenge. Migrant traders had frequented the area for decades prior to the dispute. Pottle too had fished the area for more than a decade. He had also had reportedly long believed that “if I had my rights, I would not owe him [Norman] a penny.” After the Newfoundland government intervened in the area, he had a new means of securing what he believed was rightfully his. As he put it, “I came from Labrador to get my rights against Norman.”11 The Pottle-Norman conflict was not an isolated matter. Indeed, officials who visited the area around Hamilton Inlet noted there was increasing tension between fishers and those who supplied them over questions ownership of salmon posts in the years just prior to the dispute.12 The justices in the case, then, understood that their decision would affect the tenor of relations throughout the region. Ultimately, Hoyles and the others decided against Pottle, taking Norman’s bill of sale as proof of ownership.13 The judges may have believed that their decision would dispel tensions in the region. However, new conflicts emerged beginning in 1879. Some of these disputes were related to the earlier episode involving Norman and Pottle. In 1879 Norman sold all of his fishing rights to Job Brothers in St John’s. That company, in turn, agreed to sell them to the hbc, the dominant trading firm in the Inlet since 1840 or so. While seemingly straightforward, utterances made by Governor Glover on a trip to the region in 1879 led some fishermen in the district to question whether the hbc, or any company or individual, had a special claim on the fishery in any part of Hamilton Inlet. Glover reportedly responded to the fishermen that “no man” could “claim the water,” and that “if anyone has nets to fish, they have a right to fish any place.”14 The rights to particular places, he explained, went to those who staked a claim to an area at the beginning of the fishing season.

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Accordingly, some fishermen in the vicinity of Jordan’s Tickle began fishing where they pleased. Initially, George Flowers Jr, whom Norman had hired to fish at the post after he evicted Pottle, set his nets at the Tickle. However, Flowers soon found his claims challenged: George Pottle returned and again argued that he had rights to the post because of his own and his wife’s connections to the place.15 After initially protesting against Pottle’s claims, Flowers relented and directed his attention to laying claim to the grounds of Isaac Rich. Flowers apparently believed that it would be easier to win a contest with Rich than with Pottle, for Rich was aged and infirm. Rich, however, had more life in him than Flowers had anticipated. He protested loudly against Flowers’s intrusions on fishing areas he claimed, and when he died in 1883, his wife carried on the fight.16 In doing so, the couple drew attention to their family’s plight and to the insecurity of similar claims in the vicinity of Rigolet. At an earlier time, Flowers and other fishers who embraced the common property regime would have found themselves isolated. For much of the nineteenth century, the hbc was the main trading force, and its officers were effective at promoting and enforcing the system of exclusive rights in the salmon fishery. In the early 1880s, however, St John’s merchants, and particularly H.J. Stabb, were seeking to establish themselves in the Inlet. Stabb, part of a merchant family originally from Devon, had himself recently been forced out of his family’s long-time salmon fishing area in the Pinware River in the Strait of Belle Isle as rival fishing firms established themselves, pointing to the fact that no firm had exclusive rights to any fishing area.17 Stabb applied this same logic as he headed north, working primarily through his employee, a Mr Michaud, a deserter from the hbc. Through Michaud, Stabb not only offered to trade with dissidents but also encouraged their behaviour.18 As proponents of the common property system moved from one location to the next, they invited conflict from those who had claimed the same grounds as parts of their exclusive fishing areas. Many residents began carrying guns in their boats to deal with those who might dispute their claims.19 One fisherman claimed he would “be up to his shoulders in blood” should anyone interfere with his post.20 Another committed suicide, believing he would be unable to establish and defend a claim to a post he saw as rightfully belonging to him and his family.21 For naval officers who visited the Inlet to investigate and try to find some way to end the disputes, the number of overlapping and contradictory claims was dizzying. One officer, Captain Fane, concluded that the problems ultimately stemmed from the fact that the lack of clear

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rules. As he put it, “Disturbances are always liable to take place until there is some settled law established with regard to the salmon fishery.”22 Fane was astute in his observations. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, a similar lack of clarity prevailed in the salmon fishery of Hamilton Inlet. This is, of course, not to say that there were no rules. Indeed, at the time Fane visited the area, the rules regarding rights in the fishery under Newfoundland law were clear: as Glover suggested, according to colonial law, fishers had the right to fish where they pleased. Moreover, the fact that Nathan Norman, Job Brothers, the hbc, and local residents accepted that fishers could own and trade rights to posts and the grounds adjacent to them provides evidence of a different rights regime – i.e., one based on exclusive claims. The uncertainties in the Inlet stemmed mostly from the colonial government’s flip-flopping on the matter of rights in this fishery. In 1872, when confronted with the dispute between Norman and Pottle, its representatives clearly supported the system of exclusive claims. Only a few years later, officials wavered on whether such a regime had legitimacy. While the cause of the dispute is clear enough, the reason for the colonial government’s inconsistency, and the reasons for the differences in residents’ reactions to developments in 1871 and to the period after Stabb intervened in 1879, are not. To understand colonial officials’ vacillation and the wider scope and greater intensity of the post-1879 upheaval, we must look well beyond the fisheries of the Inlet, Rigolet, and the 1870s and 1880s. Indeed, ultimately both the unusual policy decisions and the anxiety in evidence among residents of the Inlet were linked to well-established conventions, rituals, and symbolic practices born in relation to the social and commercial systems dominant in the Inlet prior to the colonial government’s interventions in the area. European traders established themselves in Hamilton Inlet in the mideighteenth century. From that time up to the first decades of the nineteenth century, a wide variety of companies were involved in and around the Inlet. Changes in the key merchant houses or traders reflected strife among European powers and associated changes to imperial frontiers and diplomatic relationships. Before the Seven Years War, the French controlled the area and granted rights to merchants based mostly in Quebec. After the conquest, the British government placed the region under the control of the Governor of Newfoundland. The area remained under Newfoundland’s jurisdiction for more than a decade when, with the passage of the Quebec Act of 1774, control reverted back to Canada for about three decades. In 1809 the imperial

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government changed course a final time, placing the area under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Newfoundland once again. 23 Changes in the government in control of the area were significant for the complexion of the mercantile community operating in Hamilton Inlet. Canadian officials, for example, tended to grant trading rights to Canadian merchants, while the Governor of Newfoundland favoured British and Newfoundland firms.24 Yet, with the exception of the years between 1826 and 1833 when the Governor of Newfoundland established a circuit court on the coast of Labrador, neither the imperial nor any colonial government intervened directly in the area until late in the nineteenth century. 25 Thus, the commercial and social system in the region in the nineteenth century did not emerge out of the designs of formally recognized governing authorities; instead, the prevailing arrangements were those that residents and trading firms in the area worked out among themselves. Whereas on the south coast rivalries among imperial and national claimants and mercantile operations created “spaces in between,” in this northerly region, it was the lack of such claims that had this effect. By the later 1830s, three main groups of traders were operating in southern Labrador. First were migrant vessels from the United States and various British North American colonies that happened by the region intermittently. Second were representatives of British-based firms – for example, Hunt and Henley, which operated in Sandwich Bay, and Bird and Co. and DeQuitteville and Co. in the Strait of Belle Isle. Finally, there were traders from eastern Newfoundland – Nathan Norman is a good example – who migrated between their home ports and Groswater Bay and regions just to the north and south of the Inlet to engage in sealing, salmon fishing, furring, and any other opportunities that might present themselves.26 This array of firms is essential to understanding social life in the Inlet in the nineteenth century. The hbc was, however, by far the most powerful commercial and social force in the area, and the company’s struggles, and the solutions its officers derived for the problems that confronted them as they tried to establish a viable trade, became important for others operating in the region. The hbc established itself in Hamilton Inlet in 1836. Its first representative in the area was Simon McGillivray Jr. Born in present-day Saskatchewan, McGillivray was part of a prominent fur trade family. His father, William McGillivray, and his uncle, Simon McTavish, had both headed up the North West Company. For a short time, Simon McGillivray Jr had been a partner in that company; after it merged with the hbc in 1821, he served in the amalgamated organization until his retirement.27 By the time he entered the Inlet in 1836, the hbc had

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been trying to establish a trade in the eastern half of the Labrador Peninsula for several years. Governor George Simpson had decided to establish posts in the region around Ungava sometime in the later 1820s. His interest in the region stemmed from concerns about the company’s trade more generally. In the early nineteenth century, traders across North America reported a precipitous decline in beaver, long a staple of the hbc’s trade. At the about the same time that the catch fell off, so too did markets for the pelts. Beaver pelts had been in high demand throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth because they were key in the manufacture of the felt essential for the production of hats and other items. As other commodities, particularly silk, rose in popularity in the manufacture of hats, the demand for beaver pelts fell, creating a crisis for the hbc. Simpson responded to this threat by expanding into new areas and seeking to diversify.28 The idea of expanding into Ungava occurred to Simpson in the later 1820s after he read a pamphlet in which Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch, two Moravian missionaries, provided an optimistic account of the commercial possibilities in the Labrador Peninsula.29 The pamphlet alerted Simpson to possible opportunities, but also made clear that the Moravians, who had already established posts at Nain, Okak, and Hopedale, might themselves expand into the area, undercutting the hbc’s viability there. Accordingly, in 1830 Simpson sent Nicol Finlayson and Erland Erlandson to establish a post, Fort Chimo, near present-day Kuujjuaq in Ungava Bay.30 The idea was that a few post employees would trade imported goods for furs, mainly collected and transported by Indigenous people in the area. hbc officers were happy to trade with both the Innu and the Inuit, the two main Indigenous groups in the area, and did not anticipate problems from either group. The Innu had historically been fairly warm to European trade, and company officers imagined they would serve as important trading partners.31 The Inuit had been hostile to European encroachment from the seventeenth century up through the first decades of the eighteenth century,32 but by about 1750, a combination of violence and disease had forced them either to retreat to Moravian missions around Nain, or to accommodate themselves to Europeans’ presence.33 And while trade with either group was welcomed, hbc traders imagined that the Innu would be the more important for company trade in the region. The Inuit oriented themselves to the coast where marten, beaver, lynx, and other of the fur-bearing animals that company traders targeted were comparatively sparse. By contrast, the Innu homeland, Nitassinin, encompassed fur-rich parts of the interior of the Labrador Peninsula.34

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The Ungava venture failed miserably when most of the region’s Innu residents refused to cooperate with the company’s plans. This reluctance had to do with differences in the company’s aims and demands as compared with those of earlier sojourners to the region. In earlier times most European incursions into the area involved a sporadic trade on the coast. The Innu depended heavily on inland resources, and particularly on hunting the large numbers of caribou that annually migrated through their territory. So long as Europeans remained on the coast, trading with them required little change to a way of life that had long provided the Innu with a measure of stability and self-sufficiency. The hbc’s plans in Ungava, however, were different. Company traders imagined a predictable, well-organized, large-scale traffic in furs. Such a trade required that the Innu redirect their hunting efforts and accept greater dependency on imported goods and foreign markets. The fur-bearing animals the hbc targeted occupied different areas from the caribou. In effect, then, hbc officers were asking the Innu to alter their way of life fundamentally. While they had been receptive to the relatively non-invasive trading of earlier years, Innu hunters had little interest in exchanging the autonomy offered by the caribou hunt for dependency on hbc posts.35 Indeed, not only did they not reorient their hunts but they refused even to provide information about the interior to hbc traders.36 Company traders in Ungava attempted to force the Innu to change their hunting efforts by refusing to trade goods on which the group had come to depend – for example, powder, shot, and tobacco – for anything other than furs. This strategy failed when rival traders based in southern parts of Nitassinan provided the Innu with goods when the hbc would not. Compounding this difficulty, the unpredictability of the hbc’s own supply lines to the region meant that its employees were dependent for food on Innu hunters, who could then insist that company traders exchange essential goods for venison rather than furs.37 The move south to Hamilton Inlet was mostly about trying to overcome the weaknesses of the hbc’s position in Ungava Bay.38 By ridding southern parts of Nitassinan of rival trading firms and setting itself up as the only source of imported goods, the hbc believed it would better be able to pressure the Innu to reorient their hunting activities. Moreover, the south was more accessible by ship. Company officials believed that that their greater ability to secure food in the south would further strengthen their hand in dealings with Innu bands. As well, in the south there was a greater variety of flora and fauna than in areas further north.39 Thus, while hbc traders could pressure Innu hunters to reorient themselves, they could also rely more heavily on their own em-

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ployees, who could engage not only in furring but also in salmon fishing, sealing, and other profitable ventures year round, living on imported provisions if necessary.40 However well thought out the Hamilton Inlet venture was, the company’s first years in the area continued to disappoint officials in London. Even the more diversified trade of the more southerly region could not offset the high cost of sustaining post employees on imported provisions.41 The main problem in the late 1830s, however, remained the Innu refusal to change their hunting practices. Indeed, the main difference between the Ungava venture and the efforts through Hamilton Inlet was that the company’s greater ability to secure a monopoly meant that Innu bands starved with much greater frequency, sometimes with devastating death tolls, as members of the group took great risks to persist in hunting caribou. 42 In response to these continued frustrations, company officers developed yet another strategy to secure a stable, profitable trade in Labrador. This effort ultimately produced modes of social organization and governance that persisted into the late nineteenth century. The hbc’s long history of frustrated efforts to reorient Innu hunters led officers in the district to a particularly low view of these people. Such views began to emerge early in the company’s involvement in the area as traders accounted for the less than impressive results of their efforts. Not long after establishing Fort Chimo, for example, Finlayson explained his failure as a trader by referring to the supposedly lowly character of the Innu as compared to other Indigenous groups the company dealt with in other parts of North America. The Innu were not, he explained to Governor Simpson, “possessed of any industry.”43 Instead, they were lazy, indolent, and driven by instinct. In short, they were totally “uncivilized,” more akin to animals than people. Like “wolves and other wild animals,” they followed and drew “nearly the whole of their subsistence” from the caribou herds.44 McGillivray and those who followed him echoed such views.45 Having concluded that the Innu were too primitive to be depended upon to participate in the commerce of “civilized men,” company traders directed their attention toward mid-century to a minority section of the population in the area around Hamilton Inlet. The main residents in the region outside of the Innu and Inuit were a group that called themselves “planters” or “freemen.” In many respects, planters in Hamilton Inlet resembled those called “planters” in Newfoundland: they were essentially men who set out to establish themselves as independent operators. In contrast to the Innu, planters grounded their notions of independence in European ideas about economic autonomy and fami-

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ly life. To be a “planter,” an individual must establish himself as the patriarch of a household. The idea was for the members of the household to labour together to sustain themselves, both through raising and gathering food locally and by producing marketable commodities (usually fish, furs, and oil) that could be traded for imported items necessary for subsistence and for fishing and trapping. In Hamilton Inlet, the arrangement between merchants and planters resembled a broader pattern that prevailed elsewhere in Labrador and in Newfoundland. Planters received an outfit – supplies necessary to conduct hunting and fishing operations – on the condition that they would use their catch to repay the merchant at the end of the season. Ideally, a planter and his family would procure and process enough fish, furs, and other products to repay advances and cover the costs of supplies needed to sustain the household. In theory the system hinged on a free and fair exchange between merchant and planter. In reality it was often inequitable and exploitative. Merchants, who monopolized access to necessary imports and to the markets on which to sell fish, furs, and other products, charged as much as possible for their wares (the hbc marked up goods by a minimum of 75 per cent), while offering as little as possible for a planter’s catch.46 Rather than repaying their debts at the end of the season, planters often found themselves in a state of perpetual indebtedness. Planters and the supplying system pre-dated the hbc in Hamilton Inlet.47 Yet hbc officers did not initially imagine that planters would constitute a significant part of the company’s trade. Indeed, company traders were more familiar with, and preferred, the truck system extant in other of their North American operations – that is, one based on Indigenous labour, expertise, and social networks.48 As company officers continued to find it difficult to secure a source of labour, they began looking to planters in the area. And, while it was desperation that initially motivated this reorientation, company officers soon found that planters were a remarkably reliable and economical source of labour. What they probably did not understand was the degree to which their own views of the Innu, born of disappointments and frustrations in seeking to develop trade in the region, contributed to the stability of that system. In Labrador, as in many other nineteenth-century settler contexts, Indigenous people far outnumbered those of European descent. When men aspiring to planter status there set out to establish the familial relations essential to their standing as “freemen,” they did so generally by forming unions with Aboriginal women. They also often embraced the survival strategies such people had developed. In Labrador this meant a seasonal migration between fishing and hunting homes.49 Moreover,

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Europeans’ long involvement in southern Labrador further blurred the distinctions between “Indians” and “planters.” Liaisons between Europeans and Aboriginal women were common well before the early nineteenth century.50 That an increasing number of planter families were “second generation” when the hbc entered Hamilton Inlet meant that, to these outside observers, planters often appeared indistinct from members of Aboriginal groups in the area. In fact, to the uninitiated, there was often no phenotypical difference. In fall 1836, for example, McGillivray first encountered members of the John Blake’s family. Blake, born in England in 1812, had moved to Labrador as a young man and married Sarah Phippard, the daughter of an Englishman and an Inuit woman.51 The family came to the post at dinner time and expected to be invited to join post employees for a meal. Surprised, McGillivray noted in his journal that “these people consider themselves as good as you” and expected to be treated “as equals.”52 The murkiness of social categories in a context where men of influence increasingly disparaged Indigenous peoples was unsettling to aspiring planters. Planters became intent on distinguishing themselves from the “Indians” through a theatre of sorts manifesting itself in familial arrangements and day-to-day living patterns.53 Planter men, for example, insisted that the Aboriginal women with whom they entered into unions have Christian names and that the unions be formalized with Christian marriage ceremonies, usually at company posts.54 Planters also prized literacy; missionaries and other visitors to the district noted that parents in planter families were intent that their children be able to read the Bible.55 They also adopted foodways they thought indicative of “civilized life.” For instance, many planter families grew vegetable gardens.56 While such plots provided an important source of nutrients, they also were a means of demonstrating that planters were committed to a settled life rather than roving the wilderness like the predator species to which traders compared Indigenous people. Planters also insisted on eating cooked food. Flora Baikie, the great-great-granddaughter of planter Ambrose Brooks, recounts a story that illustrates the extreme lengths to which some planters went to impose “civilized norms” on their households. Brooks’s daughter related that her father forbade his Inuit wife to eat raw meat and asked his children to monitor and report on her habits while he was away trapping. On returning from one trip and learning that his wife had eaten raw caribou fat, Brooks was furious. To deter her from such behaviour, he “took a piece of rope” and gave her “a hammering” until she lay on the floor sobbing.57

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hbc officers, frustrated by uncooperative Aboriginal groups, found planters’ enthusiasm to demonstrate their civility advantageous. After all, in extending credit, the company validated planters’ claim to be other than “Indian.” In fact, access to substantial amounts of credit signified that individuals were in many ways the opposite of “Indians,” viewed by company officers as indolent, unclean, and unreliable. “Planters,” by contrast, were honest, industrious, loyal, and disciplined. It was these inner qualities and characteristics that justified the trust company officers had in them. The company, then, was instrumental in establishing and maintaining these markers of civility. Traders’ willingness to continue to extend credit, and therefore to acknowledge and affirm planters’ standing as planters hinged on the honouring of debts. Ideas of ownership and property rights in the salmon fishery also took on meaning within this more general ritualistic and symbolic order. Title to salmon posts was a complicated affair. In essence, planters accepted a system of use-based rights whereby a particular individual had rights to a post so long as he and/or his family members fished it every season. If a post was left vacant for a year, another party could take it over. Yet if a particular planter had established rights to a post, he could also transfer or sell his post and the associated fishing grounds. While this arrangement seems to have pre-dated the hbc, company officers respected it, knowing that most fishers in the Inlet would have to trade with them whether the company owned the posts or not.58 Moreover, the officers also saw their own participation in this order as a way to claim additional fishing grounds, for they could establish posts in otherwise vacant locales and then allow fishers in the region to use them in exchange for half of the catch.59 For planters, maintaining this system was beneficial in that it ensured the continual use of a preferred fishing area. It also, however, became an important means for them to distinguish themselves as a group. In having their claims recognized, they confirmed that they were fully fledged “rights-bearing subjects of the Queen.” While many planters held such rights on a customary basis, up through the nineteenth and early twentieth century others enshrined their rights and their standing and that of their heirs through drawing up wills that they registered with the company.60 On discovering the advantages of the planter-based order, company officers not only increasingly traded with planter families already present in the vicinity of Hamilton Inlet but by the early 1840s also encouraged their own employees to establish themselves as “freemen.”61 The planter-based truck system became central in the company’s efforts to

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access the resource wealth of Innu lands despite resistance to encroachment. And, while the company’s planter-oriented trade and the rituals and social categorizations connected to it may have been primarily an outgrowth of frustration and struggles over the fur trade in eastern parts of the Labrador Peninsula, the ideas, practices, and attitudes that took shape were important for more than the fur trade. Indeed, there was no separation between the different branches of the company’s endeavours in the region. Most of those the company supplied trapped and fished. They also were parts of one large social unit, for even while planters lived near one post or another and frequented it more regularly, virtually all of these people travelled the entire region around Hamilton Inlet visiting, trading, and otherwise interacting with one another and with hbc employees.62 After its traders turned their attention to the planter trade, the hbc still experienced lean years, as a shortfall in salmon or furs meant thin profit margins. Moreover, the planter-focused system did not end the sometimes difficult relations between the various firms in the vicinity of Hamilton Inlet and those who worked for and traded with them. Different companies were not above trading with planters indebted to a rival firm if they thought it would go unnoticed, and planters sometimes played one firm off against another. Planters also traded with migrant traders, and there were cases of such men, after many bad seasons, simply absconding without paying off debts.63 Nevertheless, this system of relations worked well enough that the hbc and other traders in the area could expect a fairly reasonable and reliable return each year. Moreover, with each passing year, the company and planters both became more invested in this organization of the trade and of social life. The extension of debt, along with a host of other material and symbolic gestures, meant that planters had a more stable material existence than “Indians,” and also that they often had greater access to medicine and other services. Those privileges, as well as styles of dress and domestic arrangements, further distanced one group from another.64 Unbeknownst to hbc managers and owners of other firms operating in and around Hamilton Inlet, however, a challenge to this social system was taking shape at about the same time that company traders established its foundations. This threat came not from the Innu or other residents of Labrador but from colonial officials. Colonial politicians had shown a fleeting interest in the region early in the company’s tenure in Hamilton Inlet. They did so at this early date primarily because the reinstatement of French rights in Newfoundland in 1815 made it difficult for Newfoundland firms to compete in the bank fish-

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ery, and the shore Labrador fishery offered an alternative.65 Yet merchants and colonial officials did not press their claims at that time. Their reluctance stemmed from the fact that British-based firms in the area were hostile to any intervention that might challenge their authority and might result in the collection of colonial duties that would diminish the profitability of their trade. Indeed, when the colonial government sent a revenue officer, Thomas Rendell, north to collect duties and information in 1840, he met stiff resistance. 66 The hbc, Hunt and Henley, and other powerful traders in the area even contested the claim that the colonial government had jurisdiction over the coast of Labrador.67 While the imperial government rejected these protests as baseless, colonial officials abandoned this early endeavour as developments on the south coast of Newfoundland grabbed their attention. After all, only a few years after Rendell’s voyage, the colony’s politicians began ramping up efforts to control the bait trade on their southern border, and they did not have the wherewithal to fight a two-front war. As we have already seen, intervention on the south coast had disappointing results, and colonial officials abandoned their program of policing the region with revenue cruisers in 1848. As these efforts failed, attitudes toward the north and other parts of the island changed. Fearing that they might not regain a monopoly over the bank fishery in the near term, colonial officials began to intervene more forcefully in Labrador,68 seeing it as a possible site of commercial opportunity and a way to strike a blow against the French. In 1851, the government began to seek information about the Labrador fishery. At that time, several traders long established in the fishery provided testimony that the French regularly fished outside the limits assigned to them by AngloFrench treaty agreements.69 In 1852, several merchants based on the Avalon – for example, Robert Pack and other Carbonear-based merchants, Kenneth McLea and others from St John’s, John Wilcox from Port-de-Grave – began to lobby the government to intervene in Labrador.70 They had two main demands. The first was that the colonial government exempt Newfoundland-based merchants trading and fishing in Labrador from customs duties, or that that they collect duties from British-based merchants operating in Labrador. The idea was to remove obstacles to the northward expansion of Newfoundland-based merchants: if British-based firms and traders from the United States and the neighbouring British colonies could trade in the area without paying duties, there was no way Newfoundland-based traders could compete. The other demand had to do with the French. The Newfoundland merchants complained that the French regularly ventured outside of

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their assigned limits, taking as much as 200,000–300,000 quintals of cod from waters off Labrador annually. The fish caught there, according to the petitioners, like that caught offshore or on the west coast, received the French government’s generous bounty (see previous chapter’s discussion of French investment in large vessels, bultows, and shallops) and competed with Newfoundland fish in overseas markets.71 The merchants demanded that the machinery of the colonial state be mobilized to collect duties and to keep the French within their limits. Colonial officials acceded to the request the following year, asking the governor to approve a grant that would pay for a fisheries protection and customs collection service in southern Labrador. As with the earlier effort on the south coast, the plan for Labrador was to offset the cost of sending cruisers to the area with customs duties collected from traders and merchants operating in the region.72 Governor Hamilton approved a grant for the cruisers with the caveat that their crews had no rights beyond warning off French fishers straying outside grounds granted them under treaty agreements or reporting such fishers to British or French authorities. Knowing that the measure would be unpopular among the British-based merchants operating in the area, Hamilton also cautioned that if colonial officials were to collect duties in Labrador, they also ought to build roads and schools, and extend the colony’s police and judicial institutions into the area. 73 Colonial officials had little interest in shouldering the financial and other burdens that would be required to provide the kinds of services Hamilton suggested were necessary. Accordingly, while the colonial cruisers sent to Labrador acted to keep the French within their limits, there is no evidence in any report to suggest that the cruisers’ captains collected duties in southern Labrador in the decade after 1852. For the first years of operation, crews operated mostly in the area around the Strait of Belle Isle. Especially after 1860, however, colonial traders and officials gradually extended their reach north, mostly because of changing conditions in the fishery in southern Labrador and elsewhere on the island. In part, changes in the fishery had to do with the more intense gears the French and others introduced earlier in the century. While the colonial cruisers could force the French to keep to their own waters, citizens of the republic had the right to fish on the Newfoundland side of the Strait of Belle Isle. French crews continued to fish the same stocks as their counterparts on mainland North America. Moreover, the bulk of the fish in the Strait was part of a migratory stock that followed baitfish up the west coast of the island.74 Agreements between the French and the British in the wake of the American Revolu-

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tion gave the French rights to all of the west coast down to Cape Ray. Thus, they continued to fish the stock heavily. Moreover, with each passing year the number of colonial fishermen in the area increased as the shore fishery declined in longer-settled parts of Newfoundland. The more general climactic changes of the later nineteenth century – the “little ice age” – only amplified the effects of the increased take of fish.75 To compensate for declining catches in southern Labrador, fishers began travelling further north.76 In the 1860s, this push brought the colonial government into direct conflict with the hbc and other merchants operating in the vicinity of Hamilton Inlet for the first time in two decades. And, as colonial officials began moving into the area, they found their reception in the early 1860s no warmer than it had been in the 1840s.77 Indeed, representatives of the hbc, Hunt and Henley, and other firms, believing that an expanded colonial trade would diminish the profitability of British-based firms, resurrected their earlier arguments against the imposition of duties. Such arguments had no better effect in1862 than they had in 1840.78 This failure, however, did not deter the British merchants. Instead, it inspired a shift in tactics. Rather than arguing against the colonial government’s right to impose duties, representatives of the hbc and others in the area demanded that the colonial government establish civil and judicial institutions in the region and take over responsibility for the relief of the poor, a function that the company and other firms in the area had taken on in the absence of a formal state.79 Earlier, the prospect of the considerable financial outlays required for administering justice and providing relief and other services had deterred colonial officials from imposing taxes. In the 1860s the colony’s legislators and its leading merchants were more determined, though the colonial politicians still did not view the area as being like other parts of their dominion. There was, for example, no effort to create an electoral district in Labrador. There was also no concerted effort to establish schools and other services outside of the areas where large numbers of Newfoundland families migrated each year.80 The government did, however, provide some services, albeit in a minimalist way. Rather than a permanent court, for example, it passed an act to establish a circuit court.81 Moreover, rather than sending justices of the peace to the area, officials expanded an earlier-established system of deputizing representatives of merchant firms operating in Labrador.82 The tentative nature of efforts to extend colonial institutions north reflected the general way in which colonial officials thought about Labrador. For them, it was an area to be exploited for the benefit of res-

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idents of eastern Newfoundland, particularly the Avalon Peninsula. Colonial officials knew little about the peoples and places north of Cape Charles. Indeed, both colonial and British officials mentioned in their reports the general state of ignorance of the region and its people, and this basic lack of knowledge and interest persisted into the twentieth century.83 Late nineteenth-century merchants and politicians on the Avalon were interested in the cod that lay off the coast and the trade associated with it. They wanted to access the fish and expand their northern commercial sphere, partly to compensate for their limited ability to compete in or control the still-lucrative bank fishery, and they wanted to do so with as little expense as possible. The conflicts of the 1870s and 1880s emerged as colonial officials and the merchants and traders aligned with them butted up against the unfamiliar social world that had come to exist in and around Hamilton Inlet. The changes in colonial officials’ position on the question of rights in the fishery and the different character of each era of conflict reflected the shifting strategies of Newfoundland merchants and the differing implications of those strategies for planters near Rigolet. The Pottle-Norman dispute captures well both the strength of the social system that existed in the Inlet and key results of the colonial government’s early intrusions into the area. Norman had begun operating in the area around the middle of the nineteenth century, the very time at which the hbc’s planter-oriented system was becoming solidified. To engage profitably in the area, Norman accepted, and reinforced, that order and the system of property rights central to the fishery. Pottle too had long participated in that commercial and social order and accepted its parameters.84 And, while neither man questioned the validity of the system’s premises, Pottle was provided with a means of enhancing his position within it by the colonial government’s intrusions into the area. For judges in the case, Norman’s complicity in the order that had emerged under the hbc created an awkward situation. Hugh Hoyles and the others had long been interested in expanding and defending the claims of Newfoundland businessmen. Indeed, Hugh Hoyles’s father, Newman Hoyles, representative for Fortune, had earlier been instrumental in responding to George Lake’s petition on the south coast. Hugh Hoyles himself sat as the Conservative representative for Fortune in 1848.85 Byran Robinson, one of the other justices in the case, had been the member for Fortune before the younger Hoyles took up the seat, and he too had used his position in part to expand commercial opportunities for Newfoundland-based merchants.86 Yet, both also represented a government that consistently promoted a common proper-

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ty rights regime in the fisheries. Thus, when Pottle challenged Norman, Hoyles and the others found themselves endorsing a system of ownership in the fisheries that was out of keeping with normal practice in Newfoundland waters so that they could further the interests of an influential Conception Bay trader. While Pottle might have thought the ruling unfair, it did not upset or challenge the order that had come to pass under hbc rule, and the conflict was relatively easily contained. The 1872 decision, however, dealt with one specific situation, and no legislative changes followed from it. To the chagrin of hbc officials and other long-time operators in the area, this lack of clarity left claims to fishing areas open to question.87 When Norman retired from the area and a new group of “southerners” moved in, then, confusion and disputes ensued. For later arrivals in the region such as H.J. Stabb, the system of exclusive claims was an obstacle to northward expansion. Stabb himself had been forced out of a long-time fishing area as rivals pointed to their common claims in the fishery. Stabb sought to deal with his declining fortunes in the south by expanding his operations into new territory in the north on the same grounds. By ignoring the system of exclusive claims that had gained currency under hbc rule, he and those allied with him could gain access to a broad range of resources. Governor Glover’s suggestion that a common property regime prevailed in Hamilton Inlet as in other Newfoundland waters only lent force to Stabb’s efforts, and the colonial government now wavered in its support for the system of exclusive rights its representatives had endorsed only a few years earlier. The colonial government’s hesitancy no doubt had to do partly with the governor’s statements. It also was linked to the fact that continued support for the system of exclusive rights in the salmon fishery near Rigolet was now inimical to the interests of some leading Newfoundland merchants. Amidst this wavering, a minority of planters began supporting the common property system, thereby giving Stabb a number of allies.88 Some planters may have aligned themselves with him partly out of personal disposition. George Pottle, for example, joined Stabb partly to reclaim the area from which Norman had evicted him. Moreover, Pottle seems to have generally been dissatisfied with the inequities of the trading relations in the Inlet and to have consistently resisted what he saw as an unjust arrangement. Indeed, he not only challenged Nathan Norman in 1871 but also sometimes complained loudly about the hbc officials with whom he traded after Norman evicted him.89 Yet, inequities and personal disposition only go so far in explaining why Pottle and others may have strayed from the earlier hbc-centred

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order. Also important were ecological changes that had occurred after the mid-1870s. The most substantial change in the area near Rigolet after Newfoundlanders increasingly ventured there was a falling off of salmon returns. The decline may have partly resulted from the operations of the hbc and other companies in the area for over half a century. Consistent fishing pressure could result in declining returns in the fishery and in many locales in Newfoundland did. Yet, decline was also linked to the Newfoundland crews. The hbc, Hunt and Henley, and others had focused heavily on salmon, but Newfoundland fishers tended to focus on the shore cod fishery. As catch rates off of their own communities plummeted in the later nineteenth century, they simply took their gear, labour force (often whole families), and methods to a region where fish were more abundant.90 While this transplantation allowed the “southerners” to survive, salmon there did not fare so well. hbc officers frequently complained that some fishing devices, and particularly cod traps, indiscriminately caught migrating salmon as well as the cod the Newfoundland crews targeted. hbc traders at Rigolet noted a falling off of salmon catches only a few years after fishers introduced the devices in Groswater Bay.91 In this context, desperation was a key motivator, a point illustrated well by the case of George Flowers Jr, another key advocate of common property rights in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Flowers’s parents were hard hit by the declining salmon fishery. Indeed, Captain Kennedy, the naval officer who escorted Glover to the Inlet in 1879, noted that circumstances were “especially” desperate for “one aged and worthy couple of the name of Flowers who were on the verge of starvation, owing to the failure of the salmon fishery his season upon which they mainly rely.”92 After Pottle forced the younger Flowers from the post that Norman had once owned, Flowers sought to alleviate his and his family’s distress by infringing on the grounds of another planter, Isaac Rich, who was ill, aged, and apparently less capable of defending his territory. Those operating in the Inlet were well aware of the implications of the challenges that Flowers, Pottle, and others mounted. As the hbc’s chief trader Fortescue explained to James Bissett, a trader at Montreal, it was “very important” that Flowers and the others not succeed, “as it causes all of our stations to be called into question.”93 Many planters were also cognizant that the Flowers/Pottle challenge undermined their social and racial standing in the Inlet. As Isaac Rich noted when asked about the basis for his rights to fishing grounds near his post, he was a “subject of the Queen.” Why should he “not own a part of her land and water?” To challenge his right was to challenge his standing as a “free born Englishman,” and to his mind his standing as such was unshak-

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able. “The Queen herself,” he proclaimed, “could not put me out without she broke her own law.”94 The fact that Stabb’s efforts around Hamilton Inlet directly challenged the order that existed under hbc rule goes a long way toward explaining why the disturbances that began in 1879 were more intense and widespread than the earlier Pottle-Norman conflict. After all, Stabb’s efforts not only threatened access to resources in a period of declining returns in the salmon fishery but also undermined a foundation stone of residents’ standing as “civilized” people. These conflicts were intense enough that they would remain ensconced in the minds of hbc officials for many years.95 Yet, fears that these episodes would be repeated were never realized. Instead, the hbc and the planters associated with it continued on, much as they had, well into the twentieth century. The reversion to the earlier status quo reflected changes among the colonial elite that had developed since the Pottle-Norman conflict. In those earlier years, the Newfoundland government was clearly committed to extending its reach into the northerly regions; after 1875, the appetite for northern expansion waned. The weakening of interest in the area on the part of the colonial government reflected its members’ more general view of the role of the fisheries in the economic future of their imagined settler state. Declining catches in the nineteenth century were a source of great concern. In turn, toward the century’s end, these local changes intersected with other, sometimes tangentially linked technological and international political developments to produce further crisis and change. While bultows, seines, traps, and the Labrador fishery provided short-term solutions to problems of supply, they also meant that processors (the “shore crew”) had to contend with large quantities of fish at once. At the same time, the introduction of steamers, which carried larger cargoes than ever before, significantly changed the dynamics of the fishery for exporters.96 To command the best prices for fish, Newfoundland exporters had to get their products to market before their Norwegian and French competitors. The emphasis on gathering cargoes and transporting them to market expeditiously led merchants to relax their standards. Indeed, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, many fish exporters, and particularly those dependent on the Labrador fishery, began purchasing fish tal qual (just as they come). With decreased selectivity, fishers often concentrated on catching rather than curing fish, and the quality of fish produced in Newfoundland declined overall. In the long term, the diminished quality made it difficult for merchants to increase or even to maintain their share of rapidly expanding

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foreign markets in the late nineteenth century.97 The decline in the competitiveness of Newfoundland fish, combined with increased tariffs in what had been key markets for the island’s exporters, only added to an already difficult situation.98 After mid-century, a growing number of politicians were emphasizing landward development in Newfoundland over the expansion of or investment in the fishery as the best way to secure an economic foundation for the settler state they envisioned.99 That focus increased substantially by the late 1870s, with William Whiteway, an ardent proponent of railway development, winning the election of 1878.100 While the next chapter examines landward development in detail, suffice it to say that this shift away from the sea was important for governing officials’ efforts in Labrador. Indeed, while officials’ equivocation about which property regime to impose may have been partly rooted in their reluctance to go against the aims of merchants such as Stabb, it also was linked to a more general falling off of their interest in matters in the area. The enthusiasm for direct interventions that had existed in the 1860s had mostly diminished by the mid-1870s; the last report from the circuit court was submitted in 1875, the year after the Newfoundland government entered into serious discussion of building a railway across the island, and the same year that officials arranged to have a survey undertaken in anticipation of the possible construction of a transinsular line.101 Stabb could continue to promote the common property regime he thought essential to establishing himself in the salmon fisheries in and around Hamilton Inlet, but ultimately his efforts were more an irritation than a serious threat to the hbc; colonial officials were unwilling to risk further upheavals that would require expensive policing or other interventions. Newfoundland crews continued to migrate to the area to catch cod. Yet, when it came to salmon and to regions under hbc influence, colonial officials preferred instead to continue to collect what duties they could while administering justice and poor relief through hbc officials. In the view of chief trader Fortescue, they “squeezed as much as possible out of the Company.”102 Businessmen and professionals who established themselves in Newfoundland during the boom years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries secured representative institutions in 1832. Establishing a local government, however, did not mark the advent of the settler state that many of those in the legislature envisaged. Indeed, such men had to assert control over spaces and resources in their “island home” to build an economic foundation for the state they imagined.

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After experiencing their first frustrations in efforts to secure their southern border, they directed attention to the north, hoping to expand the commercial sphere available to Newfoundland-based merchants and traders. These efforts succeeded for a time, though as catch rates in the shore fishery in the southernmost regions of Labrador around the Straits declined, colonial officials, often following the lead of traders and merchants, extended their reach ever further north. As they pressed on into the area around Hamilton Inlet, they soon discovered that, in the north as in the south, the particularities of how the area had figured into a broader web of commercial and diplomatic relations underwrote a distinctive commercial and social system in which the region’s residents were heavily invested. In contrast to the south, where intersecting and overlapping claims had produced “spaces in between,” in the north it was disinterest among formally constituted imperial and colonial governments that had this effect. Here the hbc established itself as a ruling commercial force. The informal negotiations among settlers and Indigenous peoples in the area had produced a commercial order in which social and racial standing were intimately connected to credit and exclusive property rights in the salmon fishery. When Newfoundland traders such as Nathan Norman entered the area, they found that to operate effectively they had to conform to this order. As the Newfoundland government sought to promote the interests of Avalon-based merchants after officials began to push north, its representatives initially granted legitimacy to a system of exclusive rights in the salmon fishery. These early decisions created something of a conundrum for the island’s politicians, for later arrivals to Hamilton Inlet such as H.J. Stabb sought to claim spaces and resources through embracing the common property system that colonial officials normally endorsed. In introducing this system of rights into the Inlet, Stabb and others soon learned that residents of northerly climes, like those on the south coast, were heavily invested in a system of relations that predated the colonial government interventions. Had they pressed their claims, such officials might have had better luck in expanding to the north. Ultimately, however, continued frustrations in the south, combined with a broader context of ecological decline in the shore fisheries and the difficulties in marketing and production of the later nineteenth century, quelled the northward push. Rather than directing resources to establishing a firm grip on fishing grounds, the colony’s politicians placed ever greater emphasis on the landward development in Newfoundland as a cure-all for their economic woes.

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3 Which Road to the Future? Social Unrest, Landward Development, and Eastern Perspectives

The upheavals in Rigolet and Fortune Bay highlight the difficulties the colonial government had in convincing people in the north and on the south coast to cooperate with their plans. Informal links connected them to neighbouring British territories. Formal treaty arrangements granted rights to American and French fishermen as well. Moreover, the historic disinterest of colonial officials to parts of Labrador had allowed the hbc and other firms to establish themselves in the region. Together informal practices and formal arrangements produced distinctive configurations of commercial and social relations that, in turn, underwrote regionally specific interests often at odds with what the eastern-based merchants and professionals who dominated the House of Assembly viewed as the best arrangement for their “island home.” Conflicts that emerged between residents of different regions of Newfoundland and Labrador drew into relief the distinctiveness, and often the incommensurability, of their respective positions. In both Fortune Bay and southern Labrador, efforts to force residents into accepting the colonial government’s position led to a clearer articulation of regionally specific interests, galvanizing resistance that manifested itself in social upheaval and formal political efforts. Landward resources had long figured into colonial officials’ strategies for economic development. By the later decades of the nineteenth century, the regionally based conflicts and political initiatives in the south and north, combined with declining catches in the shore fishery and the difficulties of competing and marketing internationally, led an increasing number of colonial officials to emphasize the land over the sea as the foundation for the state they imagined. And while most of the colony’s leading businessmen and politicians accepted this reorientation as necessary, there was no agreement about the specific development strategy

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they ought to pursue. By the 1860s, two clear factions had emerged, one favouring a government-centred, debt-heavy approach, and another preferring a more laissez-faire strategy based on private initiative. By the 1870s, these two factions defined the colony’s main political parties. Politicians such as William Whiteway and Ambrose Shea argued for a sharp break with the fishery and the directing of the country’s resources into a large-scale program of landward development based on the construction of railways. Robert Thorburn and members of the Reform Party advocated a more cautious approach based on the construction of conventional roads, private investment, and expansion of the existing coastal steamer service. The passage on 17 April 1880 of an act authorizing the construction of a narrow-gauge railway from St John’s to Hall’s Bay seemed to signal a victory for Whiteway’s approach. His government, which had come to power two years earlier, did not hesitate to get the project underway. Even before construction began, however, it became clear that strong sentiments about the project extended beyond the House of Assembly. Not long after employees of Knipple and Morris, a London-based firm hired to complete a location survey for the project, began their work, large numbers of men and women from communities just outside St John’s threatened them with physical harm and even death if they persisted. Several years later the proposed cessation of construction produced a similarly rancorous upheaval, though this time in the island’s capital city. As with the disturbances in Hamilton Inlet and in Fortune Bay, close analysis of these upheavals on the Avalon Peninsula provides insight into important aspects of nineteenth-century Newfoundland history. In particular, they help to nuance our understanding of the “view from the east.” Were the focus exclusively on areas off of the Avalon, it would be easy to conclude that the people of that area spoke with one voice. This misconception is understandable given that residents of other regions mostly had contact with colonial officials, and those officials tended to represent the policies and views of the party in power in the colonial legislature. Such a view, however, oversimplifies the situation. As other scholars have noted, there were significant class, gender, and ethno-religious divisions among the population of eastern Newfoundland, and such divides could produce quite distinct views and perspectives that sometimes translated into formal and informal political action.1 The pro- and anti-railway upheavals bring to light important ways that “place” mattered for many residents of the Avalon Peninsula. Each episode brings to light concerns of a differently oriented group of working people in that part of Newfoundland.

