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“There lies a land in the west and north

Whither the bravest men went forth

And daunted not by fog and ice

They reached at last to a Paradise.”

P. E. Goldsmith

Is it a Paradise, this Newfoundland that is rock-lipped, high-piled and washed by a greedy sea?

Though Paradise is a relative state there always existed the romantic illusion that Newfoundland might be the real thing. But if it was not Heaven, we hope it was a haven to the numberless soldiers and sailors who came during the Second World War, to stay and rest awhile before returning to battle on the land, in the air, on or under the sea. What Newfoundland heart and hand could do was done, but now, in retrospect, in the fateful year of 1949, the Caribou Hut, the hostel of which we write, seems to express the bones and blood of old Newfoundland, to speak of her salty spirit, to illustrate her dogged devotion to a cause, and to point to something that truly typified “the good old days.”

As a separate entity Newfoundland is dead, but now that she has become the tenth Province of Canada and accepted a lower political status; now that she must merge her rugged individualism in the group spirit, she can review the time when she lived her largest period of history, when she was peacefully invaded.

Newfoundland has always been solitary with a tempestuous history that was fathered by rock, wind and sea, but a decade ago she was jolted from her isolation. She was re-discovered, overrun by a stream of humanity that sooner or later found its way to the Caribou Hut, the hostel which stood a stone’s throw from the sea, and at the foot of the ascending land-terraces that form the capital town of St. John’s.

The Caribou Hut became a complex, exciting venture to Newfoundlanders. It was a bit of lively history; life pouring out “the rich, red wine of youth.” It was a service that often walked the extra mile, and quite literally gave its cloak also. Every visitor who came to the Hut seemed like a story written in blood-red ink. Every hour at the hostel was saturated with interest, pathos, energy, and vicarious adventure for the local people. Every volunteer who served, glimpsed a more unselfish way of life.

And it happened in Newfoundland, the North Atlantic Island that has been called so many names: the Ancient Colony, the Oldest and Smallest Child, the Empire Cinderella, Helluland, the Land of Naked Rocks, the Fish-and-Fog-Land, the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and once in a bitter piece of journalism it was called the Imperial Slum.

Immediately from the names one glimpses a contrast of opinion. So what is the background of this rock-indented land? Old Sagas tell of Norsemen grown heady and drunk with the new-world beauty of pointed evergreen in the forests of spruce and fir, and the plentiful skinful of fruit in the luscious blueberry.

Cabot, at his first landfall, is alleged to have made rapt comment.

“Buena Vista!” (Oh, Happy Sight.)

Pioneers coined nostalgic names for the bleak spots on which they settled, and Newfoundland is dotted with Heart’s Delights’, Desires’, and Little Heart’s Eases’.

In harsh contrast to romantic over-statement one notices that a pioneer road in Newfoundland was named Burst Heart Hill, so it seemed as if one early name had to abandon the fantasy world in order to speak realistically of an uphill climb towards colonization.

The writer who covered the Atlantic Meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in Newfoundland waters, in 1941, spoke gloomily of the approach to the rock-ribbed shore.

^[1]“We saw,” he said, “a wavering coastline of desolate little beaches and coves, behind which the country rose in mournful hills—it looked to me like perfect Red Indian country.”

Is there any truth between these extreme opinions?

As a commonsense answer one could insist that it was all in the point of view.

Newfoundland could be Paradise to the native, “the livvyer” as he is sometimes called in the vernacular, because home is where the heart is, but just as one begins to visualise the native, happy at home, he contradicts himself in no uncertain terms.

All Newfoundlanders know of the historic entry regarding John Cabot in the Privy Purse expenses.

“To hym that found the new isle, £10.”

When the native Newfoundlander becomes exasperated with his moody land he swears that John Cabot should have received ten years.

It is indisputable that few people speak of Newfoundland moderately. Appraisal frequently resembles the bit of brutality in the Shavian character who wanted a thick pair of boots to kick with, and a thick pair of lips to kiss with.

That is the Newfoundland touch—the extreme attitude towards a bleak heritage—the veering opinion that changes with the winds. But the basic characteristic of Newfoundland is drama. Climatically the country is deranged, flouting the calendar most of the year. Sometimes it likes a touch of spring in January, and frequently winter in June. If it likes to change its temperature forty degrees in a day, that is just Newfoundland. One has to be tough to be a resident. But how magnificent the country can look, how big and bold, and how strong of light.

There is rich fullness and bleak emptiness—rock like geological skeletons. There is delayed spring, suddenly made delicate and beautiful by the drifts of white pear-blossom flushed by the stalky Rhodora. Indigenous bloom comes from the shining Blue Flag, the Iris, that could so rightfully be called the fisherman’s orchid. There is the purple-blue smudge of the blueberries, whose low, speared leaves redden in autumn to stain the ground blood-red. On blueberry ground, autumn looks as if it had really murdered summer.

And the livelihood of the Newfoundland folk?

There is a primitive story of the daily bread wrested strongly from the sea, and the rigours of the ice-fields.

The Newfoundlander is obliged to stay close to the elemental truths; to be a homespun creature in tune with natural things. He suffers long and stays kind, and perhaps, because he is so subject to nature’s hostility, he inclines towards a warm hospitality. Because he loves a cause he loved the cause of the Caribou Hut which came into being the year that Winston Churchill picked up the dimmed political torch thrown by Neville Chamberlain; the momentous year when the new Prime Minister shook England with his platform of “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

It was at the close of that year that Newfoundland became a boom country, and the invasion sounded like an oncoming stampede, after some one had shouted, “gold!”

Why?

Because Newfoundland had the most important geographical position between the two hemispheres. She was furthest away from America, and the nearest to Europe. Her capital town was the most easterly port, stuck out in the North Atlantic. Other than that St. John’s had an almost land-locked harbour that could wrap comforting arms round the ships fighting the Battle of the Atlantic.

From earliest times Newfoundland harbours meant peace after storm. The “Snug Harbour” is more than a name. Bare, and bleak as they are, the harbours are magnificently safe, having represented new-world anchorage to the bold buccaneers manning the cockleshell boats which crossed the ocean “by guess and by God” to fish in Newfoundland waters, as early as 1502, after Cabot had declared that the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland were richer than the silver-mines of Peru.

St. John’s harbour is one of the safest in the world and it appears as a cosy shelter after a fierce tussle with the open sea. It is also like a secret, an unexpected surprise.

As a ship approaches the coast one becomes fearful that the captain might have lost his mind, when it seems all too evident that he is steering towards solid rock. Then the miracle appears—the hills open—the ship runs through a passage called “The Narrows”—it enters a harbour, about a mile and a half long, and a quarter of a mile wide. The flustered ship is most happily in port.

Normally St. John’s harbour has plenty of space for its steamers, schooners, sealers, salt-ships, oil-tankers and visiting craft of any kind. The water can always roll spaciously around the ships rising and subsiding with the tide, but when St. John’s became a swollen port and garrison town the water could scarcely be seen for the ships. It became an epic sight for the far-sighted Newfoundlanders who unconsciously give their first glance to the sea. It was endless fascination to study the changing face of the harbour, to see an empty bit of space immediately occupied by another ship. The historic harbour had become a marine parking-place marked out by an economical hand.

Against the skyline the ships resembled a forest of shorn trees, with stout funnels like tree-stumps. Near the water the hulls were closely packed, and their camouflage gave a weird illusion of a gigantic display of modern art. All the colours, at the cool end of the spectrum, seemed to be bent—to be waved—in order to render the ships adaptable to every blue-grey-green-yellow mood of the sea.

No Newfoundlander will ever forget the harbour, and the active but stealthy hush-hush when a convoy began to assemble. Though secrecy was maintained it was impossible not to know when something was in the wind because of the knowledge of the human eye, though the ships would begin to stir as if imploring the land to look away. It was equally impossible not to realise the near submarine warfare when the wrecks came limping in; when the ships anchored full of tragic holes, and with weary lists that told their own tales. As long as contemporary memory lasts, who will forget the wreck that stood for so long with a great hole raised high above water-line through which the gulls swooped, to be lost to view for a second before they reappeared on the other side? That action became part of the waterfront—the full circle of white wings that suggested guardian angels, though people used to study that ship rather nervously, and think that it was a bad advertisement for the Battle of the Atlantic. But perhaps it also made them aware of the value of the Caribou Hut.

Newfoundland was sometimes in the frontline, and knowledge after the event revealed that torpedoes had been fired into St. John’s harbour; that ships standing at anchor, in other places, had disappeared in front of wildly incredulous eyes. The ships were there, and not there. One was forced to recognize a sneaking menace.

St. John’s further had a full wartime black-out which intensified the problems of the over-populated town in providing the screen for unlawful action. As the natural tone of Newfoundland is sombre, a St. John’s moonless night was frequently one of Stygian darkness.

What is St. John’s like, the seaboard town that is as old as any on this side of the Atlantic?