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Resistance to rail development came especially from those just outside of the city who had, like their elite counterparts, pursued survival strategies focused on the land instead of the sea. Having increasingly focused on agriculture, such people saw surveyors as a threat to the tracts they had, through much back-breaking effort, recently transformed into productive land. Popular resistance to the railway was quelled by a combination of violence and negotiation within a few years of the beginning of construction; elite opposition, however, continued. And, while adept manoeuvring could bring Thorburn and his Reformers to power in the House of Assembly in 1885, the victory was hollow without popular support. In the face of intense pro-railway protests, some of them involving the occupation of the House of Assembly while it was in session, the new government had little choice but to reverse direction and embrace a policy nearly identical to the one they had long criticized. The extent and intensity of popular support for the railway project was a testament to the considerable degree to which especially urban working people had come to see it and the associated conception of the island and its resources as central to their well-being. This conviction helped to ensure that governments would persist in railway building throughout the later nineteenth century. Residents of the area around St John’s shared a history that was in some ways similar to that of their south coast and Labrador counterparts. While there was a relatively small population of settlers in the region from the seventeenth century onwards, the heaviest influx occurred during an extended period of warfare and strife between Britain and France in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The centrality of the cod fishery for the economy of eastern parts of the colony fundamentally shaped social relations. The basic social unit was the fishing family, whose members engaged in a family-oriented “truck” system. While men caught fish from small vessels close to shore, women and children formed the bulk of the “shore crew” – those who cured the cod after it was landed.2 These families tried to lessen their dependence on merchants not only through fishing but also through raising what vegetables and livestock local resources allowed. Ideally, at the end of the season, fishers took their saltfish to a merchant to repay him for any equipment or other items given on credit at the beginning of the season, and also to purchase items essential to sustaining the family through the winter.3 So long as prices for fish were high and cod were plentiful, the truck system sustained the island’s populace and provided a lucrative area of in-

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vestment for both foreign and local capitalists.4 After the end of the Napoleonic wars, however, the British reinstated French and American fishing rights, and the conditions that made the island appealing to settlers vanished. The people were still there, however, and successive governments found themselves trying to justify the continuation of a settler project born of the particular economic situation in a crisis period long after those conditions had passed. Even before the establishment of representative government, prominent residents of the colony saw landward development as a part of the solution for Newfoundland’s economic woes, despite ecological and climatological barriers to doing so in many parts of the island. By the 1820s, colonial reformers such as Patrick Morris and William Carson advocated expanding residents’ agricultural efforts to compensate for the lower prices that Newfoundland fish fetched in a post-1815 marketplace saturated with subsidized French and American product.5 While concerns about foreign competition remained, especially in the later decades of the nineteenth century, colonial officials saw landward development as a means of escaping the fishery altogether.6 An apparent decline in local cod stocks, primarily the result of expanded fishing efforts,7 partly motivated this departure. While there is evidence of an imbalance between fishers and local cod stocks as early as the 1830s, by mid-century fishers and merchants from a variety of localities were reporting more bad years than good. The decline in Conception Bay mirrored that on the south coast, and after mid-century it became sharp.8 This falling off likely resulted from a coalescence of increased population along with increased fishing pressure and declining fecundity among cod in the era of the “little ice age.”9 Merchants and fishers alike faced real economic problems rooted in ecological change.10 Merchants began to restrict credit to fishers who could and would invest in such technologies as bultows, cod seines, and cod traps that enabled them to catch more of a declining resource locally, or to those who could afford the larger vessels needed to seek out and harvest fishing grounds off the coast of Labrador. The intensification of fishing efforts and the exploitation of new stocks provided only a temporary reprieve. As we have seen, stocks were soon thinned to such a degree that Newfoundlanders needed either new technologies or new fishing grounds to sustain fishing families and profit margins.11 By the early 1860s, impoverishment and widespread complaints about declining catch rates mounted to the point that the government appointed a select committee chaired by mha John Rourke to inquire into causes.12

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The Rourke inquiry did little to alter the downward trend in catch rates. By the later nineteenth century most colonial officials came to conclude that the shore fishery could no longer sustain an expanding population in Newfoundland.13 While the bank fishery was still potentially lucrative, uncooperative south coast residents and international agreements and competition constrained expansion in this sector (see chapter 2).14 As it became clear that expansion to the north also would likely be expensive and difficult, most of the island’s leading politicians agreed that they would have to look away from the sea and toward the land to prop up Newfoundland’s economic foundations.15 By the 1860s two general philosophies of development emerged. Some argued that the best way forward was to follow a state-centred policy of development premised on heavy borrowing, large-scale exploration for resources, and infrastructure development that would foster economic growth. Others advocated a more classical liberal, laissez-faire approach that emphasized low taxes, free trade, and private initiative and financing of new endeavours. Proponents of these approaches first engaged with one another systematically in the course of discussions of a union of British North American colonies in the midto later 1860s. The former group, led by Frederic Carter, saw the path to a “British future” as linked with the other British North American colonies. The latter, under the direction of Charles Fox Bennett, set its sights on Newfoundland itself. Viewing the island (in this period the terrestrial resources of Labrador almost never entered the discussion) as a resource hinterland that ought to be developed for the benefit of the Avalon Peninsula, they argued that Newfoundlanders ought to develop as a separate state.16 Bennett and other liberals had read the mood of the electorate better than his rivals. Building and strengthening the nascent nationalism among many of these people, Bennett won out over Frederic Carter and other pro-confederate proponents of transcontinental railway projects and the big government and big spending entailed in them.17 Bennett’s campaign during the election of 1869 helped to defeat Confederation for several generations. The development strategy that pro-confederates held dear, however, remained alive and well, even though the breadth and intensity of anti-confederate feeling among many Newfoundlanders meant that, by the mid-1870s, the debate had shifted. The Carter faction, now led by William Whiteway, accepted that Newfoundland would go it alone.18 Embracing a more nationalistic political rhetoric, he suggested that the best way to transform Newfoundland into a prosperous “British country” was to secure massive

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loans to build a railway across the island. Such men as A.W. Harvey and Moses Monroe, Ambrose and George Shea, Daniel Greene, Michael Carty, Moses Harvey, Michael O’Mara, James McGrath, Richard MacDonnell, William Donnelly, Robert Kent, James Callanan, Thomas Mitchell, and Thomas J. Murphy became vigorous proponents of this revised version of the state-centred, debt-heavy approach to development. Some of these men – and particularly A.W. Harvey and Moses Monroe – were bona fide Water Street merchants. The majority, however, were prosperous retail merchants, industrialists, financiers, prominent lawyers, and well-to-do artisans based in St John’s.19 Most were not directly interested in the fishery but nevertheless understood that its decline meant general economic collapse. These men found the railway appealing in part because they believed it would provide the basis for a dynamic economy on the island. Encouraged by Surveyor General Alexander Murray’s optimistic reports of extensive agricultural lands and mineral and timber resources in the interior, they joined their rivals in seeing the interior of the island itself as a resource hinterland. They argued that building a railway across the island would make these resources accessible. Mining and lumbering would provide new areas of investment for merchants and other businessmen who hoped to lessen their dependence on the fishery while creating employment for those who could no longer be sustained fishing for cod. Settling agriculturists in the interior would take additional pressure off of the fishery and also provide a market for industrial products, which both merchants and politicians hoped to produce locally at a handsome profit.20 Moreover, for many of its proponents, the railway was more than a means of accessing resources. It was itself a symbol of civility, one of the accoutrements of an “advanced” or “British” society. To have a railroad was to be “modern” while its lack placed Newfoundlanders on a plane with “lesser peoples.” As Moses Harvey, writing under the pseudonym “Locomotive,” explained, “All civilized nations have found it necessary to introduce the locomotive railway. Without it, progress is found to be slow or impossible, and in order to develop their resources and keep their place in the onward march, at whatever cost, railways had to be built. It would be difficult to find any country, having any pretensions to the term civilized, without railways.”21 As of the 1880s, only “China and Newfoundland” had been able “to resist the innovation; and now the latter threatens to give way.” To oppose the railway, Harvey maintained, was to sink to the level of the Chinese – he even referred to detractors as “our fine old Chinese Newfoundlanders.” If allowed to

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guide the country’s future, these men, bound to a conservative, rigidly structured social system, guaranteed “stagnation and death … the people who refuse to advance or to accept fresh thoughts must degenerate and perish.”22 The railway also appealed because it provided Newfoundlanders an escape from an industry, the fishery, which pro-railway politicians believed to promote forms of social organization and habits within the populace that did not conform to the standards of Britishness to which they aspired. For elites throughout the empire, a “British society” was a free market order centred on acquisitive individuals. For them as for many other nineteenth-century thinkers, “individuals” were male and ultimately consumers, and their natural impulse was to employ their capacities and faculties to satisfy a limitless number of appetites. The “good society” was in part that which fostered conditions maximizing the production of those things needed to satisfy individual wants. If men and women had no reason to believe that they would have control over what they had accumulated, and the right to exclude others from it, there would be no motivation to produce anything beyond basic subsistence. For the railway’s proponents, the fishery, especially the supplying system that was associated with it, was problematic. According to them, merchants determined both the price of fish and the price of supplies. By undervaluing fish and overcharging for supplies, they created a scenario in which fishers always owed the whole of their catch (and then some) to the merchants. Rather than working to encourage innovation and productivity, this system encouraged men and women to act in ways associated with “lesser peoples.”23 For instance, it fostered an emasculating dependence and encouraged them to default on debts, to lie, cheat, deceive, and steal to wring as much out of merchants as possible. These practices, and particularly the failure to honour debts, compounded the problem, for merchants covered their bad debts by inflating the cost of supplies to those who were honest.24 It was a miracle, as one observer noted, that “four hundred years of a baneful system of trade have failed to eradicate from our people those virtues of independence, self-reliance, honesty and industry so characteristic of the British races.”25 Nevertheless, were the colony ever to take its “rightful place at the forefront of British possessions,” massive changes were needed, and the railway, that “innovator, that overturner of old systems and ideas, that enemy of sung monopolies,” would serve this end.26 It would do so in part because it promoted the payment of workers in cash. As well, proponents of the project predicted that the industries generated

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by the railway would also pay cash wages. Cash was preferable to credit because it gave working men control over the product of their labour. They could then choose between suppliers, and, in seeking to get the most for their money, would force merchants to compete with each other and so ensure that they charged prices determined by the market. Moreover, individual control over wages would also create incentive to increase earnings and allow independence that promoters of the railway viewed as characteristic of “British societies.”27 For pro-railway politicians, as for planters in Hamilton Inlet and Fortune Bay, dependence was only problematic for males. While the railway appealed because it would foster independence for men, it also appealed because it promoted female dependency and allowed more male control over female lives. For some, railway work, and work in the industries that the railway generated, would employ men with wages sufficient to support a wife and children at home.28 For others, such as James Monroe, an owner of the cordage company (“The Ropewalk”) in St John’s, it meant something different. Monroe was not opposed to young women working. After all, in virtually every large industrial centre in the western world, large numbers of women were factory operatives.29 For them, the railway and the industrial development it would spawn could provide appropriate employment situations. Rather than travelling to isolated locales, women could work as they did in other “advanced” settings. They could work under the supervision of men while at work, and those away from home could be protected from danger and kept from endangering the community by elite women, who, working through modern social agencies, could keep a watchful eye on female workers during their leisure time.30 Historians and others have sometimes suggested that proponents of this railway vision represented a challenge to a group of backward looking, self-interested merchants. This view echoes explicit arguments that pro-railway politicians and newspaper editors put forward in the 1880s. In this view, the struggle unfolding in the House of Assembly was between the “party of progress” and the “fish flake” or “stagnation” party. The former consisted of forward-looking men who embraced innovation and modernity; the latter was comprised of “fishocrats” intent on ensuring that the cod fishery, the industry that had produced and that still sustained their fortunes, remained at the centre of the island’s commercial system.31 Similar arguments had long been part of political discourse in Newfoundland. Indeed, it was often both an explanation for the failures of economic diversification initiatives, and a political

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rallying cry from the time of Carson and Morris up to the early twentieth century.32 It is important to avoid uncritically incorporating such arguments into interpretations of the past. For instance, some of the largest supplying merchants in St John’s supported the railway. Moreover, most merchants who opposed the railway actually supported economic diversification. Charles Bennett, for example, criticized the railways, yet his faith in commerce and landward development in Newfoundland was unmistakable.33 Credit assessors from R.G. Dun and Co. were struck by Bennett’s enthusiasm for ventures outside of the fishery, noting in 1855 that he “was the first to take hold of any new enterprise.”34 He, along with Alexander McNeilly, Charles Ayre, Walter Grieve, Charles Bowring, and other major merchants who opposed the railway, were among the key investors in Newfoundland’s industrial and alternate resource development projects.35 Moreover, such men were part of the same cultural context as their pro-railway counterparts, and they often praised railways as generators of progress. Bennett wrote in a letter to the Telegram in 1882 that commerce was the “metal composing that great chain which is to link together the commercial interests of the world and bring the semi-civilized and barbarous races of mankind under the influence of, and in harmony with, the civilized portions thereof for the mutual benefit of all.”36 In general, as promoters of commerce, railways were a “powerful promoter of civilization … even more powerful than the merchant and the Missionary.” For Newfoundland, however, Bennett thought railways were a bad idea. He, Robert Thorburn, A.J.W. McNeilly, A.F. Goodridge, and other opponents of rail development saw the debate as “a repetition of the hard-fought battle of 1869.” The large debt incurred in constructing a railway across the island would require higher taxes and would ultimately prove unmanageable for the colony, thereby undermining Newfoundland’s independence.37 Critics of the project also believed that the railway would drive up wages and taxes, detract funding and traffic from ships in the coastal trade, and damage the fishery and other marine industries. At least in the short term, they argued, businessmen depended on the fishery for profits that could be invested in new industries, and most working people on the island depended on the fishery for a living.38 To their minds, any policy that undermined it was ill advised. The real question in the political battles of the later 1870s and 1880s, as in 1869, then, was not whether the resources of the interior ought to be developed, nor whether the socio-economic situation on the island needed to be changed if Newfoundland were to become a populous,

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prosperous British settler state. Rather, it was what policy of development ought to be undertaken, and anti-railway men suggested that Newfoundlanders ought to follow what they dubbed a program of “real progress.” In this view, Newfoundlanders ought to continue on with the fishery and do nothing to injure the trade. Simultaneously, however, they should encourage industrial development through the use of subsidies and by adjusting tariff schedules, as well as expand the existing steamer service, and build a series of strategically placed roads and short rail lines to access resources and fertile agricultural regions once they had been identified.39 When Whiteway won the election of 1878 partly on a promise to build a railway in Newfoundland, it was a victory for the debt-heavy, statecentred approach to development that had lost out in 1869. Whiteway and his allies lost no time in attempting to implement the project. The initial plan was to build a trans-insular line from St John’s to St George’s Bay on the west coast. When Whiteway approached the imperial government about the project, however, its members refused to help finance it or even assent to its construction. According to British officials, the project had little strategic or economic importance for the empire. Moreover, the French had rights to portions of the west coast. The British government was already embroiled in conflict with the French over North African territories, and officials at Whitehall feared that added tension over the fisheries in Newfoundland might strain relations to the breaking point.40 As an alternative, Whiteway proposed to build a line from the colony’s capital to Hall’s Bay. Immediately after passing the Railway Act in the spring of 1880, the government hired surveyors in anticipation of calling for construction tenders.41 News that surveying had begun inspired excited optimism in many towns on the Avalon. As the survey party moved outside of the capital, however, instead of enthusiasm and cheers, the workmen encountered insults and threats. As they approached Foxtrap, a community about twenty-six kilometres west of St John’s, verbal assaults turned into physical confrontation. A crowd of irate residents (mostly women) armed with pitchforks, splitting knives, and rocks refused to let the surveyors pass. At least some of those in the crowd made plain that if the surveyors pushed on with their work, the consequences would be dire. As the Morning Chronicle later reported, one “ancient virago,” “arms bared and hair streaming behind her,” vowed to “let daylight into the stomachs of the invaders” should they persist.42

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It is not clear exactly how many people were in the crowds. Antirailway editors reported that over five hundred people had assembled, more than the population of Foxtrap. Pro-railway papers cited lower numbers. Possibly the higher estimates were accurate, for even though a large numbers of people from many Conception Bay communities resisted the surveyors, contemporaries and subsequent authors dubbed the episode the “Battle of Foxtrap” or the “Battle of Foxtrap Bridge.”43 Thus, the crowd may have included residents from neighbouring communities. By all accounts there were at least several hundred protestors, and the disturbances drew immediate attention. Both pro- and antirailway factions mobilized their propaganda machines to use the upheaval to their advantage. Those who opposed construction argued that the Foxtrap rebels represented the true views of patriotic Newfoundlanders everywhere and commended them for gallantly resisting illconceived development strategies. As one commentator put it, residents of Foxtrap reflected “the opinion [that] prevails all over this district; indeed we may say all over the country, that this Railway business is a huge fraud, with self-interest running throughout it and Confederation at bottom.”44 By contrast, pro-railway newspaper editors and politicians argued that there was little about the Foxtrappers’ demonstrations that suggested patriotism or concerns about the future independence of the country. Instead, most of their complaints were with possible new taxes on consumer goods, the introduction of new means of raising revenues (particularly disconcerting for them was the specter of a tollgate on the road to St John’s), fears that they would not receive compensation for damage to property by surveyors, and concerns that their property might be expropriated outright.45 Pro-railwayites also argued that such concerns were rooted in the efforts of one or more unnamed anti-railway merchants who had reportedly travelled out from St John’s ahead of the survey; these “designing persons” had spread “evil rumours and false stories” to instill fear and to incite unrest.46 Their aim was to achieve through crowd actions what they could not achieve by legitimate means in the House of Assembly. For pro-railway observers, the episode was in some ways laughable. Particularly amusing was the apparently widely accepted notion that pieces of red flannel the surveyors used as markers were Canadian flags and that territory on which they were planted would be annexed. It was also an embarrassment: residents’ unfamiliarity with the national symbol of the neighbouring dominion underscored the ignorance and backwardness that pervaded the outport communities and highlighted the urgency of pressing on with the rail-

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way project. According to pro-railway politicians and editors, only binding such regions of the island to the modern world with ribbons of steel would purge the population of such undesirable qualities.47 Most who have considered the Battle of Foxtrap have basically accepted the pro-railway interpretation of events.48 This view relies on two related working assumptions that need closer scrutiny. First is the idea that working people tended toward irrationality and overly emotional responses. Second is the view that only elites were capable of analyzing and developing a political consciousness and program in light of changing socio-economic circumstances. Historians’ tendency to accept the view, common among the pro-railway faction at the time of the upheaval, that one or more unscrupulous merchants whipped illinformed, easily led outport residents into a frenzy is in some sense understandable. It is, for example, difficult to ascertain the motivations of those who assailed the railway surveyors. Because most of these people were working people, and mostly working women at that, editors mentioned the names of only two – Margaret Cullen and Charlie Andrews – of those in the crowds.49 Moreover, elements of this explanation are no doubt sound. Unquestionably, the surveyors’ work elicited a dramatic emotional response. It is also likely that one or several anti-railway merchants from St John’s made impassioned appeals to outport residents, emphasizing heightened taxes and a forced union with Canada. After all, those in the anti-railway camp, such as Charles Bennett and Walter Grieve, were the same men who had objected to Confederation with Canada in 1869. In the Confederation debates, they had claimed that the enormous public debt implied in the Canadian scheme of union would saddle Newfoundlanders with an unsustainable tax burden while providing little benefit to the colony.50 To rally popular support against the proposed union, Bennett and his counterparts had launched a propaganda campaign against their political opponents – a campaign that reportedly involved exaggerated, if not unfounded, claims about the consequences of Confederation.51 To attribute these exaggerated claims and the highly charged, sometimes even violent, responses they engendered to irrationality or hyperemotionalism, however, is mistaken. Indeed, to do so is to dismiss rather than to explain this episode. Instead, we should ask what circumstances might have led people to embrace particular ideas and beliefs and act as they did. The post-1815 social and economic realignments mentioned above were important for residents of Foxtrap. Census data indicate, for example, that the decline of the shore cod fishery was as apparent there as in any other locality during the last half of the nine-

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teenth century. In 1845, the first year in which the community appears in the census, it had a total of eighty-eight inhabitants. There is no indication of the amount of fish landed and processed in that year, but there is evidence that the community was heavily dependent on fishing. Enumerators recorded fifteen dwelling houses; they also indicated that there were fifteen “planters, fishermen, or shoremen,” and did not indicate that anyone in the community was employed in an occupation other than fishing.52 The 1857 census recorded an increase of fifty-five people. Of these 143 residents, fifty-nine caught and cured 375 quintals of cod (just over six quintals per person) and produced about the same number of gallons of fish oil.53 The 1869 census indicates that about one hundred people, employing twenty-one nets and seines, were engaged in the fishery, though again the amount of fish caught was not recorded.54 Five years later enumerators recorded that the number of people engaged in the fishery had dropped to eighty-one. These people, representing about a third of the community at that time, cured approximately 830 quintals of cod, meaning that the number of quintals per person had risen by almost four when compared with catch rates about a decade earlier. The higher yield was likely the result of increasing use of more intensive gears, for even though the number of fishers had declined, the number of nets and seines grew to thirty-two.55 Ten years later, declining returns meant that far fewer people were engaged in the local fishery both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the total population (thirty-three people, or approximately 10 per cent of the population). These people, using significantly more gear per person (twenty-eight nets and seines in total), cured only 110 quintals of fish, or about three quintals per person.56 In the next census, compiled in 1891, the population had increased to 381.57 The number of people recorded as “engaged in catching and curing fish” was now only twenty-two (sixteen males and six “others”), or about 5 per cent of the total population. These people caught and processed a mere sixteen quintals of fish.58 In some ways, residents of the community were typical in their response to the decline of the shore fishery. Foxtrappers were among a large number of residents of Conception Bay who responded to the localized depletion of cod partly by reorienting themselves spatially. They were among the throngs of “southerners” who edged their way north toward Hamilton Inlet after 1860. Indeed, the heavily female composition of the crowd was partly related to the fact that men from the community had not yet returned from these northerly fishing grounds.59 While for some the Labrador fishery might have been lu-

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crative, there is little to suggest that men from Foxtrap gained much more than subsistence for their trouble. Here again the census is instructive. No censuses indicated that a resident of Foxtrap owned a large vessel of the type needed to travel to the Labrador coast.60 Most of the men from the community, then, signed on as crew members working for more affluent individuals in other communities. The relatively modest earnings that men would have procured in heading off to the Labrador meant that those who remained behind also had to contribute to the support of the family. Those who would have traditionally constituted the shore crew in Foxtrap and neighbouring communities embraced survival strategies that reflected their particular position on the island. Foxtrap’s residents lived in close proximity to the capital city. With the mass influx of settlers in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, St John’s grew from a mostly seasonally occupied fishing centre to a bonafide commercial town. Local people began growing crops and livestock to supply an expanding urban market. By the middle of the nineteenth century, they had transformed the once barren belt of territory surrounding the city into some four hundred productive farms.61 By the later nineteenth century, a growing network of roads meant that residents in the region of Foxtrap could supplement their income by supplying the colony’s main urban centre (population now about 25,000) with fresh meat, milk, eggs, butter, and produce. Residents of Conception Bay communities may have taken their lead from residents elsewhere on the Avalon. As John Mannion has pointed out, the populace of Point Lance had long supplied the townsfolk with meat, dairy, and vegetables.62 Whether they learned from other settlers on the Avalon, or simply adapted out of necessity, census data indicates that residents redirected their efforts toward the land and away from the sea. In 1874 and 1884, enumerators recorded that residents cultivated approximately eighty acres of land in and around their community.63 Seven years later, 189 acres were devoted to gardens (an increase of over one hundred acres),64 and nineteen people identified themselves as farmers by profession.65 And, while the numbers of horses and milk cows changed modestly, those of cattle more than doubled (from nineteen in 1884 to forty-six in 1891). Sheep numbers also more than doubled from forty in 1884 to 101 in 1891, while those of fowl (not previously recorded in the census) stood at over 700.66 Given that it would have taken considerable application over many years to create a cultivable acre of land, the 1891 figures reflect a significant outlay of effort since 1884.

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This context offers a better, if less dramatic, explanation for why opponents of the railway emphasized the points that they did. Given the nature of their livelihood, it is not surprising that residents of the community were alarmed by what they heard. With taxation, for example, opponents of the railway in 1880, as in previous years, emphasized that the debt required for constructing a railway was unsustainable in Newfoundland. In itself, this concern was reasonable. Proponents of the project assured residents that the economic dynamism spawned by the railway would offset the enormous loans required for construction. Ultimately the predictions of the anti-railway faction would prove accurate.67 When politicians addressed residents of Foxtrap, however, they did not simply point to an unsustainable tax burden. Instead, they tailored their message to connect the anticipated rise in taxes to the lives and particular conditions in which community residents found themselves. In the nineteenth century, the Newfoundland government’s key source of revenue was import taxes.68 Since many of the goods on which residents of Foxtrap depended were imported, they could reasonably fear that the prices of many essential items would increase if the railway were to proceed. It is not surprising that they would have been incensed at the prospect of an increased cost of living. After all, they were already pressed by ecological decline and shifting economic circumstances in the colony and internationally. Any additional expense would only have worsened an already difficult situation. It is also clear why anti-railway propagandists suggested that the government was likely to construct a tollgate on the road to St John’s to raise additional funds to pay for the railway. While contemporary critics and subsequent scholars dismissed such ideas as preposterous, tollgates, bridges, and roads had long been means of collecting revenue in British colonies. Given the enormous financial outlay necessary for railway construction, residents would have understood that additional sources of revenue would be required, and that they would be garnered through new means of taxation.69 Opponents of the railway no doubt chose to emphasize a tollgate as a possible means of raising revenues because it would also have made local produce less competitive with imported food stuffs, undermining the survival strategies that had emerged in Foxtrap by that time. The other message that struck a chord with residents was the possible confiscation of property. While pro-railway papers claimed that anxiety over this possibility reflected residents’ gullibility and the unscrupulous nature of their anti-railway counterparts, later recollections of key participants in the events of 1880 suggest otherwise. D.W. Prowse, a judge

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and noted historian, for example, led the detachment of constables who suppressed the upheaval, and after the initial disturbance, continued working in the district to promote social stability. Part of his detail was to discuss the benefits of rail development with local residents. He also “attended the railway arbitrator as a sort of ambulatory court, setting titles to land.” By Prowse’s own admission, the public information sessions were of questionable value in bringing about the desired effect. Residents did, however, appear to have been keenly interested in the settling of titles. Prowse set himself to this work for several weeks and thought his efforts ought to have earned him more “honour or reward” than they did.70 Nevertheless, that he had to undertake such an effort to ease residents’ anxiety is telling. It suggests that when surveyors approached communities just outside of St John’s, residents did not have formal title to the fields they farmed. This scenario might seem strange, yet Newfoundland’s marine orientation, and the limited amount of agricultural territory available, meant that often there was no formal title to land. Instead, ownership and rights derived from use. In this system, people had rights to land that they improved and enclosed with a fence. This ownership did not necessarily rest in perpetuity. Informal community rules required that the person continue to use the land, or at least use it fairly frequently, to retain title. In this sort of system, after the land fell into disuse for a period of time, someone else was free to use it. In so doing, title had effectively transferred to another person for as long as he or she continued to use and maintain the territory.71 Prowse’s recollections indicate that when residents of Foxtrap and neighbouring communities looked to the land for subsistence, they simply began working and enclosing the most promising tracts nearby. According to Alexander McEwan and others, this practice was typical in communities outside of St John’s. Indeed, some governors refused to grant land outside of St John’s until late in the nineteenth century.72 The Registry of Deeds suggests that no one formally registered properties around Foxtrap until 1882. At that time, James and Garland Butler ceded a portion of their land to the Newfoundland Railway Company.73 A use-based system of property rights based on local custom could function relatively well among those in the community, and there is much evidence that such systems persisted in Newfoundland and were effective well into the late twentieth century.74 Outsiders, however, did not necessarily recognize the local informal rules and codes. While the Railway Act guaranteed that the island’s residents would be compensated for any damage or property lost during the sur-

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vey, those in Foxtrap may have reasonably feared that their lack of official ownership would make any claim for restitution tenuous. Again, given the precariousness of their circumstances, it is not surprising that residents of the community would have reacted strongly to the potential loss of food or income with no compensation. Although concerns about immediate crop and property damage were no doubt partly at the centre of controversy, they were clearly not the only source of concern. Residents continued to protest against survey and construction crews over the next several years and, after a rail line was in place, reports of attempted train-wrecking persisted.75 If the original protest had only been the result of concerns about title to land, there is no reason that residents should have persisted after such matters had been dealt with in the aftermath of the initial upheaval. While the clandestine nature of train-wrecking and isolated skirmishes makes understanding subsequent resistance to the railway difficult, an incident in the fall of 1881 provides some clues. At that time, the Newfoundland government had hired a syndicate of capitalists headed by A.L. Blackman to build the Hall’s Bay rail line.76 Organized as the Newfoundland Railway Company, the Blackman syndicate had begun construction in August 1881 and by the fall had completed ten miles of track and graded another ten. As workmen extended the line out of St John’s, residents of Foxtrap and neighbouring Manuels petitioned members of the colony’s Executive Council. The petition was, as the editor of the Telegram noted, at once an appeal for help and a manifesto. It asked the government to save residents’ gardens from “land grabbers.” It also called for all those people along the line to “organize and take a determined stand against the invading forces of the Railway Company.” If the line were to “pass a mile and a half inside of [their] settlements,” they would “offer no resistance.” If the Railway Company insisted on running directly through their fields, however, they would “fight it out on the line, even if it [took] all winter.”77 The Railway Company did not heed the warning, and in the spring of 1882 another battle between residents near Foxtrap and employees of the railway broke out.78 The petition, however, reveals something about the motivations of the Foxtrap protestors. As pro-railways observers at the time pointed out, there seemed to be little congruence between residents’ concerns and the anti-railway views and arguments of their political opponents. In fact, little in the petition suggests that residents objected to the railway per se. Instead, they were concerned with their fields. The virulence with which they objected to any incursion into their territory, especially given that the government guaranteed com-

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pensation, may seem difficult to understand. It is essential, however, to see these protests in context. At around the time of the upheaval, residents faced challenges from two different directions. The declining fishery was, of course, a key source of their problems. But seeking to compensate the loss of income from the fishery by promoting agriculture also brought significant hardship. One obvious ecological barrier to agriculture in much of Newfoundland is the lack of topsoil. It took enormous effort, compared to that required in other colonies, to find and bring into cultivation extant pockets of agriculturally viable land.79 Sometimes there simply was no such land in the vicinity of fishing settlements. In these settings, residents created garden plots by scrounging for soil and other organic material and centralizing them in raised beds. More often, however, they combined the two practices by locating areas viable for agriculture, and then, through much effort, expanding and enhancing them. The scarcity of this basic resource on the Avalon was sometimes a source of tension and conflict within communities as people vied for the limited amount of fertile ground available or sought to defend land they had brought under cultivation.80 In Foxtrap the number of acres under cultivation did not increase substantially in the years just prior to the upheaval; the census suggests that the amount remained relatively constant between 1874 and 1884. Seven years later, however, cultivated acreage more than doubled, and livestock numbers increased substantially. These significant increases suggest that even though the redirection of efforts may have begun not many years before 1880, the transition was underway. Contemporary press reports corroborate this supposition. On 27 July, for instance, after much rhetorical flourish and a severe denunciation of the government, the editor of the anti-railway Telegram suggested that surveyors’ intrusions were repugnant because residents increasingly depended on their produce for survival. The survey’s timing was particularly problematic, he noted, occurring “at a time too when residents were beginning to reap some benefit from their labors.”81 Given the decline in the community’s staple trade, it is unsurprising that perceived encroachments on hard-won cultivable soil would have inspired much angst among residents. Their land had been secured through countless hours of pulling stumps, draining bogs, centralizing what topsoil could be found, and composting fish and other organic material at hand to expand and enhance what was already present. To lose a portion of a field or a pasture was to lose not only the immediate products of the soil but also the huge outlay of effort that had gone into making “sterile, rocky soil” productive in the first place.82

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What evidence we have about circumstances in the community at the time suggests that such losses would have been particularly difficult to accept. According to one reporter who had frequented the community for several decades prior to the upheaval, in the 1860s the region’s “brooks and lakes teemed with trout,” and the uplands “abounded with brown-plumaged ptarmigan.” Since then, however, the “advancement which lapse of time brings to even the quietest communities” had done its work. Game was now scarce and there was almost no unclaimed land. The inhabitants “had a hard struggle for existence.”83 The climatological conditions of the years just prior to the protest only compounded an already difficult situation. In 1879, Edward Colley, a missionary who had lived and worked in the region around Foxtrap since 1847, noted that the winter of that year had been harsh. The severe weather, combined with economically depressed circumstances, had been very hard on residents of the community, most of whom suffered from the cold and “from want of food and clothing.”84 The ensuing years were even worse. As Colley explained in 1882, “last winter was the severest I have known since I came to this colony.” That year’s storms made him “think of the ‘treasures of snow’ spoken about in the book of Job.” The generally impoverished and weakened state of the population caused “a greater number of deaths than ever known on this shore in any year before.”85 In such lean years, the loss of any possible source of food or income could have dire consequences for families, and no doubt the frantic nature of residents’ protest was linked to the severity of the circumstances in which they found themselves. While a combination of force and negotiation overcame popular resistance to the railway, official opposition was not so easy to quell. At about the same time that Foxtrap residents undertook their second round of protests in 1882, a cadre of anti-railway politicians and merchants organized themselves into an opposition party led by James Rogerson. The “New Party” had little more success than the Foxtrap protestors in that year, as Whiteway mustered a majority by forming a Conservative-Liberal coalition. A few years later, circumstances had changed significantly. Though railway construction continued steadily for several years after 1881, the Blackman syndicate appears to have had financial difficulty almost from the outset. The company went bankrupt in the spring of 1884 before the completion of the proposed line. Francis Evans, a London banker and receiver for the Newfoundland Railway Company, saw through to completion the line from St John’s to Harbour Grace. The rather disappointing results of this first railway

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contract materialized at about the same time that sectarian tensions, spurred on by Orange-Catholic violence in Harbour Grace late in 1883, mounted in the colony.86 The result was that in 1885 Robert Thorburn and a reformulated New Party, now called the Reform Party, divided along denominational lines the Conservative-Liberal coalition that had brought Whiteway to power in 1882.87 Thorburn’s government was elected on 31 October 1885. When the legislature convened in early February 1886, all evidence suggests that he and other Reformers were committed to a policy of “real progress” similar to the one Bennett had advocated until his death in 1883, and that such men as the speaker of the house, A.J.W. McNeilly, and the prime minister himself continued to promote. The election, they claimed, indicated a popular rejection of the former government and its development policies. As a result, the speech from the throne contained no mention of railway construction, an omission which the opposition heavily criticized.88 They reaffirmed their commitment to a non-railway course of development again a month or so later, when Ambrose Shea, a former Whiteway supporter and leader of the opposition, introduced a set of resolutions urging the legislature to resume railway construction. Thorburn vehemently argued against passing the resolutions.89 In keeping with the policy of “real progress,” he argued that the railway policy had not created the benefits its promoters had hoped for. He further maintained that such projects had added, and would continue to add, a tremendous financial burden to the colony, and, in keeping with his views of “real progress,” suggested that the government should instead encourage agriculture.90 While the opposition claimed that the best way to do so was by building railways, in 1886, as in 1882, the Reformers preferred to provide transportation and employment by building an extensive network of conventional roads.91 Accordingly, they poured money into road construction and passed an Act for the Promotion of Agriculture. The act established farming districts under the direction of a superintendent and staff who directed and managed the clearing of the land, kept track of who settled there, directed road building and other public works, and promoted “scientific agriculture.”92 Yet Thorburn altered his course dramatically by September 1886 and announced that railway work would resume. Because the government was still embroiled in a legal feud with the Newfoundland Railway Company, making it impossible for the government to resume construction on the Hall’s Bay line, the plan was to build a branch line from Harbour Grace to Placentia.93 The Reform Party organ, the Mer-

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cury, initially explained the decision to resume railway construction by claiming that it was merely an extension of the earlier efforts to promote agriculture. Not only would the building of the line open up new lands, but “habits of industry will be developed, and by railway work many will be trained for such labour as is required in clearing and cultivating land and their tastes in that direction will be developed.”94 By the time of the next election in 1889, however, the Reform party plan was virtually identical to that which Whiteway had put forth in 1880 and, after he came out of retirement to run against Thorburn, he put forth again in 1889. Like the Whitewayites, Reformers now talked about the importance of railways for the development of “hidden resources” in the island’s interior.95 As Jim Hiller has noted, “the wheel appeared to have come full circle.”96 Others have suggested that the return to railway construction resulted from the pressures of political survival and the need to deal with economic distress.97 In this view, Thorburn and his counterparts recognized that there was little future in politics along denominational lines. With an eye to political survival, he and his counterparts looked for a means to woo members of the Catholic opposition. At the same time, the 1880s in general were particularly bad years for the Newfoundland fishery. The ecological imbalance between fishers and cod mentioned earlier persisted. In turn, these local changes intersected with already mentioned problems of production and marketing brought on by bulk buying and processing.98 Additionally, foreign competition and an international depression affected not only cod fishers but a host of primary and other producers, creating a “crisis period” for the Newfoundland fishery.99 The fishery of 1886, like those immediately preceding it, was a total failure for eastern residents, making the situation desperate for those in the outports and in urban centres alike. Resuming railway construction would put people to work, and constructing a branch line to the largely Catholic district of Placentia would appeal to representatives of Catholic districts.100 Ultimately the resumption of railway construction did serve these ends. After Thorburn announced his intention to resume construction, several Liberals crossed the floor or at least frequently supported Thorburn’s proposals. Yet, in themselves, political manoeuvring and economic depression are unsatisfying as explanations for the Thorburn government’s abrupt shift in attitude and policy relating to railway development. There is no direct evidence to support the idea that Thorburn courted Catholic representatives.101 Moreover, if his strategy was simply to woo members of the opposition, it seems odd that he would

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have antagonized them in the weeks just after the opening of the assembly, only to turn around to attempt to win favour with them. The idea that the need to provide employment caused the change in policy also seems problematic. Thorburn and other Reformers were well aware of the country’s depressed economic circumstances in February 1886, and from the outset and continuing through the year they had spent heavily on road construction, other public works, and direct relief to alleviate the situation.102 There is no obvious reason that Thorburn should have felt compelled to revive railway construction. If he simply wanted to distribute more money for relief, why not do so in ways that accorded with the Reform Party’s policy of “real progress”? Why not build more roads, provide more direct relief, and undertake more public works outside of railway construction to provide the unemployed and the needy with a living? The difficulties encountered in traditional explanations for the sudden shift in Thorburn’s policy are rooted in the same tendencies as the traditional explanations for the Foxtrap upheaval. Historians have tended to presume that the form and viability of government policy is determined primarily by elites. And while elites were central in formulating and executing policies in the colony, they did not work in isolation from the colony’s working people even if, even as late as 1885, most had no voice in the formal political arena. The nature of source materials, especially in places like Newfoundland where illiteracy was widespread, makes accessing popular understandings difficult. Yet, even if we cannot determine precisely what residents of St John’s and other urban areas on the Avalon thought of the railway, it is apparent that almost immediately it was of significant interest to them, whatever their social standing. For instance, not only did a large number of men and women gather to watch the turning of the first sod near John Dwyer’s farm in 1881, but on more than one occasion, as the local press noted, individuals’ interest got the better of them and they got in the way of work crews or ventured dangerously close to locomotives as they moved down the tracks.103 Moreover, once the railway line was extensive enough, many people, including working people, incorporated train travel into their collective leisure-time pursuits. Almost immediately after the first train travelled from St John’s to Topsail in June 1882, for example, a host of unions, church organizations, clubs, and other societies in St John’s abandoned the steamship excursions popular in an earlier period for railway excursions.104 While some of the appeal of the technology no doubt had to do with its novelty, there is also evidence to suggest that fishermen and other

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working people in and around St John’s were tired of the uncertainties of the fisheries and that they took politicians’ promises of well-paid and long-lasting employment seriously. For example, even before railway construction began, Francis Winton, editor of the Morning Chronicle, believed he needed to urge Newfoundlanders to continue on in their traditional pursuits. As he noted, “employment to any extent need not be expected upon the Railroad until late in the season.” Indeed, the Railway Act had not “yet passed the three branches of the Legislature.” Thus, he “strongly advised” every “man who has employment carefully to hold on to it … The man who is foolish enough to throw up his present employment in expectation of work on the Railroad will be grievously disappointed and will deserve no pity.”105 Even after railway construction began, the number of men who were expecting work on the railway still disconcerted local elites. E.D. Shea, editor of the Newfoundlander and brother of long-time railway advocate Ambrose Shea, reminded those engaged in the fishery that only “when the fishery slackens”106 should they look for work on the railway. About a month later, although he was pleased to see that “the people seem fully alive to the important benefits” of the railway, he also encouraged the “large number of applicants now waiting to be taken on the work” to explore other means of employment.107 A more telling account of both the extent of the popularity of the railway and the meaning it held for large numbers of working people in the vicinity of the colony’s capital, however, is found in developments shortly after Thorburn took office. Voting restrictions (which would, as we shall see, be lifted by acts in 1887, 1889, and 1890) meant that many working people in Newfoundland had no say in the election. Exclusion from formal politics did not, however, keep such people from determining how the affairs of the colony ought to be run. By the spring of 1886, Newfoundlanders had endured several years of a deepening depression, and, as one Telegram reporter warned, “the masses [were] dissatisfied, sullen and angry.”108 If civil strife were to be avoided, the same writer cautioned, “something must be done soon.”109 The writer had good reason for concern. Beginning early in 1886 and continuing on to the next year, large numbers of people in St John’s and other centres on the Avalon became more and more restive as they found themselves in increasingly dire straits. In late February 1886, three to four hundred fishermen and labourers gathered at the court house in Harbour Grace to demand “Bread or Death.”110 On the 3 March, an estimated one thousand people assembled at the Colonial Building to implore the government do something to “relieve their

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present distress.”111 On 18 March, a group of men from Portugal Cove forced their way into the office of Judge Conroy in St John’s and threatened that “if they didn’t get work … they would break open a store and take provisions by force.”112 Later in the same month, workers demanding that the government take action to ameliorate their situation forced their way into the Colonial Building and occupied it while the Assembly was in session.113 In the spring and summer, workers from different parts of the island also made only slightly veiled threats in petitions. As a group from St John’s explained in an appeal to Governor William Des Voeux, “there is no fish to be caught, no work or labor to be had, and the town is filled with idle men, who are in a state of extreme destitution, and cannot exist unless some employment is given us immediately … We receive but three days’ work in a fortnight at three shillings a day, out of which we have to support our families.” Therefore, “peaceably and quietly, as loyal subjects of Her Majesty,” they asked Des Voeux “to advise your government to give us work at once, as we do not want to be driven by famine and poverty into a breach of the peace.”114 Several months later, the situation had grown tense enough that workingmen harassed the premier himself, protesting his policies as he walked through the streets of St John’s.115 As with the Foxtrap episode, politicians and the journalists and newspaper editors allied with them viewed petitions and social unrest in the later 1880s as the work of a disorderly “mob” got up by a desperate but ill-advised people. Reports of these incidents, when analyzed closely and in conjunction with the demands outlined in workmen’s petitions, suggest that working people within St John’s, like their agriculturally oriented counterparts outside the city, acted with purpose. The men who occupied the Colonial Building in late March, for example, gathered at about 1:00 p.m., and, as legislators entered in anticipation of the opening of business later that afternoon, the crowd reportedly cheered as those who supported railway extension went up the steps to the building’s entrance.116 Those who gathered outside the Assembly forced their way into the legislature, overpowered the sergeant-at-arms and several constables, and upset benches or other furniture that got in their way. Entering the main room, they headed for the speaker’s chair, where they waved a “white calico flag with the word ‘Railway’ upon it.”117 Similarly, about two weeks later, men in Harbour Grace, where the local press had reported that “mobs” were active, sent petitions to their representatives. In at least some of those petitions they argued that the settlement of agricultural lands and the increase of mining enterprises was the “secret of better times for the laboring pop-