It rises steeply from the waterfront in a series of rocky terraces, and even when the summit is reached it continues to undulate like a country that abhors flatness.

St. John’s is a tall, flat-faced, wooden town, which might have been handsome had it been allowed to follow a natural evolution. But like the Phoenix it kept rising from its own ashes, and as it rose it grew plainer and plainer through the sheer compulsion of providing a quick roof over the human head.

Four times in a century fire destroyed St. John’s, the wind whipping the fires until they became great holocausts. Newfoundland is a country where wind and fire make vicious company, but truly the wind will always make the country one of the “Big Breath.” The wind never lets people off. It bends them double, sniffs at them like dogs tempted by a bone; it snatches at the fashionable hat and the new hair-do; and in pioneer days it is recorded that the settlers went out tied together. Once, it is told, that a wrestler came to Newfoundland, and he became so tormented by the wind, that he stopped in the street to fight it. When the travelling Newfoundlander returns home, he feels comfortably sure he is back when he gets an orange-wrapper, or a paper-bag full in the face. It is not unusual to pass a place, where building is in process, and receive a necklace of shavings, and on a big windy day, any Newfoundlander can read the news from the papers that blow round his feet.

Yet, strangely enough, the wind often spares the frail wooden structures, and the flimsy fish-flakes that the fisherman perches so precariously on solid rock. It could be that God has taught the Newfoundlander some natural geometry that the wind recognizes and respects.

Even St. John’s looks frail in contrast to its hard foundation. Visitors are inclined to ask how the thin-looking, wooden houses withstand the wind?

It is always difficult to see ourselves as others see us, and the Newfoundlander is often surprised, and irritated, by outside analysis of his country and himself. But similarity of opinion is arresting. The visitors flinch from the wind, and ask if it is always like that? Everyone remarks the lack of architecture, town-planning, and the wooden houses. Some one said they were like “wooden boxes, turned any-which way.” Everyone is inclined to think that the houses look weather-beaten outside, and unexpectedly handsome inside.

More outspoken and personal comment frequently infuriates the native who takes fire easily. A well-known book, written about the Banks of Newfoundland, said that the native had come to resemble a cod-fish himself from so much association with his natural resource.

Another observer said, after watching some Newfoundland soldiers pass by, “faces like live rocks.”

A modern historian, who declared that there would always be backward places on the earth for reasons of climate, gave Newfoundland as an example. Tradition says Newfoundland has nothing but weather. Yet the old island can manifest a splendour unknown to temperate places. Its stayed bud and blossom can leap into what the native calls “gunshot growth.” Summer can come full-flowered. Then the weather-ridden Newfoundlander will “oh” and “ah” in the awed recognition of God’s country, at last.

Ask anyone who has visited Newfoundland how he enjoyed himself? Invariably he will say that he had a wonderful time, but prior to 1940, visitors stood out in the sparsely populated country. Local hosts were pleased to see them and enjoy a contact with the outside world, but when thousands and thousands of visitors began to arrive, Newfoundlanders were overwhelmed, especially in St. John’s, which was in the state of being too small a place for too many people. The tall, wooden houses were suddenly required to have elastic-sides. People began to feel crowded as if they were being asked to pull rabbits out of a hat.

Something had to be done. But though bewildered, St. John’s had the Imperial spirit. Was it not the very cornerstone of the British Empire? Had it not nurtured the spot where Sir Humphrey Gilbert had claimed Newfoundland in the name of Queen Elizabeth, declaring that anyone uttering words of dishonour to Her Majesty should lose his ears?

Though larger and better-known Colonies did not always remember it, the British Empire had started in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

That was in 1583.

In 1940 Newfoundland was re-discovered. Britain, Canada, and the United States had suddenly recognized her as a bastion for North American defence.

But there was something else highly strategic in Newfoundland—the great airport—conceived in 1936, as if some British statesmen had experienced Imperial prevision; as if they knew how important a Newfoundland airport would be when the sea-routes were being made impossible with submarine warfare.

While the United States was still neutral, and it was manufacturing bombers for Britain, there arose big transportation difficulties. Such bulky aircraft required shipping beyond the capacity of Britain, and even the ships they had were beginning to go down in the Battle of the Atlantic.

There stood the Newfoundland airport.

When the situation was going from bad to worse, some one had a brain-wave.

“Fly all the bombers,” he said, “from the airport in Newfoundland, under their own steam.”

It was inspiration, Heaven-sent, and the beginning of the Newfoundland invasion. The country became a spring-board for squadrons of bombers, while young men of all nations arrived to fly them overseas, and to come back to do the same thing over again. These young airmen began to appear in St. John’s for week-end leave and there were very few places for them to go. Then the Canadians arrived to defend the airport, and they too began to appear in town seeking distraction beyond its scope.