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ulation.” Like their St John’s counterparts, they demanded the resumption of railway work, arguing that it would provide the island’s populace a means of, as they put it, “ridding ourselves” of poverty.118 The goals and platforms of organizations that many working people in the colony found appealing corroborate what is suggested by “mob” actions. Not long after popular discontent peaked, a group of men in St John’s organized the Home Industries Encouragement Society (hies). The hies was born in part out of dissatisfaction with government efforts to deal with the economic crisis. A considerable number of workingmen reportedly had come to the conclusion that if something were to be done, they themselves would have to take action to “elevate the condition of the people.” As the name implies, the hies’s organizers believed that “the secret of improving and elevating the condition of the people” lay in multiplying home industries119 and in “drafting a portion of the people who cannot live by the fisheries to other industrial occupations.”120 Organizers presented these aims not simply as desirable but as the tie that bound all true patriots in Newfoundland, and their brand of nationalism was quite popular. Just over a month after its founding, the hies had a membership of over 500 (181 of whom had been recruited between 8 and 22 November) comprised of shoemakers, carpenters, tailors, blacksmiths, bakers, tinsmiths, sail makers, general labourers, coopers, fishermen, saddlers, and others, each of whom paid a one-dollar membership fee.121 The organization was by no means a bastion of revolutionary sentiment. Indeed, its organizers saw their purpose as promoting harmony and cooperation between employers and workers. Yet the bulk of its members were workingmen, and while organizers urged employers and affluent men in general to fraternize with these people, the organization was explicitly a workers’ organization.122 In themselves, the hies objectives appear generic enough to have included virtually anyone promoting any policy of economic diversification. Yet closer analysis reveals that the organization had definite pro-Whiteway leanings. The president of the hies, who was elected directly by the membership, was James Angel, a foundry owner and a loyal Whitewayite who was rewarded for his support with an appointment to the legislative council after Whiteway came back to power in 1889.123 One of the vice-presidents, Thomas Mitchell, was a baker whom Whiteway appointed to city council in 1892.124 Regular speakers at the organization’s meetings included many of the pro-railwayites mentioned earlier – men like A.B. Morine and Thomas J. Murphy, and also new arrivals to the political scene like Edward Morris.125 Workers and others

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who flooded into the organization in its first months of existence seem to have found Whiteway’s policy of development appealing. Workers’ demands and the ways that politicians attempted to address the social unrest of the mid to later 1880s suggest that those of modest means were enthusiastic about more than just a means of procuring sustenance. The Thorburn administration had poured money into the construction of public works and purchasing and distributing supplies to the needy, and workers were well aware of that fact.126 For those in the “crowds” and at the centre of efforts to draw up petitions in Harbour Grace, St John’s, and elsewhere, it was not “relief” that they wanted. Indeed, evidence of dissatisfaction with work or employment conditions that had a stigma of charity associated with them is found in the already mentioned instances in which workingmen surrounded and intimidated Thorburn on the street. When Reformers provided work, whether on the Placentia line or on roads or other public works, they decided to withhold a percentage of workers’ earning to be distributed later in the year. Reformers claimed that the work they provided was “not a demoralizing system of issuing pauper relief to the able-bodied” and that “‘a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work’ [would] be given.”127 However, government refusal to relinquish to workers control over money that they had in theory earned indicated ongoing paternalism in providing work. Even though the railway was a form of employment that enabled the workingmen to live according to ideals of masculinity characteristic of what imperialists and colonial nationalists throughout Britain’s territories called a “British race,” the lack of individual control over earnings in Thorburn’s scheme was unacceptable because it suggested that those receiving the wages could not be trusted to make decisions for themselves. Just as Thorburn’s ambiguous attitude about control of wages paid on government-financed projects upset large numbers of people, his refusal to resume railway construction was the cause of considerable public outcry. From the 1870s onward, key portions of the island’s elite touted railway work as desirable and honourable. Payment in cash gave workers control over how and where they spent their earnings and allowed them to live according to their “god given manly independence.”128 When Thorburn refused to continue with railway construction in a period when other waged work was difficult to find, working people in St John’s and eastern urban areas reacted strongly not because they wanted relief, but precisely because they did not want relief. Thus, when men in Harbour Grace petitioned the government, they asked their representatives to enable them to rid themselves of poverty, and

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they believed that railway construction was a means to that end. Similarly, when the crowd of workers stormed the Colonial Building, they did not want handouts but rather respectable employment. As the Telegram reported, they “hooted and yelled and refused to leave, saying they wanted ‘Railway’… they did not want food, and did not pretend to want it. They wanted Railway.”129 In terms of understanding Thorburn’s shift, then, popular unrest was vitally important. Even more important for the long term, perhaps, are the already mentioned changes in the political system in late nineteenth-century Newfoundland. The upheavals both reflected and promoted what Kenneth Kerr has called a “creeping plebianism” in Newfoundland’s formal politics of that period. The government not only adopted the secret ballot in 1887 but also introduced a more democratic franchise in 1889 and 1890.130 The move to a secret ballot was important for several reasons. First, in an open system, where each voter had to declare the candidate for which he voted, the decision could easily be swayed by physical threats at the polling station. Moreover, elites knew who voted which way. Men of small means knew that if they voted for the “wrong” candidate, they might find themselves at an economic disadvantage in the post-election period. After 1887 politicians could not be sure who had voted which way, and they had to find new tactics to influence voters. They now had to win votes through convincing large segments of the electorate to vote for them by promising to bring about changes that would benefit the masses. They had to address their political platforms directly to the island’s working people. The introduction of a more democratic franchise after 1890 only accentuated these tendencies.131 The form of the 1889 election began to take shape in 1887. At that time Robert Bond and Alfred B. Morine, both independent mhas, urged William Whiteway to come out of retirement. He agreed, and he apparently understood the new political realities and the appeal that railway development had among Newfoundland’s workers, for he marked his official return to the political arena and the beginning of his campaign for re-election with a huge torch-lit rally, complete with marching bands and fireworks. No longer was his simply the “party of progress.” Instead, he was now the “apostle of progress,” and “the leader of the workingman’s party.” He surrounded himself with banners. One had a picture of a locomotive on it. Another read “A Railway to Hall’s Bay by Whiteway,” while still others informed the crowd that Whiteway would bring “Progress,” “Labour and Good Wages,” and “No More Emigration.”132

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That an estimated three thousand people came out to celebrate Whiteway’s return to politics indicates that he enjoyed some popularity.133 While he was no doubt responsible for some of it, the continuing depression and Reformers’ handling of railway work on the line to Placentia also were key. Thorburn and his Reformers could do little about the depression. They did, however, have control over construction of the Placentia line, and, especially in the context of the new political situation, the populace would and could hold them personally responsible for the treatment that they received. We have already noted the unpopularity of Thorburn’s policy of withholding wages. In addition, while those who worked for the Blackman syndicate were paid on average a dollar a day, the Thorburn government paid only seventy-five cents. Workers also often had to take some or all of their wages in credit at stores operated by members or friends of Thorburn’s administration. Working and living conditions were miserable; workers were reportedly given a roll of tar paper and some nails to build themselves shelters while they were on the line.134 This treatment of workers, including the payment in truck, was extremely unpopular, and Whiteway and his counterparts capitalized on that disaffection. The Telegram (the pro-Whiteway paper at the time) reminded workers of the comparatively low wages. In addition to calling the Thorburn and Reformers the “stagnation party” and the “fish flake party,” Whiteway supporters dubbed them the “flour and molasses party” as a way of drawing attention to the payment of wages in truck.135 The Reformers tried to counter by arguing that they were now “in the van of progress,” and by adopting rhetoric virtually identical to that which Whiteway had used in the early 1880s and continued to use in the 1889 election. They also took concrete steps to demonstrate that they were truly a party of “progress” as a large proportion of the electorate understood the term. Late in 1888, they actually resumed work on the Hall’s Bay line.136 But the bulk of the voting population apparently did not find Reformers’ appeals convincing, for Whiteway was swept back into office, leading a group of young, up-and-coming political figures such as Robert Bond and Edward Morris who would continue in politics as leaders of “workingmen’s” and “people’s” parties for many decades to come. In the context of an increasingly democratic political order, success in politics required candidates to be able to read as well as to influence popular sentiment. Thorburn later acknowledged that Whiteway’s landslide victory in 1889 was in large measure attributable to his skill at navigating a political landscape in which class-based populism was

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increasingly important.137 Governor O’Brien was also aware of the shift, and displeased by it, as he believed that democratization lowered the quality of politics and politicians. He reflected in a letter to the Colonial Office several years after the election, “I regret to have to add that through the effect of the Ballot and universal manhood suffrage granted to our uneducated people the personnel of the new House is still lower than that of the last.”138 Scott Eaton has pointed out that St John’s and Avalon districts did not determine political outcomes on their own,139 yet the support of working people in urban parts of the most populous region of the island in the later 1880s did contribute significantly to the dominance of a rail-centred landward development policy. Such support, then, helped to ensure that such policies would be central to the “eastern perspective” that many of those off the Avalon experienced for some time to come. The year after Whiteway came to power, the government negotiated a contract with C.H. Middleton and Robert G. Reid to complete the railway to Hall’s Bay. While Middleton dropped out of the partnership in 1892, Reid and his descendants became synonymous with the Newfoundland railway and, indeed, came to loom large in Newfoundland history more generally. Reid not only saw the Hall’s Bay line through to completion but also agreed to build a trans-insular line. He began that project in 1893, and workers in his employ completed it five years later. As regional opposition movements, ecological change, and marketing and production problems associated with bulk buying and selling of fish limited the extent to which the Newfoundland government could expand in either the bank or shore fisheries, politicians and merchants alike increasingly viewed the island’s interior as providing the potential economic foundation for their fledgling dominion. While most politicians and many working people may have agreed that landward development was the best path forward, however, there was no homogeneity of opinion among residents of the east. And, while ethno-religious and class and other divisions were important, “place” coloured the sensibilities and perspectives that such divisions wrought. Working people in the rural fringe of St John’s began their own landward development independent of the colonial government. As catch rates declined, many turned their attention to the backbreaking work of transforming scrubland near their communities into a productive agricultural region, and they increasingly came to depend for their income on the surpluses they grew and sold to urban residents. When the colonial government set out on a program of railway development, its members did so with

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the understanding that the project would not only open up agricultural territory in the interior but also foster a booming industrial economy in St John’s. Proponents of this large-scale program of landward development, however, soon ran up against those in areas just outside of the colony’s capital city. Just as the government hired survey crews, those earlier pioneers of localized landward development were beginning to enjoy the fruits of many years of hard labour. Conflict arose between the two groups as the railway crews marked hard-won agricultural land for expropriation and destruction as the site of the future railway line. While rural residents’ protests did not ultimately stay the railway project, anti-railway politicians did. However, after the colony’s anti-railway faction came to power, pro-railway unrest in St John’s and in other urban areas of the Avalon contributed greatly to a resumption of railway work. As important as urban workers were for policy and politics, their case also is worthy of consideration for what it reveals about the significant divergences of opinion among residents of the east. For many working people in and around St John’s and other urban areas, the best hope of a vibrant future was the railway and the possible work in the factories and industries that railway promoters promised would spring up after the infrastructure was in place. Such men hoped that the project and the industries it spawned would enable them to escape from the fishery and allow for greater independence. For those in rural parts of the Avalon who had already partly escaped the fishery through transforming scrubland into farms, the railway was a threat to the same hoped-for future. Ultimately, widespread support for the railway in the most populous areas of the Avalon and elsewhere in eastern Newfoundland ensured that railway-centred development strategies would be key to the “eastern perspective” those living in other parts of the island would come to know.

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4 Place and Resistance to the “Government of St John’s” The St George’s Bay Dispute of 1889–1892

Plans to build a British society by developing landward resources gained support from a wide variety of residents of the Avalon Peninsula and elsewhere in the east. There were, however, significant obstacles to realizing such an envisioned future. In the long term, for example, climate and ecology meant that colonial officials and public intellectuals were probably overly optimistic about the agricultural potential of some areas of the island. In the more immediate term, the central obstacles had to do with diplomatic inheritances that reflected the particularities of Newfoundland’s post-contact history. As few Europeans after 1500 had viewed the island as anything other than a base for a seasonal fishery, no one power, except in times of conflict, had sought to monopolize it. Even though the British controlled the island and could have excluded competitors from the early eighteenth century on, they allowed others access to the fishing banks. They also permitted other nations’ fishing fleets to use the beaches for drying fish, and to use local resources (fresh water and materials for building flakes and repairing boats and vessels) necessary to the trade. After the Napoleonic wars, fishers from other British North American colonies, France, and the United States all fished off the island. While residents of the neighbouring colonies had rights rooted in their common membership in the empire, treaty agreements with the British government underwrote French and American claims. As colonial politicians began to reimagine the interior and western parts of the island as the key to a vibrant future for Newfoundland, the agreements devised in the earlier context remained in force. As we have already seen, these agreements were integral to the social and commercial life of residents in the vicinity of Fortune Bay. Their signifi-

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cance, however, extended well beyond southern parts of the island, for while St Pierre and Miquelon were important bases for the French fishery, treaty agreements also gave the French rights to parts of the west coast during the fishing season. As historians have long noted, French claims to the coast incensed politicians and commercial elites based in St John’s.1 French claims were an obstacle to the development of resources on or near the west coast. They were also a barrier to the dominant, railway-centred strategy of landward development, for the claims prevented the use of most areas of the west coast as a terminus for the trans-insular line. The St George’s Bay dispute, a conflict over the herring fishery in the late 1880s and early 1890s, was linked to colonial politicians’ frustrations with this diplomatic inheritance. In the late 1880s, the Newfoundland government set out to encourage the French to relinquish their claims to the island by using their control over local matters to restrict French access to bait. At that time, as in previous years, the goal was to interfere with the French bank fishery. In a context of declining returns in the shore fishery, the idea was that in limiting the only remaining lucrative French fishery, colonial officials would encourage the French to withdraw their claims. Doing so would open the west coast to unfettered development and allow completion of infrastructural projects thought essential to the future vibrancy of the country. In 1887 the House of Assembly passed a Bait Act stipulating that no bait could be sold to the French without a licence from the Newfoundland government. While an illicit trade still existed, the government increased patrols on the south coast to lend force to the legislation, and, as evidence taken in an inquiry into the effect of the act later demonstrated, the measure did interfere with French access to bait in the region.2 On the west coast things were different. Despite having established two electoral districts in the region five years prior to the passage of the Bait Act, the Newfoundland government still found its legislative powers limited by treaty agreements. The act, therefore, essentially did not pertain to the west coast, and the French looked to St George’s Bay, long known for its lucrative spring herring fishery, to procure bait for their bankers. Had the French been content to purchase bait from St George’s Bay fishers at the market rate, they likely would have found few complaints. However, French frustration with the colonial government, and their desire to secure as much of the baitfish on the west coast as possible at the lowest possible price, led them to impose rules that harmed traders and fishermen based in the Bay. Particularly offensive were French prohibi-

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tions against the sale of bait to any but French vessels. Moreover, French crews were removing herring from residents’ nets without permission or compensation, excluding local fishers from choice fishing grounds, and introducing gear that fishermen believed would be detrimental to the long-term viability of the fishery.3 Residents soon grew restive. In contrast to the Fortune Bay dispute, however, they did not resort to violence; instead, they blamed the colonial government for failing to protect their interests and the security of their property, and they forwarded official complaints and claims for damages to the House of Assembly through their magistrate and representative. The turmoil and the claims ultimately resulted in a commission of inquiry whose members travelled to the coast to investigate the matter in 1891. While the Fortune Bay conflict has received much scholarly attention, the St George’s Bay dispute has not. It is worthy of consideration, however, for in understanding the sources of residents’ grievance and the rationale for their responses to French incursions, as well as colonial politicians’ responses to residents’ demands, we gain insight into underappreciated aspects of the history of the treaty coast and of Newfoundland more generally. The St George’s Bay dispute and the demands that went along with it grew out of ambiguities and contradictions inherent to the position of a large portion of the settler population of the west coast. Although members of a British settler society, they also inhabited a region where rights granted to the French interfered with residents’ obtaining clear title to property and the establishment of electoral districts and judicial institutions thought typical for “British peoples” at the time. Especially during the last third of the nineteenth century, members of the colonial government and leading religious and intellectual figures based in St John’s often pointed to the undesirability of this situation. Predictably, they held it up as an example of the kind of abuses and hardships Newfoundlanders had to endure. The situation exemplified the imperial government’s willingness to sacrifice the interests and well-being of Britain’s “oldest and most loyal colony” to foster and sustain friendly relations with a rival imperial state. Historians have also noted imperial neglect, and they have tended to echo the views of these elite men and women. For them, however, the focus has not been so much on decrying the supposed injustice of the arrangement as on explaining how colonial officials extended their reach into western parts of the island to rid the population of this “extraordinarily anachronistic” and egregious state of affairs. They have emphasized that even before the Entente Cordiale (1904), colonial politicians enjoyed considerable success, gaining the right once and for all to appoint magis-

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trates in 1877, and establishing electoral districts on the treaty shore (St Barbe and St George’s) in 1882.4 In examining the views and beliefs of St George’s residents, however, it is clear that their interpretation of the situation was different from that of St John’s elites and recent historians. Some families in this bay had been established for several generations by the late nineteenth century. Others had migrated only a few years before the St George’s Bay dispute broke out. Whether they were long established or newly arrived, most of those living in the area had neither strong connections with nor affinities for their counterparts in eastern parts of the island. Instead, they were more closely connected, often by family ties, and almost universally by commercial links, with Canadian centres, particularly with Halifax. Many residents of the Bay also did not generally lament the indeterminacy of their standing. For some, living on the borderland of the French and British empires had provided tremendous commercial opportunity and enabled them to become prosperous traders. It was also a precondition for the high degree of control that fishers in the Bay had over exploiting and managing the resources adjacent to their communities, and for access to comparatively inexpensive staple goods. Given that this unique situation underpinned the commerce and social system in the Bay, attempts to end it stood as a potential threat to those same systems, and residents of St George’s Bay saw the colonial government’s late nineteenth-century manoeuvrings in this light. While the colonial government may have had to do battle with French and British authorities, then, a key reason that they had limited success in establishing magistrates, customs collectors, and other officials on the coast before the 1870s was that residents of St George’s Bay and other parts of the treaty coast refused to accept them. Indeed, the colonial government’s appointment of a stipendiary magistrate in 1877 was as much a victory over local resistance to the appointment of such officials and the taxes necessary to pay for them as it was over French or British reluctance to approve them. The victory, however, was by no means final, as resistance to officials the colonial government appointed continued for several years after the magistrate took up his post. By the early 1880s, a large number of residents in the Bay and on the treaty shore more generally accepted a future with St John’s. They did so mostly because they recognized that the imperial government, preoccupied with pressing matters elsewhere in the empire, had little appetite for opposing the more populous and more politically and economically powerful eastern portions of the island, many of whose residents in-

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creasingly saw the development of the west coast as a means of securing their future as a British country. West coast residents, including those in St George’s Bay, however, accepted this future on their own terms. If they were to follow the laws and pay the duties, licence fees, and other taxes that residents of other regions of the island paid, they also expected to do so as fully fledged British subjects who enjoyed political representation, full participation in legal institutions, and secure title to property. Residents accepted the authority of the colonial government only as long as it safeguarded these rights, and the St George’s dispute highlights how tenuous the integration of the region into the orbit of St John’s was. The fact that the French could arbitrarily imperil residents’ property and access to long-standing staple resources such as herring raised questions about whether the officials and institutions which they had recently accepted, and which they paid to support, could deliver. The existing treaty agreements between French and British governments limited the extent to which the colonial government could interfere in the French fishery. Nevertheless, to maintain support among west coast residents, colonial officials had little choice but to accept responsibility for failing to protect those under their domain. French claims to portions of the west coast of Newfoundland were linked with the same tangle of eighteenth-century agreements that had ceded St Pierre and Miquelon on the south coast. Part of the conditions for French recognition of British sovereignty over Newfoundland in 1713 was that the French could still land and process their catch on designated parts of the island during the fishing season. Originally the French and British agreed that the “French Shore” would extend from Cape Bonavista to Point Riche on the western side of the Great Northern Peninsula.5 During the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, periodic hostility between the French and the British led to the repeated suspension and reinstatement of French rights in the Newfoundland fishery. After the American Revolution, the two parties changed the boundaries of the treaty shore. As of 1783, it began at Cape St John on the island’s northeast coast and included the eastern and western sides of the Great Northern Peninsula and the entire west coast of the island down to Cape Ray. The two powers reaffirmed these boundaries in the wake of the Napoleonic wars when, under the Treaties of Paris (1814 and 1815), the British reinstated French fishing rights once again. On these stretches of coast, Newfoundlanders and

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other British subjects could not erect structures inhibiting or otherwise interfering with the French fishery.6 By the later nineteenth century, residents of St George’s Bay were accustomed to the presence of the French. One of the key French fishing stations on the west coast was on Red Island, just a few miles northwest of the Bay, and French vessels regularly used the waters off Sandy Point, the main community in St George’s, as a refuge from rough weather and as a base from which to trade with local residents. During the century between 1783, when the French and British governments redrew the boundaries of the treaty coast to include St George’s Bay, and 1889, when the troubles in the Bay first began to heat up, relations between the two groups were mostly amicable. This happy state of affairs resulted partly from the good will that emerged as residents traded and worked with the French. Residents also were generally “grateful to the French for many little acts of kindness.” 7 The French, for example, brought a physician to Newfoundland with them each season. Medical assistance was in short supply on the treaty shore, and the French reportedly never turned away ill or injured residents, sometimes even taking them onboard their vessels for several days or even weeks to nurse them back to health.8 The relative harmoniousness of settler-French relations in St George’s Bay was also partly rooted in indifference that, in turn, was an outgrowth of the commercial orientations of the two groups. For much of the nineteenth century, Bay residents focused their energies on the herring fishery, while the French targeted cod. From the perspective of St George’s fishers, the French were not especially significant for the conduct of their staple trade. Most of the herring from St George’s Bay was what contemporaries called “shore herring.” They were thinner and smaller than the “bank herring” of the winter fishery in Fortune Bay or the spring fishery off Labrador.9 Classed as “no. 3 herring,”10 they, like the gill-netted fish on the south coast, were a grade thought suitable only as bait, or as food for plantation workers in the southern United States and the West Indies. Though not fond of the fish, workers in such locales consumed it in great quantities, enabling them to produce tropical products for export to growing industrial centres in the United States and Europe.11 Fishers of St George’s Bay and French crews, then, targeted different species. Moreover, few of the markets residents of the Bay traded in, and the traders they traded through, were linked to the French trade. This orientation meant that little friction was likely to develop between the two groups.

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As well, even though there was considerable French demand for herring for bait throughout the late nineteenth century, there was little interest in the St George’s Bay herring specifically. The reasons for this disinterest varied for different fleet sectors. The French fishery had two contingents, both of which arrived in early April. One contingent, based at St Pierre and focused on the bank fishery, mostly sailed out of Bayonne, Dieppe, and, to a lesser extent, St Malo. The other, primarily concerned with the shore fishery and based on the west coast and Labrador, mostly operated out of St Malo, St Brieuc, Nantes, and Granville.12 For those who fished the banks, the lack of interest in St George’s Bay herring had to do with the timing of their fishery and the habits of the fish in this region. Unlike Fortune Bay, which served as both an overwintering area and a spawning ground for herring, St George’s Bay was exclusively a spring spawning area. The fish arrived in the bay in enormous numbers in early May, usually remaining there for four to six weeks.13 French banking crews and shore fishermen both arrived in early April. For the banking crews, the timing of the St George’s herring fishery was not ideal. These men hoped to be halfway through their first trip to the banks by early May, when the herring was just starting to arrive off Sandy Point. Thus, they preferred to bait on the south coast, where herring arrived earlier, and where they would be closer to the fishing grounds. For French crews engaged in the shore fishery, the increasingly prevalent mode of fishing meant that bait in general was of less interest than it might have been. Though French fishermen on the west coast employed some bultows and engaged in a limited hook and line fishery, by mid-century their operations mostly involved seining. This method of capture, focused as it was on trapping fish rather than enticing them to feed, meant that herring or bait of any kind was not as important to the French as it might otherwise have been. While French crews employed in the shore fishery took what herring they needed, the quantity of fish they took from St George’s Bay was inconsequential.14 If undisturbed, French crews and settlers in St George’s Bay might have continued on harmoniously. They were not, however, left to themselves. In 1887, the House of Assembly passed the Bait Act. Partly motivated by the particularly bleak economic situation of the mid to later 1880s, it was the colonial government’s last attempt to use its control over local matters to assert control over the banks fishery. Moreover, the colony’s politicians hoped that a less lucrative bank fishery would influence the French to withdraw their claims to the island more gen-

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erally. Instead, the act provoked a more aggressive assertion of claims to west coast fisheries. This emboldening of French naval officers and others in the region ended the previously peaceful relations between the French and the settler population in St George’s Bay. Although the timing might have been later than French crews would have liked, outside of the south coast, St George’s Bay was the most abundant, secure source of herring in relatively close proximity to the banks. The French began travelling to the region to procure bait in 1888, the first year that the Bait Act took effect. At that time, there was little complaint from St George’s fishers. In fact, initially residents thought the Bait Act might be a boon for them as they surmised that “the French, being excluded from the purchase of Bait in Fortune Bay would be obliged to come to this shore to procure it.” They presumed that they would profit from expanded trade, and in the first year that the act was in effect, their predictions were borne out; the French purchased bait from St George’s fishers at the going rate.15 The following year, however, the French brought baiting vessels with them from St Pierre, not only catching herring for themselves but also claiming exclusive use of the most desirable fishing grounds. In 1890 and 1891, they insisted that St George’s Bay fishermen remove their nets from any location that might interfere with French bait fishing. Moreover, in at least one of these years, British officers on the coast reaffirmed the French right to intervene in the fishery in this way. In 1891, the French further aggravated residents of St George’s Bay by reportedly removing herring from local fishermens’ nets without permission and requiring that they sell bait exclusively to the French, and at a reduced cost.16 Residents of the region were outraged. Fishermen landed all of the 20,000 barrels (approximately 4,000,000 pounds) of herring they caught annually during the few weeks in the spring when the fish swarmed into the Bay. French interference, even if for a short time, seriously limited the extent to which families in the area could profit from the fishery and effectively removed a key source of annual income.17 Yet, if the fishermen’s hostility to French interference in their fishery was predictable, their response was not. In a few instances, they directly confronted French fishermen.18 Their main reaction, however, was to register complaints and claims for damages with their own government, contacting the magistrate in their district almost immediately after the French began interfering with the fishery.19 Residents of the Bay had, they explained, paid the same taxes, fines, and duties as other residents of the colony. Moreover, the colony, with the consent of the British government, had recognized their settlement through placing the region under the jurisdiction

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of the Supreme Court, establishing police, magistrates, and customs officials, and conceding them a representative in the House of Assembly. This being the case, they demanded that the magistrate protect their interests. When he explained that he was powerless to act, given that international treaties still gave the French rights to the coast fisheries, residents turned to their mha, Michael Carty.20 He, in turn, sent a letter to Robert Bond, then colonial secretary, requesting that the Government of Newfoundland compensate the people of his district for their losses. After more than a year of petitions and complaints, colonial officials established a commission to inquire into the occurrences at St George’s Bay. Ultimately, they accepted the claims as legitimate, if inflated; however, residents never did receive the compensation.21 The St George’s Bay dispute presents something of a curious scenario. The immediate cause of residents’ dissatisfaction was the French interference in the St George’s Bay herring fishery. Yet the popular response was not to assault or otherwise target the French but to make claims against the colonial government for damages inflicted by a foreign power. The puzzle that this dispute presents, then, is in explaining residents’ strategies and the colonial government’s response to demands placed upon it, both of which seem counterintuitive. Why would a settler population demand that their own government pay for damages inflicted by a foreign nation? Moreover, why would the Newfoundland government accept the claims as valid, especially given that international treaty agreements it had no part in negotiating seriously limited its authority in the region where the aggrieved parties resided? Here it is important to investigate the particular historical circumstances that produced the claims and concessions. The views, claims, and responses evidenced in the St George’s Bay dispute were not simply a product of the Bait Act. Instead, they reflected the particular tensions and ambiguities of the position that residents of the Bay occupied. That position and the particular subjectivities, aims, and perspectives associated with it have figured marginally in much writing about Newfoundland in the later nineteenth century. As with the Fortune Bay dispute, understanding those tensions and ambiguities requires placing the dispute and the sentiments and strategies surrounding it within a longer social, economic, and political history. The area in and around St George’s Bay, like many regions of the island, had abundant marine resources. It also included some of the island’s best farmland.22 Moreover, three sizable rivers that empty into the Bay provide access into the interior of the island, home to game and, at one

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time, substantial populations of fur-bearing animals. These marine and terrestrial environs and the ready access to the interior made the region appealing to a variety of peoples before and after European contact, though details of their activities are not always clear. For instance, the Beothuks frequented the area before Europeans arrived. It appears that a small group (probably around forty to fifty people) lived there at least on a seasonal basis.23 The Bay may also have been a site of interest to Mi’kmaq peoples in pre-contact times, though it is difficult to say with certainty that these people travelled to the region regularly much before the seventeenth century.24 While sailors had charted the area in the fifteenth century, Europeans did not regularly visit until the sixteenth century when the Bay served as a refuge for Basque whalers who cruised the coast.25 By the mid-eighteenth century, French and English fishing crews in search of cod and salmon occupied the coast seasonally, as did Aboriginal hunters who travelled to the area to hunt beaver, martin, and other fur-bearing animals for Quebec-based merchants.26 There is little evidence of fixed permanent settlements in the region after the period of Beothuk occupancy until the later eighteenth century. Members of fishing crews from Jersey made their way to the area near St George’s Bay, often coming from the island’s south coast where they had migrated in significant numbers from the Channel Islands after the French withdrew from the region in 1713. The first permanent residents of the Bay in the post-contact period, the Searle and Huelin families, were part of this group, arriving around 1770.27 In addition to the Channel Islanders were men and women of Aboriginal ancestry, some of them Mi’kmaq sojourners who moved to the Bay in the later eighteenth century after the British established control over Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island. The Mi’kmaq, former military and trade allies of the French, appear to have come to the area partly to escape the encroachment of an expanding settler population in Cape Breton. The group also seem, as Olaf Janzen and Dennis Bartels have persuasively argued, to have preferred to live in close proximity to the French who then occupied St Pierre, because it allowed them access to a Catholic priest and the best hope of continuing on with exchange practices that had become central to their survival.28 Others, the so-called Jack-o-Tars, of Acadian and Aboriginal ancestry, appear to have been drawn to the region by the prospect of economic opportunity.29 In the early nineteenth century, a range of European-descended settlers entered the Bay. These included a substantial number of Scots, Highland crofters or their descendants, displaced by the clearances of

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the later eighteenth century.30 In addition, there were significant numbers of metropolitan French, either deserters from the many fishing vessels that frequented the coast each year, or those who had come to the coast as employees of a French firm and decided to strike out on their own.31 Especially after the middle of the nineteenth century, migrants from Quebec and the Maritimes moved to the area to establish mines and lumber mills.32 Significant numbers of men and women from Newfoundland’s east coast also made their way to the Bay. The bulk of these people either discovered the region on their increasingly frequent voyages to Labrador or migrated from Labrador when the fishery failed in northern climes.33 Finally, there were some families in the region of a more unlikely character. Because of the Bay’s proximity to an international shipping lane, vessels from various European ports happened by it on their way to Montreal or other mainland ports. At times, either through choice or misfortune, some of those aboard such ships landed and stayed on in the Bay.34 The core of the economic life of this culturally and linguistically diverse selection of people changed over time as social conditions on the coast and ecological circumstances shifted. Most of the Bay’s earliest inhabitants came to fish for salmon and to trap fur-bearing animals.35 Such activities remained important throughout the late nineteenth century, although from the early years of the century fur-bearing animals in the area fell off and the salmon fishery could not sustain a growing settler population, at least in part because of declining stocks. The extent of the decline is indicated by inquiries conducted in the later 1850s by H.H. Forrest, a lawyer by training.36 His father, Henry Essex Forrest, who hailed from Ireland, appears to have been involved in some capacity in trade in the Caribbean before moving to Montreal where he worked as a clerk, first for Simon McTavish, a leading light in the North West Company. After the North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company merged under the Hudson’s Bay Company banner in 1821, Henry continued on in the new firm.37 The younger Forrest moved to Sandy Point in the 1830s, probably after his father became familiar with the area through his work with the hbc, for the firm traded extensively on the lower north shore of Quebec. H.H. Forrest rose to become one of the “principal residents” of the community. When in 1856 he asked the oldest residents of the community about changes in their average catch of fish, he found that over the previous fifteen years landings had declined by about a third, despite the introduction of increasingly intensive fishing practices.38 The declining catches also had to do with the comparatively small number of rivers and streams

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on which to fish. The earliest settlers laid claim to particular rivers and passed rights to those fisheries to their descendants.39 Accordingly, both new arrivals and an expanding number of the descendants of long-established families had to find other means of making a living. To this end, residents of Crabbs Brook, Robinsons, and other emerging St George’s communities directed significant energy to farming. One of the distinguishing features of the southwest coast was that here, in contrast to many areas of the Avalon Peninsula, the areas around Fortune Bay, and Labrador, it was possible to earn a living from farming. Indeed, many early settlers migrated to the region from more congested agricultural areas of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia so that they could continue on as farmers.40 While the land was not as rich as that in the Codroy Valley just to the south, parts of St George’s Bay were sufficiently fertile to sustain farms that, for visitors to the region, contrasted sharply with the agricultural endeavours witnessed elsewhere on the island. As Rev. James Kelly, bishop of Newfoundland, noted during a visit to Sandy Point and vicinity in 1870, “the luxuriant crop of potatoes and other vegetables attracted the notice of all on board, Sandy Point being much warmer than the south and east coast, and vegetation therefore earlier. The fresh verdure was very welcome to the eye, and we were never tired of the magnificent view of the range of hills to the N.E., with smiling farms.”41 The area was bountiful enough that many residents of the Bay not only supplied themselves with much of the food they needed but also grew hay for sheep, cows, steers, and other livestock, and even generated a surplus to trade for other necessary items or services.42 During the French fishing season, Bay residents held a weekly market to supply migratory crews with fresh meat, poultry, butter, eggs, and vegetables.43 Residents also branched out into other fisheries, many engaging in some cod fishing directly off their coasts or, later, off Labrador.44 Until the later 1880s when lobster became more important, however, most Bay fishermen concentrated on the herring fishery. And, while the actual catching of herring absorbed their energies only for a few weeks in the spring, this fishery nevertheless structured residents’ productive lives throughout much of the year. Much time was spent constructing barrels, knitting or mending nets, and preparing boats and premises for the spring fishery. Residents often travelled from the coast into the interior, or to the Bay of Islands (the great lumber yard of the west coast), to access stands of timber and other materials from which they fashioned hoops and staves.45 The opening of lobster canneries in the region in the later nineteenth century reinforced this pattern, although

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instead of spending the winter making barrels, residents increasingly turned their attention to building traps.46 Life for residents of St George’s Bay differed from that of residents of the east and other parts of Newfoundland in that the area was not only more agriculturally oriented but also sustained a significant number of lumber mills and forestry-related industries.47 At least as important as these environmental and geological distinctions, however, was the extent to which shifting treaty arrangements directly and profoundly affected the circumstances in which settlers operated. Of course, French rights in Newfoundland affected people living in other regions. As we have already seen, many business elites and politicians in St John’s came to see the limitations to development on the west coast as a barrier to a prosperous future. French trading and other interventions in the area around Hermitage Bay and Fortune Bay were a source of irritation for colonial politicians and a lucrative and vital source of income for many residents and traders in that region. Yet, the ways that French claims affected residents of St George’s was distinctive. When the Huelins and the Searles set up their homes in the Bay, they were well within the limits of an unequivocally British territory where they enjoyed the same rights and privileges of settlers elsewhere on the island. Their children, as well as other settlers who entered the Bay in the ensuing decade or so, held the same status. In 1783, their situation changed dramatically as it did for the Messervey and Dennis families briefly discussed in this book’s introduction. For much of the eighteenth century, the French and British had been embroiled in war. When American colonists rebelled against the British in 1776, the French sided with the colonists. During the Revolutionary War, the French vacated their fishery, and in their absence a large number of settlers moved into the regions the French had formerly held, particularly in Notre Dame Bay. When the French and British redrew the boundaries of the French Shore, St George’s Bay fell within reconstituted limits.48 At first, settlers’ future in the region looked bleak, as the French hoped to obtain exclusive rights to the coast in the 1783 negotiations. However, the British rejected that arrangement, insisting instead on a concurrent right to the fisheries of the west coast. The British did, however, agree to prevent British fishermen from interfering with the French, and to remove fixed establishments from the coast.49 Residents of St George’s thus found themselves in a distressing situation. Expulsions following the acquisition or loss of overseas territory by one of the imperial powers were by no means unheard of in

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the later eighteenth century. The famous removal of the Acadians of Nova Scotia was not too distant a memory for older residents of St George’s in 1783. Moreover, the experiences of the Messervey and Dennis families in St George’s Bay were not isolated affairs. Indeed, not long after the French and British signed the 1783 treaty, the French removed settlers who had established salmon fishing stations just north of St George’s Bay in the Bay of Islands.50 It is not clear whether the French now intended to remove all settlers on the coast or only those whose operations directly interfered with their fisheries. Fortunately for residents of St George’s, the French never acted on whatever plans they may have had immediately after the signing of the 1783 treaty. Soon the British were excluding the French from the Newfoundland fisheries once again, as war between the two countries erupted in 1793 and continued almost without interruption for the next twenty years. By the time this last round of hostilities ended in 1815 and the French once more gained rights to the coast between Cape St John and Cape Ray, settlers in the region were too numerous to be easily removed. Moreover, the French found the settlers’ presence convenient, as they could be employed as guardians in the winter months.51 While their existence on the coast may have been more secure after 1815, then, residents of the Bay were very much a part of a “borderland” – an area in which overlapping imperial claims and competing intraimperial economic strategies produced a measure of indeterminacy. Here as elsewhere, that indeterminacy coloured the history of the place in various ways. For instance, it meant that settlers on the west coast did not possess rights and institutions – such as the franchise or regular judicial institutions – essential to contemporary definitions of the life of “British peoples.” Moreover, until the French relinquished their claims to the island in 1904, residents lacked clear title to property, a situation particularly significant for social and economic life on the treaty coast and a disincentive to investment in the region. After all, establishing a base of operations in the fishery or exploiting other resources on the coast required a substantial investment in wharves and other infrastructure. As potential investors could not get clear title to facilities they constructed, merchants from St John’s and elsewhere on the island were disinclined to make the investment. Instead, they focused their attention on more easterly portions of the island and on Labrador, oriented themselves to England, the West Indies, and Europe, and focused on finding ways to better compete with rival fishing powers.52 While there is evidence that St John’s firms sent trading vessels to the west coast in the earlier nineteenth century, they were merely one faction among a

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larger group of traders who hailed from the United States, the Maritimes, Jersey, and France. This commercial competition made the region less lucrative than it might have been had these eastern firms been able to dominate the trade. Moreover, the French insisted that only residents of St George’s could fish in the Bay. Such limitations caused much complaint from eastern merchants and residents of neighbouring British colonies.53 The imperial government, however, was unwilling to challenge the French position, and the restrictions limited supplemental income that migratory traders might have got from fishing.54 The obstacles to developing infrastructure necessary for exploiting resources and the limitations on fishing rights in St George’s Bay shaped residents’ interactions with the Newfoundland government and residents of eastern parts of the island. There was some contact between the two parts of the island throughout the nineteenth century. At about the same time that colonial officials first contemplated intervening in Labrador, they sent a representative to St George’s Bay to serve the dual role of customs officer and magistrate. The desire to identify, monitor, and tax trade and fisheries on different parts of the island (the same impulse that led to the deployment of revenue cruisers north and south) partly motivated this move. Also important were the concerns of residents of St George’s Bay, particularly those such as H.H. Forrest, who had accumulated significant wealth through the commerce of the Bay. As increasing numbers of relatively poor Acadian-Mi’kmaq settlers (“Jack-o-Tars”) entered the Bay, Forrest and others, who viewed these people as prone to begging and thieving, worried about the security of their property.55 Forrest petitioned the colonial government to extend representative institutions and a formal system of policing and justice to St George’s. 56 The colonial government’s early efforts to do so ended badly. Members of the House of Assembly chose for the position James Tobin, a merchant down on his luck, later expanding his duties to include the surveillance of the Strait of Belle Isle. Soon after Tobin arrived at Sandy Point, however, it was clear that the salary was not the only appealing aspect of the position for him. In an effort to regain some of his former affluence, he attempted to use the powers granted him to impose illegitimate taxes and otherwise to disadvantage already established traders in the Bay.57 His efforts, eventually denounced even by his friends and associates in St John’s, soon had “the whole settlement ... aflame.”58 Tobin left St George’s after only three years in his post. After Tobin’s departure, Bay residents sometimes requested assistance from the governor in particularly lean years, and the governor, in turn,

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periodically brought the requests to the attention of colonial officials. Such requests might arise in years when the fishery was poor or when some unexpected natural event – for example, a particularly intense storm or a flood – interfered with the normal commerce of the Bay.59 Requests also might arise in the case of disputes among residents of the Bay, or between the French and residents, which they could not resolve themselves.60 Generally, relations between the French and settlers were friendly; the only unmanageable period of conflict, from the end of the Napoleonic wars to the early 1890s, occurred in 1859. That conflict was not the product of divisions within the Bay so much as the consequence of the policies and manoeuvrings of the colonial government, which had recently prevented the implementation of a convention between the British and French governments. The French antagonized residents of the Bay in the hopes that the aggrieved parties would complain to the governor, who would then pressure colonial politicians to change their course. As the French naval officer explained to prominent area residents, they should “communicate with the Government at St John’s and induce them to make some new Arrangement with the English and French Governments,” as so doing would prevent future disruptions of the fishery in St George’s Bay. 61 Moreover, relations among residents themselves were mostly peaceable and conducive to a vibrant commerce, one that generally sustained residents. Indeed, naval captains and others who visited the coast often commented on the relative prosperity of St George’s as compared to other localities.62 While disputes among residents did occur, the need to resort to outside authorities was rare, mostly because after Tobin left, residents of the community developed a highly effective system of justice for the Bay. Members of the community chose one or more individuals from their midst, putting forward particularly respected men as legal authorities who, in turn, were sanctioned directly by the British Crown as “honourary Justices of the Peace.” In essence, this was a formalization of a community practice that long predated Tobin’s arrival. Naval officer Edward Chappell, who visited the region in 1813, observed that Phillip Messervey was not only the “chief man” of the place but that community members had designated him a constable as well.63 Moreover, in the 1860s, when the naval officers created honourary justices of the peace, some of the same individuals who had previously served as informal legal authorities – for example, H.H. Forrest and Edwin Alexander, a sub-agent for Lloyds of London at Sandy Point – now filled the new positions.64 The system functioned well enough that the only time residents of the community appealed to the gover-

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nor for assistance after 1853 was in reference to a particularly intractable and violent dispute in 1862 over land at Crabbs (also called Crabbs Brook, Barrachoix, or Barrisway) among newly arrived and longsettled residents.65 The fact that residents of St George’s Bay had developed a relatively prosperous, socially peaceful, orderly society by the first decades of the nineteenth century, coupled with the fact that French restrictions made the region unappealing as a site of investment for established businessmen on the island, meant that east and west existed in relative isolation of one another.66 Indeed, those seeking to travel from east to west often had to combine a large number of short legs on various fishing schooners and other vessels, often with long periods of waiting in between. For most of the nineteenth century, residents who had originally hailed from eastern regions of the island could go years, even decades, without hearing from relatives back east.67 This isolation of the two regions is also indicated in Governor Bannerman’s response to the 1862 request for assistance in the settlement of disputes over land. Noting that “if the information about the people residing at the Barrachoix be correct the government ought to look after their interests,” he, however, hesitated to act, as he and those colonial politicians with whom he spoke were “so much in the dark about St George’s Bay.”68 Up through the late 1860s, this widespread indifference to the western portions of the island, including St George’s Bay, puzzled and frustrated such observers as Thomas Sears, a Catholic clergyman serving in the region. The region contained rich farmland and other resources, yet there were few roads or schools, and no way to communicate with Newfoundland’s capital except by sending “a letter by some passenger or sailor to Halifax.”69 He implored colonial politicians who would not enter into Confederation with Canada to “bring about a proper Confederation of the island with itself, i.e., of the component parts of it.”70 Sears’s pleading aside, there were few efforts to bridge the divide between east and west in the late 1860s. It appears that after Tobin left, the different orientations of the two localities led to ignorance and indifference, which only further reinforced the situation. Colonial officials were explicit about their lack of interest or involvement in the region; during the negotiations leading up to the failed efforts to clarify the matter of French rights in Newfoundland in 1857, for example, colonial politicians found the proposed settlement unsatisfactory because they believed they stood to gain little from it. As Colonial Secretary James Crowdy explained, “the settlements in St George’s Bay and on other parts of the

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French Shore … have been of no service to this colony adding neither to our Revenue or resources, and that concession of us of any part of this coast would not be of sufficient value to warrant a compliance with any of the propositions of the French Commissioner.”71 The gulf separating east and west, and the fact that French interventions in the region gave St George’s Bay fishermen an effective monopoly over the fisheries there, fundamentally shaped the social and economic history of the region. The difficulties of obtaining clear title to property, for example, deterred affluent men from outside of the area from establishing operations in St George’s Bay. For those of more modest means, however, the barriers to outside investment provided an opportunity to build up trading concerns. Thus, through good fortune and careful strategizing, John Messervey, son of Susan and Phillip Messervey, inherited and expanded upon his father’s operation and took his place as one of the “principal residents” of the Bay.72 A similar combination of good fortune and diligence allowed Phillip Dennis, John Thomas, and other members of long-established families to rise in stature.73 The same circumstances also made the Bay attractive as a site of settlement to men who possessed ambition and know-how but not necessarily much capital. H.H. Forrest, who served as a key legal figure, is a good example. From his arrival in the 1830s until his death in 1869, Forrest appears to have used family connections to the West Indies to develop and sustain a flourishing business shipping herring from St George’s through Halifax to plantations in the south.74 Other early traders followed a different route. Constant Garnier, for example, had initially travelled to the Bay as a clerk in the employ of a French firm with operations on Red Island. After several years he settled in St George’s Bay and struck out on his own. By 1881 he had built up a substantial business that included trading vessels, wharves, and other facilities valued at over $25,000.75 Others, such as Edward Laroux and Joseph LeGrandais (also sometimes spelled “LaGraudais”), both of Granville, France, followed a similar path and were important traders by the last decades of the nineteenth century. At about the same time that these three were establishing themselves, Samuel McKay, who had travelled to St George’s from Ireland in 1841, also built up a substantial business. McKay, eventually joined in business by his son-in-law, Captain Thomas Shaw, was a central figure throughout the late nineteenth century, as were Edwin Alexander, who came to Sandy Point around 1848, and Charles Bishop.76 While little is known about Bishop before

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he arrived in St George’s in 1874 to take part in the herring trade, it is clear that he quickly rose to prominence.77 The indeterminacy of life on the west coast continued to shape the ways that these men conducted their business well after they had established themselves. By the 1840s, a significant group of local traders, both members of the founding families and later migrants operated a fleet of Bay-based schooners, most of them built locally. Some focused their attention on the Maritimes and developed a brisk trade almost exclusively with Halifax, which was several hundred kilometres closer to St George’s than St John’s.78 Indeed, it would be difficult to overstate the importance of Halifax and the Maritimes to the commerce and life of the Bay. Local traders not only sold most of their fish and procured most of their supplies in Halifax but sometimes they, and very often the fishing families with whom they dealt, were from the Maritimes. Virtually all communication with the outside world went through Halifax; traders did their banking in Maritime centres, and when they dealt in specie on the coast, they used “Halifax currency.”79 St George’s Bay’s position on the border of the French and British empires shaped relations between residents and the non-human world as well. In fact, the French inadvertently gave St George’s Bay fishers opportunities that the colonial government denied those in parts of the island it controlled. In the absence of any other local governing power, and with an effective monopoly over the resources that sustained them, residents of the Bay were in a unique position.80 In essence, they could, from their experience of changing ecological circumstances, collectively determine and enforce rules governing use of the resources on which they depended. What is more, there is strong evidence that fishers in the Bay not only created such rules but did so effectively and to the long-term benefit of their fisheries. For instance, in the later 1850s, after the practice of discarding fish offal on spawning grounds resulted in a drastic decline in catch rates, fishermen banned the practice.81 Similarly, when seines became increasingly common in herring fisheries in Labrador and on the south coast, residents of St George’s deemed the devices destructive. Accordingly, as Stephen March, superintendent of fisheries, noted after visiting the Bay in 1869, they “made a law among themselves that no seines are to be used.”82 Local control over the fisheries adjacent to St George’s Bay communities, combined with an abundance of migrant traders in the region, was important for class relations. Men like Messervey and Forrest seem to have established themselves as the main merchants in the Bay. The presence of migratory competitors meant that local traders could not

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charge excessive prices for imported goods; moreover, the presence of alternative avenues of trade cultivated a measure of paternalism between St George’s traders and fishers, as local businessmen had to convince fishermen to conduct business with them. They did so by offering to ship residents’ catches to Halifax at a flat rate of about two shillings per barrel.83 The fee not only got the fish to market but those who shipped fish with the vessel owner could acquire supplies equal to the value of the profit on their catch at a lower rate than that available from many migrant traders, including those from St John’s. They could get goods at the same rate that St George’s traders paid at Halifax without having to pay Newfoundland import duties. Local schooner owners fostered loyalty in other ways. In lean years, for example, they extended credit to Bay fishermen to see them through, something migrant traders were unlikely to do.84 Local control over the fisheries also shaped the strategies that men such as Forrest and Messervey pursued to expand their fortunes. Overexploiting local resources would have caused social tensions within the Bay. Thus, as these traders built up larger holdings and invested more heavily in vessels, after the end of the spring herring fishery they began sailing to fishing grounds in Labrador far removed from their homeports. These northern voyages allowed them to offer fishermen in the Bay opportunities to earn extra income as sharemen, further strengthening ties between the two groups.85 The split between the two coasts remained unaltered until St John’s– based politicians and merchants turned their attention to large-scale programs of landward development in the 1870s. At that time, such men became increasingly interested in integrating east and west. As we have seen, a combination of declining catches of cod in the shore fishery per unit of effort and frustration over obstacles to exerting control over the bank fishery and northern regions led most politicians and public intellectuals to see large-scale programs of landward development as Newfoundland’s best hope for a “British future.” While there was no consensus about how best to proceed along these lines, virtually all could agree that diversification through landward development was necessary, and that some of the most resource-rich portions of the island lay on or near the west coast. By the 1870s, Charles Fox Bennett and other prominent St John’s businessmen had begun to develop mines in the region.86 Soon after Bennett began his ventures, James Baird established lobster factories in St George’s Bay.87 Moreover, as we have also seen, an increasingly influential faction of the colonial polit-

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ical elite saw the region as not only containing important resources but also as central to their development strategies for the island as a whole. Flat Bay, in the inner part of St George’s Bay, was one of the only sheltered harbours on the west coast. This, in combination with its comparatively close proximity with mainland North America, made it a logical terminus for the trans-insular line that Whiteway and his counterparts saw as central to the economic foundations of the settler state they imagined they were building.88 While the politicians and their business associates continued to bemoan the damaging effects of continued French competition in the cod fishery, toward the end of the nineteenth century they articulated a new set of complaints about the French. The impossibility of establishing clear title to property on the coast persisted as a perceived obstacle to developing the region, and the prohibition of fixed structures also hindered development in the immediate and longer term.89 While the colonial government eventually put the terminus for the railway in Port aux Basques, just south of the limits of the French Shore, such limitations made it impossible to build spur lines on most of the west coast.90 To exploit the timber and minerals which colonial politicians and businessmen knew existed in the region, in the near term they would have to transport them via the Gulf, and the transportation of such goods at a commercially viable scale would require wharves and other facilities, structures that Anglo-French treaties also prohibited. Colonial officials argued that French claims not only stunted commercial life in the region, but also made it difficult to extend representative institutions there and to appoint peace officers and other officials. According to colonial politicians and their allies, then, continued French claims meant that the population lived in a state of barbarity, with no guarantee of relief in lean years, no public support for infrastructure such as roads, and no law and order. Worse still, residents were subject to the whims of French fishing and naval captains who could turn them out of their homes with little warning. It was vital, these men argued, that the imperial authorities allow the government of Newfoundland to take control of the west coast, thereby ridding their brethren in this “howling wilderness” of the uncertainty and injustices they had long suffered and granting them participation in representative institutions to which they, as a British people, were entitled.91 Complaints that French rights on the west coast interfered with the development strategies of these eastern commercial and political figures were reasonable enough. However, the characterization of the perspectives of the settler population, and of relations between that group

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and the French, were mostly inaccurate, something that struck such observers as Michael Howley. Part of a prominent St John’s family, and the first Newfoundland-born archbishop of St John’s, Howley had served alongside Thomas Sears as a missionary in St George’s. He was well apprised of both the views of colonial politicians in St John’s and conditions in the Bay. Up through the 1890s, Howley regularly admonished imperial officials that “those engaged in public life in the eastern portion of the island” were unqualified to speak about the interests of residents of the treaty shore. The “distance and want of communication between the east and west sides of the country” was so great, he maintained, that St John’s politicians were “altogether ignorant” of the west – it was “practically unknown to them as if it were in Australia.” Moreover, he believed that “the political and commercial interests of St. John’s are entirely at variance with those of the treaty shore; and are of such an acute character as to bias and prejudice the judgement of politicians in a manner which prevents them from forming an intelligent conception of the affairs of the West Coast.”92 The emerging eastern view of conditions on the west coast was significant. For even though it revealed little about the actual nature of west coast life, it did reflect and legitimate the expansionary designs of St John’s–based commercial and political elites. The contrast between the imagining and the reality of life in St George’s Bay became clear soon after colonial officials set out to assert their claims to the coast. Such efforts occurred a few years after serious discussion of railway development had begun in the early 1870s, and the strategy resembled earlier efforts. As in 1850, colonial officials sought permission to establish a magistrate/customs officer on the coast. Now, however, rather than simply raising revenue and monitoring French activities, the goal was explicitly to demonstrate that the region and its resources rightly fell under the authority of St John’s. Residents of Sandy Point and other Bay communities were in no way warm to this advance. They were well aware that the colonial government would demand in 1877, as it had in 1850, that duties be imposed to pay for a stipendiary magistrate.93 The duties would have a negative effect on fishers and traders alike. For traders, they would mean the loss of a competitive advantage over traders from elsewhere on the island.94 For fishing families, they would mean higher prices and, hence, a less materially comfortable existence.95 Like the British-based merchants who resisted the payment of duties in Labrador, residents of St George’s Bay did not welcome the Newfoundland government’s interventions, and they protested against the

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imposition of duties on the grounds that taxation without representation was a violation of their rights as British subjects. When Samuel McKay and other prominent traders got word of intentions to put a magistrate in place, then, they mobilized. Rather than addressing the question of the magistrate directly, however, they petitioned the Governor of Newfoundland to ask for the right to establish a fishing station at Red Island, long the centre of the French fishery in the southwestern part of the island. In particular, McKay and the others asked that they be able to fish from Red Island and to dry fish there “free from the intrusion of French Fishermen.”96 And, while colonial officials’ efforts to establish a magistrate and the request for rights on Red Island may seem unrelated, the St George’s traders conceived the latter manoeuvre as a way of resisting the incursions of the colonial government. With the support of most small shopkeepers and fishermen in the Bay, they began lobbying for access to Red Island, knowing full well that it violated the established fishing practices and would irritate the French. Their idea was that their demands would encourage the French to assert their claims in the region more vigorously. The hope was that such instigations would “prevent the appointment of constituted authority on that half of the coast of Newfoundland,” thereby allowing them to continue their long-standing, duty free trade with the Maritimes. As Captain Sullivan reported to the governor, “you are aware of the commercial intercourse with the Maritime Provinces of the Dominion free of all import duties and this … would seem to be to continue their present/late freedom by causing a difficulty to the imperial government in introducing legal authority on those parts of the coast of Newfoundland where the French exercise treaty rights of this kind.”97 The 1877 petition alarmed imperial officials. Relations between France and Britain were already tense as the two powers squabbled over North African territories.98 When it became clear that residents intended to vie for their own ends by causing turmoil on the west coast, British officials were concerned enough that relations between the two powers might be strained to the breaking point that they sent two naval vessels to St George’s to investigate the matter. Captain Erskine and Lieutenant Jackson, the investigating officers, reassured the governor and officials at Whitehall that there was no significant opposition in St George’s Bay to the colonial government’s efforts to appoint officials and extend their authority over the region. Even though no less a figure than Samuel McKay had forwarded the petition, Erskine denied that the petition had the support of any “resident of weight” in the com-

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munity. The agitators, a group of ne’er-do-wells, he and Jackson explained, represented mostly themselves and, at best, a small fraction of the community. Once the magistrate was in place and people in the Bay became more closely integrated with the east, they believed, such sentiments would dissipate.99 While the naval officers may have dismissed the 1877 petition, even they could not ignore that the circumstances in which people in St George’s operated did not promote a sense of commonality with the east. As Jackson put it, “It was impossible not to see that owing to the difficulty of communication with St. John’s and also to the fact that all business transactions of that part of the coast are with the Maritime provinces of the Dominion the people hardly realize that they are answerable to the same laws as the rest of the colony.”100 Moreover, the widespread sentiment that underlay the Red Island petition did not subside. In December 1877, soon after the naval officers completed their investigations, the colonial government appointed Captain Howarth, a retired naval officer, as magistrate for the west coast. Howarth operated out of Birchy Cove (now Curling) in the Bay of Islands; as well, the government established several customs officers in the more densely populated parts of the west coast.101 As the central trading hub of the west coast, St George’s Bay was among the locales to receive such an official. The response to these moves to establish the authority of what residents of St George’s tellingly termed “the government of St John’s” revealed that naval officers’ assessment of situation had been overly optimistic. Indeed, not long after Howarth took up his position in Birchy Cove and George Lilly took up his as customs officer at St George’s, there was a large public meeting at Sandy Point on 22 February 1878. Those assembled passed a series of resolutions directly opposing the efforts of the colonial government. This meeting, “convened by the principal inhabitants of St George’s Bay representing the French Shore,”102 included John Thomas, Phillip Dennis, Samuel McKay, and Constant Garnier. Those assembled “unanimously agreed to oppose the speculative views of the Newfoundland Government in imposing their Civil Laws and taxation on the inhabitants on the French Shore without a legal right.” They also opposed “any infringement on our rights as to the collecting of duties and a taxation of licenses.” More ominously, those in attendance also expressed their hope that the “highhanded acts of the Newfoundland government will not … make such a disturbance as it did in the Red River Territory.”103 That meeting and the formal demands that emerged from it were more difficult to dismiss than the Red Island petition. Nevertheless,

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when the governor asked the district’s newly appointed magistrate to investigate, Howarth attempted to explain the event away. Branding the leading merchants in the region as “agitators,” he claimed that this group had “entirely poisoned the minds of the ignorant people in the neighborhood.”104 While such claims may have allowed Howarth and others to discount complaints and protests, they did not alter the fact that a large, socially diverse group of people found the incorporation of the region by the “government of St John’s” unappealing. It also did not change the fact that a primary objection of Bay residents to bringing the region under the authority of St John’s was that it represented a departure from and threatened to disrupt long-standing commercial and social practices. Most residents of the Bay, including its leading men, appeared to have been content with the social order that had grown up. If required to accept the authority of a colonial metropolis, they preferred Halifax over St John’s, and they responded to the early overtures of the Newfoundland government by drafting petitions to the governor general of Canada asking that the western portion of Newfoundland be joined with the neighbouring dominion rather than with Newfoundland.105 Protests continued after the February meeting. In May 1879, for example, a dispute developed around the unloading of cargo from the schooner Abby Alice. The key cause of conflict was that Charles Bishop had unloaded flour, tea, clothing, and other items and refused to pay duty on the goods. For George Lilly and D.W. Prowse, whom the colonial government charged with investigating the matter, Bishop’s stand was disconcerting. Both agreed that Bishop was “a very respectable well conducted young man,” one of the more successful traders of the Bay.106 They also noted that he did not act alone but instead was the figurehead for a more general movement among other traders and many residents of Sandy Point, a number of whom had helped him to unload his goods and to defy the customs authorities. Bishop and the others made no effort to conceal their activities. The point was to force the colonial and imperial governments to acknowledge and address grievances that Bay residents had already made known via telegram earlier in the spring. The trouble had started when the residents paid taxes in 1878 and found that they received no benefit for doing so. The poor of Sandy Point and elsewhere in the Bay received no government relief, nor was the district represented in the House of Assembly.107 Bishop maintained that he and his counterparts had “no faith in the government of Newfoundland.” He and other traders had supported the poor throughout the winter and “could not support [both] the poor and the pay-

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ment of duties.”108 Moreover, when he and his fellow traders learned that they would “not get representation it was then unanimously agreed that we would not pay duties.” Getting no response to their telegram, they resolved to “have matters brought to a crisis,” thereby forcing colonial and imperial governments to address their concerns.109 The proposed resolution to the Abby Alice affair provides further evidence of reluctance on the part of residents of Bay St George to accept the colonial government’s authority. Prowse observed that residents of the west were basically divorced from their eastern counterparts and recommended that, in addition to imposing a fine of £100 on Bishop, the government ought to cultivate the affections of especially the leading residents of Sandy Point. This, he thought, could be done through the strategic expenditure of government money on reinforcing or developing roads, wharves, and other infrastructure essential to the trade of the area.110 While the government did direct funding to this end following the dispute, this policy did not automatically inspire loyalty.111 In early 1881, for example, the same residents who had refused to pay duty in 1879 attempted once again to stir up trouble between the French and English, hoping it would lead to France’s disallowing the appointment of customs officials and magistrates on the coast. Residents asked French naval officer Commodore Deverenne if they were required to pay duties on imported goods, anticipating that the French, uneasy with any appointment on the treaty shore, would respond in the negative. Their expectations were correct. Deverenne informed residents that the colonial government not only had no right to collect customs but also had no right to appoint officials of any sort.112 The incident had the immediate effect of provoking a dispute between French and British diplomats.113 Nevertheless, neither power pressed the matter, and this attempt, like the earlier request for rights to fish from Red Island, did not have the long-term effect that many residents of St George’s desired. Dissatisfaction with “the rule of St John’s” continued well after 1881. In fact, as late as 1890 Michael Howley approached the imperial government on behalf of a group of residents asking that the west coast be joined with Canada.114 Nevertheless, circumstances in the later part of the century worked directly against these movements. Colonial politicians were increasingly adamant in their claims to the western portions of the island. Moreover, they were likely to see the extension of the authority of the Newfoundland government as an appealing option, given their increasing concerns with what observers in London thought were more critical theatres of the empire in north African and central and

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east Asia. Even as some St George’s residents attempted to resist the imposition of duties by playing French and British off against one another, prominent traders in the Bay and a large number of residents elsewhere on the west coast became increasingly resigned to the fact that their future lay with St John’s rather than some other centre. In May 1881 Bishop and others had forwarded several petitions to the governor with a total of over four hundred names. The petitions were identical, and all explained that many of the signatories had come to the coast fully realizing that they would enjoy limited rights in the region owing to French claims, but that “this fact was compensated for to a great extent by the absence of taxation.” With the establishment of magistrates and customs officers appointed by the colonial government, however, the petitioners noted that now “the collection of taxes upon this coast was commenced upon exactly the same scale as in other parts of this colony, as if we enjoyed equal privileges with them.” They went on to point out that they did not have the same rights as settlers elsewhere on the island, and demanded that the colonial and imperial governments either grant them the full slate of rights fitting a “British people” or cease the collection of taxes.115 It is against this background that the events of 1889 must be understood. Pressure from residents of the treaty shore, in combination with the increasingly adamant demands from “the government of St John’s” for French Shore concessions, resulted in the establishment in 1882 of two electoral districts on the west coast, St George’s and St Barbes. Each district returned a member in the 1882 election.116 Yet representation was only one of the demands that the petitioners of 1881 had placed upon the imperial and colonial authorities. In 1882 as in 1879, residents of St George’s held no real affection for the government of Newfoundland. They had largely accepted that they would be Newfoundlanders rather than Canadians, but they expected that in return for their allegiance they would gain all of the rights demanded in their petition. The colonial government established courts in the region and provided mail subsidies and road and education grants. As for demands relating to the alteration of established rights in the fishery, establishing clear title to property, and granting residents the right to exploit and to build facilities necessary to ship mineral resources in the region, those were matters that butted up against imperial treaties. As such, they were beyond the remit of colonial authorities. These limitations, along with the tentative nature of support in St George’s and along the treaty coast for rule by the “government of St

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John’s,” ultimately underlay the unlikely demands and concessions that emerged in the early 1890s. In the years immediately following the appointment of magistrates and customs officials, and the establishment of courts and electoral districts, conditions in the region were relatively tranquil. There was, then, nothing to force the issue of the Newfoundland government’s limited ability to safeguard the rights of residents of St George’s. With the passage of the Bait Act, however, this relative tranquility came to an end. In the first year the act was in effect, residents of the Bay had no complaint, but in the following year, matters changed. French crews not only interfered with the resident fishery but also deployed seines – which residents of the Bay had long prohibited – jeopardizing the long-term viability of the industry in St George’s Bay. The need for a certain supply of bait no doubt partly motivated the changed conduct, but so too did a French desire to strike back at the Newfoundland government. In 1890, as in 1859, the only way they could do so was by harassing fishermen on the treaty coast.117 In provoking the French to harass residents of St George’s Bay, colonial politicians inadvertently put themselves in a difficult situation. After all, residents of the region had only grudgingly accepted the authority of the colonial government on the condition that they have the same rights as those elsewhere on the island. When the French intervened in St George’s, they clearly violated the rights of residents of that region. Charles Bishop, ringleader of some of the earlier protests against the Newfoundland government, represented Bay residents in demanding that the colonial government defend the rights it had promised to guarantee in exchange for acceptance of its authority. Of course, colonial politicians could not guarantee those rights, as they were powerless to act, given the imperial treaties that still governed the west coast fisheries. They found themselves in a position of either having to acknowledge that they could not guarantee residents of the Bay the full slate of rights they demanded as a precondition for accepting the authority of the government in the first place, or having to accept that they were negligent. Colonial politicians did not want to admit that their grasp on the west coast was weak. Such an unpalatable admission might reignite the rebellious spirit that had only died down a few years earlier, thereby further jeopardizing their ability to claim fully a region they saw as important to the future of their “island home.” Faced with the choice of weakness or negligence, then, the colonial government accepted the latter and, through a commission of its own creation, conducted an investigation and awarded damages – which it never paid. In January

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1892, Judge Pinsent submitted his initial report indicating that residents of the Bay ought to receive payment for damages incurred. About six months later, Charles Bishop sent a telegram on behalf of residents in the Bay demanding that the government pay what they had been awarded, suggesting that they should be able to take goods “free of duty, the amount of duty due being set against the compensation recommended until it was paid off.” More ominously, Bishop informed the colonial government through his mha that “should this be refused” he and those he represented “would take the goods from the steamer or Customs House and would not pay the duty.” Sir Baldwin Walker, who patrolled the west coast that year, advised Bishop and 160 others from the Bay who approached him against such a strategy. Seemingly this dissuaded them from resorting again to rebellious acts. While they remained aggrieved, eventually they appear to have resigned themselves to the fact that they would receive no payment. After the repeal of the Bait Act in 1893, future incursions were unlikely. The matter seems to have faded from view.118 By the 1870s, proponents of Newfoundland’s settler state had endured several decades of frustrated efforts to secure their hold over the people, spaces, and resources they imagined as parts of their dominion. Despite widening social cleavages in and around Fortune Bay, the colonial government had been unable to force residents of the area to end their long-standing, often illicit, trade in bait, and that in turn facilitated the French bank fishery and shored up the position of one of Newfoundland’s key international competitors in the saltfish trade. In the north, diminishing resources and resistance from a differently oriented group of planters made expansion onerous and potentially costly. Accordingly, colonial politicians ranging from William Whiteway to Robert Thorburn to Charles Fox Bennett concurred that the best path forward was one that led away from the sea and toward the land. Yet, if these men and their allies believed that expansion into the interior and the west would be less troublesome than earlier efforts to control the south and north, their encounters with residents of St George’s Bay dispelled such notions. The economic vibrancy and orderliness that had come to characterize life in Sandy Point and its vicinity, then the commercially dominant and most populous part of the treaty shore, was premised on the uncertainty and indeterminacy resulting from overlapping and conflicting British and French claims in the region. For merchants and fishers alike, then, colonial politicians’ schemes of western expansion and the extension of the “rule of St John’s” were unwelcome. Instead, they

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signalled a threat to an order in which a large number of residents of St George’s were heavily invested. Residents of communities in the area responded to the colonial government’s overtures with suspicion, reluctance, and hostility. Ultimately, the mercantile and political establishment of St John’s overcame local resistance to its authority, yet a close analysis of the upheavals of the early 1890s reveals the tenuousness of that affiliation. And, as important as St George’s Bay was, it is also clear that the positions, views, and struggles of people in this locale did not represent those of all residents of the treaty shore. The next chapter provides insight into the diverse and shifting views, concerns, and aims of differently situated people in more northerly places on the west coast.

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5 More French Shore Problems The Lobster Controversy on Newfoundland’s Treaty Coast, 1890–1904

As the St George’s Bay dispute suggests, colonial politicians and merchants were faced with a variety of “French Shore problems.” Some of those conflicts had less to do with the French than they did with the different perspectives and interests that settlers developed as they charted a course forward in light of particular ecological circumstances, and their particular positions in imperial and colonial relations and claims. The St George’s dispute highlights one important perspective that emerged among residents of one of the most populous and commercially dominant centres on the west coast in the nineteenth century. It would be a mistake, however, to see that dispute as representative of the entire treaty coast in the later nineteenth century. Indeed, even while the same treaty agreements were in effect over almost the entire western shore, people living north of St George’s Bay operated in ecological settings that differed significantly from those on the southwest coast. They also developed perspectives and aligned themselves with parties operating on the treaty shore in ways that differed from those concerned with the herring fishery in St George’s Bay. Moreover, the perspective among more northerly residents of the treaty shore, like that in St George’s and elsewhere, changed as the policy of the colonial government, international agreements, and social and ecological circumstances shifted. This chapter further considers the “French Shore problem.” It does not attempt an exhaustive account of the settlement and social relations on the treaty coast. Instead, it highlights key dynamics in the later nineteenth century in parts of western Newfoundland, particularly areas of the Great Northern Peninsula from the Bay of Islands northward, by examining the “lobster controversy.” Scholars have long viewed this issue as a quintessential example of the tensions, ambiguities, and

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conflicts that characterized the history of the treaty coast as a whole in the later nineteenth century.1 It is also a particularly useful case because by later in the century the potential for conflict over the lobster fishery is partly what led the British to conduct various investigations, including an 1898 Royal Commission, into the “French Shore question.” The naval authorities’ reports and the minutes of evidence the commissioners collected provide detailed information about social, cultural, and economic conditions on the coast at the time, making it possible to consider the circumstances, views, and aims of a wide variety of groups.2 Moreover, while lobster was important to St George’s and the southwest, most of the lobster grounds were further north. Thus, examining the controversy over this industry allows insight into regions beyond Sandy Point. Most scholars who have examined the lobster controversy have focused on international agreements and negotiations pertinent to the episode. They have also provided insight into the colonial government’s efforts to extinguish, or circumvent, the claims of foreign powers. In focusing on these groups and these aspects of the past, they have treated the conflict as a single dispute.3 While attentive to the figures and negotiations that have long held historians’ attention, this chapter focuses on the history of those resident or operating on the treaty shore as well. Examining the matter from this perspective reveals that at least three other groups – residents of the treaty shore, migrant merchants from the Canadian Maritime provinces, and British naval authorities – also exerted significant influence in how the controversy over lobster in this region played out. Considering these groups indicates that the conflict historians have generally taken as the controversy in its entirety represented but one among several, interconnected, and mutually determining theatres of struggle, none of them static. Most scholars suggest that by the middle of the nineteenth century the basic pattern of antagonisms termed the “French Shore problem” had emerged. Aware that their claims in Newfoundland were their only remaining access to the cod fishery besides St Pierre and Miquelon, the French pressed for interpretations of treaty rights that maximized their access to resources. Newfoundlanders, irritated at both continued competition in their staple trade and what they saw as the British government’s neglect of their interests, were increasingly adamant in their demands for the abrogation of French treaty rights. Meanwhile, the British, hoping to avoid either alienating their own colonists, or provoking the French, sought (with limited success) to find a middle ground.

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According to many who have considered the matter, the lobster controversy was connected with these conflicts among British officials, Newfoundland political elites, and the French. This assessment is reasonable, for the question of lobster on the west coast was clearly linked to disputes that emerged among these groups in the context of later nineteenth-century changes in the cod fishery.4 Indeed, the lobster controversy, like the St George’s Bay dispute, grew out of the destabilizing influence of the 1887 Bait Act, for subsequently the French not only asserted their rights in the herring fishery in St George’s Bay but also argued that their treaty rights pertained not only to cod but also to lobster. For the French, laying claim to the lobster fishery on the coast served several ends. First, if nothing else were available, lobsters could themselves be used as bait. Second, establishing canneries provided employment and areas of investment for French colonists on St Pierre who were hard hit by the decline of the shore fishery. Finally, this fishery maintained claims to portions of a coast that historically had rich stocks of caplin and herring, the preferred baitfish for the bank fishery.5 Rather than withdrawing, the French responded to the introduction of the Bait Act by building a lobster factory at Port aux Choix.6 The construction of this factory sparked the conflict, and according to scholars of the matter, was a classic example of a French Shore dispute. Both the French and the merchants and professionals who dominated the island’s government sent numerous dispatches to the Colonial Office arguing for interpretations of treaty agreements that excluded one another from the trade. The British, caught between the two factions, and attempting to find a solution that suited the French and their own colonists, negotiated a “modus vivendi” with the French in 1890. In essence, the agreement froze conditions as they stood on 1 July 1889. All factories that existed to that time could continue to operate, but no new factories could be constructed without the joint consent of the British and French naval authorities who patrolled the shore.7 The agreement, like similar efforts, did not satisfy Newfoundland’s political leaders. According to its scholars, the dispute, centred on these groups, continued in this basic pattern until the French relinquished their claims to the island as part of the 1904 Entente Cordiale.8 The traditional account of the lobster controversy is not wrong. Indeed, the struggle to control the cod fishery was what inspired the initial dispute and parts of the diplomatic framework that remained in force throughout the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, in shifting the focus to residents of the coast, it becomes clear that this older interpre-

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tation misses much. As the St George’s Bay case suggests, the origins of the population on the west coast were diverse. Indeed, in some ways, St George’s reflected the key sources of settlers for the coast more generally. For instance, some were descended from employees of Jersey merchants who began travelling to the coast in the later eighteenth century.9 Initially involved in a migratory fishery, by the early nineteenth century some employees saw permanent settlement as a means of acquiring greater independence from their employers.10 These men often married or otherwise entered into unions with Mi’Kmaq women established in the region.11 Others could trace their lineage to residents of France who had deserted from French fishing vessels, or to French colonists who migrated from St Pierre and Miquelon. Still others came to the region from elsewhere in Newfoundland, often because local resources in the longersettled portions of the island could not sustain an expanding population.12 Most, however, travelled to the coast from Nova Scotia and to a lesser extent from other parts of the Maritimes and Quebec.13 Some areas north of the Port au Port Peninsula supported a variety of industries. The Bay of Islands, for example, was long noted for its dense stands of trees, and migrants from Nova Scotia and Quebec opened sawmills there. Some small-scale agriculture was carried on as well.14 Yet the soil on this part of the west coast was not as rich as that to the south. Moreover, while the sawmills employed some residents, they probably did as much harm as good in terms of generating employment more broadly. Contemporaries often complained that effluent from these concerns fouled fishing grounds, making it difficult for long-standing residents to make a living.15 As in many eastern parts of the island and on the south coast, residents of parts of the Great Northern Peninsula north of the Bay of Islands depended heavily on marine species throughout the nineteenth century. While cod was important, the nature of cod stocks off the west coast meant that settlers in the region were less dependent on this resource than were those living in other parts of the island. Most cod caught on the west coast were part of a migratory stock.16 In the spring of the year, the fish would move along the coast following the Esquiman Channel (a deep trench that runs parallel to most of the west coast of Newfoundland and nearly touches shore at Port au Choix) and would come into shore in pursuit of caplin and other pelagic fish such as herring.17 The fish first approached shore near Red Island just off the Port au Port Peninsula, and gradually made their way up through the Strait of Belle Isle and on to Labrador.18 Although fishermen engaged in intense periods of fishing as cod passed near their communities, their livelihood depended on

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other fisheries as well. In the early years of settlement in the early nineteenth century, residents of many parts of the coast engaged in salmon fishing, as stocks of this fish fell off drastically in Europe and the United States.19 They also hunted seals extensively.20 As well, from early in the nineteenth century, the west coast herring fishery grew substantially as a result of an increased need for bait in an expanding bank fishery, the depletion of stocks off the United States and the Maritimes, and consistent demand for protein for plantation labourers in the southern United States and the Caribbean.21 A substantial number of the region’s settlers first migrated to the coast from Nova Scotia to pursue the herring fishery, selling the fish as both food and bait to the French and American vessels that became increasingly common as the shore fishery dissipated in Newfoundland and elsewhere.22 The particular origins of west coast settlers and their targeting different species than east coast residents did not mean that their experiences were entirely different than those of their east coast counterparts, of course. Indeed, there is evidence that many west coast settlers embraced notions of independence similar to those prevailing in other areas of Newfoundland. Patricia Thornton, for example, has found that a key reason that many employees of merchant firms operating on the west coast and Strait of Belle Isle settled was that they preferred to establish their independence through marrying local women and developing households that they could head up.23 There is also evidence that Britishness and membership in the empire were key to the ways that many residents of the French Shore articulated and thought about their rights and entitlements.24 For instance, residents in more northerly parts of the treaty shore, like their counterparts in the southwest, rarely complained about the French. As in St George’s, they traded with French crews and gladly received the care of French physicians. They also worked for French fishing captains as guardiens, caring for and guarding French premises during the winter months. Nevertheless, French claims meant that they could not get clear title to the territory they occupied, sometimes for generations. Naval captains and residents both occasionally complained that this arrangement affronted residents’ rights as “Britishers.”25 Moreover, when disputes did occasionally break out between French and English, residents generally saw the interventions of French authorities as illegitimate. As one resident put it, as “Englishmen on English soil,” settlers expected to deal with British officials when it came to the law and government of the treaty shore.26 Settlers in the west, as in the east and elsewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador, also had to contend with ecological decline in the later

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nineteenth century. For instance, fishermen in the west, as in other regions, had to use more intensive gears to maintain cod catch rates, and they noted an overall decline in the size of the average fish.27 Declining fortunes in this fishery made it unprofitable for the French, causing them to abandon long-held rooms on the coast and to focus more on the bank fishery.28 The herring fishery, once a staple fishery in the Bay of Islands, Bonne Bay, and elsewhere on the west coast, also experienced significant fluctuations and suffered as markets collapsed in the wake of the US Civil War.29 By the 1860s the seal herds off of the west coast were depleted.30 Moreover, from the early 1860s as well there were troubling signs in what had been a key industry in the region, the salmon fishery. By the middle of the nineteenth century, after about four decades of sustained fishing, government officials and fishers began to notice a falling off in the numbers of salmon landed in rivers on the Great Northern Peninsula and elsewhere. The depletion was noticeable enough that the government undertook a formal inquiry into the fishery in 1860. Matthew H. Warren, who conducted the inquiry, was originally from Devon, England, and was familiar with the history of the salmon fishery in the British Isles. Salmon had once been so abundant and so inexpensive in Britain, he wrote, that “it was often … inserted in … Apprentices’ indentures that they should not be compelled to eat Salmon oftener than twice a-week.”31 While at one time “almost every river in the United Kingdom and Ireland swarmed with Salmon,” the “vile practice of fishing at all times and seasons and by all appliances has driven the dogged, but noble fish from many rivers, and lessened the numbers frequenting others, causing destruction of a greater portion of the fisheries.” The decline of this fishery in Britain and in the northeastern United States partly inspired early merchants in the Straits of Labrador such as Thomas Bird to pursue the fish, as a market for salmon still existed in Britain even though the fish did not.32 The salmon fishery of Newfoundland was “as valuable as those of any of the British Provinces,” Warren noted, and warned that if some means were not devised “and laws enforced for their [the salmon’s] preservation, their total annihilation will be the consequence.”33 Over the next several decades, naval captains visiting communities on the Great Northern Peninsula continued to comment on declining catches and destructive practices. By 1880 catches in once-productive sites like the Torrent and East Rivers just south of Port au Choix fell from annual yields of around eighty barrels a year each to just one and a half barrels.34 The cause of the decline, according to W.R. Kennedy,

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captain of the Druid, was clear: despite long-standing warnings about the dangers of doing so, commercial fishers from Newfoundland and elsewhere barred the rivers with nets and other devices, thereby catching a large percentage of the fish that ascended the rivers, and preventing them from laying their eggs. “There is hardly a river or brook in this country which is not beset with either, weir, mill-dam, trap, net, or other engine which the ingenuity of man can devise for the capture of salmon in defiance of all laws, proclamations, and the dictates of humanity or common sense,”35 Kennedy observed. In some streams, “the practice has been carried out so persistently for many years, that the salmon have deserted the river altogether.” While Kennedy and other captains could prevent people from barring rivers when they encountered the practice, they were well aware that after they left, fishers basically did as they pleased. The result was a general decline in the fishery. As Kennedy noted, “‘Salmon is scarce’ is the doleful cry where-ever we go round these coasts.”36 Over the next several years naval captains reported that the “doleful cry” remained the same and the words “scarce” and “nil” filled the columns of most logbooks devoted to salmon.37 Yet the ecological circumstances in which residents of parts of the Great Northern Peninsula operated at this time differed in important respects from that in the east. In many Conception Bay communities, for instance, there were few alternatives to the shore cod fishery. The west coast, by contrast, contained the island’s choicest lobster grounds. While historians have rightly emphasized the significance of the cod fishery for diplomatic negotiations over lobster, they have underestimated the extent to which the lobster fishery itself was a point of interest and contention. Indeed, this trade drew the attention of leading St John’s merchants such as James Baird and Moses Monroe. It was also central for merchants from Canada’s Maritime provinces. The substantial profits to be earned in this industry, the marked if uneven decline of lobster stocks further down the seaboard, and the declining of catches of salmon, herring, and other fish in New England, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland itself, translated into a dramatic expansion of the lobster industry on the treaty shore.38 Beginning in the early 1870s, Nova Scotia canners began opening factories focused exclusively on lobster. Such factories proliferated dramatically over the next two decades as both Maritime and Newfoundland merchants got into the trade. Many of these were substantial concerns, fishing several thousand pots and employing over seventy people, including tradesmen who produced the crates and cans necessary for the industry. The overwhelming majority were located in and north of the Bay of Islands.39

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Political circumstances on the west coast differed substantially from the east as well. The fact of the French claims to the region was significant, for rather than falling under the colonial government’s jurisdiction, it was seasonally governed by British naval officers who travelled to the coast. These men had interests and aims in some ways similar to the imperial officials on whom historians have often focused; they were in regular dialogue with officials in the Foreign and Colonial Offices and were involved in devising and implementing a global imperial strategy. Yet they were also centrally concerned with maintaining or fostering stable, vibrant communities of Britons in the particular corner of the empire they sought to administer. They saw themselves as disinterested parties whose duty was to mediate between Britons of different social standing and geographical origin. Of course, ultimately the British Empire was an “empire of capital,” and these officers did secure conditions amenable to accumulation which benefited some Britons more than others.40 Yet it would be a mistake to take as disingenuous their claims of attending to the interests of all Britons. While the officers viewed capitalist enterprises as essential to British society, they also aimed to develop industries that exploited neither resources nor people excessively.41 For the captains who travelled to the coast, the goal was to foster something like an ideally functioning version of the industrial system that existed in the British Isles.42 Not personally interested in the profits and wages that might be earned from lobster or other Newfoundland resources, they hoped to use the resource to develop their envisioned society. In short, the officers wanted a lobster industry dominated by large industrial processing facilities, where workers and fishers received fair prices and wages and owners secured a healthy profit margin while maintaining catch rates that would ensure the long-term viability of the trade.43 Taking these distinctive ecological and political circumstances into account is significant. It makes clear that there was no one “voice of Newfoundland” when it came to the 1890 agreement about the lobster fishery on Newfoundland’s French Shore. For the Maritime merchants operating there, for instance, the 1890 agreement was unproblematic. A wider process of ecological depletion is partly what pushed them into Newfoundland in the first place.44 With dwindling opportunities in the Maritimes and in some Newfoundland fisheries, the lobster fishery was essential to a lucrative business, and their main concern was with maintaining access to what was the northern limit of the northeastern North American lobster grounds. For them the French were a threat. Indeed, they may have been more of a threat to the Nova Scotians than to New-

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foundland merchants, for the French early on had focused their efforts to close British factories (thereby setting a precedent supporting their interpretation of long-standing treaties) of Rumkey and Co., a Nova Scotian operation.45 They did so because they were aware that Newfoundland merchants and politicians were hostile to competing claims to, and traders on, the west coast. Accordingly, the French believed they would encounter less resistance in pursuing such an approach.46 As is implied in the French strategy, however, the Newfoundland political elite was also a concern for the Nova Scotians. After all, the Newfoundland government and the merchant elite of St John’s were interested in extinguishing all rival claims to the western shore, including those of traders from the neighbouring dominion. For the migrant merchants attempting to solidify claims to territories they had long used, the modus vivendi was a positive good. By freezing conditions as they stood in 1889, the agreement helped to cement their claims to territories over which they had an increasingly precarious hold. Residents of the treaty coast had a different position and perspective. Many of them were quite comfortable with the modus vivendi. The lobster fishery was important to their livelihood, as authorities on the treaty coast often remarked.47 In 1887, for example, the local justice of the peace in Bonne Bay reported that in the previous winter, about 150 families had applied to the government for relief. While a number of barrels of flour were forthcoming, residents received little else, and many families were “half naked,” had no blankets, and had to “lie around their stoves at night in winter to keep alive.” Malnutrition probably contributed to the outbreaks of disease that naval captains reported with increasing frequency.48 In this setting, the lobster fishery was vitally important. In fact, according to the justice of the peace, “the only people who could support themselves were those who had worked in the lobster factories.”49 Yet on the Great Northern Peninsula as in other regions of the island and Labrador, working people wanted not only to survive but to lead lives of independence characteristic of “freeborn Englishmen.”50 Thus, rather than accept relief or poverty, in their efforts to secure “respectable work” they regularly travelled abroad or signed on to the schooners that passed their communities on their way to Labrador.”51 The system of labour that came to pass in the west coast lobster fishery indicates that similar aims informed workers’ decisions and strategies in the region. As opportunities emerged in the lobster fishery, these men were willing to supply the expanding number of canners, and canners were happy to hire local labour. Doing so was, as Nova Scotian canner William An-

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guin later recalled, less expensive and troublesome than importing crews from the Maritimes.52 Women on the coast worked under the close supervision of overseers, often lived in sex-segregated bunkhouses, and did the bulk of the “unskilled” processing work.53 For the men, participation in the industry was different; they constituted the bulk of those who actually fished for lobsters. For them, dependency was inconsistent with the life of British men, and when they exchanged work on the Labrador or the mainland for employment closer to home, they did so as independent contractors, catching lobsters to sell by the hundred to the canners setting up on the coast in growing numbers.54 Such arrangements had pecuniary advantages. Fishermen received a higher price (60 cents as opposed to 50 cents in 1887) per hundred lobsters if they used their own gear rather than that provided by a factory owner. They could construct traps of laths they sawed from local trees during the winter months,55 and the only real expense was for the rope needed to set the traps.56 The benefits of the extra ten cents per hundred lobsters disappeared quickly, however, if ice or a strong gale and heavy seas destroyed a large number of traps, which was not at all uncommon.57 Fishermen likely accepted this risk and the extra burden of labouring in the winter months, collecting material and constructing pots not only for the higher remuneration but also because the work meshed well with prevailing ideas about independence, masculinity, and Britishness.58 These tendencies underscore that workingmen on the west coast shared much with their eastern counterparts in aspiring to live as “British men.” The modus would have helped to solidify their standing as Britishers of the first rank. It did so because it entrenched the position of disparate mercantile groups, and this arrangement was beneficial for workingmen on the coast in several ways. For instance, the presence of multiple, competing firms and traders allowed fishermen to demand a maximal price through selling to the highest bidder. Moreover, whether or not male residents of the coast readily acknowledged it, the wages that women and children earned were essential to sustaining the style of life thought essential to British peoples. The large number of factories in need of labour – Newfoundland-owned factories as well as those owned by the French and Nova Scotians59 – ensured that workers received competitive wages.60 Additionally, both processing workers and fishermen received at least part of their pay in specie.61 Cash payments allowed them to purchase both staple products (flour, salt, sugar, cloth, and so forth) and supplies for their trade (rope, nails, nets) at competitive rates.62 This latter point was reportedly a