Those vigorous young men, made fighting fit and fit to fight, were in urgent need of entertainment that did not exist. For that reason St. John’s threatened to become loose and disorderly. There were reports of broken windows and very big fights in very little quarters. Modest little ice-cream parlours, that had never seen anything wilder than teen-agers sipping soda through straws, reported a far and wide flinging of chairs and tables, as well as other outbursts of misdirected energy. Though money began to flow freely, conservative and unhappy proprietors were willing to take less money if they could be sure of a whole café next day.

At first the Newfoundland civilian was stunned. He had always had his country and his roads to himself. He could dawdle, and enjoy both in the spirit of undisturbed ownership. Now he felt dispossessed, crowded on his own streets, mowed down by the ever-increasing numbers of dun-coloured, army-vehicles. The strangers were strutting, becoming the “big-shots.” They looked down their noses at the natives. They were disdainful of a hard old heritage. They began to call the townsfolk “the Newfies” and like Queen Victoria, the Newfoundlanders were not amused.

But worse was yet to come. At first it was like a blow beneath the belt, the absolute change, a possible change of sovereignty that stuck in the local throat.

On August 20th: 1940, Winston Churchill was speaking in the House of Commons, and Newfoundland was big news.

Was it possible that he was saying this?

^[2]“Presently we learned that anxiety was also felt in the United States about air and naval defenses of their Atlantic seaboard, and President Roosevelt has recently made it clear that he would like to discuss with us, and the Dominion of Canada, the development of American naval and air-facilities in Newfoundland and the West Indies. There is, of course, no question of any transfer of sovereignty—that has never been suggested, or of any action being taken without the consent, or against the wishes of the various Colonies concerned, but for our part, His Majesty’s Government, are entirely willing to accord defence facilities to the United States on a ninety-nine years’ lease basis, and we feel sure that our interests, no less than theirs, and the interests of the Colonies themselves, and of Canada and Newfoundland will be served thereby. These are important steps. Undoubtedly this process means that these two great organizations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States will have to be somewhat mixed up.”

Somewhat mixed up?

No Newfoundlander could hear or read further. He was already mixed up, confused, quite sure that he was being made an American overnight. Even when he realized that there would be no change of sovereignty he still knew that the Yanks were coming, not only for wartime, but for ninety-nine years.

Ninety-nine years!

The greatest optimist of longevity could not hope to live long enough to get his country back to himself.

It was unbelievable. The Yanks had ninety-nine years’ lease on lands in Newfoundland for the establishment of naval and military bases, in consideration of releasing at once to Great Britain fifty American destroyers.

^[3]Fifty destroyers! So that was the price!

Newfoundland was shaken to the core of her old, rugged heart, and the first reactions were tempestuous. An ancient privacy was being violated, an independent country was being invaded, and it was useless to insist that a people had been consulted. So that was what Newfoundland was worth to Britain. Sold, up the river, for fifty destroyers!

When the native got his breath he began to examine the terms of the agreement more craftily.

It was definitely laid down that local labour must be used in ordinary construction. The fisherman knew he could beach his boat and take a rest from the sea. The “livvyer” understood construction. Was he not a natural Jack-of-all-trades, accustomed to entering the virgin forest to cut wood for his house, his boat, his oars? Now the seams of his boat could open wide. The Americans were rich. They paid the highest wages for the shortest hours. The fisherman could come to town and get steady work, with regular pay, and his bread and butter would no longer be subject to the caprice of the seasons, or to the foreign markets. Let the Yanks come! They could usher in a reign of prosperity that was more than welcome in Newfoundland. They would build a naval and military base in Argentia. They would build a streamlined fort on the outskirts of St. John’s, all along the softly rolling slopes of a lakeside where the Newfoundlander had held his annual Regatta from time immemorial. The beautiful Quidi Vidi, the lake, “the pond” that represented the local festival.

Now it was gone to the Yanks for fifty destroyers.

Quidi Vidi? But it was part of everyday life, the walk on a fine day, “the drive round the pond” to round off the evening, the place where one skated, where the horses raced in winter and the boats sailed in summer.

It was a bitter pill on the St. John’s palate.

The Americans would spoil the day of the races. They would erect prohibitive gates with sentries alongside. There would be Yankee troops where the Newfoundlander had placed his wheel-of-fortune, his tents, and his band-stand where the band played “The Banks of Newfoundland” or “Comin’ up the Pond” at the end of every race. The time-honoured melodies that could raise the native from the dead, would now fuse with the “Star Spangled Banner.” It was a time of mourning indeed, a time for an old-world lament.