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source of extreme frustration to St John’s merchants and a central reason for wanting all rivals off the west coast. For workingmen there, however, the lower cost of goods reinforced their independence. For them, the modus entrenched circumstances essential to “manly independence,” and indeed, there is no evidence that west coast workmen protested against the agreement.63 For naval officers patrolling the treaty shore, the modus was also welcome, and not just because it was the agreement that their government had entered into and that they were responsible for enforcing. By the later 1880s, naval officers began noting localized depletion of lobster stocks. These observations reflected the biological nature of lobster themselves. Lobster begin their lives as free swimming larvae and gradually become oriented to the ocean floor.64 After descending to the bottom, they migrate at a slow pace to regions where the temperature and food supply are suitable, and in which there are large rocks or cavities providing shelter from predators. Though generally they grow slowly, they can have a long life and can grow quite large (the largest recorded being as much as a century old and weighing upwards of forty-five pounds). Untouched grounds contain many generations of the crustaceans, many in the four to ten pound range.65 Lobster biology fundamentally affects their distribution and the amount of fishing effort a particular portion of the stock can withstand before becoming depleted. The most densely populated regions, and those most quickly replenished, are regions such as the heads of bays and places with onshore winds to which ocean currents and prevailing winds carry larval lobsters.66 Vast and dense lobster stocks made viable large factories on Newfoundland’s west coast. By the later 1880s, however, naval captains began noting localized depletion – probably in regions that, being further from the areas where prevailing winds and currents deposited larvae, were slow to replenish. By 1890, on some of the longest-worked portions of the coast, stocks were thinned to the point that they could not sustain some of the largest and oldest factories.67 While officers did not think that these localized depletions meant that the end of the fishery was imminent, they believed that it signalled a need for a more careful system of management.68 For the officers, then, the modus provided not only a means of dealing with an impasse between the French and the colonial elite but also a way to regulate the number of factories and the intensity of fishing in the hopes of creating a better-managed fishery.69 Acknowledging the variety of perspectives on the lobster modus and French Shore issues provides new insight into why the officials on whom

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scholars have traditionally focused took the positions and attitudes that they did. It is true, for example, that key members of the St John’s political and mercantile elite were increasingly inflexible on the French question in the late nineteenth century.70 No doubt, as scholars have suggested, the imperial government’s refusal to allow such men to develop territories they saw as parts of their dominion, especially in the context of a declining shore fishery, was a source of frustration. Yet working people contributed to this increasingly rigid stance as well. As we have seen, the introduction of the secret ballot in 1887 and the expansion of the franchise in 1889 and 1890 made appeals to working people more important to electoral success.71 While many workmen in St John’s adopted a position that complemented that of their employers, they did so for their own reasons, and after they embraced such views, used all available means to shape the direction of policy. In addition to granting an overwhelming majority to Whiteway’s unofficially titled “Workingmen’s Party” in 1889, they used public protests as a means of exerting political pressure at home and abroad. For Whiteway’s working-class supporters, the best way to conform to prevailing standards of Britishness in the immediate and longer term was to build a trans-insular railway, and they saw the French presence as an obstacle to the policy of progress they had come to embrace. The 1890 modus vivendi reflected the imperial government’s continued acquiescence in the matter of French claims. A large number of workmen found this conciliatory attitude repugnant, and several thousand made their dissatisfaction known at public meetings at the Athenaeum and in a space known as “the Park,” a large enclosed field in the middle of the town. Workmen held up banners reading “Down with the French,” and complained of their victimization at the hands of the British government. They also prominently displayed a flag with an uncrowned harp and the stars and stripes to express that they saw themselves as oppressed, and to remind authorities of the kinds of movements and revolutionary acts that the imposition of such unpopular policies might provoke.72 The fact that French claims stood as an impediment to railway development, and that railway-centred policies of development were popular among working-class men in St John’s, made the “loyal cooperation” the imperial government hoped would emerge around the lobster issue highly unlikely among politicians who depended on the votes of these people for electoral success.73 Indeed, after Whiteway defeated Robert Thorburn’s Reform Party (subsequently renamed the “Patriotic Association”), both parties sought to secure, or maintain, the support of the electorate by showing themselves to be more unbending on the French question than their rivals.74

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Similarly, the hesitancy of the British government to act in favour of the St John’s mercantile and political establishment was not, as others have contended, simply linked to their reticence to irritate an imperial rival. It also had to do with naval officers’ efforts to navigate the demands and claims of the diverse groups of Britons under their charge. Eastern-based merchants and officials comprised an important lobby group, and they made their views known through various dispatches, delegations, and petitions sent to London. They also spoke through friends and relatives in Britain. For instance, Robert Thorburn’s uncle, Walter Thorburn, was the member for Peebles and Selkirk, and he often presented the views of his nephew and his associates as the “Newfoundland” position.75 Naval authorities could not help but take such views into account. Yet they were also aware that they reflected one perspective on the French Shore and the west coast lobster fishery. As Commodore (later Admiral) Assheton Curzon-Howe of the Cleopatra explicitly noted, such views were those of “one class only.” He knew all too well that they differed from the Maritimers’ views. Moreover, he and the other officers knew that the views of such men were often “as diametrically opposed to the opinions of the poorer people who occupy the Treaty Coast … as they can possibly be.”76 For the naval authorities, the goal was to promote a viable industry and a stable society. To do so required not only dealing with French-British relations but also balancing the claims and interests of these differing groups of Britons. The reluctance to cater to a St John’s–based mercantile and political elite, then, was also partly conditioned by the fact that they knew that placating one group would irritate or disadvantage others. As many of the “new” diplomatic historians have pointed out, in addition to placing policy actors within the social relations of the period, considering groups outside of formal political and diplomatic realms changes substantially the ways we understand diplomacy, diplomatic relations, and the crises and conflicts associated with these negotiations and agreements.77 The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century controversy over lobster illustrates this well. A tendency to focus on colonial politicians, their editorials, and their petitions and correspondence with British officials has shaped what historians view as the key issues, participants, and events in the controversy. We might even say that historians have done what naval officers in the late nineteenth century refused to do with men like Walter Thorburn: they have allowed the St John’s mercantile and political elite to speak for Newfoundlanders in general. By accepting elite views as the “Newfoundland position,” they

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have taken the concerns, struggles, and aims of one group as the dispute in general. Viewing the history of the west coast lobster fishery from the perspective of a wider variety of actors, it becomes clear that taking the perspective of one group as the controversy in its entirety obscures its multidimensional nature. The struggle between the colony’s political elite, the French, and British officials was, of course, important, but it was one thread in a web of overlapping and interlocking conflicts involving diverse groups as they responded to alterations in regulations and shifting ecological circumstances. While the 1890 modus was important, and while it may have been the imperial policy that the St John’s elite chafed at, as we have seen, it caused little dissension among most people engaged in the French Shore lobster fishery. The migrant merchants, resident fishers, and naval captains did not remain detached from the controversy for long, however, although the struggles and tensions that soon consumed them related to post-1890 changes to the agreements. One of the most contentious changes created a shifting terrain of struggle that lasted until just before the French relinquished their claims in Newfoundland. This was the decision to allocate grounds to the different authorized factories in 1892. Naval officers made the change partly to pre-empt conflict and partly to create a more “rational,” better managed, and sustainable fishery.78 Their idea was not to give a specific factory owner exclusive rights to particular grounds but instead to assign British fishermen rights to grounds assigned to British factories. As Commodore CurzonHowe explained to Governor O’Brien, “I have nothing to do with the number of people who fish on the grounds and waters of an English factory; the whole population of the Coast is welcome to do so, provided they keep within the limits agreed to under the ‘Modus Vivendi.’”79 In practice, however, factory owners took the new arrangements to mean that they had exclusive rights to the grounds allotted to them. Indeed, after the rule came into effect, they often bought and sold factories at dramatically increased prices with the understanding that they had purchased not only the physical plant but also the rights to a particular section of the lobster grounds.80 The introduction of this de facto system of private property created a French Shore problem, though it was not a problem that much involved the French. Whatever naval officers’ intentions may have been, after the new agreement came into effect, fishers had “not been permitted to sell, except to the proprietor of the factory within whose area the lobsters were caught.”81 These new limitations made it difficult for fishermen to negotiate higher prices for their catch, frustrating in it-

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self.82 At the time it came into effect, however, the limitation was more than an irritant to fishermen wanting to a secure high prices. Higher returns for the lobster they caught were essential, for the depletion of the lobster stocks that some naval officers noted after the mid-1880s had real material effects for working people on the treaty shore. Even though overall catches remained respectable in the late 1880s and early 1890s, lobsters caught declined both in number and average size.83 Moreover, the large overall annual output of processed lobster masked the fact that by the 1890s considerably more effort was required to acquire the same amount of raw material.84 Thus, even though the prices paid for lobster in the 1890s were thirty to forty cents per hundred higher than they had been in 1887, fishermen on the coast still could not make ends meet, and there were few economic alternatives.85 As it turned out, fishermen chose not to accept the new arrangements. Rather than simply complaining about the perceived injustices under the 1892 amendments to the modus vivendi, increasing numbers opted to pack lobsters themselves in illicit factories. Generally, these were small operations consisting of a small shack and two boilers that could be easily disassembled and hidden in the woods at the sight of a naval vessel.86 Such small factories were not entirely a new phenomenon; they had emerged soon after the initial modus vivendi. At that time, the factories appealed to residents of the coast and to St John’s merchants. For residents, they provided a means of securing a higher income in a context of ecological decline.87 Moreover, usually one or a few families ran the factories.88 Women and children did most of the work of extracting meat and canning, while men continued to fish and to sell their product to merchants as independent contractors. In this system, women ceased to receive wages. For men, however, it allowed continued independence and an even more secure status as breadwinner, all of which meshed well with the patriarchal order prescribed in prevailing standards of Britishness. For St John’s merchants who supplied the bulk of these operations, they represented not only an immediate profit but the potential for a better foothold in a still-lucrative trade. In essence, on hearing of the impending agreement between the French and British, St John’s merchants began building factories, or providing local residents with supplies necessary to construct them, and dozens of small operations sprang up.89 Unfortunately for the St John’s mercantile community, most of these factories had not existed before the cut-off date for new operations of 1 July 1889. While a large number of those who backed the factories wrote to the imperial government requesting that the date be pushed

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to 1 January 1890, naval officers on the coast and long-established large canners from the Maritimes protested against such a move.90 The larger canners objected to potential competitors. Naval officers saw the proliferation of the small factories as inimical to their aim of promoting a profitable, sustainable, and modern lobster industry on the treaty coast. The problem from their point of view, as well as the intensification of exploitation, was that those working in the smaller factories lacked supervision. Sometimes this resulted in poorly sealed cans and a spoiled product and to failure to adhere to other standards of quality control that prevailed in the larger factories. The Newfoundland canners, for example, sometimes packed two grades of lobster, one in flat cans, and another in tall cans. The “flats” contained the best portions of unbroken meat from larger lobsters, while the “talls” contained broken meat and garnered a lower price. According to the officers, the small owners were aware of the price differential, but they ignored “the reason and pack[ed] indiscriminately all portions in flat tins.”91 By the 1890s, the officers, as well as those operating in the lobster canning industry more generally, were, as Richard Warren has pointed out, well aware that poor quality could quickly destroy the reputation of a particular packer, brand, or source of tinned lobster.92 If the officers were to maintain a lucrative trade, they needed to ensure that such practices did not become commonplace. In the year following the modus, then, the naval authorities shut down over one hundred of the small operations.93 Their actions set off protests from the St John’s mercantile community. Some, such as James Baird, who was both influential and heavily vested in the west coast lobster fishery, even mounted legal challenges against the naval authorities in the British courts.94 The closings inconvenienced many residents of the treaty shore. Most, however, “immediately and loyally obeyed” the order to close the factories and entered into the employ of the authorized factories without complaint or incident. Indeed, one naval captain, impressed at the degree of compliance, commented on the “patience and good temper of the whole of the inhabitants of the western shore.”95 There was nothing to suggest that this situation would have changed markedly if all things had remained constant. After the larger, mostly Nova Scotian factory owners began to act as though the grounds allocated to their facilities after 1892 were their exclusive “claims,” however, the small factories re-emerged. The clandestine nature of any illicit trade makes it difficult to determine with precision its origins and mode of operation. While such operations may have been compara-

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tively simple, they did require start-up capital. A single boiler, for example, cost from ten to twelve dollars for iron, and from forty to seventy dollars for copper, and fishermen required a supply of tins and shooks (thin pieces of wood used to make shipping crates) and a means of accessing markets.96 As one commodore noted in 1898, the illicit factories could not have operated, nor could their owners have accessed external markets, if they were “run by poor fishermen alone”; they had to have been “supplied in some way.”97 It is likely that the illicit trade initially represented a return to the earlier practice of establishing small operations on the coast, one financed by disgruntled Newfoundland merchants who saw illicit canning as a way of circumventing obstacles to their expansion in a lucrative trade, and who now had an ally in the residents of the coast. After 1892, the illicit trade spread rapidly. At first the naval authorities were reluctant to force factory owners to allow open access to the grounds adjacent to their factories. From their perspective, it was easier to monitor and regulate a few larger factories with fixed grounds than it was to have a large number of canners with unlimited access to the lobster grounds. Rather than alter the de facto system of private property that emerged after 1892, then, the officers encouraged factory owners to pay residents a fair wage and stressed that doing so was in the owners’ self-interest.98 After all, small-scale packing meant unsupervised packing and the possible tarnishing of the reputation of Newfoundland products in the marketplace.99 Moreover, the proliferation of such operations also meant the unregulated exploitation of a resource that the officers believed was already showing signs of over-exploitation. If canners paid a higher price for lobster, there would be no incentive for fishermen to can illegally, thereby lessening the possibility of over-fishing and reducing the chances that consumers would receive a poor quality product that might ruin the reputation of the Newfoundland pack.100 Despite much pleading, however, authorized canners showed no signs of raising the rates they paid to fishers, and the illicit trade continued to grow. In fact, by the later 1890s, many of the naval authorities monitoring the coast noted that the illicit trade “assumed very great proportions and threaten[ed] to overwhelm the western shores of the Treaty Coast.”101 It was the source of controversy and discontent among residents of the shore as well, for while occasionally a French factory owner lodged a complaint with the naval authorities, the controversy was not primarily between French and British.102 In fact, naval officers generally noted peaceful relations between the French and residents of

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the coast.103 With the differently oriented British subjects, however, things were more acrimonious. As Commodore Bourke explained, these people “never ceased to fight over the question of lobsters.”104 Much to the chagrin of large canners (many of whom had paid hefty sums for their factories and, in their view, the rights to the associated fishing ground),105 concerns about the health of the stock, the quality of the pack, and social tensions led the naval authorities to insist in 1897 that the owners of authorized factories allow British fishermen to work any grounds assigned to a British factory and to sell their catch to the highest bidder.106 With the forced opening of the grounds, the price of lobster more than doubled to $2.25 per hundred. Seemingly, a sense of collective injustice had emerged among fishermen in the course of their disputes with factory owners, as they had not been offered this price initially. Instead, it “was achieved by a combination among the men – they would not fish for lower rates after they had got permission to fish in any waters.”107 Much to the disappointment of the naval authorities, however, the new strategy did not solve the problem of illicit packing, and the failure of the new policy showed that naval authorities had only partly appreciated the concerns and motivations of the authorized canners. Unquestionably, maximal profitability was partly what drove these men. After all, most ventured far from their Maritime homes to western Newfoundland because they believed they could thereby make substantial profits. Yet by the 1890s it had become increasingly difficult to do so. Part of the difficulty came from the greater costs associated with entering the trade after naval officers allotted grounds to each factory, for factory owners who purchased their operations from an established canner after 1892 had to clear more profit to compensate for the greater outlay of capital at the outset. More significant, however, was the state of lobster stocks themselves. The depletion that naval officers began to note in the later 1880s continued unabated. At century’s end, every indicator pointed to a marked decline in lobster stocks. For instance, virtually all of those interviewed about or reporting on conditions on the treaty coast throughout the period noted that lobsters were fewer in number and smaller than in years past.108 H.H. Haliburton, agent for St John’s merchant James Baird, a long-time resident of the coast, and eventually a factory owner in his own right, was more precise. He recalled that when he first arrived in the early 1880s, “from 1¾ to 2¼ was the average number of lobsters to a one pound can” at his factories. By 1898 that number had increased to “from 5 to 8 lobsters to the pound can.”109 Commodore

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Bourke too noted that in some places conditions were desperate; it took between four and a half to five nine-inch lobsters to fill a one-pound tin. While he personally had seen factories having to use eight to fill a can, he also had heard that in some parts of the Bay of Islands, that number was sometimes as high as “twelve to thirteen to the 1lb. tin.”110 Changes in the ways factory owners paid for lobsters further reinforce Bourke’s observation. While they continued with the earlier practice of paying by the hundred, by the later nineteenth century factory owners began to count two or three lobsters as one because at that time it took two to three lobsters to equal what had been the weight of one average lobster in earlier years.111 Moreover, even while overall catches remained respectable, it took more gear to acquire the same yield. As Bourke noted, in 1898 the French factories fished three thousand more traps than they had the previous year without increasing their yield of lobster. In the same year, the English factories fished six thousand more traps than they had the previous year, and they managed to pack three thousand fewer cases of finished product.112 The localized depletions on which naval officers remarked in the late 1880s, then, marked the first phases of a steady decline in lobsters stocks. Catches remained substantial, but factory owners, like the fishermen who supplied them, found themselves in an increasingly desperate circumstance. While factory owners may well have paid fishermen as little as possible for their catch to increase their profit margins, as the stocks of lobster declined, this practice was increasingly essential to the profitability of large-scale operations. And when naval officers imposed the new rules in 1897, they unwittingly helped to promote small-scale canneries in a variety of ways. For instance, they inadvertently made the illicit trade appealing even to the owners of the authorized factories who had previously opposed such operations. Pressed by dwindling lobster stocks and a dramatic increase in the cost of supplies available, such factory owners adapted to the new circumstances by trying to find new ways to supplement income derived from their operations and new sources of raw material. The illicit factories were central to their strategies. In supplying such operations, the authorized canners made money on the supplies they extended.113 Indeed, Halifax trader James Farquhar became a key supplier of “the necessary plant and tins all along the coast.”114 In supplying “only those who interfered with other legal packers,” canners like Farquhar also could access lobsters grounds not allotted to their factories.115 Finally, as it became difficult to sustain large-scale operations, many canners simply closed up and left.116 Fishermen then had little choice

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but to pack illicitly. After all, lobsters do not live long out of water, and when they die, they deteriorate quickly. Part of the reason that the spread of the canning trade and the expansion of the lobster fishery were closely linked in the nineteenth century is that this method of preservation allowed the crustaceans to be preserved quickly near the fishing grounds.117 With the authorized factories closing up, fishermen either canned their own catch or it went to waste.118 Instead of fading, then, the illicit fishery expanded dramatically after 1897. While controversy over illicit canneries persisted, it was no longer between the owners of authorized factories and resident fishermen. As one naval captain observed, in the years immediately following the opening of the grounds, the authorized factory owners had come to “have tacitly accepted as a fact that illicit packers [had] come to stay.”119 Some canners even allowed fishermen to have “free run” of their factories. Allowing residents to organize their own labour in the existing facilities was not only less troublesome to owners but it paid better and allowed them to “see that the lobsters were properly tinned,” thereby maintaining market share.120 Others increasingly moved out of canning and into a system of supplying fishermen akin to that which had existed in the cod fishery. Instead of paying cash for lobsters and employing canning crews, the authorized owners increasingly took on the role of supplying merchants. Under this arrangement, the authorized canners supplied residents with goods they needed to sustain themselves and to pursue the fishery, with the understanding that the balance owing would be paid off with the lobster catch of that season.121 What controversy there was existed between the naval authorities on the one hand, and resident fishermen and the owners of the authorized factories who now acted as supplying merchants on the other. Various captains continued to complain about the short-sightedness of both residents and merchants, who mostly seemed to show little regard for the long-term viability of the lobster fishery. However, with no allies on the coast, they had little success in influencing prevailing social practices. In the years just prior to the French relinquishing their claims to the coast, even these men basically accepted the illicit trade. While issuing warnings and occasionally seizing equipment, they turned increasingly to monitoring and managing the fishery that had emerged, even going so far as to provide regular returns of the illicit factories on the coast, all the while imploring residents to moderate their efforts in the interest of preserving the fishery.122 Such appeals fell on deaf ears. When the Newfoundland government took control of the coast after the 1904 Entente Cordiale, its efforts to regulate the fishery on the west

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coast, and in Newfoundland more generally, were not very successful either. Fishermen there, as elsewhere on the island, depleted lobster stocks to such a degree that the total yield for the island slipped from the 1889 high of 18 million pounds to just over 700,000 pounds. Ultimately, the Newfoundland government imposed a moratorium in the fishery in 1924.123 As the St George’s Bay dispute suggested, the distinct ecological, commercial, and diplomatic conditions and arrangements on the western coast of Newfoundland could and did produce perspectives, interests, and aims that differed significantly from those of residents of the Avalon or other parts of Newfoundland and Labrador. The lobster controversy on the French Shore underscores this point. Most historians who have studied the controversy have followed Frederic Thompson’s lead in focusing on the records of the St John’s elite and the French and British diplomatic corps – a reflection of the assumption that the controversy entailed a single conflict among these three groups, one that grew out of long-standing disputes over the cod fishery and exemplified a more general pattern of French Shore relations. In essence, according to the dominant view, the French sought to maximize their rights in the fishery, the Newfoundlanders (meaning the St John’s–based political and mercantile elite) sought to exclude the French altogether, and British officials, seeking neither to alienate their colonists nor to offend another of the great powers, sought unsuccessfully to find a middle ground satisfactory to all concerned. According to most historians, the controversy persisted in this way until the 1904 Entente Cordiale. In giving attention to the various parties operating or resident on the treaty shore, however, our view of this incident changes substantially. It reveals that a wide range of men and women were concerned with and affected by the changing regulation of the west coast lobster fishery. Considering these groups allows us to appreciate better a diversity of opinion about imperial and diplomatic policy. It also allows us a more thorough understanding of how differently situated groups in the colony could shape and constrain or enhance the effectiveness of agreements and policies that seem at first glance to be the preserve of elites. Finally, considering the lobster controversy from the perspective of groups outside the colonial or diplomatic elite changes the way we understand the nature, meaning, and parameters of both the conflict and aspects of Newfoundland history more generally. Although the St John’s–based elite was an important element in the dispute, these men also represented only one voice, and their concerns and the conflict in

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which they were central was one of several interconnected and mutually determining theatres of struggle. In addition to the cod fishery and what transpired among diplomats and officials in the colonial government, there were disputes – between processors and workers, and among processors themselves – that, while shaped by broader international arrangements, were rooted more squarely in the lobster fishery itself. These disputes were often partly about St John’s merchants and politicians and their efforts to wrest control from the French of western parts of the region they imagined as their “island home.” They also, however, involved residents of the west coast. These men and women were tied into regional and international economies through different trading networks. They also operated in the context of ecological circumstances different from those of their eastern counterparts. These distinct and shifting conditions produced a history whose logic and development was separate from that of the east and other regions. The lobster controversy highlights that, in the west as in the east, regional perspectives were neither homogeneous nor static. Residents in areas outside of St George’s Bay, particularly from the Bay of Islands northward, inhabited a less agriculturally productive region than those in the southwest and were thus more dependent on marine resources. As various historically important fisheries declined, whether because of ecological or economic change, lobster became increasingly important to residents and their efforts to live as “British people” after 1870. The changing ecological context in which they operated affected their views and aims. Their perspectives, however, also reflected their social location, a shifting set of diplomatic agreements, and changing strategies of the colonial government and the mostly eastern-based merchants it represented. Together these ecological, diplomatic, commercial, and social factors contributed to a set of viewpoints and strategies that evolved in unexpected ways over time. Often residents of the more northerly parts of the treaty shore embraced aims and views often at odds with the expansionist strategies of the Avalon Peninsula. They also were, however, not identical to, or synchronous with, the shifting aims and political impulses emanating out of Sandy Point.

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2 Conclusion

As they went about their lives on Newfoundland’s southwest coast, Philippe and Susan Messervey would not have known that negotiations at a Parisian hotel and in Versailles in the fall of 1783 were putting agreements and boundaries in place that would shape their lives for decades to come.1 Although they had once been settlers with the same rights and status as their counterparts in other parts of Newfoundland, the Messerveys and other early settlers of St George’s Bay now found themselves at the borderland of the French and British empires, their claims to the homes they had recently established and their future in this part of the island in question. Though initially disconcerting, the indeterminacy of life in this setting became the foundation for the Messerveys’ well-being, just as it was for a large number of settlers who eventually founded a string of economically vibrant and orderly communities in the area. Residents of this part of the coast thrived and became deeply attached to a political, social, and economic order developed through their adaptations to the specific intersection of the changing and mutually determining multi-scalar commercial, ecological, political, and diplomatic circumstances in which they operated. While these conditions were distinctive, they were not unique. Indeed, the Lake family of Fortune Bay, the Richs and Broomfields of Hamilton Inlet, Margaret Cullen and Charlie Andrews of Foxtrap, and residents of settlements on the Great Northern Peninsula all lived in contested spaces. All came to understand themselves in ways that reflected their particular positions in a wider web of relations and often articulated their interests by reference to particular places. Using a series of upheavals to identify these senses of place, this study focuses in detail on several localities in Newfoundland and Labrador in

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the nineteenth century. In analyzing such locales, it provides a wealth of detail about little-known aspects of the history of the island and parts of the mainland to its north, contributing to an extant body of studies of Newfoundland and Labrador focused on other times and places. Taken together, however, the details make a larger point about the history of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is easy to see as natural, or to take as given, the political boundaries that structure our lives; it is especially easy in the case of Newfoundland. For while Labrador is clearly a political artifice, Newfoundland is an island, and the physical separation between it and other territories makes a political division paralleling geographical facts appear permanent or inevitable. Yet geographical facts do not determine social and political outcomes. Indeed, as the St George’s Bay case makes especially clear, even when people inhabit the same island, they do not necessarily share a sense of belonging or of collective mission or purpose. The boundaries that have come to define Newfoundland do not reflect a natural or logical ordering of political space. They also do not reflect a unity or collective self-definition that came to pass organically as generations lived out their lives there. Instead, they reflect a long process of struggle and negotiation, the enduring legacy of one-time partial success of a mostly St John’s– based mercantile and political elite in “surrounding” and “taking hold” of the people and spaces they saw as subject to their rule.2 Drawing together the many studies of Newfoundland’s political and diplomatic history with the insights of more recent social and cultural history underscores that while the St John’s position was important to be sure, it was also partial, a regionally specific voice in a larger conversation. The cases here highlight the general contours of this conversation. They suggest that different groups on the island and in Labrador embraced particular perspectives and saw themselves as having distinct interests associated with the places they inhabited. The perspectives and interests that emerged in specific locales – the foundations of these senses of place – reflected diverse positions within a constellation of diplomatic relations, regional and global trade networks, and changing social and ecological circumstances locally and elsewhere. While ultimately contingent, the sensibilities and imaginings that arose at such intersections were often the foundations for political and other mobilizations. In eastern parts of the island, substantial numbers of people settled during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when a period of war made transatlantic travel difficult, caused a spike in the price of fish, and gave British merchants a temporary monopoly in trade. A minority of this group grew affluent through the fishery, and

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they came to see their fortunes and their future as tied up with the island and its resources. Such men, mostly based in St John’s, saw themselves as entitled to the rights of “free-born Englishmen,” and they pressed for political and judicial institutions befitting that designation. While they secured those institutions, as the strife and warfare of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries came to an end, so too did the conditions underlying the economic vitality that had drawn these men to the island in the first place. They now had to sustain a settler state under newly challenging conditions. At first, they sought through appeals to the imperial government to reimpose conditions similar to those they had enjoyed during the earlier crisis period, and particularly the monopoly they had enjoyed in the fishery. When such appeals failed, they sought to disadvantage competitors in the fishery, particularly the French, by controlling the south coast bait fishery, a mostly shore-based operation over which the colonial government did have some jurisdiction. Efforts to secure what Newman Hoyles and others in the colonial government imagined as their southern border, however, had unexpected results. Hoyles and his counterparts soon discovered that not all residents of the island shared their views and interests. Indeed, for those in the vicinity of Fortune Bay, the existence of French competitors was at the core of a trade in herring and other baitfish essential to the affluence of some residents and the subsistence of a great many others. Colonial officials intervened directly by sending revenue cruisers to police the area. Their efforts, however, only led settlers in the vicinity of Fortune Bay to a clearer consciousness of the distinctions between their own interests and those pursued by the colony’s political elite. The interventions galvanized an oppositional solidarity among many south coast residents. That solidarity, and the sense of place central to it, reflected that residents had become dependent on and willing to defend the commercial and social order they had developed. Ultimately, the broadly based refusal to comply with colonial law seriously inhibited colonial officials’ attempts to secure an economic foundation for the settler state they imagined. Still, these early frustrations did not dissuade the mercantile and political elites of St John’s from their task. Instead, they led to a shift in focus, as officials deployed their cruisers in the north to gain control over a more easily patrolled shore cod fishery off Labrador and provide Avalon-based merchants opportunities to expand into it. Initially the government’s enforcement officers were successful. As they pushed further north, however, they soon discovered in and around Hamilton

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Inlet, as in the south, a well-established social and commercial order in which settlers’ sense of themselves as a collectivity was deeply implicated. Around mid-century, the possibility of a vast and lucrative fishery had led colonial officials to confront obstacles to their control of northern regions. By the 1870s, when Avalon-based merchants became increasingly interested in industries outside of the cod fishery in the region around Hamilton Inlet, things were different. The continued antipathy to the colonial government’s attempted incursions on the south coast after the Fortune Bay Dispute finally persuaded colonial officials that control over what they imagined as their southern border was unlikely in the near term. Without controlling the south, the government had little chance of ridding itself of heavily subsidized competitors in a still potentially lucrative bank fishery. These continued frustrations, combined with problems of marketing and production in the cod fishery, meant that by the later nineteenth century there was little appetite in St John’s for the anticipated turmoil and cost associated with overturning the established order in Hamilton Inlet. Instead, many of the colony’s leading statesmen – William Whiteway, Robert Thorburn, Charles Fox Bennett – concluded that landward resources would be more foundational to the prosperous, populous society they imagined would come to exist in their “island home.” Though there was much debate and dissension over which landward development policy the government ought to pursue, in 1878 Whiteway and his political allies embarked on a railway-centred strategy. While he and the others knew there was resistance to this plan from within the St John’s elite, they were soon made aware that many working people also had objections. Indeed, even before construction began, residents of Foxtrap and other communities just outside of St John’s violently resisted railway surveyors’ encroachment on their property. This upheaval reflected how place had produced different perspectives among eastern Newfoundland residents. Many of those living in Foxtrap and other communities near St John’s had taken up agriculture to compensate for diminishing catches in the shore fishery of Conception Bay. Even though these people may have agreed with Whiteway and others about the need to turn away from the sea to sustain themselves, the railway project posed a threat, for the line passed directly through land that Foxtrap residents had only recently, through much effort, transformed into farms. Ultimately, coercion and negotiation overcame early popular resistance to rail-centred development. Popular pressure for the scheme in a context of increasingly democratic politics ensured that it would re-

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main at the heart of the colonial government’s development strategies. Having overcome resistance and defeated their political opponents, Whiteway and his pro-railway allies imagined that they would encounter few obstacles as they set their sights on the interior and the western parts of Newfoundland. They were wrong. International treaties were a fundamental stumbling block to asserting control over the region. Local circumstances and the views and aims of settlers complicated matters further. Careful consideration of the history of St George’s Bay, the most populous and commercially important part of the French Shore, shows that a large proportion of people on the west coast neither identified with nor sought a closer relationship with the east. Instead, traders and fishers in the region had developed a stable social order and sought out a living in the indeterminate circumstances inherent to life on imperial borderlands. They not only developed such an order but imagined that a different structuring of political boundaries might suit their interests better than with the government of Newfoundland. Only after much conflict and negotiation did they accept a future with the “government of St John’s.” This, the most populous and commercially important section of the treaty coast, was vital to the history of the region. However, a close look at the lobster controversy not only indicates that this episode was more dynamic and wide reaching than other scholars have allowed but also highlights that residents of St George’s Bay did not speak for all residents of the treaty coast. Here as in the east, differently situated residents had distinct interests that reflected their various relationships with their counterparts in Sandy Point, in other locales around the island, and in Labrador, as well as with elites in the colony’s capital. Analysis of the controversy over lobster shows that residents in more northerly parts of the area pursued their particular set of interests, aligning and realigning themselves with various parties operating on the treaty shore as social, diplomatic, economic, and ecological circumstances changed. The cases considered here are, of course, by no means the only ones that could be examined. Rosemary Ommer, Dave Bradley, and Scott Eaton have each provided excellent studies of communities on the northeast coast, and their analyses suggest that residents of this area had a potent sense of themselves as parts of a distinctive place by the later nineteenth century.3 We know little about the history of the south coast between Channel-Port aux Basques and the region around Fortune and Hermitage Bays. Here, as in Placentia Bay, it is entirely possible that similar “senses of place” were important to the relations among resi-

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dents, and between them and the outside world.4 My intention is not to provide an exhaustive account of all of the ways in which different localities were linked to the already mentioned dialogue in the late nineteenth century but to show that the dialogue itself was an integral part of Newfoundland history. A sound understanding of the history of the period as a whole demands attention to the various participants in a larger exchange, one that involved disparate and internally divided populations, whose members developed very specific perspectives, aims, and interests rooted in their locations in a changing web of trans-local and transnational relations. To gain such an understanding demands that we trace and then explore and explain the historical processes underlying the territoriality that defines our present imagination and social life.

Tractarianism and Bishop Edward Feild

159

1 Notes

acknowledgments 1 See Korneski, “Race, Gender, Class”; “Railways and Rebellion”; “Development and Diplomacy.”

introduction 1 Butt, Early Settlers of Bay St. George, 174. 2 I have used the terms “French Shore,” “treaty shore,” and “treaty coast” interchangeably to refer to the parts of Newfoundland in which the French had rights. 3 Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 76; Hiller and English, Newfoundland and the Entente Cordiale, 10; Thompson, French Shore Problem, 3–24. 4 Statement of John Dennis, 14 September 1786, National Archives of the United Kingdom, co 194/36, 194. 5 Butt, Early Settlers of Bay St. George, 173. 6 “Evidence: James Tobin, 14 February 1856, Select Committee to Inquire into the Proposed Cession of Fishing Privileges on the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador,” Journal of the House of Assembly (hereafter jha) 1857, Appendix 301; R. Vesey Hamilton to Sir J. Hope, 13 July 1864, jha 1865, Appendix 628. 7 Janzen, “French Shore Dispute,” 50–1. 8 See, for example, Harvey, “Western Newfoundland,” 108; Evening Telegram, 13 October 1879; Hatton and Harvey, Newfoundland, 136; Winter, Scott, and Morine, French Treaty Rights in Newfoundland, 20–1. 9 Edward Chappell, a naval officer who visited Newfoundland’s southwest coast in 1813, noted that Philippe Messervey was recognized as a peace officer. This practice continued throughout the nineteenth century. On Chappell, see Whiteley, “Edward Chappell,” in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography On-

160

10 11

12

13 14

15

16 17 18 19

20

Notes to pages 5–8

line (hereafter dcb Online), http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/chappell_edward_9E.html. For Chappell’s comments, see his Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Rosamond, 66. On the later nineteenth century, see Newfoundland Almanack 1857, 37; Newfoundland Almanack, 1860, 30; Newfoundland Almanac, 1861, 35; Newfoundland Almanac, 1862, 35. Chappell, Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Rosamond, 66; Cormack, Narrative of a Journey across the Island, 90. See, for example, Rogers, Historical Geography of the British Colonies: Newfoundland, 209–25; Thompson, French Shore Problem; Fraser, “French Shore,” 275–332; Hiller, “Newfoundland Fisheries Issue,” 1–23. Here I am drawing on a long-standing strategy among social historians. See, for example, Hobsbawm and Rudé, Captain Swing; Rudé, Crowd in History; Thompson, “Moral Economy of the English Crowd.” Newfoundland scholars have also previously employed this strategy. See, for example, Little, “Collective Action in Outport Newfoundland”; Overton, “Public Relief and Social Unrest.” Moore, “Explaining the Present.” An enormous number of sources could be cited here. For examples of studies of the west coast and treaty shore, see the essays in Mannion, Peopling of Newfoundland; Ommer, “Scots Kinship, Migration, and Early Settlement”; Thornton, “Dynamic Equilibrium”; Bennett, “Some Aspects of the Scottish Gaelic Tradition,” esp. 46–80; Szwed, Private Cultures and Pubic Imagery. On other parts of the island, see Bannister, Rule of Admirals; Cadigan, Hope and Deception; Pope, Fish into Wine; Overton, “Economic Crisis and the End of Democracy”; Keough, Slender Thread. See, for example, Neary, Newfoundland in the North Atlantic World; Cell, Newfoundland Discovered; Ryan, Fish out of Water; Ryan, Ice Hunters; Hiller, “Origins of the Pulp and Paper Industry”; Hiller, “Politics of Newsprint”; Hiller, “The 1904 Anglo-French Newfoundland Fisheries Convention”; Hiller, “Newfoundland Fisheries Issue in Anglo-French Treaties”; English, Barrels to Benches; Hiller and English, Newfoundland and the Entente Cordiale. Bolton, French Incursions into New Mexico; Bolton, Spanish Borderlands. For Turner’s most concise and famous statement of this idea, see his “Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Bolton, French Incursions into New Mexico; Bolton, Spanish Borderlands. Orsi, “Construction and Contestation”; Millett, “Borderlands in the Atlantic World”; Hämäläinen and Truett, “On Borderlands”; Johnson and Graybill, “Borders and Their Historians in North America,” 3–8; Adelman and Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders.” See, for example, Giersch, Asian Borderlands; Hämäläinen, Comanche Empire;

Notes to pages 8–19

21 22 23 24 25

26 27

28 29 30 31

161

Kaplan, Boundaries and Place; Asiwaju and Adeniyi, Borderlands in Africa; Ott, War, Judgement, and Memory; Statiev, Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands; Sahlins, Boundaries. Agnew, “Territorial Trap”; Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History.” Johnson and Graybill, “Borders and Their History in North America,” 4–5. See Matthews, “Class of ’32”; Cadigan, Newfoundland, 98–124. This phrase comes from Adelman and Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders.” Rogers, A Historical Geography of Newfoundland; Thompson, French Shore Problem; McKay, Newfoundland; Hiller, “History of Newfoundland”; Hiller and Neary, Newfoundland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Torpey, Invention of the Passport, 11. Payne, Fishing a Borderless Sea; Johnson and Graybill, Bridging National Borders in North America; Delay, North American Borderlands; Gangster, Sweedler, and Scott, Border Regions. Adelman and Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders.” Various scholars have voiced such concerns. See Canizares-Esquerra, “Entangled Histories,” 789, 799; Hämäläinen and Truett, “On Borderlands,” 340–2. Williams, Marxism and Literature, 128–35. See, for example, Hiller, “Appointing Magistrates,” 40.

chapter one 1 Reeves, “Fortune Bay Dispute,” 31. 2 Payne, Fishing a Borderless Sea, 29–57. 3 “Report of Commander Heysham, R.N. on Visits to the Westward,” Journal of the Legislative Council (hereafter jlc) 1868, 59; James Erskine to Vice Admiral Sir A. Cooper-Key, 14 July 1876, jha 1877, Appendix 780; Goode, Fisheries and Fishery Industries, 458. 4 Bolster, Mortal Sea, 182–3. 5 Reeves, “Fortune Bay Dispute,” 31–60; Payne, Fishing a Borderless Sea, 29–30; O’Flaherty, Lost Country, 129–30. 6 Bultows were also called long lines, tub trawls, drifting lines, night lines, or standing lines. See Bolster, Mortal Sea, 136–8; De La Morandière, French Cod Fishery in Newfoundland, 11. 7 McKenzie, Clearing the Coastline, 60–1. 8 Ibid. 9 Bolster, Mortal Sea, 136–7. 10 Payne, Fishing a Borderless Sea, 1–28; O’Leary, Maine Sea Fisheries, 173; McKenzie, Clearing the Coastline, 66–7; Bolster, Mortal Sea, 138.

162

Notes to pages 19–22

11 Neary, “French and American Shore Questions as Factors in Newfoundland History,” 115. 12 Reeves, “Fortune Bay Dispute,” 33. 13 Ibid., 31; Proctor Brothers, Fishermen’s Own Book, 111–12. 14 Testimony of Charles Dagle, Master of Schooner Lizzie and Namari, Enclosure No. 3 in Sir E. Thornton to Earl of Derby, 4 March 1878, in Great Britain, Correspondence Respecting Occurrences at Fortune Bay, Newfoundland in January 1878 (hereafter Great Britain, Correspondence), 5; Testimony of James McDonald, Master of Schooner F.A. Smith, Enclosure No. 3 in Sir E. Thornton to Early of Derby, 4 March 1878, in Great Britain, Correspondence, 6; Deposition of John Saunders, Enclosure No. 4 in Thomas Wolley to Lord Tenterden, 11 July 1878, in Great Britain, Correspondence, 18; Deposition of Mark Bolt, Enclosure No. 5 in Thomas Wolley to Lord Tenterden, 11 July 1878, in Great Britain, Correspondence, 19. 15 Testimony of Charles Dagle, Master of Schooner Lizzie and Namari, Enclosure No. 3 in Sir E. Thornton to Earl of Derby, 4 March 1878, in Great Britain, Correspondence, 5; Testimony of James McDonald, Master of Schooner F.A. Smith, Enclosure No. 3 in Sir E. Thornton to Earl of Derby, 4 March 1878, in Great Britain, Correspondence, 6; Testimony of David Malanson, Master of Schooner Crest of the Wave, Enclosure No. 3 in Sir E. Thornton to Earl of Derby, 4 March 1878, in Great Britain, Correspondence, 7; Deposition of William H. McDonald, Master of Schooner William E. McDonald in Further Correspondence Respecting the Occurrences at Fortune Bay, Newfoundland in January 1878, 35. 16 Innis, Cod Fisheries, 15. 17 Matthews, “History of the West of England-Newfoundland Fishery,” 49–51; Innis, Cod Fisheries, 39; Prowse, History of Newfoundland, 17. 18 Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 50. 19 Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland, 162; Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 56. 20 Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 52, 55. 21 Whiteley, James Cook in Newfoundland, 19–20. 22 Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland, 162. 23 Cadigan, Hope and Deception, esp. vii–xii, 1–17. 24 Ryan, “Fishery to Colony,” 39. 25 Chang, “Newfoundland in Transition,” 35–66; Williams, “Ethnohistorical Study of Fisher-Merchant Relationships,” 18–19. 26 Macdonald, “Really No Merchant,” 1988, 64. 27 Fizzard, Unto the Sea, 93–5; Thornton, “Transition from the Migratory to the Resident Fishery,” 92–120; Cadigan, Hope and Deception, 37–50; Ommer, “One

Notes to pages 22–5

28 29

30 31

32 33 34

35

36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43

163

Hundred Years of Fishery Crisis,” 7; Ommer, “Merchant Credit and the Informal Economy,” 167–89. Dollimont, “History of Fortune and Hermitage Bays,” 88–9; Macdonald, “Really No Merchant,” 63. See Abstract Returns of Newfoundland, 1857, 125–6; Abstract Census and Return of the Population, &c. of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1869, 156; Abstract Census and Return … 1874, 196. Goode, Fisheries and Fishery Industries, 439. M.B. Millibanke, “Report of the Sea-Cow and Cod Fisheries Established upon the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulph of St. Lawrence, in the year 1789,” 26 October 1789, co 194/38, 126. Robert Rowley to Vice Admiral Sir Charles Hamilton Bart, 27 August 1818, co 194/61, 80–2. Jukes, Excursions in and about Newfoundland, 92. Cape Ann Advertiser, 23 February 1877; Captain Bennett, who visited the south coast in 1836, mentioned the presence of traders from the United States and from other of the British North American colonies. See Thomas Bennett to Governor Prescott, 31 August 1836, jha 1837, Appendix 445. Richard Furneaux, a one-time resident of Harbour Breton, also later recalled the early presence of vessels from neighbouring colonies. See “Report of the Select Committee on the Pickled Fish Act,” Evidence of Richard Furneaux, jha 1848–9, Appendix 675. Wayne O’Leary mentions this trade in Maine Sea Fisheries, 15. James Hayward mentioned it retrospectively; see “Report of James S. Hayward,” 1 November 1865, jha 1866, Appendix 638–9. Dollimont, “History of Fortune-Hermitage Bays,” 91–6. Neary, “French and American Shore Questions,” 98. Wix, Six Months of a Newfoundland Missionary’s Journal, 157. On Newman Hoyles see Pamela Bruce, “Newman Wright Hoyles,” in dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hoyles_newman_wright_1777 _18407E.html; see also Frederick Jones, “Sir Hugh William Hoyles,” in dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=5596. Proceedings for 24 April 1835, jha 1835, 101. “Report of the Select Committee to Whom was Referred the Petition of George Lake and others, Inhabitants of Fortune Bay,” jha 1835, 108. Hiller, “History of Newfoundland,” 10; “An Address to His Excellency Henry Prescott,” jha 1835, 114. “An Address to His Excellency Henry Prescott,” jha 1835, 114; 7 Wil IV, Cap 3 (Acts of the General Assembly of Newfoundland [hereafter agan] [1836]), 13.

164

Notes to pages 25–8

44 Neary, “French and American Shore Questions,” 98. 45 Thomas Bennett to Captain H. Prescott, 31 August 1836, jha, 445; “Copies of Reports Made by Alexander Milne of her Majesty’s Ship Crocodile Relative to the Fisheries of Newfoundland,” jlc 1841, Appendix 30. See also “An Address to the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty,” jha 1844, 125. 46 De La Morandière, French Cod Fishery in Newfoundland, 11; Challamel, Technique et pratique des Grande Pêches Maritimes, 26–7. 47 Smith, Fisheries of Cape Ann, 88. 48 Assembly of Newfoundland, “Address to the Crown,” jha 1844, 124–7; Patrick Morris, “Report on the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Fisheries on the Banks and Shores of Newfoundland,” 22 April 1845, jha 1845, Appendix 208; “Report of Captain Loch on the Fisheries of Newfoundland in a Letter to Earl Dundonald, 1848,” jlc 1849, 187; jha 1848–9, 258; jha 1850, Appendix 111. 49 “Report of Captain Decourcy of hms Helena on the Fisheries of Newfoundland, Address to Vice-Admiral, Right Hon. Thomas, Earl of Dundonald,” jha 1851, Appendix 151; De La Morandière, French Cod Fishery in Newfoundland, 11. 50 Bolster, Mortal Sea, 138. 51 Thomas Bennett to Captain H. Prescott, 31 August 1836, jha 1837, 445. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 446. 54 Ibid., 445. 55 “Appendix 6: Report of a Select Committee of Her Majesty’s Council Appointed to Take Additional Evidence on the Pickled Fish Act Amendment Bill,” jlc 1849, Evidence of Charles Bennett, 129; Fizzard, Unto the Sea, 94; Aaron Buffett, “Grand Bank: Flourishing Fishing Capital of Fortune Bay,” Daily News, 7 June 1941, 5. 56 Proceedings for 24 April 1835, jha 1835, 101. 57 M.B. Davis, P. Lundrigan, and P. Ripley, “Description of the Cod Stock Structure in Placentia Bay, nafo Subdivision 3ps,” Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 2006; Hutchings, Neis, and Ripley, “The ‘Nature’ of Cod,” 140–85. 58 See, for example, jha 1844, 116; Patrick Morris, “Report of the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the State of the Fisheries on the Banks and Shores of Newfoundland,” jha 1845, Appendix 202–7. 59 “Copies of Reports Made by Alexander Milne of Her Majesty’s Ship Crocodile Relative to the Fisheries of Newfoundland,” jlc 1841, Appendix 30. 60 Ibid. 61 Sean Cadigan, “‘Chilling Neglect,’” 10. 62 “Copies of Reports Made by Alexander Milne of Her Majesty’s Ship Crocodile Relative to the Fisheries of Newfoundland,” jlc 1841, Appendix 30.

Notes to pages 28–31

165

63 Sean Cadigan, “‘Chilling Neglect,’” 11; Patrick Morris, “Report of the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the State of the Fisheries on the Banks and Shores of Newfoundland,” jha 1845, Appendix 202–13. 64 Proceedings for 18 April 1844, jha 1844, 116; “Address to the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty” jha 1844, 126. 65 4 Wil. IV, Cap. 16 (agan [1834], 81). 66 8 Vic., Cap. 5 (agan [1845], 26). 67 “Report of the Select Committee on the Pickled Fish Act,” jha 1848–9, Appendix 672. 68 “Report of the Select Committee on the Pickled Fish Act,” Evidence of Richard Furneaux, jha 1848–9, Appendix 675. 69 “Report of the Select Committee on the Pickled Fish Act,” jha 1848–9, Appendix 672. 70 See, for example, “Appendix 30: Copies of Reports Made by Alexander Milne of Her Majesty’s Ship Crocodile Relative to the Fisheries of Newfoundland,” jlc 1841, Report for 21 June 1841. 71 “Report of Captain Decourcy of hms Helena on the Fisheries of Newfoundland, Address to Vice-Admiral, Right Hon. Thomas, Earl of Dundonald,” gcb,” 5 September 1850, jha 1851, Appendix 151. 72 “Report of Captain Decourcy of hms Helena on the Fisheries of Newfoundland, Addressed to Vice-Admiral, Right Hon. Thomas, Earl of Dundonald, gcb,” 5 September 1850, jha 1851, Appendix 141; “Report of Captain Ramsay, of Her Majesty’s Ship Alarm, Addressed to Sir George Seymour, Naval commander-in-Chief,” 2 August 1851, jha 1852, Appendix 107. 73 Macdonald, “Really No Merchant,” 67. 74 See “Report of Select Committee on the Preservation of Bait,” jha 1876, Evidence of T.R. Bennett, Appendix 680; Fizzard, Unto the Sea, 94; Aaron Buffett, “Grand Bank: Flourishing Fishing Capital of Fortune Bay,” Daily News, 23 June 1941, 7. 75 Mountain, Sowing Time, 9. 76 “Appendix 30: Copies of Reports Made by Alexander Milne of Her Majesty’s Ship Crocodile Relative to the Fisheries of Newfoundland,” jlc 1841, General Remarks. 77 See, for example, Abstract Census and Return … 1845, 22–4. 78 T.R. Bennett recalled these changes. See “Report of Select Committee on the Preservation of Bait,” jha 1876, Evidence of T.R. Bennett, Appendix 680. The schooners were also a routine part of reports from both naval captains and from the colony’s Fisheries Protection Service (on which more below) from the early 1860s onward. See, for example, “Report of Captain Hamilton of Her Majesty’s Ship Hydra of His Cruise on the South Coast of Newfoundland,” jlc 1863, xi; “Appendix 1: Report of Captain Parish on the 1st Cruise

166

79 80 81 82 83

84

85 86 87 88

89 90 91

92

93 94

Notes to pages 31–2

of hms Sphinx between 5th June and 22 August 1868,” jlc 1869, 5, 11; “Report of Commander Heysham, rn on his Visit to the Westward, 8 July 1867,” jha 1868, Appendix 503, 506; “Report of Commissioner for Protection of Herring fishery, Under Act 25th Vic., Cap. 2, from 1st to 11th April,” jlc 1873, Appendix 426. Abstract Census and Returns … 1869, 154. Abstract Census and Return … 1874, 193. Abstract Census and Return … 1857, 97–8. Abstract Census and Return … 1874, 134. Abstract Census and Return … 1884, 166; Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Tables II and III – Fisheries, Property, Produce of the Land, Live Stock, etc., Mines, Factories, &c., 336. Abstract Census and Return … 1857, 97–8; Abstract Census and Return … 1874, 134; Abstract Census and Return … 1884, 166; Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Table I – Population, Sex, Condition, Denominations, &c., 336; Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Table I – Population, Sex, Condition, Denominations, Professions, &c., 309. “Copy of Report of Captain Brown, hms Danae of his Cruizes on the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador,” jlc 1872, Appendix 197. Bolster, The Mortal Sea, 47; Fagan, The Little Ice Age. On the spatial reorientation of the fishery see Cadigan and Hutchings, “Nineteenth Century Expansion of the Newfoundland Fishery,” 31–66. “Report of the Select Committee on the Pickled Fish Act,” Evidence of Harry Knight, jha 1848–9, Appendix 675; “Report of Commander Heysham, rn on His Visit to the Westward, 8 July 1867,” jha 1868, Appendix 506. Cape Ann Advertiser, 27 January 1870. Vessels that prosecuted the offshore fishery were referred to as “banking” vessels. Bolster, Mortal Sea, 114–15; “Letter from Matthew H. Warren, Esq., on the Subject of the Salmon and Other Fisheries, Reported with the Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Salmon Fishery of This Island,” jha 1860, Appendix 483; Cape Ann Advertiser, 24 December 1875. Cape Ann Light and Gloucester Telegraph, 29 December 1866; “Report of Commander Heysham, rn on Visits to the Westward,” jlc 1868, 59; James Erskine to Vice Admiral Sir. A. Cooper Key, 14 July 1876, jha 1877, Appendix 780; Goode, Fisheries and Fishery Industries, 456. Cape Ann Advertiser, 23 February 1877. Fishermen at the time noted this annual pattern. In recent years researchers also have noted it. See Stephenson, Melvin, and Power, “Population Integrity

Notes to pages 32–5

95 96 97 98

99

100 101 102

103

104

105 106 107

108

167

and Connectivity,” 1733–9. Hatton and Harvey, Newfoundland, 271–3; Rogers, Historical Geography of the British Colonies, 209–14. Hatton and Harvey, Newfoundland, 272. Rogers, Historical Geography of the British Colonies, 272. Robertson, Shelburne and the Gloucestermen, 2. Cape Ann Advertiser, 23 February 1877; John Erskine to Sir A. Cooper, 14 July 1876, jha 1877, Appendix 781. I have found advertisements for Newfoundland and Labrador herring in Grand Forks, North Dakota; Chicago, Illinois; and Muskegon, Michigan. See, for example, Grand Forks Daily Herald, 31 May 1884; Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, 25 February 1869; Muskegon Chronicle, 31 March 1885. “Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly to Inquire Into the Causes of the Decline in the Fisheries,” jha 1863, Evidence of James Winter, Appendix 478. Cape Ann Advertiser, 23 February 1877. See Innis, Cod Fisheries, 329–30; and the testimony of Gloucester captain Charles Dagle, jha 1879, Appendix 462. Report of Captain Decourcy of hms Helena on the Fisheries of Newfoundland, Addressed to Vice-Admiral, Right Hon. Thomas, Earl of Dundonald, gcb,” 5 September 1850, jha 1851, Appendix 143; The Rooms: Provincial Archives Division (hereafter trpad), gn 2/2, box 42, J. Blackburn to James Crowdy, 14 October 1853; co 194/137, A.D. Lolly to George Seymour, 21 July 1852, 112–24; Goode, Fisheries and Fishery Industries, 450. T.R. Bennett recalled that in the years after mid-century the fleet of schooners grew from a few dozen to over three hundred vessels. See “Report of Select Committee on the Preservation of Bait,” jha 1876, Evidence of T.R. Bennett, Appendix 680. Godwin, Late Capt. J.M. Fudge, 4–5; on the history of shipbuilding in Marystown, see Albert Dober, “History of Shipbuilding in Marystown,” 2013, http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/sgc-cms/histoires_de_chez _nous-community_memories/pm_v2.php?id=story_line&lg=English&fl =0&ex=00000642&sl=5187&pos=1, accessed 26 May 2013. “Appendix 7: Copy of report of Captain Malcolm of hms Danae of Fisheries on the S.W. Coast of Newfoundland, 1871,” jlc 1872, 175. Innis, Cod Fisheries, 379. trpad, gn 2/2, box 36, Andrew Ellis and John Chapman to James Crowdy, 22 August 1850; “Report of Captain Ramsay of Her Majesty’s Ship Alarm, Addressed to Sir George Seymour, Naval Commander-in-Chief, on the 22nd August 1851,” jha 1852, 107. “Report of the Select Committee on the Pickled Fish Act,” Evidence of Harry

168

109 110

111 112

113 114 115

116

117

118

Notes to pages 36–7

Knight, jha 1848–9, Appendix 675; “Report of Captain Ramsay, of Her Majesty’s Ship Alarm, Addressed to Sir George Seymour, Naval Commander in Chief, on the 22nd August, 1851,” jha 1852, Appendix 108; “Report of Commander Heysham, R.N. on Visits to the Westward,” jlc 1868, 58; “Appendix 7: Copy of Report of Captain Malcolm, hms Danae, of Fisheries on the S.W. Coast of Newfoundland,” jlc 1872, 179. “Report of Select Committee on the Preservation of Bait,” jha 1876, Evidence of T.R. Bennett, Appendix 680. C.F. Bennett to John Fox, 4 May 1858, jlc 1858, 257–8; “Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly to Inquire Into the Causes of the Decline in the Fisheries,” jha 1863, Evidence of Thomas Gaden, Appendix 475. Dollimont, “History of Fortune-Hermitage Bays,” 59. “Evidence Taken before Select Committee on French Encroachments on This Island and Labrador,” jha 1851, Evidence of W.L. Bradshaw, Appendix 167; “Report of Captain Ramsay, of Her Majesty’s Ship Alarm, Addressed to Sir George Seymour, Naval Commander-in-Chief,” 2 August 1851, jha 1852, Appendix 107. Philip Hubert mentions this practice. See Hubert to J.J. Rogerson, 25 September 1875, jha 1876, Appendix 685. “Appendix 33: Report of Officer in Charge of Herring Fishery Protection Service 1877,” jlc 1878, 192. See “Report of James S. Hayward,” 1 November 1865, jha 1866, Appendix 651; “Report of Select Committee on the Preservation of Bait,” jha 1876, Evidence of Joseph Small, Appendix 688. The practice continued on after the Fortune Bay dispute as well. See John Sullivan to P. Carty, 11 February 1881, jlc 1882, 618. “Report of Select Committee on the Preservation of Bait,” jha 1876, Evidence of Joseph Small, Appendix 687. “Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly to Inquire into the Causes of the Decline in the Fisheries,” jha 1863, Evidence of Thomas Gaden, Appendix 474 and Evidence of James Winter, Appendix 481. Taylor, “Knowing the Black Box,” 60–75. Bolster mentions these difficulties in Mortal Sea, 17–23. See also the essays in Jackson, Alexander, and Sala, Shifting Baselines. Bennett was from Nova Scotia. He started a mercantile business in Fortune Bay in 1853 and went on to become a prominent judge and politician in Newfoundland. For biographical information, see “Report of Thomas R. Bennett,” in William Whiteway to Earl of Kimberley, 20 May 1881, in Correspondence Arising out of Transactions at Fortune Bay and Elsewhere, 1; “Thomas

Notes to pages 37–8

119 120 121

122

123 124

125

126

127

128

169

R. Bennett,” in Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 1, 177–8. “Report of Select Committee on the Preservation of Bait,” jha 1876, Evidence of T.R. Bennett, Appendix 680. “Captain D. Miller’s Report on the Fisheries of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1873,” jlc 1873, 395. “Report of Select Committee on the Preservation of Bait,” jha 1876, Evidence of T.R. Bennett, Appendix 680; Fizzard, Unto the Sea, 110; Macdonald, “Really No Merchant,” 76; Withers, “French, American, and Canadian Influences,” 19; Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 138. Report of Judge Bennett [hereafter rjb], Evidence, Edward Reid, 167. A large number of schooner owners and other residents mentioned the importance of this trade in building up the schooner fleet. See, for example, rjb, Evidence, George Inkpen, 167; rjb, Evidence, William Payne, 170; rjb, Evidence, John Spencer, 176; rjb, Evidence, George Simms, 177–8. “Report of James S. Hayward,” 1 November 1865, jha 1866, Appendix 638–9. “Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly to Inquire into the Causes of the Decline in the Fisheries,” jha 1863, Evidence of James Winter, Appendix 478. Jiggers were unbaited hooks set in a lead sinker shaped like a baitfish. Some fishermen complained that these devices not only increased catch rates but also mortally wounded a large number of other fish as well. “Appendix 1: Report of Captain Parish on the First Cruize of hms Sphinx Between 5 June and 22 August 1869,” jlc 1869, 26–7; “Appendix 7: Copy of report of Captain Malcolm of hms Danae of Fisheries on the S.W. Coast of Newfoundland, 1871,” jlc 1872,178; “Report of Commander Heysham, rn on his Visit to the Westward, 8 July 1867,” jha 1868, Appendix 506; “Copy of Report of Captain Brown, hms Danae, of his Cruizes on the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador,” jha 1872, Appendix 196. P.F. Little to Colonial Secretary’s Office, 2 March 1863, jha 1863, Appendix 197–99; “Report of Commander Heysham, rn On His Visit to the Westward, 8 July 1867,” jha 1868, Appendix 507; “Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly to Inquire into the Causes of the Decline in the Fisheries,” jha 1863, Evidence of Thomas Gaden, Appendix 474. “Outport Magistrates’ Replies to a Circular from Government, Relative to the Mode of Prosecuting Fisheries, and the Introduction of Improvements Therein,” jha 1863, Evidence of James Winter, Appendix 418; “Copy of Report of Captain Brown, hms Danae, of His Cruizes on the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador,” jha 1872, Appendix 192.

170

Notes to pages 38–42

129 O’Flaherty, Lost Country, 54. 130 Cape Ann Advertiser, 29 December 1866; 5 November 1869; “Report of Commander Heysham, rn on His Visit to the Westward, 8 July 1867,” jha 1868, Appendix 504; “Appendix 1: Report of Captain Parish, on the 1st Cruize of hms Sphinx between the 5th June and 22 August 1868,” jlc 1869, 27. 131 jha 1860, 65; jha 1865, 31. 132 21 Vic., Cap. 14 (agan [1858], 93–4). 133 25 Vic., Cap. 2 (agan [1862], 9–11). The law was later amended to extend the period in which seining was forbidden. See 39 Vic., Cap. 6 (agan [1876], 108). 134 jha 1863, Appendix 437. 135 Proceedings for 28 February 1866, jha 1866, 56. 136 trpad, mg 633, Papers of the Chamber of Commerce, box 3, folder 1, Annual Report 1865, 5–6. 137 Proceedings for 28 February 1866, jha 1866, 56. 138 Proceedings for 1 March 1866, jha 1866, 62. 139 Henry Camp, commissioner of the Herring Fishery Protection Service, mentioned that Newman and Co. owned the Greyhound, one of the vessels the colonial government had regularly leased. See Camp, “Journal of the Schooner Mary Jane Employed on Herring Fishery Protection, 1880,” jlc 1881, Appendix 614. 140 Macdonald, “They Cannot Pay Us in Money,” 118. 141 “Evidence: George and John Lake, 2 May 1863, Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly to Enquire into the Causes of the Decline of the Fisheries,” Evidence of George and John Lake, jha 1863, Appendix 621. Customs records also indicate that the Lakes had small schooners (25 tons) by the mid-1840s. See trpad, gn 11.21, Finance and Customs, Vessels Outward: Little Bay, May 1843. 142 “Appendix 55: Report of Commissioner for Protection of Herring Fishery, under Act 25th Vic., Cap. 2, from 1st to 11th April, 1872,” jlc 1873, 426. 143 “Appendix 47: Copy of Report of Officer Employed on the Protection of the Herring Fishery, 1st to 12th April 1873,” jlc 1874, 480. 144 “Copy of Report of Officer Employed on the Protection of the Herring Fishery, 1st to 12th April 1873,” jlc 1874, 481. 145 James Erskine to Vice Admiral George G. Wellesley, 24 October 1875, jlc 1876, 256. 146 Joseph Small to Receiver General, 27 August 1875, jlc 1876, Appendix 687. 147 Henry Camp to James L. Noonan, 18 April 1872, jlc 1873, 420–1. 148 “Appendix 33: Report of Officer in Charge of Herring Fishery Protection Service, 1877,” jlc 1878, 196–7. 149 Joseph Small to J.J. Rogerson, 27 August 1875, jha 1876, Appendix 687.

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150 Philip Hubert to J.J. Rogerson, 25 September 1875, jha 1876, Appendix 686. 151 Bolster, Mortal Sea, 182–3. 152 Deposition of John Rumsey, Enclosure No. 2 in Robert Herbert to Lord Tenterden, 28 March 1878, Great Britain, Correspondence, 11. 153 Reeves, “Fortune Bay Dispute,” 33; Cape Ann Advertiser, 24 December 1875; 12 January 1877. 154 “Appendix 33: Report of Officer in Charge of Herring Fishery Protection Service, 1877,” jlc 1878, 189–90. 155 “Report of T.R. Bennett on the Fortune Bay Affair, 4 May 1881,” in William Whiteway to Lord Kimberley, 20 May 1881, Great Britain, Correspondence Relating to the Settlement of Claims Arising out of the Transactions at Fortune Bay and Elsewhere, 6. 156 “Deposition of Mark Bolt, 13 June 1878,” Enclosure No. 5 in Thomas Wolley to Lord Tenterden, 11 July 1878, in Great Britain, Correspondence, 15.

chapter two 1 Condon, Fisheries and Resources of Newfoundland, 202. 2 trpad, gn 1/3/A 1880, Box 14, folder 38, “Supreme Court of Newfoundland: George Pottle vs. Nathan Norman and Others, 24 November 1870” (hereafter Pottle v. Norman), 20. 3 Ibid., 8, 20. 4 See Nourse to Simpson, 26 August 1843, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (hbca), B 153/b/2, North West River Correspondence Book, 1843–1846; trpad, gn 1/3/A, 1883, box 17, folder 10, R.H. Cochrane to C.G. Fane, 9 July 1883. 5 Pottle v. Norman, 9. 6 Ibid., 20. 7 Ibid., 19. 8 Ibid., 20. 9 Ibid., 11. 10 Ibid., 9. 11 Ibid., 10. 12 “Report of R.J. Pinsent, Esq, Judge of the Labrador Court,” 31 December 1870, jha 1871, Appendix 703. 13 Pottle v. Norman, 21. 14 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 14, folder 38, M. Fortescue to S. Rendell, 12 July 1880. 15 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 14, folder 38, Enclosure No. 3 in W.H. Hall to W.R. Kennedy, 14 October 1880. 16 Rigolet Post Journal, 1879–1883, hbca, B.183/a/26, entry for 11 July 1882;

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19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26

27

28 29 30

31

Notes to pages 52–5

trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 17, folder 10, Statement of Isaac Rich, 30 January 1883, 3. “Report of Stephen March, Esquire, General Superintendent of Fisheries during the Summer of 1865,” jha 1866, Appendix 522. Fortescue to John Ford, 18 July 1881, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1875–1886; Fortescue to Armit, 20 July 1881, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1875–1886; Fortescue to S.R. Parsons, 24 September 1881, hbca, B.183/b/3, Rigolet letter Books, 1875–1886; Fortescue to W.V. Whiteway, 11 July 1882, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1875– 1886. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 17, folder 10, Statement of Isaac Rich, 30 January 1883, 1, 5. Ibid., 4. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 17, folder 10, Statement of Abraham and Charles Broomfield, 1; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 17, folder 10, Statement of Isaac Rich, 30 January 1883, 1. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 17, folder 10, C.G. Fane to Sir Henry F.B. Maxse, 7 August 1883. Rothney, “Case of Bayne and Brymer”; Whiteley, “Establishment of the Moravian Mission”; Whiteley, “Governor Hugh Palliser”; Whiteley, “Newfoundland, Quebec, and the Administration of the Coast of Labrador.” Anick, Fur Trade in Eastern Canada, 643. Gaudie, Down North on the Labrador Circuit; Rompkey, Story of Labrador, 77. On traders in the area, see hbca, B.153/b/1, “Report on the Coast Trade of Labrador,” 1843, 108–10; Captain Arthur Cochrane to Vice Admiral Sir George Seymour, 6 September 1852, jha 1853, 124. There were also other English and Jersey traders further south. See Ommer, From Outpost to Outport, 23; Whelan, Just One Interloper after Another, 25–35. Fernand Ouellet, “Simon McGillivray,” dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca /en/bio/mcgillivray_simon_7E.html; Fernand Ouellet, Simon McTavish, dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mctavish_simon_5E.html. See also Calloway, White People, Indians, and Highlanders, 124; Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, 117–19, 138–9. Mackie, Trading beyond the Mountains, 245–7, 319; Innis, Fur Trade, 264–5. Kohlmeister and Kmoch, Journal of a Voyage; Davies, “Notes on Ungava Bay and Its Vicinity,” 135–6; McLean, Notes of a Twenty-Five Years’ Service, 32–3. Finlayson to the Governor and Committee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 20 September 1830, in Davies, Northern Quebec and Labrador Journals and Correspondence, 178. Sider, Skin for Skin, 38.

Notes to pages 55–7

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32 Robertson, “Notes on the Coast of Labrador,” 29; Hind, Explorations in the Interior, 126–30; Gosling, Labrador, 164–74, 230–1; Jenness, Eskimo Administration, 7–9; Anick, Fur Trade in Eastern Canada, 612–15. 33 Rankin, “Role of the Inuit,” 310–19; Mitchell, “Inuit of Southern Labrador and Their Conflicts,” 320–9. 34 Wadden, Nitassinan, x; Samson, Way of Life, 81. 35 See Sider, Skin for Skin, 38; Mailhot, People of Sheshatshit, 8–10. 36 Finlayson to George Simpson, 31 March 1834, in Davies, Northern Quebec and Labrador Journals, 225. 37 Nicol Finlayson to Erlandson, 19 November 1832, in ibid., 191; Nicol Finlayson to Mr Erlandson, 27 March 1833, in ibid., 195; Nicol Finlayson to George Simpson, 31 March 1834, in ibid., 225. 38 Davies, Northern Quebec and Labrador Journals, lxxii–lxxvi. 39 Fitzhugh, Environmental Archaeology, 19–24; Fitzhugh, The Labradorians, 311–13. 40 Davies, Northern Quebec and Labrador Journals, lxxii–lxxvi. 41 Nourse to Verral, 9 January 1842, hbca, B.153/b/1, North West River Correspondence Book, 1838–1843; Nourse to James Keith,18 September 1842, ibid.; Nourse to Keith, 15 September 1842, ibid. 42 See, for example, Nourse to Barclay, 9 August 1847, hbca, B.153/b/3, North West River Correspondence Book, 1846–1849; Hardisty to Barclay, 17 July 1850, hbca, B 153/b/4, North West River Correspondence Book 1849–1851; Hardisty to Smith, 30 January 1849, hbca, B.153/b/3, North West River Correspondence Book, 1846–1849; North West River Post Journal, 1850–1853, hbca, B.152/a/11, entry for 30 December 1850; North West River Post Journal, 1850–1853, hbca, B.153/a/11, entry for 12 August 1850; North West River Post Journal, 1864–1866, hbca, B.153/a/16, entry for 24 April 1865; North West River Post Journal, 1865–1866, hbca, B.153/a/17, entry for 2 November 1866; North West River Post Journal, 1865–1866, hbca, B.153/a/17, entry for 21 February 1867; Great Britain, Report from the Committee on the Hudson’s Bay Company, 83. 43 Nicol Finlayson to Governor Simpson, 10 December 1832, in Davies, Northern Quebec and Labrador Journals, 194. 44 Finlayson to J.G. MacTavish and Joseph Beioley, 10 December 1832, in ibid., 191. 45 See hbca, B.153/a/1, North West River Post Journal, 1836–1837, entry for 5 November 1836; see, for example, Davies to Simpson, 3 August 1838, hbca, B.153/b/1, North West River Correspondence Book, 1838–1843; North West River Post Journal, 1839–1840, hbca, B.153/a/3, entry for 11 April 1840; Donald Henderson to Nourse, 19 January 1846, hbca, B.153/c/1, North West River Inward Correspondence 1844–1847; Nourse to Barclay, 24 July 1846,

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47 48

49 50 51 52 53

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Notes to pages 58–9

hbca, B.153/b/3, North West River Correspondence Book, 1846–1849. In 1843, on seeing that the Innu would risk starvation rather than direct their attention away from caribou hunting, hbc officers went so far as to import supposedly more advanced Cree families from the Rupert’s River District on James Bay into Labrador. The hope was that that the Rupert’s River group would set an example for the Innu, or perhaps supplant them. Ultimately the scheme failed, as the Rupert’s River Cree, facing Innu protestations and the unfamiliar terrain of eastern parts of the Labrador Peninsula, returned to their home territory. See Nourse to Simpson, 25 August 1843, hbca, B.153/b/2, North West River Correspondence Book, 1843–46. James Anderson to Simon McGillivray, 4 February 1838, hbca, B.153/c/1, North West River Inward Correspondence, 1838–1843; Davies to James Keith, 22 August 1838, hbca, B.153/b/1, North West River Correspondence Book, 1838–1843; James Keith to A. Davies, 3 October 1838, hbca, B.153/c/1, North West River Inward Correspondence, 1838–1843. Kennedy, Encounters, 137–40. Davies to Simpson, 13 September 1839, hbca, B.153/b/1, North West River Correspondence Book, 1838–1843; for a similar discussion, see Davies to Simpson, 3 August 1838, hbca, B.153/b/1, North West River Correspondence Book, 1838–1843. Davies, “Notes on Ungava Bay,” 421–2; Brandy, “Inuit Land Use,” 332–3. Fitzhugh, The Labradorians, 314. Kennedy, People of the Bays and Headlands, 35. hbca, B.153/a/1, North West River Post Journal, 1836–1837, entry for 5 October 1836. In recent years scholars have commented on the origins of social categories in Labrador, and often the anxiety surrounding them; see, for example, Kennedy, “Labrador Metis Ethnogenesis”; Kennedy, Holding the Line. Scholars of Labrador are, of course, far from alone in contemplating such questions; see, for example, Lawrence, “Gender, Race, and the Regulation of Native Identity”; Palmater, Beyond Blood; Peterson and Brown, New Peoples; Coates and Morrison, “More Than a Matter of Blood”; Innes, Elder Brother and the Law of the People; Douaud, Western Metis. Richard Hardisty mentioned this practice. See Hardisty to Hunt and Co., 20 June 1849, hbca, B.153/b/3, North West River Correspondence Book, 1846– 1849. See also Rigolet Post Journal, 1850, hbca, B.183/a/5, entry for 7 August 1850; Rigolet Post Journal, 1856–1857, hbca, B.183/a/11, entry for 12 April 1857; Rigolet Post Journal, 1857–1858, entry for 29 July 1857; Rigolet Post Journal, 1879–1883, B.183/a/5, entry for 18 February 1880. See also Baikie, “I Likes to Go Fishing,” 12; Baikie, “Weddings,” 4–5; Baikie, Labrador Memories, 11, 42.

Notes to pages 59–62

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55 Numerous observers noted that planter families insisted that their children read. See, for example, “Report of Judge Sweetland, of Proceedings of Labrador Court, During the Summer 1864, &c., Together with Census Return of Resident Population, from Blanc Sablon to Indian Harbor,” 11 October 1864, jha 1865, Appendix 708; “Report of R.J. Pinsent, Esquire, Judge of the Court of Labrador,” 27 November 1869, jha 1870, Appendix 506; Young, One Hundred Years of Mission Work, 14; Campbell, Sketches of a Labrador Life, 13; Blake, Diary, 4. 56 Low and Macoun, Report on Explorations, 127. 57 Baikie, “I Likes to Go Fishing,” 12. 58 Nourse to Simpson, 26 August 1843, hbca, B 153/b/2, North West River Correspondence Book, 1843–1846. 59 Nourse to Anderson, 24 August 1846, hbca, B.153/b/3, North West River Correspondence Book, 1846–1849; Nourse to Henry Connolly, 11 June 1848, hbca, B.153/b/3, North West River Correspondence Book, 1846–1849. 60 hbca, B.183/z/4, Rigolet Wills of Servants and Residents. 61 Baikie, “Hudson’s Bay Company Employees Who Left,” 17–29; Nourse to Anderson, 25 August 1847, hbca, B.153/b/3, North West River Correspondence Book, 1846–1849. 62 The number of examples that might be cited in support of this assertion is enormous. See, for example, North West River Post Journal, 1847–1849, hbca, B.153/a/9, entry for 5 June 1848, 26 June 1848, 23 September 1848; North West River Post Journal, 1850–1, hbca, B.153/a/12, entry for 31 December 1850, 16 May 1851; North West River Post Journal, 1850–1853, hbca, B.153/a/11, entries for 28 January 1851; 18 March 1851; 26 April 1851; Rigolet Post Journal, 1856–1857, hbca, B.183/a/11, entry for 22 June 1856; P.W. Bell to Donald Smith, 10 September 1856, hbca, B.183/a/11, 28. 63 See, for example, Nourse to James Keith, 18 September 1842, hbca, B.153/b/1, North West River Correspondence Book, 1838–43; Anderson to Nourse, 9 September 1844, hbca, B.153/c/1, North West River Inward Correspondence 1844–1847; Hardisty to Joseph McPherson, 25 July 1851, hbca, B.153/b/4, North West River Correspondence Book; Hardisty to Joseph McPherson, 9 September 1851, hbca, B.153/b/4, North West River Correspondence Book 1849–51; Hardisty to Simpson, 25 September 1849, hbca, B.153/b/4, North West River Correspondence Book. 64 North West River Post Journal, 1844–1846, hbca, B.153/a/7, entry for 3 April 1844; North West River Post Journal, 1850–1851, hbca, B.153/c/12, entry for 15 May 1851; Rigolet Post Journal, 1857–1860, hbca, B.183/a/12, entries for 24 March 1857, 10 January 1858, 3 February 1858; Rigolet Post Journal, 1865–66, hbca, B.183/a/20, entry for 25 September 1866. 65 Patrick Hogan mentioned this reorientation retrospectively. See “Report of

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68

69

70

71

72 73 74

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Notes to pages 62–4

Mr. Patrick Hogan on the Subject of the Cod Fishery,” 31 March 1881, jha 1882, 609; see also W.G. Gosling, Labrador, 382–90; Thornton, “Dynamic Equilibrium,” 67. For evidence of these protests, see “Report of Mr. Rendell’s Proceedings on the Coast of Labrador,” jha 1841, Appendix 42–3; T.S. Bird to John Craze, 10 July 1840, Maritime History Archive, C.108/0-9, Thomas Street Bird and Company Papers. “Report of Mr. Rendell’s Proceedings on the Coast of Labrador,” jha 1841, Appendix 42; Charles Hunt to Lord Stanley, 10 March 1842, jha 1843, Appendix 372–373; Elias Rendell to William Davies, 9 August 1841, hbca, B.183/c/1, Rigolet Inward Correspondence, 1841–58. Patrick Hogan mentioned the rationale for the increased interest in Labrador in a report on the cod fishery. See “Report of Mr. Patrick Hogan on the Subject of the Cod Fishery,” 31 March 1881, jha 1881, Appendix 609. See, for example, the declarations of Edward White, William Ellis, and William Penney dated 15, 18, and 21 December 1851 respectively in “Documents from His Excellency the Governor in Reference to the Encroachments of the French on the Labrador,” jha 1852, 112–15; see also J. Gaspard LeMarchant to Earl Grey, 20 February 1852, fo 27/1228, 79–89. “Petition from Robert Pack and Others, 19 February 1852;” “Petition from Kenneth McLea and Others, 24 February 1852;” “Petition from John Wilcox and Others, 12 March 1852,” jha 1852, 40, 47, 61. See “Petition from William Gordon and Others, 28 April 1852,” jha 1852, 142; “Memorial from the Merchants and Traders of St John’s,” 30 April 1852, jha 1852, 146–7. Proceedings for 5 May 1852, jha 1852, 153–4. Proceedings for 10 May 1852, ibid., 168. Evidence: Edward White, 14 February 1857, Select Committee to Inquire into the Proposed Cession of Fishery Privileges on the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador by the Imperial Government and the Government of France, jha 1857, Appendix 281; Evidence: Robert Ellice, 14 February 1857, scfp, jha 1857, Appendix 282–3; Evidence: James McLoughlan, 16 February 1857, scfp, jha 1857, Appendix 283–4. Olaf Janzen notes a long-term decline in the number of French fishermen on the west coast of Newfoundland. In his estimation, the number declined from more than nine thousand in 1829 to about four hundred in 1903. See Janzen, “The French Shore Dispute,” 52. Observers in the 1860s and 1870s noted the falling off of catches. See, for example, “Correspondence, Together with Public Notices Relative to Able-Bodied Pauperism and Failure of the Labrador Fishery,” jha 1863, Appendix 1187; “Report of Commander Preston, of H.M.S. ‘Medea,’ to His Excellency the Governor, on the Protection of the Labrador Coast, from Battle Harbor to Cape Harrison,” 14 October 1864,

Notes to pages 64–6

76

77

78

79 80 81 82

83

84 85 86 87

177

jha 1865, Appendix 630; “Report of the General Superintendent of Fisheries on the Protection of the Fisheries on the Coast of Labrador, and in the Straits of Belle Isle, during the Summer of 1867,” 31 October 1867, jha 1868, Appendix 524. British naval officers and other officials also conducted inquiries that chronicled the decline of the fishery retrospectively. See, for example, trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, “State of Occupied and Unoccupied French Rooms on the North East Coast of Newfoundland,” Enclosure No. 6 in Newfoundland Letter No. 95, 1893; Great Britain, Report of the Newfoundland Royal Commission, Evidence: Commodore M.A. Bourke, St John’s, nl, 12 October 1898, 1963. On the gradual shift north, see Henry Youle Hind, “Notes on the Northern Labrador Fishing Grounds,” 8 November 1876, jha 1877, Appendix 731; Cadigan and Hutchings, “Nineteenth-Century Expansion of the Newfoundland Fishery,” 31–66. Bannerman to Duke of Newcastle, 13 June 1862, in Great Britain, Labrador Customs Duties, 3; Rev. U.Z. Rule witnessed firsthand the controversy over duties in Labrador as he hitched a ride on one of the colony’s revenue cruisers; see Rule, Reminiscences of My Life, 8. See Hunt and Henley to Sir F. Rogers, Bart, 28 October 1863, and F. Rogers to Sir Edmund Head, 5 December 1863, in Great Britain, Labrador Customs Duties, 33–4. Hunt and Henley to Sir F. Rogers, Bart, 30 January 1864, in ibid. “Report of R.J. Pinsent, Esq., Judge of the Labrador Court,” 31 December 1870, jha 1871, Appendix 704. See 26 Vic., Cap. 3 (agan [1863], 19). The colonial government began appointing such individuals as stipendiary magistrates in 1857. See The Newfoundland Almanac 1857, 37. Colonial officials had inquired into doing so as early as 1852. See Finalyson to Paton, 28 June 1852, trpad, gn 2/2, box 40. “Letter from Commander of the ‘Sappho’ to Vice-Admiral Sir George Seymour,” 6 September 1852, jha 1853, Appendix 125–126; Henry Youle Hind, “Notes on the Northern Labrador Fishing Grounds,” 8 November 1876, jha 1877, Appendix 731; W.R. Kennedy to E.A. Anglefield, 10 September 1879, Adm 1/6506. Whiteway to Glover, 3 November 1880, trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 14, folder 38. Frederick Jones, “Sir Hugh William Hoyles,” in dcb Online, http://www. biographi.ca/en/bio/hoyles_hugh_william_11E.html. On Robinson see “Bryan Robinson,” in Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 4, 611–12. Fortescue to Prowse and Sons, 18 August 1880, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books; Forescue to W.V. Whiteway, 11 January 1882, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1875–86.

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Notes to pages 66–72

88 Fortescue to S.R. Parson, 24 September 1882, hbca, B.183/b/3, Rigolet Letter Books, vol. 2, 1875–86. 89 McTavish to Allan Cameron, 27 September 1875, hbca, B.183/b/3, Rigolet Letter Books, vol. 1, 1875–86. 90 Ryan, Fish out of Water, 48. 91 Fortescue to Armit, 18 October 1883, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 2, Rigolet Letter Books, 1883–1894. 92 “Third Cruise of hms Druid with His Excellency the Governor on Board,” 30 August to 9 September 1879, Adm 1/6506. 93 Fortescue to Bissett, 5 July 1880, hbca, B.183/b/4, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1875–1886; see also Fortescue to E.D. Shea, 23 September 1880, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1875–1886; Fortescue to W.V. Whiteway, 11 July 1882, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1875– 1886. 94 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 17, folder 10, Statement of Isaac Rich, 30 January 1883, 2–5. 95 Nearly two decades later, traders and residents in the area still recalled the turbulent period of the early 1880s when questions of ownership and rights emerged. See James Wilson to Robert Prowse and Sons, 20 September 1900, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 5, Rigolet Letter Books. 96 Ryan, Fish out of Water, 77–98. 97 Ryan, “Newfoundland Salt Cod Trade,” 51. 98 Ryan, Fish out of Water, 133. 99 Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 6. 100 Ibid. 101 See Hiller, “Railway and Local Politics,” 124; “Report of J.L. McNeil, Esq., Acting Judge of the Court of Labrador,” jha 1875, Appendix 924–6. 102 Fortescue to Armit, 12 August 1881, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1875–1886; Fortescue to G. Adams, 16 February 1884, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 2, Rigolet Letter Books, 1883–1894; McKenzie to Robert Prowse and Sons, 28 July 1886, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol., 2, Rigolet Letter Books, 1883–1894; McKenzie to Prowse and Sons, August 1888, hbca, B.183/b/3, vol. 1, Rigolet Letter Books, 1887–1892.

chapter three 1 See, for example, Gunn, Political History of Newfoundland, 157–75; Lambert, “Emblem of Our Country, 21–43; Hollett, Shouting, Embracing, Dancing; Keough, “Contested Terrains”; Luedee, “‘Bare Rocks instead of Fish,’” 81–98; Cadigan, Hope and Deception and the pertinent chapters of Newfoundland and Labrador; Little, “Collective Action in Outport Newfoundland.”