Everywhere it was change, startling change. Newfoundland would never be the same again. One could hear the old days in recession. Even Churchill, the instigator, seemed to know that himself. His every word acknowledged a period of history, and of humanity, in a sharp crook of evolution. An old order was being broken up—the turmoil—the war—the blood, toil, tears and sweat represented the convulsive pangs of the new-world order, and Newfoundland was drawn in.

^[4]“For my part,” said Churchill, “looking into the future, I do not view the problem with any misgiving. I could not stop it if I wished. It is like the Mississippi—it just keeps rolling along. Let it roll. Let it roll on full-flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days.”

Newfoundlanders understood talk like that. They were sea-people, conditioned to the rise of the flood-tide, sometimes carrying all before it. They knew that the sea gave and the sea took away.

Newfoundland began to rise on a flood-tide, and to adapt herself to a new way of life.

The Americans arrived to swell the already large numbers in the already bursting town. The troops came in a gigantic transport which the sea walloped, as she stayed uncomfortably off-shore, fearful of the narrow entrance to St. John’s. A salty townsfolk chuckled with mirth when the wonder-working Americans were brought in by a local skipper. Somehow that made things more equal when the vital young Americans overran the town.

In St. John’s the human element was forced to adapt itself to complete change, but the old country herself behaved like the “Bedlamer” she sometimes was. It was not surprising to people who had always claimed that Newfoundland herself was the creature, and the people on her crust merely appendages. The Island sulked, doing her best to justify her bad reputation. Like an unreconciled shrew she veiled her face in her finest fogs, making it difficult to see all the strangers. One merely heard them grumbling about the backwater to which they had been sent—no wonder it was called “foreign service”.

The Americans became more vitamin-conscious, wondering if the lack of summer-sun would take the enamel off their teeth. As for the Newfoundlanders they did not miss what they had never had. If it was November in June, that was just Newfoundland acting up, and moaning about the change.

The local eye was on the American steam-shovel gouging the base of a granite cliff at the foot of Quidi Vidi, but now the local mind was appeased. The Americans had gone to the bottom of the pond. The Regatta would still go on!

The steam-shovel had become an attraction to which men took their wives and children, but for a while the labourer-fisherman hung back. He was a pick and shovel man, used to working the long way round. But he was a quick learner. After the first strangeness was over, he was ready to work the quick way, to help build an American fort on Newfoundland soil.

So the home-folks came as well, to add a few more to the crowd.

The Canadians brought a whole regiment and built another headquarters in another part of the town.

East, west, north and south there were men, as well as a whole floating population on the harbour. It was both Bedlam and Babel, with the unfortunate civilian lost between uniformed men. The streets thundered and broke down under the weight of army-vehicles. Mechanical equipment made loud snorting noises. It was exciting, but wild and disorganized, with the strangers carrying all before them. When the black-out fell, people were unhappily aware that every law was being broken. Quiet householders began to find soldiers and sailors everywhere; sitting on their doorsteps, dating in their gardens, and maybe jacknifing in their doorways as they took a little nap.

St. John’s had become a Mecca for women. The older girls persuaded their parents it was time to leave school. The maids gave notice because they could make better money elsewhere, and stay out later at night. Every girl had a “fellah,” even those who had never had a date in their lives. Some thought that the sentry-box was a peaceful place for a date when the rest of the town was so crowded.

Parents felt the loosening of all authority and the lowering of every moral standard. Every girl felt that her boy might die; therefore she aimed to please. The rapidly changing dates became the same dream, only with a different face, and perhaps from another wartime service. There were many Lili Marlenes, under the lamp-posts, and by the barracks-gates.

Definitely something must be done.

When confusion was at its height some one glimpsed the possibilities of a wartime hostel, of a place of entertainment, and with the vision came the plan, and an implacable determination to organize. Some one called a meeting—and the seed of the Caribou Hut was sewn on very fruitful ground.

[1]	Atlantic Meeting by H. V. Morton, page 93.

[2]	Blood, Sweat, and Tears by Winston S. Churchill, p. 351.

[3]	“Sept 3rd, 1940. The United States transfer 50 of their older destroyers to the Royal Navy. Britain agrees to lease to U.S.A. for 99 years without charge naval and air bases in the North and South Atlantic.” P. 354, Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

[4]	Blood, Sweat, and Tears by Winston S. Churchill, p. 351.