Notes to pages 73–5

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11

12

13 14 15

179

Porter, “‘She Was Skipper of the Shore Crew.’” Cadigan, “Moral Economy of the Commons,” 14–15. Hiller, “Newfoundland Credit System,” 82–101. Cadigan, “‘Chilling Neglect,’” 6–7. House et al., Building on Our Strengths, 39–54. Cadigan, “Moral Economy of the Commons,” 18–22. Alexander, “Newfoundland’s Traditional Economy,” 20–1; Cadigan, “Moral Economy of the Commons,” 18; Cadigan, “Failed Proposals for Fisheries Management,” 147–69. Bolster, Mortal Sea, 47; Brian Fagan, Little Ice Age. Alexander, “Newfoundland’s Traditional Economy,” 20–1; Cadigan, “Moral Economy of the Commons,” 18. Cadigan, “Moral Economy of the Commons,” 25–7; Cadigan and Hutchings, “Nineteenth-Century Expansion.” See also Cadigan, “Failed Proposals, 147– 69; Ryan, Fish out of Water, 48–9. See “Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly to Inquire into the Causes of the Decline of the Fisheries,” jha 1863, Appendix 435–631. Alexander, “Newfoundland’s Traditional Economy,” 25. Cadigan, “‘Chilling Neglect.’” At first, colonial politicians seem to have believed that granting rights to the use and benefit of the lands and resources of the island’s interior at a minor cost would itself entice settlers and investment to the island. Accordingly, in 1860 they passed an act that outlined the procedures and conditions of the sale of unoccupied crown lands. The 1860 act seemingly had disappointing results, and in May 1866 the Assembly passed another act offering bounties (eight dollars for the first acre and six dollars for each of six additional acres) to those who cleared and brought into cultivation unoccupied lands in the colony. While diversification in general appealed to the colony’s elite, failures in the fishery throughout the 1860s made the situation more urgent, and they framed the latter act (tellingly entitled Act for the Reduction of Pauperism, by Encouraging Agriculture and More Effectually Carrying into Operation the Provisions of the Act, 23 Vic., Cap. 3) explicitly with the view that the “present means of support” were “not sufficient to provide” for wants of the populace. To these they introduced additional legislation designed to generate growth, including, for example, acts to encourage oyster farming, homesteading, manufacturing, and sheep farming. See 23 Vic., Cap. 3 (agan [1860], 29–31); 29 Vic., Cap. 5 (agan [1866], 55–7); 31 Vic., Cap. 11 (agan [1868], 78); 36 Vic., Cap. 7 (agan [1873], 85–89); 40 Vic,. Cap. 10 (agan [1877], 61–2); 42 Vic., Cap. 14 (agan [1879], 89–91); 42 Vic., Cap. 10 (agan [1879], 80–2). On the parallels between the Newfoundland and Canadian

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20

Notes to pages 75–6

and American homestead legislations, see Staveley, “Saskatchewan-By-TheSea,” 31–41. Although by the later 1890s Newfoundlanders grew more concerned with Labrador’s mineral and timber resources, in the period under consideration they tended to regard it as a fishing station. That is, they concerned themselves with little beyond the coastal zone they needed for conducting the fishery. Indeed, until around the turn of the century, they had not bothered to determine the boundaries of the region. See Budgel and Staveley, Labrador Boundary. Smith, “Toryism, Classical Liberalism, and Capitalism,” 7–12; Hiller, “Confederation Defeated,” 67–94; Jones, “‘Antis Gain the Day,’” 142–7. Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 4. While the majority of the top tier of the St John’s social hierarchy were fish merchants, Bonnie Morgan has noted there was also a key group of “those who directed society through political institutions.” Many of the leaders of the pro-railway groups – men like Whiteway and Shea – were among this segment of Newfoundland’s late nineteenth-century ruling class. See Morgan, “Class and Congregation,” 37. For information on the individuals mentioned here, see Hiller, “William Whiteway,” dcb Online, www.biographi.ca /en/bio/whiteway_william_vallance_13E.html; Hiller, “Ambrose Shea,” dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=41186&query=ambrose %20AND%20shea; Melvin Baker, “A.W. Harvey,” dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca /EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=40894 &query=augustus%20AND%20harvey”; Baker, “Moses Monroe,” dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp ?BioId=40430 &query=moses%20AND %20monroe. See also “James Callanan,” Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 1, 313; “Michael Carty,” Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 1, 379; “William Donnelly,” Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador Labrador, vol. 1, 635; “Richard MacDonnell,” Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 3, 406; “James McGrath,” Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 3, 409; “George Shea,” Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 5, 153; “Patrick J. Scott,” Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 5, 110–11; “Thomas Murphy,” Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 3, 655. For more on Murphy and for information on Thomas Mitchell, see Baker, “Government of St John’s,” 242, 248. Harvey, This Newfoundland of Ours; “Report of the Select Committee to Consider and Report upon the Construction of a Railway,” jha 1880, 127. For earlier examples of similar views, see, for example, Father Morris, “The Proposed Railway across Newfoundland; A Lecture Delivered in the New Temperance

Notes to pages 76–9

21 22 23 24 25

26 27

28 29 30

31

32 33

181

Hall, 9 February 1875” (St John’s: Public Ledger Office 1875); David Alexander, “Newfoundland’s Traditional Economy,” 25. Morning Chronicle, 10 July 1880. Ibid., 8 June 1880. Mercury, 3 November 1884; 4 November 1884. Robert Sweeny suggests that the tendency to default on debts was widespread. See his “Accounting for Change,” 121–38. The idea that Newfoundland had been hampered by self-serving merchants was pervasive. This quote comes from the Mercury, 12 February 1884. See also, for example, the Morning Chronicle, 23 December 1881; Mercury, 5 November 1884. Sean Cadigan mentions the importance of this view in Hope and Deception, esp. vii–xii. Mercury, 4 March 1882. This type of commentary was common. See, for example, Mercury, 19 April 1882, 13 May 1882, 24 June 1882, 27 June 1882; Morning Chronicle, 24 January 1882, 30 June 1882; Newfoundlander, 1 March 1881; 30 June 1882; Carbonear Herald and Outport Telephone, 16 September 1880, 13 May 1881. Mercury, 4 March 1882. Newfoundlander, 26 January 1883. Ibid., 11 March 1879, 26 January 1883. Often these ideas about the future that the railway would bring were implicit. See, for example, Evening Telegram, 6 January 1881, 19 October 1881, 21 October 1881, 1 November 1881. Newspaper reports toward the end of the nineteenth century indicate that the city contained organizations that had been developed elsewhere to deal with the “problem” of young female wage earners. A report in the Evening Telegram for 4 June 1897, for example, mentions that St John’s was home to a branch of the Girl’s Friendly Society, an organization founded in London, England, in 1875. For contemporary examples of these ways of thinking about Newfoundland and its history, see Mercury, 16 June 1883, 8 June 1883, 12 February 1884; Morning Chronicle, 23 December 1881. Other scholars have identified and commented on the pervasiveness of these notions. See, for example, Cadigan, Hope and Deception, vii–xii; Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 6; Bannister, “Whigs and Nationalists; Bannister, “Making History.” Cadigan, Hope and Deception, vii–xii. Alexander McNeilly, mha for Twillingate and speaker of the house under Thorburn, was, for example, a key investor in the Avalon Gold Mining Company. See Telegram, 5 March 1886. He was also involved in land and mineral speculation; see Centre for Newfoundland Studies (cns), biographical file for Alexander McNeilly.

182

Notes to pages 79–82

34 “C.F. Bennett and Co.,” R.G. Dun and Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard University, Harvard Business School, vol. 10, p. 16, entry for 22 October 1855. 35 Bennett was interested in a host of industries on the island. He, along with Smith McKay, started up the colony’s first copper mine in Tilt Cove. In addition to mines, Bennett owned a brewery, distillery, sawmill, and foundry, was involved with shipbuilding, owned a slate quarry, was a founding member of the Agricultural Society, and constructed a model farm south of St John’s. On Bennett, see cns, biographical file for Charles Fox Bennett; see also Bert Rigg’s article in Telegram, 28 November 2000. John Joy has shown that virtually all of the industrial ventures in St John’s in this period had financial backing from the colony’s prominent merchants. See Joy, “Growth and Development of Manufacturing.” 36 Telegram, 27 September 1882. 37 Evening Telegram, 5 August 1880; Telegram, 22 March 1881, 21 March 1881. For Thorburn’s similar view, see, for example, Newfoundlander, 1 April 1881. 38 Hiller, “Railway and Local Politics,” 129. 39 Hiller, “History of Newfoundland,” 130. 40 Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 6; Cramm, “Construction of the Newfoundland Railway,” 28–33; Otte, “From ‘War-in-Sight’ to Nearly War”; Darwin, Empire Project, 71–5. 41 Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 7. 42 Morning Chronicle, 27 July 1880. 43 Harding, “Battle of Foxtrap,” 85. 44 Evening Telegram, 27 July 1880, 30 July 1880. 45 Letter to the editor, 6 August 1880, Carbonear Herald and Outport Telephone, 12 August 1880; Morning Chronicle, 29 July 1880, 27 July 1880. 46 Morning Chronicle, 29 July 1880. 47 Ibid.; Public Ledger, 30 July 1880. 48 Harding, Newfoundland Railway, 15–23; Harding, “Battle of Foxtrap,” 84–7; Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 7–8; Hiller, “History of Newfoundland,” 83; Cramm, “Construction of the Newfoundland Railway,” 45–8; Moon, “Fighting Women of Foxtrap,” 39–43; Penney, “Newfoundland Railway,” 476. 49 Carbonear Herald and Railway Journal, 15 August 1880; Prowse, “Old-Time Newfoundland,” 215. 50 Jones, “‘Antis Gain the Day,’” 146–7; Smith, “Toryism, Classical Liberalism, and Capitalism,” 7–8; Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 7. On Grieve’s opposition to Confederation see Hiller, “Walter Grieve,” in dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=39679. 51 Jones, “‘Antis Gain the Day,’” 146–7.

Notes to pages 83–5

183

52 Abstract Census and Return of the Population, &c. of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1845, 2. 53 Abstract Census and Return … 1857, 14. 54 Abstract Census and Return … 1869, 11–12. 55 Abstract Census and Return … 1874, 12, 14. 56 Abstract Census and Return … 1884, 12, 14–15. 57 Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Table I – Population, Sex, Conditions, Denominations, Professions, &c., 14. 58 Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Table II and III – Fisheries, Property, Produce of the Land, Live Stock, etc., Mines, Factories, &c., 14–15. 59 This is of course not to say that the only reason women protested in Foxtrap was that men were in Labrador fishing. As other scholars have pointed out, women were often central in public protests. See, for example, Little, “Collective Action”; Bittermann, Rural Protest. 60 Abstract Census and Return … 1874, 14; Abstract Census and Return … 1884, 14; Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Table II and III, 14. 61 MacKinnon, “Farming the Rock,” 32; Murray, Cows Don’t Know It’s Sunday, 33–61. 62 Mannion, Point Lance, 31. 63 Abstract Census and Return … 1874, 15; Abstract Census and Return … 1884, 15. 64 Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Table II and III, 19. 65 Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Table I, 18. 66 Abstract Census and Return … 1884, 15; Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1891: Table II and III, 19. 67 The trans-insular line, the early phases of which Foxtrap’s residents resisted, accounted for about $9.5 million (nearly 60 per cent) of Newfoundland’s $17 million debt in 1898, the year the line was finished. The construction of branch lines between 1887 and 1934 added over $40 million to the country’s debt, a burden that, in the context of the Great Depression, it could no longer carry. Overburdened by debt accumulated in large measure to underwrite railway-building, Newfoundland had little choice but to assent to rule by a Commission of Government in 1934. See Eaton, “Railway Routes and Regionalism,” 11; Clarke, “Railway Branch Line Construction in Newfoundland”; Newfoundland Royal Commission Report 1933 (London: hms0 1933), 206, 223; Cramm, “Construction of the Newfoundland Railway,” 158. 68 Hiller, “A History of Newfoundland,” 10. 69 Toll roads and bridges were common throughout the empire. In neighbouring Canada, for example, a large number of the early roads in Ontario and Quebec were toll roads. The system persisted in Ontario until 1926 when the

184

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Notes to pages 86–91

government took over the road between Sarnia and Petrolia. See Jackman, “Economic Development of Canada,” 581. Prowse, “Old-Time Newfoundland,” 215. McEwan, “Newfoundland Law of Real Property,” 35. Ibid., 99–103. Registry of Deeds, Memorandum of Agreement between James Butler and Garland Butler and the Newfoundland Railway Company, 15 August 1882. McEwan, “Newfoundland Law of Real Property,” 170; Pocious, Place to Belong, 105; McCarthy, “Evolution in the Landscape.” “Offbeat History: Wrecking the Train,” Telegram, 13 June 1968. Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 9. Evening Telegram, 6 October 1881. Ibid., 13 May 1882; Evening Mercury, 16 May 1882. Cadigan, Hope and Deception, 3–17. Ibid., 51–64 Evening Telegram, 27 July 1880, 30 July 1880. Evening Mercury, 3 July 1882. Ibid. lac, mg 598, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Reel A 245, Letter 4257, Report of Edward Colley, 1879. lac, mg 598, spg, Reel A 246, Letter 3703, Report of Edward Colley, 31 December 1882. Keough, “Contested Terrains,” 29–70. Hiller, “Railway and Local Politics,” 133–4. Mercury, 19 and 20 February 1886; Proceedings of the House of Assembly, 18 February 1886. For a copy of the resolutions, see jha 1886, 80–9. Mercury, 23 and 24 March 1886; Proceedings of the House of Assembly, 19 March 1886. See Legislative Council debates, 20 February 1886, in Telegram, 26 February 1886. The legislature passed the act on 19 March, the same day that it defeated Shea’s railway resolutions. 49 Vic., Cap. 3 (agan [1886], 51–7). Cramm, “Construction of the Newfoundland Railway,” 89–91. Mercury, 28 September 1886. See, for example, Assembly debates, 7, 9, 10 May 1889; in Mercury, 14, 16, 18 May 1889. Hiller, “History of Newfoundland,” 133. Hiller, “Railway and Local Politics,” 135. Ryan, “Newfoundland Salt Cod Trade,” 51; Ryan, Fish out of Water, 133. David Alexander, “Newfoundland’s Traditional Economy,” 23.

Notes to pages 91–5

185

100 Colonist, 24 July 1886; Telegram, 26 August 1886, 20 September 1886. 101 Cramm has noted the lack of evidence for this view in “Construction of the Newfoundland Railway,” 93. I am not suggesting that sectarianism was unimportant for Newfoundland in general; clearly, the violence at Harbour Grace in 1883 indicates that the Protestant-Catholic divide still had significance. There is, however, nothing to indicate that sectarianism was important in the decision to resume railway work. 102 Hiller, “History of Newfoundland,” 131–2. 103 Newfoundlander, 19 August 1882. 104 There is discussion of the first railway excursion in the Mercury, 27 June 1882, 5 July 1882, and general excursions were reported in the Telegram, 3 July 1882 and 22 July 1882. On 9 August 1882 the employees of the city’s foundries and engine and boiler works scheduled a similar trip. See ad in Telegram, 25 July 1882. Similar excursions are mentioned in Mercury, 14 July 1882, and 19 July 1882. Hiller also mentions the popularity of the railway in Newfoundland Railway, 9–10. 105 Morning Chronicle, 6 May 1881. 106 Newfoundlander, 23 August 1881. 107 Ibid., 16 September 1881. See also ibid., 2 September 1881 and 16 September 1881, and similar commentary in the Morning Chronicle, 6 May 1881. 108 Evening Telegram, 23 June 1886. 109 There is evidence of mass privation and unrest in various parts of Conception Bay and in St John’s. See Evening Telegram, 11 February 1886, 22 February 1886, 27 February 1886, 11 March 1886, 16 March 1886. 110 Ibid., 27 February 1886. 111 Ibid., 3 March 1886. 112 Ibid., 18 March 1886. 113 jha 1886, 88; Mercury, 31 March 1886. According to the Harbour Grace Standard of 3 April 1886, the arrest of those identified as the leaders of the “mob” at the Colonial Building precipitated still more unrest as “a mob gathered outside the Court House for the purpose of rescuing the prisoners, and were only prevented from breaking in the door and doing so by a squad of police drawn up before it with fixed bayonets, while the mounted men did their utmost to scatter the crowd.” 114 See Telegram, 5 July 1886 for a copy of the petition. A copy of another similar petition from workers from Harbour Grace appears in the Telegram, 16 April 1886. 115 Mercury, 13 December 1886. 116 Harbour Grace Standard, 3 April 1886. 117 Mercury, 31 March 1886; Harbour Grace Standard, 3 April 1886. 118 For copies of the petitions, see Telegram, 16 April 1886.

186

119 120 121 122

123

124 125

126 127 128 129 130

131

132 133 134 135

136

Notes to pages 95–9

Mercury, 13 October 1886; Telegram, 14 October 1886. Ibid., 23 October 1886. Ibid. Ibid., 8 November 1886, 11 November 1886, 16 November 1886. The number of people organized is mentioned in the Mercury, 23 November 1886. The inclusion of “interested capitalists” is mentioned in the Mercury, 17 December 1886. Ibid., 28 October 1886 mentions that Angel was elected president of the organization. On Angel, see also “James Angel,” in Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 1, 47; O’Neill, Oldest City, 666. On Mitchell, see Baker, “St John’s Municipal Chairman and Mayors,” 5–6. Evening Telegram, 23 November 1886. Morris was elected as an independent in 1885, promoted railway development, later supported Whiteway in the 1889 election, and went on to be leader of the “People’s Party” and prime minister of Newfoundland. See “Edward Morris,” in Encyclopedia of Newfoundland, vol. 3, 622; also Hiller, “Edward Morris,” dcb Online, http://www .biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=39843&query=edward%20AND %20morris. Hiller, “History of Newfoundland,” 131. Mercury, 4 October 1886. Telegram, 23 June 1886. Mercury, 31 March 1886. The Ballot Act of 1887 instated the secret ballot. See 50 Vic., Cap. 10 (agan [1887], 133–53). In 1889 the colonial government amended the Election Act to allow all males over the age of twenty-five to vote. Prior to that time, only householders over the age of twenty-five had been able to do so. See 52 Vic., Cap. 15 (agan [1889], 106–7). In 1890, the voting age was further reduced to twenty-one. See 53 Vic., Cap 13 (agan [1890], 98–101). Whiteway himself recognized the significance of these changes for politics on the island. He later claimed that the Ballot Act was what got him elected in 1889. See “Manifesto from Sir William V. Whiteway, kcmg, the Leader of the Workingmen’s Party,” Bond Papers, Centre for Newfoundland Studies Archives, Collection 237, 3. 12.004, 1893. Telegram, 29 August 1889. Ibid. Hiller, “Newfoundland Railway,” 11. Evening Telegram, 25 September 1889, 18 October 1889. These sorts of comments continued on into the Whiteway administration’s first months in power. Hiller, “Railway and Local Politics,” 135. For contemporary discussions, see,

Notes to pages 99–107

187

for example, Assembly debates, 7 May 1889, in Mercury, 14 May 1889; Assembly debates, May 11, 13, 14 1889, in Mercury, 20, 21, 22, 23 1889. 137 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 21, folder 13, Sir Robert Thorburn to Sir Terence O’Brien, 10 December 1889. 138 O’Brien to Lord Marquis of Ripon, 15 November 1893, co 194/225, 91; see also, Baldwin Walker to George Watson, 18 July 1890, co 194/216, 258. 139 Eaton, “‘To the Disgust of the Whole Northern Districts.’”

chapter four 1 Thompson, French Shore Problem; Neary, “French and American Shore Questions, 95–122; Hiller, “Newfoundland Fisheries Issue.” 2 See Bennett, Report of Judge Bennett; Evidence: George Brushett, Burin, no. 65; Evidence: James Pike Sr, St Lawrence, no. 66; Evidence: John Lake Sr, Fortune, no. 71. 3 M.F. Howley to R.J. Pinsent, 31 August 1891, in Adm 128/98, “Record and Report of the St. George’s Bay Inquiry,” 604–8. 4 Hiller, “Appointing Magistrates on the French Treaty Shore,” 40. 5 I have used the terms “French Shore,” “treaty shore,” and “treaty coast” interchangeably. All of these terms refer to the parts of Newfoundland in which the French had fishing rights. 6 Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 76; Hiller and English, introduction to Newfoundland and the Entente Cordiale, 10; Thompson, French Shore Problem, 3–24; Hiller, “Newfoundland Fisheries Issue.” 7 Dundonald to Secretary of the Admiralty, 6 September 1849, co 194/132, 130; “Appendix 9: Report of Captain Purvis, hms ‘Argus,’”18 July 1855, jlc 1856, 151; “Extracts from Captain Hamilton’s Report to the Admiral and Governor Relative to the Fisheries,” 30 September 1863, jha 1864, Appendix 471. “Appendix 7: Report of Captain Malcolm of hms ‘Danae,’” jlc 1872, 200. 8 “Appendix 1: Report of Captain Parish of hms ‘Sphinx,’” 24 August 1868, jlc 1869, 4. 9 Rogers, Historical Geography, 272. 10 “Report of James S. Hayward,” 1 November 1865, jha 1866, 628–9. 11 Higman, Jamaican Food, 317–21. 12 Rogers, A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, 216. 13 Numerous observers mentioned the timing of the fishery. See “Report of James S. Hayward,” 1 November 1865, jha 1866, 628–9; Howley to R.J. Pinsent, 31 August 1891, in “Records and Report of St. George’s Bay Inquiry,” Adm 128/98, 604.

188

Notes to pages 107–110

14 “Deposition of John Messervey,” 31 August 1858, jha 1859, 391; H. Hoskins, “Fishery Report for Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador,” 9 October 1872, jlc 1873, 461. 15 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 21, folder 8, “Presentment of the Grand Jury of St. George’s,” 6 September 1889. 16 M.F. Howley to R.J. Pinsent, 31 August 1891, in “Records and Report of St. George’s Bay Inquiry,” Adm 128/98, 604–8; Commodore Sir B. Walker to Vice-Admiral Sir G. Watson, 8 July 1891, Adm 128/97, 94–5; “Deposition of William Vincent, Seal Rocks, St. George’s Bay,” 25 June 1891, Adm 128/97, 95; “Deposition of William Morris, Seal Rocks, St. George’s Bay,” 25 June 1891, Adm 128/97, 98. 17 “Appendix 20: “Report of Captain Loch on the Fisheries of Newfoundland,” 1848, jlc 1849, 200–1; “Report of Captain Decourcy of hms ‘Helena,’ on the Fisheries of Newfoundland,” 5 September 1850, jha 1851, Appendix 150; “Report of Captain Ramsay, of Her Majesty’s Ship ‘Alarm,’” 22 August 1851, jha 1852, Appendix 110; Stephen March, “General Fishery Report on the Newfoundland and Labrador Coasts,” entry for 3 July 1869, jlc 1870, 5, 14. 18 M.F. Howley to R.J. Pinsent, 31 August 1891, in “Records and Report of St. George’s Bay Inquiry,” Adm 128/98, 607. 19 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 22, folder 5, M.H. Carty to Robert Bond, 31 May 1890. 20 Ibid., 21 July 1890. 21 On the commission’s findings, see R.J. Pinsent, “Report to His Excellency the Governor in Council upon Certain Claims of Inhabitants of Bay St. George, Newfoundland,” 27 January 1892, Adm 128/98, 610–14; and the schedule of claims attached to R.J. Pinsent to Robert Bond, 4 February 1892, Adm 128/98, 615–19. Captain Baldwin-Walker noted that residents received no compensation. See, for example, Baldwin-Walker, “Record of Interview with Deputation Onboard hms ‘Emerald’ on 16 August 1892 at St. George’s,” Adm 128/98, 622-4. 22 Michael John Kelly, “Appendix 15: A Journal and Report of the Movements of the Schooner ‘Alice,’ Employed by the Newfoundland Government, to Take the Census from Cape Ray to Quirpon, and to Protect the Fisheries on the Labrador Coast and Straits of Belle Isle, in the Year 1857,” jlc 1858, 217; Commander Howarth, “Report on the Newfoundland and Labrador Fisheries, 1874,” jha 1875, Appendix 749. 23 Marshall, History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 279. 24 Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 53. 25 Downer, Turbulent Tides, xii; Butt, Early Settlers of St. George’s Bay, 8. 26 Brown, “Growth of Settlement in St. George’s Bay,” 3. 27 Butt, Early Settlers of St. George’s Bay, 26; Statement of John Dennis, 14 September 1786, co 194/36, 194.

Notes to pages 110–11

189

28 Bartels and Janzen, “Micmac Migration,” 71–94; see also Pastore, “Newfoundland MicMacs,” 10–16; Jackson, “On the Country,” 9–13. 29 trpad, mg 331, Diary of Henry Lind, Sandy Point, entry for 17 July 1857. 30 Ommer, “Highland Scots Migration,” 212–33; Ommer, “Scots Kinship.” 31 Evidence: James Tobin, 14 February 1856, Select Committee to Inquire into the Proposed Cession of Fishing Privileges on the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, jha 1857, Appendix 300; “Appendix 8: H.H. Forrest to Alexander Bannerman, 28 October 1858,” jlc 1859, 139; Duhait, “Sandy Point.” 32 George Castri mentions a group of such men from Bay Chaleur in northern New Brunswick. See trpad, gn 2/2, George Castri to E.D. Shea, 21 July 1875. Others mention lumbermen and sawmills from elsewhere in the Maritimes. See, for example, “Appendix 25: Copy of Letter of Revd. Thomas Sears, of Bay St. George, to the Revd., Dr. Howley, St. John’s,” jlc 1870, 218; “Appendix 56: Fishery Report of A.H. Hoskins, June to October 1872,” 9 October 1872, jlc 1873, 459; trpad, gn 2/2, box 52, George Castri to E.D. Shea, 21 July 1875. 33 “Appendix 5: Report of General Superintendent of Fisheries, Stephen March,” 31 October 1868, jlc 1869, 53; “Appendix 25: Copy of Letter of Revd. Thomas Sears, of Bay St. George, to the Revd., Dr. Howley, St. John’s,” jlc 1870, 217; “Appendix 56: Fishery Report of A.H. Hoskins, June to October 1872,” 9 October 1872, jlc 1873, 458. 34 The Bay still bears evidence of such random arrivals. The Colson family, for example, were descended from a Norwegian ship captain, William Ole Olson, who made the Bay his home after his vessel became stranded there in the 1870s. It is not clear when or why the family name changed from Olson to Colson. Antonio Nardini, originally of Italy, migrated to region under similar circumstances. See Downer, Turbulent Tides, 143–53; Cyril Byrne, “Constant Garnier,” in dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id _nbr=6113. 35 John Mannion noted the importance of furring to the west coast as a whole. See Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 243–6. Residents of St George’s Bay informed Henry Lind of the importance of trapping to the early economy of their particular region. See trpad, mg 331, Diary of Henry Lind, entry for 1 November 1857. 36 H.H. Forrest was appointed to practise law in Quebec in 1825. See “Provincial Appointments,” in Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository 4 (January– June 1825): 384. 37 According to family lore, Henry Essex Forrest accumulated a significant fortune as a West Indian planter by the late eighteenth century; later he worked closely with Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk, and both suffered heavy financial losses. The evidence, however, does not bear this story out.

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38

39

40 41 42

43 44

45

Notes to pages 111–12

According to H.H. Forrest’s baptismal records, Henry Essex Forrest was working for McTavish at the time of his son’s birth. Moreover, there is later correspondence between Henry Forrest and George Simpson indicating that the elder Forrest continued to work later as a clerk for the hbc. Forrest’s family provided information about Henry Essex Forrest in an obituary for H.H. Forrest’s brother, W.W. Forrest, and in a biographical entry for his grandson, William Henry Forrest. See Canadian Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men, 176; “Obituary: W.W. Forrest,” Quebec Chronicle, 8 November 1878. On Douglas, see John Morgan Gray, “Douglas, Thomas, Baron Daer and Shortcleuch, 5th Early of Selkirk,” in dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/douglas _thomas_5E.html; and Bumsted, Lord Selkirk, 399. Baptismal Record for H.H. Forrest, 9 October 1801, Drouin Collection, available at Ancestry.com; accessed 12 December 2014. Henry Forrest wrote to Governor Simpson from Montreal; see Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, D.5/1, f. 116–117. lac, Ministre de la Marine (à Brest) (hereafter mm), Serie C, Sous-Serie 5C-1, Pecheries de Terre-Neuve, Enguete de 1859 et Proces-Verbaux, Interrogatoire de M. Forrest, 82–9; H.H. Forrest to John Kent, 1 November 1856, jha 1857, 353. James Tobin to James Crowdy, 19 October 1850, jha 1851, 172; “Report of Captain Ramsay of Her Majesty’s Ship ‘Alarm’, Addressed to St. George Seymour, Naval Commander-in-Chief,” 22 August 1851, jha 1852, Appendix 110; Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 245. Ommer, “Scots Kinship,” 70–2; Bennett, “Some Aspects of the Scottish Gaelic Traditions,” 67–8. Kelly, Voyage of the Churchship Star, 11. Henry Lind mentioned the importance of agriculture to some communities. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3/1860, Henry Lind to Robert Carter, 12 November 1862. He also noted that residents often gave him lamb and other produce as compensation for medical services he provided. See trpad, mg 331, Diary of Henry Lind, Sandy Point, entries for 12 August 1857 and 11 December 1861. Captain Charles Knowles mentions the market in “Tabular Statistical Report of the Fisheries on the French Shore,” jlc 1873, Appendix 567. trpad, mg 331, Diary of Henry Lind, entry for 19 June 1861; “Appendix 7: Report of Captain Malcolm of hms ‘Danae,’” jlc 1872, 202; lac, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, reel A 243, letter 6729, Report of Charles Jeffrey, September 1877. Evidence: James Tobin, 14 February 1856, “Select Committee to Inquire into the Proposed Cession of Fishing Privileges on the Coast of Newfoundland

Notes to pages 112–15

46 47 48 49 50

51

52 53

54 55 56 57

191

and Labrador,” jha 1857, Appendix 300; James S. Hayward, “Report on a Visit to the Western Portions of Newfoundland,” jha 1866, Appendix 630; “Appendix 1: Report of Captain Parish on the First Cruize of hms Sphinx,” 24 August 1864, jlc 1869, 14. The Bay of Islands, long known as a choice location from which to procure lumber for repairing ships and building flakes and other facilities was used by the French for this purpose. Migratory crews from Jersey also sailed there to take on wood for their operations in Labrador in the nineteenth century. See lac, spg, Letters Received, vol. 1, reel 249, Feild to Hawkins, 16 January 1864, 388. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 20, folder 17, Report of Masterman, entry for 7 October 1887. Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 252–3. Thompson, French Shore Problem, 12; Butt, Early Settlers of St. George’s Bay, 35. Thompson, French Shore Problem, 15–20; Janzen, “French Shore Dispute,” 45–6. Janzen, “French Shore Dispute,” 46; Brown, “Growth of Settlement in St. George’s Bay,” 6–7; Butt, Early Settlers of St. George, 30–3; Dashwood, French in Newfoundland, 8. Evidence: James Tobin, 14 February 1856, Select Committee to Inquire into the Proposed Cession of Fishing Privileges on the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, jha 1857, Appendix 301; R. Vesey Hamilton to Sir J. Hope, 13 July 1864, jha 1865, Appendix 628. Cadigan, “‘Chilling Neglect,’” 7. On the disallowance of the Maritimers, see Deposition of Peter Hallock, 11 June 1853, Adm 128/16, 3–7; and Deposition of Angus Holmes, 23 June 1853, Adm 128/16, 9–12. On restrictions affecting residents of Newfoundland see trpad, gn 1/3/a, box 3, folder 3/1860, H.H. Forrest to Alexander Bannerman, 27 June 1860. H.U. Addington to Secretary of the Admiralty, 22 August 1853, Adm 126/16, 81–8. Feild, Journal of a Voyage of Visitation, 40; “Report of Captain Ramsay of Her Majesty’s Ship Alarm,” 22 August 1851, jha, Appendix 110. lac, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, reel A 196, Bay of St George Inhabitants’ Resolutions, 9 September 1841. On the collection of illegal taxes and other trespasses see Archives and Records Office of the Archdiocese of St John’s (hereafter aroasj), Collection 166, M.F. Howley Papers (hereafter hp), box 33, folder 4, “Rev. Alexis Belanger,” undated; aroasj, hp, box 33, folder 7, Thomas Sears to T.J. Power, 16 September 1870; trpad, gn 2/2, box 37, John Messervey to Charles Bennett, 3 May 1851; trpad, gn 2/2, box 37, Phillip Dennis to Charles Bennett, 10 September 1851.

192

Notes to pages 115–17

58 “Report of Captain Ramsay of Her Majesty’s Ship ‘Alarm,’” 22 August 1851, jha 1852, Appendix 111. Sandy Point merchant John Messervey eventually took Tobin to court. The court found him guilty of various offences and required him to pay damages to Messervey. On the trial and views of Tobin’s associates, see gn 2/2, box 41, “John Messervey versus James Tobin.” There is a detailed account of the trial in Dunsfield, Decisions of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, 314–44. See also Wilkshire, “A ‘Stretch of Authority,’” 25–38. 59 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 14, folder 3/1880, Charles Jeffrey to John Glover, 8 April 1880; H.H. Forrest to Alexander Bannerman, 28 October 1858, jlc 1859, 138–40. 60 Such a French-settler dispute occurred in 1858 in the wake of failed negotiations over fishing rights between the French and British governments. See trpad, gn 2/2, box 48, H.H. Forrest to E.D. Shea, 4 May 1859; Petition of H.H. Forrest and others, jha 1859, 12; H.H. Forrest to Alexander Bannerman, 28 October 1858, jlc 1859, 142. For an example of a dispute among settlers, see, for example, trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3, Henry Lind to Robert Carter, 12 November 1862; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3, Thomas Legge and Thomas Evans to Henry Lind, 27 October 1862; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3, H.H. Forrest to Hugh Hoyles, 17 November 1862; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3, Henry Lind to Robert Carter, 12 November 1862. 61 “Deposition of Joseph Le Grandais,” 21 August 1858, jha 1859, Appendix 392. 62 See, for example, R. Vesey Hamilton to Sir J. Hope, 13 July 1864, jha 1865, Appendix 624; Stephen March, “General Fishery Report on the Newfoundland and Labrador Coasts,” entry for 3 July 1869, jlc 1870, 5; “Appendix 7: Report of Captain Malcolm of H.M.S. ‘Danae,’” jlc 1872, 202; D. Miller, “Report on the Fisheries of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1873,” entry for 17 July, jlc 1874, 387; “Letter from J.S. Hayward Esq., on St. George’s Bay,” 30 December 1865, jha 1866, Appendix 618. 63 Chappell, Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Rosamond to Newfoundland and the Southern Coast of Labrador, 66. 64 Newfoundland Almanack 1857, 37. Newfoundland Almanack, 1860, 30; Newfoundland Almanac, 1861, 35; Newfoundland Almanac, 1862, 35. 65 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3, Henry Lind to Robert Carter, 12 November 1862; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3, Thomas Legge and Thomas Evans to Henry Lind, 27 October 1862; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3, H.H. Forrest to Hugh Hoyles, 17 November 1862; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 3, Henry Lind to Robert Carter, 12 November 1862. 66 Other scholars have recently noted this disconnect. See McGowan, “Pregnant with Perils,” 193–218; Cadigan, Death on Two Fronts, xiii; Quinlan and Cadigan, “New Look at Confederation.”

Notes to pages 117–19

193

67 Clergymen and others commented on the difficulties of communicating with and travelling to St George’s from St John’s. See, for example, Cormack, Narrative of a Journey across Newfoundland in 1822, 94–114; trpad, mg 331, Diary of Henry Lind, Sandy Point, entry for 21 August 1857; lac, spg, Letters Received, vol. 1, reel 249, Feild to Hawkins, 11 June 1857. 68 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 3, folder 6/1862, Bannerman to Robert Carter, 19 January 1863. 69 “Appendix 23: Copy of Letter from the Revd. Thomas Sears, of Bay St. George, to the Postmaster General, John Delaney, Esq.,” jlc 1870, 211–13. 70 “Appendix 25: Copy of Letter of Revd. Thomas Sears of Bay St. George, to Revd. Dr. Howley of St. John’s,” jlc 1870, 217–19. No date is given for Sears’s letter, though Howley forwarded it on 5 April 1870 and indicated that Sears had written it not long before. 71 James Crowdy to John Pakington Bart, 22 September 1852, Adm, 128/15, 645 72 lac, mm, Serie C, Sous-Serie 5C-1, Pecheries de Terre-Neuve, Enguete de 1859 et Proces-Verbaux, Interrogatoire de M. John Messervey, 92–5. 73 See lac, mm, Serie C, Sous-Serie 5C-1, Pecheries de Terre-Neuve … Interrogatoire de Phillip Messervey, Interrogratoire de John Renouff, and Interrogratoire de Phillip Dennis on 96–100, 100–03, and 103–106, respectively. An 1878 report mentions several of the more prosperous residents in the community. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 10, folder 15/1878, “Report of a Public Meeting at St. George’s,” 22 February 1878. 74 lac, mm, Serie C, Sous-Serie 5C-1, Pecheries de Terre-Neuve … Interrogatoire de M. Forrest, 82–9. 75 The St John’s Evening Telegram provided an estimate of the value of Garnier’s property at this time in a discussion about a fire at his premises in Sandy Point. See Evening Telegram, 2 September 1881. 76 On Alexander, see trpad, gn 2/2, box 36, Rev. Meek to James Crowdy, 22 May 1850. 77 Bishop later recalled the timing of his arrival in the Bay when called to testify about the 1889–90 dispute over French interference in the herring fishery. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 22, folder 5/1890, “Deposition of Charles Bishop,” 1 July 1890. 78 “Report of Captain Ramsay, of Her Majesty’s Ship ‘Alarm,’” 22 August 1851, jha 1852, Appendix 110; “Appendix 30: Report of Captain Pasley of H.M.S. Niobe on the Fisheries of Newfoundland and Labrador for the Year 1869,” entry for 8 July 1869, jlc 1871, 246. 79 “Report of James S. Hayward,” 1 November 1865, jha 1866, 630. 80 On the colonial government’s attitude toward local management, see Cadigan, “Failed Proposals for Fisheries Management and Conservation in Newfoundland, 1855–1880,” 161–2.

194

Notes to pages 119–23

81 James Tobin mentions complaints about the ill effects of gibbing. See James Tobin to James Crowdy, 19 October 1850, jha 1851, Appendix 172–3. On the banning of the practice, see “Report of the Schooner ‘Alice,’” jlc 1858, 218. 82 “Appendix 2: Report of Stephen March, Esquire Superintendent of Fisheries, 1869,” jlc 1870, 14. Others noted this rule as well. See, for example, Lovell’s Newfoundland Directory for 1871, 292. 83 “Report of Captain Ramsay, of Her Majesty’s Ship ‘Alarm,’ Addressed to Sir George Seymour,” 22 August 1851, jha 1852, Appendix 110; “Report of James S. Hayward,” 1 November 1865, jha 1866, 629. 84 H.H. Forrest to Governor Bannerman, 28 October 1858, jha 1859, Appendix 395. 85 trpad, mg 331, Diary of Henry Lind, entry for 19 June 1861; “Appendix 7: Report of Captain Malcolm of hms ‘Danae,’” jlc 1872, 202; lac, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, reel a 243, letter 6729, Report of Charles Jeffrey, September 1877. 86 D. Miller to E.G. Fanshaw, 6 October 1873, jlc 1874, 419; Stephen Hill to Kimberly, co 537/118, 107–10. 87 Baird opened his first factory in 1882. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, Charles Cochran, “West Coast Lobster Factories,” Enclosure No. 15, Newfoundland Letter No. 95, 9 October 1893. 88 Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 6. 89 Janzen, “French Shore Dispute,” 50–1. 90 Hiller, Newfoundland Railway, 6. 91 See, for example, Harvey, “Western Newfoundland,” 108; Hatton and Harvey, Newfoundland, 136; Evening Telegram, 13 October 1879; Winter, Scott, and Morine, French Treaty Rights, 20–1; “Memorandum of a Conversation with Mr Waddington, 2 August 1879: Present, Lord Lyons, M. Waddington, and Wm. Whiteway,” fo 27/2474, 5–13. 92 gn 1/3/A, box 23, file 1, M.F. Howley to Cecil Fane, 20 July 1891. 93 lac, spg, reel A 243, Report of Charles Jeffrey, September 1877, 3. 94 James Hayward noted this concern among traders as early as 1865; Charles Jeffrey’s reports indicate that it was alive and well in 1877. See “Report of James S. Hayward,” 1 November 1865, jha 1866, 618; lac, spg, reel A 243, Report of Charles Jeffrey, September 1877, 3. 95 lac, spg, reel A 243, Report of Charles Jeffrey, December 1878, 2. 96 Petition of Samuel Mckay and others, 21 April 1877, gn 1/3/A, box 8, folder 14/1876. This petition appears to have been misfiled as the original is among 1876 documents in this collection. 97 Captain Sullivan to Governor, undated, trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 8, folder 14/1876. Sullivan wrote this letter in spring 1877. It is attached to McKay’s above-cited petition.

Notes to pages 123–8

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98 Otte, “From ‘War-in-Sight’ to Nearly War,” 693–714. 99 Captain Erskine, “Reporting Proceedings to St. George’s Bay,” 26 May 1877, co 194/193, 344. 100 co 194/193, Lieut. H. Jackson to Governor Glover, 30 May 1877, 348. 101 Hiller, “Diplomacy of Caution,” 49. 102 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 10, folder 15/1878, “Report of a Public Meeting at St. George’s,” 1878. 103 Ibid. 104 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 10, folder 15/1878, Howarth to Sir John Glover, 2 April 1878. 105 co 194/193, Lieut H. Jackson to Governor Glover, 30 May 1877, 348; trpad, gn 2/2, box 65, M.F. Howley to M. Fenlon, 11 April 1888. 106 Prowse investigated the conflict over the Abbey Alice. He mentions Bishop in trpad, gn 2/2 box 53, D.W. Prowse to E.D. Shea, 22 May 1879. Bishop later recalled the timing of his arrival in the Bay when called to testify about the 1889–90 dispute over French interference in the herring fishery. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 22, folder 5/1890, “Deposition of Charles Bishop,” 1 July 1890. 107 trpad, gn 2/2, box 53, “Deposition of Charles Bishop,” 21 May 1879. 108 Lilly recounted the rationale Bishop gave at the time of the episode. See trpad, gn 2/2, box 53, “Deposition of George Lilly,” 21 May 1879. 109 trpad, gn 2/2, box 53, “Deposition of Charles Bishop,” 21 May 1879. Other participants vouched for Bishop’s account of events and the sentiments underlying them. See, for example, trpad, gn 2/2, box 53, “Deposition of George Ozon,” 21 May 1879. British naval captains confirmed these motivations. See W.R. Clutterbuch to Captain Kennedy, 27 May 1879, fo 27/2410, 199–201. Samuel McKay also later echoed these views; see Evening Telegram, 21 September 1881. 110 trpad, gn 2/2, box 53, Prowse to E.D. Shea, 29 May 1879. 111 In 1881, for example, the government paid out just under $600 for relief of the poor and about $250 on road grants. See jha 1882, Appendix 119–20. 112 trpad, gn 2/2, box 55, “Record of Conversation between Commodore Devarenne the French Senior Naval Officer and Captain Kenney, hms Druid, Senior Officer of the English Squadron in Newfoundland,” 13 July 1881. 113 lac, mm, Sous-Serie 5C6, lac reel F2350, M. Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire to Commodore Devarenne, 16 July 1881, 6; lac, mm, Sous-Serie 5C lac reel F2350, G.C. Cloué to Devarenne, 22 July 1881, 117. 114 Thompson, French Shore Problem, 117. 115 trpad, gn 2/2 box 55, “Petition presented by Captain Howarth, rn Magistrate for the West Coast of Newfoundland,” 5 July 1881 116 Hiller, “Diplomacy of Caution,” 53. 117 A French officer explained that he and his counterparts intended to strike

196

Notes to pages 129–34

out at the St John’s mercantile community by harassing residents of St George’s and elsewhere on the treaty coast. See “Desposition of Edward Laroux,” 7 July 1892, in Prowse, A History of Newfoundland, 549. British naval officers and magistrates assigned to the treaty shore were also aware of this strategy. The French had announced their intentions in this regard immediately following the passage of the Bait Act in 1887. See Donald Brown to M. Fenelon, 20 January 1888, Adm 128/97, 20–1. 118 Captain Baldwin-Walker noted that residents received no compensation. See, for example, Baldwin-Walker, “Record of Interview with Deputation Onboard hms ‘Emerald’ on 16 August 1892 at St. George’s,” Adm 128/98, 622–4.

chapter five 1 Thompson, French Shore Problem, 93. 2 See Great Britain, Report of the Newfoundland Royal Commission (hereafter nlrc). Jim Hiller, in “Appointing Magistrates,” 39, mentions that regular naval patrols began in the mid-1840s. 3 Rogers, Historical Geography, 223–6; Thompson, French Shore Problem, 93– 119; Fraser, “Lobster Controversy,” 305–28; Hiller, “History of Newfoundland,” 190–2. 4 Thompson, French Shore Problem, 93. 5 Ibid., 93; Fraser, “Lobster Controversy,” 305–6. 6 nlrc, 44. 7 Thompson discusses the dispute and the agreement and also provides a copy of the agreement itself. See French Shore Problem, 104–7, Appendix 2; see also Hiller, “Bond, Bait, and Bounties,” 77. 8 Fraser, “Lobster Controversy,” 306. A great number of contemporary sources might be cited to demonstrate continued unhappiness with the “Modus Vivendi.” The question often dominated the editorial pages of the St John’s press. For typical views, see McGrath, “‘French Shore’ Acute Again,” 110–20; Prowse, History of Newfoundland, 539–55. 9 On the Jersey firms, see Thornton, “Demographic and Mercantile Bases,” 160–5; and Report of Commander Knowles, 24 July 1871, Adm 128/73, 335. Matthew H. Warren noted the connection between the collapse of the European salmon fishery and the rise of the Newfoundland fishery in his “On the Subject of the Salmon Fishery and Other Fisheries,” jha 1860, Appendix 483. Subsequent scholars have corroborated Warren’s observations. By the early to mid-nineteenth century, stocks in European rivers that once teemed with salmon were depleted to such an extent that some governments (if ultimately to no effect) attempted to implement restoration programs. Salmon did

Notes to pages 134–5

10 11

12

13

14

15 16

17

18

19 20

21

197

not become extinct in many European rivers until the 1960s. See Montgomery, King of Fish, 60. Thornton, “Transition from the Migratory to the Resident Fishery,” 92–120. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 11, folder 4, Report of Thomas Cope, entry for 23 August 1879; Howley, Beothucks or Red Indians, 251; Hutchings and Buehler, Early Settlers, 33. Both John Mannion and Patricia Thornton mention the historic importance these fisheries. See Thornton, “Demographic and Mercantile Bases,” 169; and Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 243–6; also Boland, “Living under One Roof,” 48–64; Cadigan, “Moral Economy of the Commons,” 25–7. Protection of the Fisheries, 1857, Adm 128/26, 196; nlrc, Evidence: Statement of Thomas Carter, Wood’s Island, Bay of Islands, 30 September 1898, 114; Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 237–43; Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 134–5. “Appendix 25: Copy of Letter of Thomas Sears, of Bay St George, to the Revd. Dr Howley of St John’s,” undated, jlc 1870, 218; Charles Knowles mentions the mills in “Report on the Newfoundland Fisheries, 1871,” Adm 128/73, 572. See also Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 253. W.H. Hall, “Fishery Report, 1879,” Adm 128/117, 5. Numerous observers in the late nineteenth century noted the nature of the west coast stock. See, for example, nlrc, John Bramston and James Erskine, “Report,” 26; nlrc, Evidence: William Sheppard, Lark Harbour, 30 September 1898, 1095; nlrc, Evidence: Simeon Avery, J.P., Bonne Bay, nl, 26 September 1898, 648. The authors of the final royal commission report mention the migratory nature of the stock off the west coast. See nlrc, John Bramston and James Erskine, “Report,” 26. Their information came from fishermen who participated in the fishery. See, for example, nlrc, Evidence: William Sheppard, Lark Harbour, 30 September 1898, 1095. nlrc, Evidence: Simeon Avery, J.P., Bonne Bay, nl, 26 September 1898, 648. This migratory pattern structured the French fishery. French fishermen historically started the season on Red Island just off the Port au Port Peninsula, and then followed the fish northward to Port au Choix. Thornton, “Demographic and Mercantile Basis,” 169; Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 243–6; Boland, “Living under One Roof,” 48–64. “Protection of the Fisheries: A Journal and Report of the Movements of the Schooner ‘Alice’ Employed by the Newfoundland Government to Take the Census from Cape Ray to Quirpon, and to Protect the Fisheries of the Labrador Coast and the Straits of Belle Isle in the Year 1857,” 1857, Adm 128/26, 197. The Western Newfoundland fishery was a bait and a food fishery. Customs

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22

23 24

25

26

27

Notes to pages 135–6

returns also indicate that buyers from Britain were second only to the Americans in the 1860s. See, for example, jha 1866, Appendix 462; Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 250. Both contemporary observers and recent scholars have commented on the emergence of the Newfoundland fishery and the decline of other similar fisheries elsewhere. For a contemporary assessment see Warren, “On the Subject of the Salmon Fishery and Other Fisheries, Reported with the Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Salmon Fishery of This Island,” jha 1861, Appendix 483, 482–3. W.C. Smith also noted the rising demand for the fish in Europe in his A Short History of the Irish Sea Herring Fisheries during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1923), 6–8. See also James R. Coull, “Penetrating and Monitoring the Market: The Development of a Continental Market for Scottish Herring in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Scottish Social and Economic History 19, no. 2 (1999): 117–31; Deborah C. Trefts, “Canadian and American Policy Making in Response to the First MultiSpecies Fisheries Crisis in the Greater Gulf of Maine Region,” in New England and the Maritime Provinces, edited by Hornsby and Reid, 212–16, 231; McKenzie, “Baiting Our Memories,” 77–90. On the importance of the herring fishery for the coast see Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 249–52; Scattergood and Tibbo, “Herring Fishery,” 3–6. A fisherman named Arthur Cashin of Sandy Point mentioned the importance of the banking vessels to the area in the last years of the nineteenth century. See nlrc, Evidence: Arthur Cashin, Sandy Point, 3 October 1898, 1321. Thornton, “Transition from the Migratory to the Resident Fishery,” 92–120. On the centrality of Britishness to the ways these men thought about themselves and their rights, see trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 4, file 2, Jessie Humber to Rodney Mundy, 12 September 1885. “Report of James L. Prendergast, Superintendent of Fisheries, 24 September 1858,” jlc 1859, Appendix 16, 174; Feild, Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the ‘Hawk’, 1859, by the Bishop of Newfoundland, 30; “Report of Captain Parish on the First Cruize of H.M.S. ‘Sphinx’ between 5 June and 22 August 1868,” jlc 1868, Appendix 1, 4. Appendix 15, “Extracts From a Despatch of Captain Hamilton to Vice Admiral Sir James Hope, kcb Relative to the Fisheries &c. of This Island, 6 July 1864,” jlc 1865, 101. See, for example, trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 19, folder 12, W.R. Hamond, “General Remarks,” 1886; trpad, gn, 1/3/A, box 20, folder 17, W.R. Hamond, “General Remarks,” 13 October 1887; trpad, gn, 1/3/A, box 23, folder 7, Sir Baldwin Walker to O’Brien, 3 October 1892; trpad, gn 1/3/A, Sir Baldwin Walker to Sir George Watson, 11 November 1891; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, Sir

Notes to pages 136–7

28

29

30 31 32

33 34 35

36 37

38

199

Baldwin Walker to Sir John O. Hopkins, 16 October 1893; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 22, folder 4, Sir Baldwin Walker to Governor O’Brien, 8 October 1890; nlrc, John Bramston and James Erskine, “Report,” 21. Janzen in “The French Shore Dispute,” 52, notes that the number of French fishing on the shore declined from over nine thousand men in 1829 to about four hundred in 1903. Contemporaries noted the decline as well. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, “State of Occupied and Unoccupied French Rooms on the North East Coast of Newfoundland,” Enclosure No. 6, Newfoundland Letter No. 95, 1893; nlrc, Evidence: Commodore M.A. Bourke, St John’s, 12 October 1898, 1963. Various scholars have commented on the decline in the herring fishery. See, for example, Fay and Innis, “Economic Development of Canada, 1867–1921: The Maritimes,” 659–60; Mannion, “Settlers and Traders,” 250–1. On Bonne Bay in particular, see Ryan, “Fisheries under Fire.” Hiller, “Gros Morne National Park.” Warren, “On the Subject of the Salmon Fishery and other Fisheries,” Appendix 483. Ibid.; Thornton, “Dynamic Equilibrium,” 76. See also note 9, above, and Montgomery, King of Fish, 60; Trefts, “American and Canadian Policy Making,” 206–31. Warren, “On the Subject of the Salmon Fishery and Other Fisheries,” Appendix 484–85. trpad, gn 1/3/A, Box 13, folder 9, Report of W.R. Kennedy, entry for 30 July– 2 August 1880. trpad, gn 1/3/A, folder 19 box 13, Report of W.R. Kennedy, “General Remarks,” 1880; see also Kennedy, Sport, Travel, and Adventure in Newfoundland and the West Indies (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons 1885), 62–5. trpad, gn 1/3/A, folder 19 box 13, Report of W.R. Kennedy, “General Remarks,” 1880. Warren, “On the Subject of the Salmon Fishery and Other Fisheries,” Appendix 484–85; trpad, gn 1/3/A, Box 13, folder 9, Report of W.R. Kennedy, entry for 30 July–2 August 1880; trpad, gn 1/3/A, folder 19 box 13, Report of W.R. Kennedy, “General Remarks,” 1880; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 13, folder 19, Commander Hall, “General Remarks,” 1880; trpad, gn 1/3/A, Report of W.C. Karslake, entry for 1 August 1881; trpad, gn 1/3/A box 19, folder 12, Report of Captain Hamond, entry for 6 July 1886; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 20 folder 17, Report of Lieutenant Masterman, “General Remarks,” 1887; trpad, gn 1/3/A box 21, folder 11, Report of Captain Hamond, entry for 23 June 1888. Trefts mentions the decline of these fisheries further down the coast. See “Canadian and American Policy Making,” 206–31. See also Mannion, “Set-

200

39

40 41 42

43

44 45

46

47

48 49

50

51

Notes to pages 137–9

tlers and Traders,” 250. Contemporary observers noted the decline as well; see Matthew H. Warren in jha 1866, Appendix 462. See Korneski, “Development and Degradation,” 21–48; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 15, folder 11, Report of Commander W.C. Karslake, entry for 1 August 1881; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, Charles Cochran, “Report on British Lobster Factories,” 9 October 1893, Enclosure 14, Newfoundland Letter No. 95, 1893; Report of Captain Fane, entry for 11 July 1882, Adm 128/117, 50; Report of Commander Julian Baker, entry for 30–31 July 1883, Adm 128/117, 72. Meiksins-Wood, Empire of Capital. Ryan, “A Liminal Gentleman.” Enclosure No. 40, Newfoundland Letter No. 75, M.A. Bourke to Sir Herbert Murray, 30 September 1897, Adm 128/134, 138; Baldwin Walker to George Watson, 22 October 1890, co 194/216, 421; Enclosure No. 8, Newfoundland Letter No. 80, Curzon-Howe to James Baird, 2 July 1895, Adm 128/101, 245. Baldwin-Walker to George Watson, confidential, 26 November 1891, Adm 128/121, 114; Enclosure No. 2 in North American and West Indian Letter No. 467/22, M.A. Bourke to J.E. Erskine, 20 October 1896, Adm 128/101, 613; Enclosure No. 2, Newfoundland Letter No. 75, M.A. Bourke to John A. Fisher, 1 November 1897, Adm 128/134, 118. Warren, History of the Lobster Canning Industry, 8. Robert Herbert to Undersecretary of State, 8 January 1881, fo 27/2546, 18– 22; Walker to Watson, secret, 18 July 1890, Enclosure, Admiralty to Colonial Office, 7 August 1890, co 194/216, 253. Walker to Watson, secret, 18 July 1890, Enclosure, Admiralty to Colonial Office, 7 August 1890, co 194/216, 252; Donald Brown to M. Fenelon, 20 January 1888, Adm 128/27, 21. See, for example, Report of Lobster Factories on the West Coast of Newfoundland, 1887, Adm 128/121, 34–6; Algernon Lyons to Secretary of the Admiralty, 5 November 1887, Adm 128/117, 126. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 23, folder 4, Report of George Watson, entries for 17 September 1891. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 20, folder 17, Report of W.R. Hamond, entry for 2–4 July 1887. Hamond was one of many captains who made similar observations. See, for example, Adm 128, volume 121, Masterman, “Report of the Lobster Factories on the West Coast of Newfoundland,” 1887, 36; Adm 128, volume 117, Algernon Lyons to Arthur Forwood, 5 November 1887, 126–7. On the centrality of Britishness to the ways these men thought about themselves and their rights, see trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 4, file 2, Jessie Humber to Rodney Mundy, 12 September 1885. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 21, folder 11, Report of Hammond, entry for 25 June

Notes to pages 140–1

52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59

60

61

62

63 64 65

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1889; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 13, folder 19, Report of Hall, 14 October 1888; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 15, folder 11, report of W.C. Karslake, 9 August 1887. nlrc, Evidence: William Anguin, Bay of Islands, 27 September 1898, 1065. Report of Lobster Factories on the West Coast of Newfoundland, 1887, Adm 128/121, 47. nlrc, Evidence: Simeon Avery, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 605. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 20, folder 17, Report of Masterman, entry for 7 October 1887. nlrc, Evidence: Simeon Avery, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 605. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, Charles Cochran, “West Coast Lobster Factories,” Enclosure No.15, no. 95, 1893, entry for 17 September 1893; Enclosure No. 2, Newfoundland Letter No. 73, M.A. Bourke to Sir John A. Fisher, 25 October 1898, Adm 128/134, 204; Enclosure No. 9, Newfoundland Letter No. 71, Leicester F.G. Tipping to the Commander, H.M. Ships and Vessels, Newfoundland Division, 8 October 1901, Adm 128/107, 85. Such developments continue to wreak havoc on the lobster fishery in this region from time to time. See, for example, “Storm Causes Another Setback for Lobster Fishermen,” Northern Pen 21, no. 25 (19 June 2000): 3. Korneski, “Race, Gender, Class,” 79–107. Charles Knowles, Report on the Newfoundland Fisheries, 1871, Adm 128/73, 573; Enclosure No. 46, Lobster Factories, Walker to George Watson, 22 October 1890, co 194/216, 422; Baldwin Walker to Sir John O. Hopkins, 8 October 1892, Adm 128/98, 659; M.A. Bourke to John A. Fisher, 1 November 1897, Adm 128/134, 118. Wages ranged from six to ten dollars per month and found for women and girls, to as much as sixty dollars a month for “skilled hands.” See Enclosure No. 6, Newfoundland Letter No. 168, G.W. Russell to Baldwin Walker, 28 September 1889, Adm 128/120, 520; T. O’Brien to Lord Knutsford, 11 March 1891, Adm 128/97, 58. Report of Lobster Factories on the West Coast of Newfoundland, 1887, Adm 128/121, 37; Algernon Lyons to the Secretary of the Admiralty, 5 November 1887, Adm 128/117, 126. Charles Knowles, “Report on the Newfoundland Fisheries, 1871,” Adm 128/73, 581; Report of Julian A. Baker, entries for 6–9 July 1883, Adm 128/117, 67; Enclosure No. 78, “Working of the ‘Modus Vivendi’ on the Treaty Coast,” 8 October 1894, Adm 128/101, 10; Terence O’Brien to the Marquis of Ripon, secret, 12 August 1893, co 194/224, 766. Walker to Watson, secret, 18 July 1890, Enclosure, Admiralty to Colonial Office, 7 August 1890, co 194/216, 252. Thompson, Memorandum on the Lobster Industry, 4. Templeman provides an estimate of the number of generations of lobster on

202

66 67

68 69 70 71 72

73

74

75

76 77 78

Notes to pages 141–4

the grounds prior to commercial harvesting in The Newfoundland Lobster Fishery, 14. On the general biology and life history of lobsters, see Lawton and Lavalli, “Post-Larval, Juvenile, Adolescent, and Adult Ecology,” 53–5; Factor, introduction to Biology of the Lobster, edited by J.R. Factor, 9; Martin and Liffert, Lobstering and the Maine Coast, 11. Fogarty, “Populations, Fisheries, and Management,” 111–13. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 19, folder 12, Report of W.J.H. Browne, entry for 30 June–5 July 1886; for similar see Enclosure No. 2, Newfoundland Letter No. 28, D.M.N. Riddel to Baldwin Walker, 15 October 1893, Adm 128/121, 83. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 20, folder 17, Lieutenant Masterman, “General Remarks,” 15 October 1887. Baldwin Walker to John Bramston, 17 November 1890, co 194/216, 446. Hiller, “History of Newfoundland,” 197. Korneski, “Race, Gender, Class,” 103–5. O’Brien to Knutsford, 28 March 1890, co 194/214, 263. As historians of the “British world” have pointed out, there is no contradiction in British subjects’ identifying as British but having complaints about the actions of the British government. As they have shown, British subjects often appealed to their rights as Britishers and pointed to perceived violations of them to protest against the policies or actions of a specific sitting government or particular officials. “Britishness” was flexible. It was a way of legitimating a particular vision of how the world ought to operate. See, for example, Buckner, “The British World,” 1–3; Buckner and Francis, introduction to Rediscovering the British World, edited by Buckner and Francis, 9–20; Bridge and Fedorowich, “Mapping the British World,” in The British World, edited by Bridge and Fedorowich, 1–15. Knutsford to O’Brien, 21 March 1890, co 194/214, 190; Memorandum to Council, 27 March 1890, Enclosure, O’Brien to Knutsford, secret, 28 March 1890, co 194/214, 269–73. Baldwin Walker to George Watson, 18 July 1890, co 194/216, 252; see also Evening Telegram, 29 March 1890, 4; Evening Telegram, 11 April 1890, 3; Evening Telegram, 10 April 1890, 4; Evening Telegram, 26 April 1890, 4. Thompson in French Shore Problem, 107, mentions that Walter Thorburn was the member for Peebles and Selkirk. Hiller mentions that Walter was Robert’s uncle in “Sir Robert Thorburn,” dcb Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7105. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, file 1, Curzon-Howe to Sir John O. Hopkins, 16 October 1893. For examples of the “new” diplomatic history, see Wood, “Diplomatic Wives”; Zeiler, “Night at Delmonico’s”; Meren, With Friends Like These. Curzon-Howe mentions the rationale for the allocation of grounds and the

Notes to pages 144–5

79 80

81 82

83

84 85

86 87 88

89 90

203

limits of all west coast factories in a letter to Governor O’Brien. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, Curzon-Howe to O’Brien, 19 August 1893. trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, A.G. Curzon-Howe to Terence O’Brien, 19 August 1893. nlrc, Evidence: Levi March, J.P., Bay of Islands, 27 September 1898, 904; nlrc, Evidence: William Langdon, Port aux Choix, 24 September 1898, 586; nlrc, Evidence: James C. Seeley, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 855. nlrc, Appendix 3, Memorandum Submitted on Behalf of the Government of the Colony of Newfoundland, 13 September 1898, 71. On the low price offered to fishermen, see nlrc, Evidence: Simeon Avery, J.P., Bonne Bay, nl, 26 September 1898, 623; nlrc, Evidence: Levi March, J.P., Bay of Islands, 27 September 1898, 904. Commodore Bourke mentioned the low prices offered and the change in the price for a case of lobster. See nlrc, Evidence: Commodore Bourke, St John’s, 15 October 1898, 2268. On the changing class standing of consumers of lobster, see St John’s Trade Review, 15 April 1899, 4. The trend after 1890 was one of consistent decline which continued unabated until the fishery nearly collapsed altogether in the early twentieth century, thereby forcing the Newfoundland government to impose a moratorium, seemingly the first in Newfoundland, in the lobster fishery. See Templeman, Newfoundland Lobster Fishery, 12–13. nlrc, Evidence: M.A. Bourke, St John’s, 15 October 1898, 2251. In 1887 fishermen received fifty to sixty cents per hundred for lobsters. About ten years later, they received about a dollar per hundred. Captain Hammond mentions the 1887 rate. A variety of informants mentioned the later price in their responses to the 1898 Royal Commission. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 20, folder 17, W.R. Hamond, “General Remarks,” 1887; nlrc, Evidence: Rev. Charles William Hollands, Port aux Choix, 24 September 1898, 752. Charles Cochran to A.G. Curzon-Howe, 3 October 1895, Adm 128/101, 237; nlrc, John Bramston and James Erskine, “Report,” 26. nlrc, Evidence: Simeon Avery, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 582. 583; nlrc, Evidence: John Hayes, Bay of Islands, 27 September 1898, 1018. Enclosure No. 2, Newfoundland Letter No. 28, D.M.N. Riddel to Baldwin Walker, 15 October 1893, Adm 128/121, 83; Enclosure No. 3, Newfoundland Letter No. 90, “Working of the ‘Modus Vivendi’ &c. on the Treaty Coast,” A.G. Curzon-Howe to Sir John O. Hopkins, 12 October 1893, Adm 128/98, 750. Baldwin Walker to John Bramston, 17 November 1890, co 194/216, 444–6. Thompson, French Shore Problem, 105.

204

Notes to pages 145–8

91 B.W. Walker to Sir George W. Watson, confidential, 26 November 1891, Adm 128/121, 114. 92 Williams, Historical Account of the Lobster Canning Industry, 13. 93 trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 23, folder 4, Baldwin Walker to O’Brien, 21 September 1891. 94 Baird owned five substantial factories at the time the modus vivendi came into effect. See trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, Charles Cochran, “West Coast Lobster Factories,” Enclosure No. 15, No. 95, 9 October 1893. On his legal efforts, see Prowse, History of Newfoundland, 551. 95 B.W. Walker to Sir George Watson, confidential, 26 November 1891, Adm 128/121, 114. 96 nlrc, Evidence: James C. Seeley, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 855. 97 nlrc, Bourke, Enclosure in Annexure No. 2, 3 June 1897, 166. 98 Enclosure No. 38, Newfoundland Letter No. 75, M.A. Bourke to Sir Herbert Murray, 23 August 1897, Adm 128/134, 134. 99 nlrc, Evidence: Commodore Bourke, St John’s, 15 October 1898, 2270. 100 M.A. Bourke to Sir John O. Fischer, 1 November 1897, Adm 128/134, 118; nlrc, Evidence: Commodore Bourke, St John’s, 15 October 1898, 2270. 101 Enclosure No. 38, Newfoundland Letter No. 75, M.A. Bourke to Sir Herbert Murray, 25 August 1897, Adm 128/134, 136. 102 Charles Cochran to A.G. Curzon-Howe, 3 October 1895, Adm 128/101, 237; nlrc, Evidence: Commander Herbert Lyon, Port aux Choix, 24 September 1898, 740. 103 A. Maréchal to Baldwin Walker, 18 June 1890, Adm 128/121, 89. 104 nlrc, Evidence: Commodore Bourke, St John’s, 15 October 1898, 2272. See also Charles Cochran to A.G. Curzon-Howe, 5 September 1894, Adm 128/101, 83; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 23, folder 6, Report of Charles Cochran, entry for 15 June 1892; trpad, gn 1/3/A, box 24, folder 1, Report of Charles Cochran, entries for 4–6 June 1893 and 28 June 1893; trpad, gn 1/3/A, Report of Curzon-Howe, entry for 11–14 August 1893; nlrc, Evidence: Rev. Charles William Hollands, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 754. Local justices of the peace commented on this strife. See, for example, nlrc, Evidence: Levi March, jp, Bay of Islands, 27 September 1898, 905. 105 nlrc, Evidence: James C. Seeley, Bonne Bay, 26th September 1898, 855; nlrc, Evidence: Levi March, Bay of Islands, 27 September 1898, 904. 106 Enclosure No. 2, Newfoundland Letter No. 75, M.A. Bourke to John A. Fisher, 1 September 1897, Adm 128/134, 118; Enclosure No. 40, Newfoundland Letter No. 75, M.A. Bourke to Herbert Murray, 30 September 1897, Adm 128/134, 138; nlrc, John Bramston and James Erskine, “Report,” 47. 107 nlrc, Evidence: Rev. Charles William Hollands, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 754.

Notes to pages 148–50

205

108 See, for example, nlrc, Evidence: Simeon Avery, jp, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 606; nlrc, Evidence: William Anguin, Bay of Islands, 27 September 1898, 1079; nlrc, Statement Made to the Commissioners by Thomas Carter, Bay of Islands, 30 September 1898; Enclosure No. 15, Newfoundland Letter No. 114, John Eustace to G.A. Giffard, 3 August 1891, Adm 128/107, 190. 109 nlrc, Evidence: H.H. Haliburton, Gravels, 1 October 1898, 1225. 110 nlrc, Evidence: M.A. Bourke, St John’s, 15 October 1898, 2265; other officers made similar observations. See, for example, John Eustace to G.A. Giffard, 3 August 1901, Adm 128/107, 191. 111 nlrc, Evidence: Simeon Avery, jp, Bonne Bay, 26 September 1898, 615. 112 nlrc, Evidence: M.A. Bourke, St John’s, 15 October 1898, 2251. 113 Enclosure No. 9, Newfoundland Letter No. 71, Henry Savile to George A. Giffard, 18 October 1899, Adm 128/107, 19. 114 A.G. Curzon-Howe noted that the master of the ss Harlow was a key supplier of the illicit factories. James Farquhar revealed in his reminiscences that he was the master of that ship. See Enclosure No. 3, Newfoundland Letter No. 90, A.G. Curzon-Howe to John O. Hopkins, 12 October 1898, Adm 128/98, 749; and Farquhar, Farquhar’s Luck, 121–6. 115 Enclosure No. 38, Newfoundland Letter No. 75, M.A. Bourke to Sir Herbert Murray, 25 August 1897, Adm 128/134, 136. 116 Enclosure No. 13, Newfoundland Letter No. 114, J.B. Sparks to G.A. Giffard, 15 July 1901, Adm 128/107, 180. 117 Martin and Lipfert, Lobstering the Maine Coast, 9–13; Williams, Historical Account of the Lobster Canning Industry, 3. 118 Enclosure No. 15, Newfoundland Letter No. 114, J.B. Sparks to G.A. Giffard, 31 July 1901. 119 Enclosure No. 9, Newfoundland Letter No. 71, Leicester F.G. Tipping to the Commander, hm Ships and Vessels, Newfoundland Division, 8 October 1900, Adm 128/107, 85. 120 John Eustace to G.A. Giffard, 19 August 1901, Adm 128/107, 192. 121 Templeman, Newfoundland Lobster Fishery, 20; Enclosure No. 46, Lobster Factories, Baldwin Walker to George Watson, co 194/216, 419; Henry Savile to George A. Giffard, 18 October 1899, Adm 128/107, 19; Enclosure No. 61, Newfoundland Letter No. 98, John Eustace to the Commodore, hm Ships and Vessels, Newfoundland, 25 September 1902, 343; Enclosure No. 2, Newfoundland Letter No. 98, R.A.J. Montgomerie to A.L. Douglas, 30 November 1903, Adm 128/107, 422. 122 See, for example, Enclosure No. 39, Newfoundland Letter No. 72 of 15 November 1900, “Returns of the Illicit Lobster Packers on the Treaty Coast of Newfoundland, and Action Taken in Regard to Them during the Season of 1900,” Adm 128/107, 114; Enclosure No. 61, Newfoundland Letter No. 98,

206

Notes to pages 151–8

John Eustace to the Commodore, hm Ships and Vessels, Newfoundland, 25 September 1902, 343. 123 Templeman, Newfoundland Lobster Fishery, 12–13; Korneski, “Development and Degradation.”

conclusion 1 On the Peace of Paris (1783), see Morris, The Peacemakers. 2 These quotes are from Torpey, Invention of the Passport, 11. Most scholars of nations, nationalism, and territoriality have made similar observations about the dynamics of bordering. See, for example, Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights; Dowty, Closed Borders; Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History”; Agnew, “Territorial Trap”; Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond”; Urla, “Cultural Politics in an Age of Statistics.” 3 Ommer, “Merchant Credit”; Bradley, “‘Smugglers, Schemers, Scoundrels, and Sleeveens’”; Eaton, “‘To the Disgust of the Whole Northern Districts.’” 4 Howard Brown’s “Inner Placentia Bay” indicates distinctive trade and ecological conditions in this region.

Tractarianism and Bishop Edward Feild

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229

1 Index

Abby Alice affair, 125–6 Act for the Promotion of Agriculture, 90 Act to Prevent Encroachments of Aliens in the Fisheries of This Island, and for the Further Protection of Said Fisheries, 25 agriculture, 21, 73, 74, 76, 88–9, 94, 101, 112, 134 Alexander, Edwin, 116, 118 American Revolution, 3, 105, 113 Andrews, Charlie, 82 Angel, James, 95, 186n123 Anglo-American Convention (1818), 19 Anguin, William, 140 Athenaeum, 142 Atherton and Thorne, 23 Avalon Peninsula, 13, 21, 62, 72; and agriculture, 84, 88, 112; and colonial politicians, 45, 64–5, 70, 75, 155, 156; economic distress, 93; and landward development, 101, 152; and railway, 99, 100; surveying, attitude to, 80 Ayre, Charles, 79 Baikie, Flora, 59

Baird, James, 120, 137, 146, 148, 194n87, 204n94 Bait Act, 102, 107, 108, 109, 128, 129, 133 bank herring, 33 Battle of Foxtrap: description of, 80; contemporary explanations for, 81–2; recurrence (1881–82), 87; size of crowd, 81 Bay of Islands: 131, 134, 137, 152; resources in, 33, 112, 134, 136, 149, 191n45 Bayonne, 26 Bennett, Charles Fox, 75, 79, 82, 90, 120, 129, 156, 182n35 Bennett, T.R., 37, 167n103, 168n118 Beothuk, 21, 110 Birchy Cove, 124 Bird, Thomas, 136 Bird and Co., 54 Birkett, Thomas, 39 Bissett, James, 67 Blackman, A.L., 87 Blake, John, 59 Bolster, Jeffrey, 19, 26, 32 Bolton, Herbert, 7 Bonne Bay, 33, 136, 139 borderlands: in Fortune Bay, 16, 45;

230

Index

in Labrador, 49, 54, 70; Herbert Bolton on, 7; Newfoundland as an example of, 8–9; in St George’s Bay, 104, 114, 119; transience of, 10 borderlands history, 7–9 bounties (French), 25, 26 Bowring, Charles, 79 Bradley, Dave, 157 Brigus, 50 British Empire, 80, 104–5, 123, 126– 7, 138 British Isles: industrial system, 138; salmon fishery, 136 Britishness, 67–8, 103, 114, 120, 127, 135, 138, 139–40, 142, 145, 152, 155 British North America, 8, 18, 19, 28, 32, 54, 75, 101, 163n34 British society, 101 Brooks, Ambrose, 59 Broomfield, Samuel, 50 Burgeo, 38, 41 Butler, Garland, 86 Butler, James, 86 Callanan, James, 76 Camp, Henry, 41 Cape Breton, 110 Cape Ray, 105 Cape St John, 105 Carbonear, 62 Caribbean, 135 Carson, William, 74, 79 Carter, Frederic, 75 Carter, Robert, 39 Carty, Michael, 76, 109 Channel Islands, 110 Channel-Port aux Basques, 157. See also Port aux Basques Chapeau Rouge, 39

Chappell, Edward, 116, 159n9 Chicago, 33 Civil War (United States), 38, 136 Codroy Valley, 112 Colley, Edward, 189 Colonial Office (United Kingdom), 138 colonial politicians: attempt to enforce colonial law on the south coast, 27, 29; attitudes toward Labrador, 39, 48, 63–5, 69, 180n16; and British-based traders in Labrador, 64; changing views of landward development, 72; collaboration with the Hudson’s Bay Company, 69; development policies among, 13, 75; obstacles to northern expansion, 69; origins of interest in Labrador, 61–2; and property rights in Hamilton Inlet, 66; response to Franco–south coast trade, 9, 16–17, 25–6, 113; response to French incursions in Labrador, 63; views about the French Shore, 4–5, 80, 103, 122; view of St George’s Bay, 117–18, 122 Conception Bay, 50, 66, 74, 81, 83, 84, 137, 157 Confederation as election issue (1869), 75 Cook, Captain James, 21–2 Cordage Company (“Ropewalk), St John’s, 78 Crabbs, 112, 117 Crowdy, James, 117 Cullen, Margaret, 82 Curling, 124. See also Birchy Cove Dennis, Fanny, 3 Dennis, John, 3

Index

Dennis, Phillip, 5, 118, 124 DeQuitteville and Co., 54 Des Voeux, William, 94 Dieppe, 26, 107 Donnelly, William, 76 East River, 136 Eaton, Scott, 99, 157 ecological change: and caplin, 24; and cod, 31–2, 48, 64, 74, 83, 91, 135–6; and herring, 36, 41–2, 137, 135; affecting lobster, 148–51; and salmon, 67, 111–12, 136–7 enfranchisement, 97, 98, 142, 186n130 Entente Cordiale (1904), 4, 103, 114, 133, 150, 151 Erlandson, Erland, 55 Erskine, James, 41 Esquiman Channel, 134 Evans, Francis, 89 Falk Moore, Sally, 6 Farquhar, James, 149 Finlayson, Nicol, 55, 57 Fisheries Commission (1857), 117 fishery: bank, 12, 17, 18, 24, 25, 27–8, 32–3, 37, 48, 61–2, 65, 75, 102, 107–8, 120, 129, 133, 135–6, 156; caplin, 4, 26, 32, 133; cod, 17, 26–7, 31–2, 48, 70–1, 83, 134, 135–6, 156; French, 17, 22, 26,35, 63–4, 101, 105–6, 107, 108, 176n75; herring, 20, 22, 23, 29, 30, 32–4, 36–8, 39, 40, 42–3, 106–7, 108, 119; inshore, 17, 22, 24, 26, 29, 31, 35, 37, 38, 41, 48, 63, 67, 69, 73, 74, 76, 82–3, 91, 112, 120, 132, 134, 136, 137, 155; Labrador, 68, 83, 84, 120; lobster, 112, 133, 139, 140–1, 145, 146–7, 148, 149–50, 151, 203n83,85; Mari-

231

times, 23; migratory, 22; Prince Edward Island, 23; salmon, 50–3, 60, 66, 67, 68, 111, 114, 135–7, 196n9; seal, 54, 57, 135, 136; United States, 15, 18–19, 22, 23, 32, 33– 4, 36, 42, 43, 54, 101 Flowers, George, Jr, 52, 67 Foreign Office (United Kingdom), 138 forestry, 76, 111, 112–13. See also lumber mills Forrest, Henry Essex, 111, 189n37 Forrest, Horatio Henry, 111, 115, 116, 118–20, 189n36 Fort Chimo, 55, 57 Fortescue, Matthew, 67, 69 Fortune, 21, 30, 42 Fortune Bay: American relations with settlers, 18; catch rates of cod, 31–2; class divisions, 30; climate of, 33; ecology in, 33; fisheries in, 20–1, 30–1, 41, 44; French-settler relations, 30; merchant firms operating in, 21–2; population of, 22; resistance to colonial law among residents of, 40–1; schooner fleet, 30–3; small traders in, 35; starvation among residents, 38 Fortune Bay dispute: account of, 15– 16, 18–19, diplomacy and, 44; events in, 17–18, 42–3; explanations for, 18–20 Foxtrap: agricultural output, 84; community of, 80, 81–2; decline of shore cod fishery, 83; decline of terrestrial resources near, 89; development of cultivable land, 88; land ownership, 85–6; starvation in, 89 French Shore: changing definition,

232

Index

3, 64, 105–6, 113; colonial officials’ view of, 5, 121–2, 143; duties and customs, 109–28; electoral districts, 102–4, 109; establishment of Supreme Court on, 109; forced removals from, 114; origin of settlers, 135; political circumstances, 4–5, 123, 127; relations between French and settlers, 4, 5, 106, 108, 113, 116, 135; residents’ security on, 4, 114; stipendiary magistrates on, 104, 109, 115; suspension and reinstatement of, 4, 105, 114; title to land on, 4, 105, 106, 115, 118– 19 fur trade, 54, 55, 56, 58, 61, 110, 111 Garnier, Constant, 118, 124 Garnish, 39 gender: and ideas of progress, 78; and notions of Britishness, 114, 140; and “planters,” 57–8 Girl’s Friendly Society, 181n30 Gloucester, ma, 15, 18, 43 Glover, John Hawley, 51 Goodridge, A.F., 79 Grand Bank, 21 Great Northern Peninsula, 3, 105, 131, 134, 136, 139, 153 Greene, Daniel, 76 Grieve, Walter, 79, 82 Groswater Bay, 54, 67 guardiens, 135 Gulf of St Lawrence, 19 Haliburton, H.H., 148 Halifax, 5, 23, 104, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125 Halifax Award (1877), 19 Halifax Commission (1877), 19 Hall’s Bay, 72, 80, 87, 90, 97, 98, 99

Hamilton, Ker Baillie, 63 Hamilton Inlet: colonial government’s assertion of control over, 61–4; demography of, 58; European traders in, 53–4; establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 56; flora and fauna in, 57–8; property rights in, 50, 52, 60 Harbour Breton, 21, 22, 23, 35, 38, 39 Harbour Grace, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96; sectarian tensions, 90 Harvey, A.W., 76 Harvey, Moses, 76 Hayward, John, 50 Hermitage Bay, 35, 113, 157 Herring Protection Service, 40–1 Highland Clearances, 110–11 Home Industries Encouragement Society, 95 Howley, Michael, 122, 126 Hoyles, Hugh, 28, 50, 51, 65, 66 Hoyles, Newman, 24, 26, 27, 65, 155 Hubert, Phillip, 42 Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc): characterization of Innu, 57; crisis in the trade of, 55; failure of Ungava Bay trading strategy, 56; move to Hamilton Inlet, 48, 54, 56; and property rights, 49, 60; relations with Indigenous peoples, 56, 57– 61, 174n45; merger with the North West Company, 111 Hunt and Henley, 54, 62, 64, 67 illicit trading, 23, 24–5, 27, 29 imperial government: and the French shore, 142; interventions on Newfoundland’s south coast, 27; jurisdiction over Labrador, 54, 62; perceived neglect of Newfoundland’s interests, 4, 103, 142;

Index

prohibitions against Franco–south coast trade, 25; and the railway, 80 Innu: dispossession of, 61; caribou hunting, 56; homeland (Nitassinan), 55; response to Hudson’s Bay Company, 55–6; starvation among, 57; traders’ views of, 57 Inuit: coastal orientation, 55; relations with Europeans, 55, 59 Jersey, 3, 134 Jersey Harbour, 22 Job Brothers, St John’s, 51, 53 Jordan’s Tickle, 49 Kelly, Rev. James, 112 Kent, Robert, 76 Kerr, Kenneth, 97 Kholmeister, Benjamin, 55 Kmoch, George, 55 Knipple and Morris, 72 Kuujjuaq, 55 Labrador, 19, 40, 53–4, 55, 57, 75, 84, 111, 112, 134, 154, 155, 157; and Britishness, 139, 140; circuit court, 54, 64; colonial government interest in, 12, 39, 45–6, 48, 62–4, 69, 180n16; and French fishery, 106, 107; investor interest in, 114; planter system in, 58, 61; as solution to declining fish supply, 68–9, 74, 120 Labrador herring, 33, 106 Lake, George, 24–7, 29, 38, 40–1, 65 Lake, John, 40 Lamaline, 30, 38, 41 landward development: reasons for, 69, 71; differing strategies of, 76–8, 79–80; early efforts, 74, 179n15; views among pro-railway politi-

233

cians, 76–8; views among anti-railway politicians, 79–80 La Poile, 42 Laroux, Edward, 118 LeGrandais, Joseph, 118 Lilly, George, 124–5 Little Bay, 22 little ice age, 32, 37, 64, 74 Little St Lawrence, 38 lobster: biology of, 141; depletion, 141, 148–9; extent of stock, 138–9 lobster canneries: authorized, 144; cost of equipment, 147; and decline of lobster stocks, 145; illicit, 145, 149–50; labour in, 140 Long Harbour, 15, 17, 18 lumber mills, 111, 112–13, 134 Magdalen Islands, 19, 23 Mannion, John, 84 March, Stephen, 119 Marystown, 34 Massachusetts, 33 McGillivray, Simon, Jr, 54, 57, 59 McGillivray, William, 54 McGrath, James, 76 McKay, Samuel, 118, 123, 124 McKenzie, Matthew, 19 McLea, Kenneth, 62 McNeilly, Alexander, 79, 90 McTavish, Simon, 54 Mercury, 91 Messervey, Phillipe, 3–5 Messervey, Susan, 3–4 Middleton, C.H., 99 Milne, Alexander, 27–8 mining, 76, 120 Mi’kmaq, 21, 110, 134 Mitchell, Thomas, 76, 95 modus vivendi: changes to, 144; dif-

234

Index

fering views of, 138–41, 142, 144, 145, 146; first iteration, 133 Monroe, Moses, 76, 137 Montreal, 67, 111 Moravians, 55 Morine, A.B., 95, 97 Morning Chronicle: on employment in railway construction, 93; political orientation, 80; reporting on the Battle of Foxtrap, 80, 88 Morris, Edward, 95, 98, 186n125 Morris, Patrick, 74, 79 Mortier Bay, 34 Murphy, Thomas, 76, 95 Murray, Alexander, 76 Musgrave, Anthony, 40 Nantucket, 23 New England, 9, 32, 33, 34, 137 New England (schooner), 18 Newfoundlander (newspaper), 93 Newfoundland Railway Company, 86–7, 89 Newman and Co., 21–3, 25, 35, 40 New Party, 89, 90 Nicolle and Co., 21–2, 23, 25, 35, 40 Noel, Stephen, 49 Norman, Henry, 49 Norman, Munden, 49 Norman, Nathan, 47–52, 54, 65, 66, 67, 70 Nova Scotia, 110, 134, 135 O’Brien, John Terence Nicholls, 99, 144 O’Mara, Michael, 76 Ommer, Rosemary, 157 Ontario (schooner), 18 Pack, Robert, 62 Patriotic Association, 142

Payne, Brian, 10, 19 Phippard, Sarah, 59 Pinsent, Robert, 129 Placentia, 90 Plaisance, 21 planters: critical of “Indians,” 59–60; definition of, 23; foodways among, 59; in Hamilton Inlet, 57– 8; Hamilton Inlet as compared to Newfoundland, 58–60; Hudson’s Bay Company’s acceptance of, 57, 60–1; ideas about Britishness, 67– 8; in the Labrador Straits, 135; literacy among, 59 Point Lance, 84 Point Rosey, 39 Port au Choix, 134, 135 Port au Port Peninsula, 134 Port aux Basques, 23, 121, 157 Port de Grave, 62 Pottle, George, 47, 5–53, 65–7 Pottle v. Norman, 47–8, 50–1, 65, 68 property rights, 47–9, 51, 60, 66, 86, 103, 105, 114, 118, 121, 144, 147 Prowse, Daniel Woodley, 85, 86, 125, 126 Quebec, 110, 111, 134 Quebec Act, 53 railway: bankruptcy, 89; beginning of construction, 87; Blackman syndicate, 87, 89, 98; critics of, 78– 9; debt associated with, 183n67; as economic panacea, 70; popular resistance to, 81–9; popular support for, 90–9; proponents of, 76–8; survey for, 80; wages paid in construction of, 96, 98. See also landward development Railway Act, 86

Index

Ramea, 40 Reciprocity Treaty, 19, 32 Red Island, 106, 118, 123–4, 126; petition, 124 Red River rebellion, 124 Reform Party, 72, 73, 90, 91, 96, 98, 142 regionalism: on the Avalon Peninsula, 24, 69–70, 72, 99–100; in Fortune Bay, 29, 44; on the French Shore, 143; in St George’s Bay, 117, 122, 125, 127–8 Reid, Robert, G., 99 Rendell, Thomas, 62 R.G. Dun and Co., 79 Rich, Isaac, 52, 67 Rigolet, 47, 49, 52, 65–7 Robinson, Bryan, 50, 65 Robinsons, 112 Rogerson, James, 42, 89 Rourke, John, 74 Rumkey and Co., 139 St Barbe, 104 St George’s Bay: agriculture, 112; commercial rivalry in, 115, 119– 20; economy of, 111–12; flora and fauna in, 109–10; governance of fisheries in, 112–13, 119; Halifax trade, 119–20; honorary justices of the peace, 116; Indigenous peoples, 110; isolation from St John’s, 117–18, 119; orientation to Canada, 119, 126; stipendiary magistrates in, 104, 122; perceptions of among colonial politicians, 121–2, 127; prosperity in, 116; resistance to collection of duties in, 124–5, 129; settlement of, 3, 110–11, 189n34; settler-French relations, 106, 113, 116, 128; social relations,

235

113–16, 118; tenuousness of colonial government’s hold over, 105; traders based in, 118–19 St George’s Bay Dispute Inquiry, 103 St John’s, 35, 114, 120; colonial government base: 4, 13–19, 23–4, 44, 102–5, 121–2, 124–8, 143; and environs, 73, 84–7; and lobster controversy, 137, 143–4, 145–6, 150, 152; merchants’ lobby, 62–3, 76, 139, 155, 180n19, 182n35; “Newfoundland position,” 10; and railway, 72, 76, 78–9, 80–2, 89, 92, 156–7; and tollgate rumours, 81, 85; working people, 9, 72, 93–100, 142, 181n30 St John’s Chamber of Commerce, 40 St Lawrence, 22, 39 St Malo, 107 St Mary’s Bay, 30 St Pierre and Miquelon, 21, 23, 34, 35–6, 43, 133–4; French base for bank fisheries, 12, 21, 22, 102, 105, 107–8, 110, 132; prohibition of trade with, 23, 25–6, 27 Sandwich Bay, 54 Sandy Point, 112, 117; early settler population, 3–4; and French fishing, 106–7; opposition to “government of St John’s,” 122, 124–6, 129–30 schools, 63, 64, 117 Sears, Thomas, 117, 122 secret ballot, 97, 142, 189n130 sectarianism, 90, 185n101 settlement, 8–9, 20–2, 24, 73, 101, 110, 118, 134, 135; French threat to, 3–5, 21 Seven Years War (1756–63), 21, 25, 53 Shaw, Thomas, 118 Shea, Ambrose, 72, 76, 90, 93

236

Index

Shea, E.D., 93 Shea, George, 76 shipbuilding, 34 shore herring, 34 Simpson, George, 55, 190n37 Stabb, H.J., 47, 49, 52, 53, 66, 68–70 Strait of Belle Isle, 52, 54, 63, 70, 115, 134, 135, 136 Supreme Court of Newfoundland, 48, 49, 50, 109 tal qual buying, 68 Taylor, Joseph, 36 Telegram: anti-railway organ, 79; on the Battle of Foxtrap, 87–8; changed political allegiance, 98; discussion of possible social unrest, 98; on pro-railway “riot,” 97 Thomas, John, 118, 124 Thorburn, Robert, 72, 73, 79, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 98, 129, 142, 156 Thorburn, Walter, 143 Thornton, Patricia, 135 Tobin, James, 115–16 toll roads, 81, 85, 183–4n69

Torrent River, 136 treaty coast. See French Shore Treaty of Paris (1814, 1815), 105 Treaty of Utrecht (1713), 3, 21, 105, 110 Treaty of Washington (1871), 15, 19 treaty shore. See French Shore truck system, 58, 60, 73, 77, 98, 149, 150 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 7 Ungava Bay, 54–5, 56 Versailles, 153 Warren, Matthew H., 136, 196n9 Washington, dc, 33 West Indies, 37, 106, 114, 118 Whiteway, William Vallance, 75, 69, 90, 97–9, 142 Wilcox, John, 62 Winter, James, 38, 39 Winton, Francis, 93 Wix, Edward, 23