Opinion

Newfoundland’s unsung hero

Work in Progress by Ivan Morgan

I feel the need to add my voice to the chorus of folks celebrating the life of Cabot Martin, a great Newfoundlander who died last week at 78.

I have a thing for unsung heroes. Politicians build great monuments to themselves, install their buddies in the highest and cushiest of offices, dole out any manner of rewards to each other, but that does not make them great. It makes them great at self-promotion.

To my mind Cabot Martin is one of this province’s great unsung heroes.

I didn’t know him well. He was a friend of my parents, not only a friend but someone they both greatly admired (little kids pick up on that sort of thing).

I remember him when I worked on Brian Peckford’s first election campaign.

I closely followed his career and battles: a list too long for here.

I was honoured to be fellow columnists in the same publication “back in the day.”  I did not feel worthy.

Cabot Martin was always so very ahead of the times.

Years ago, I interviewed former Tory MHA and MP John Lundrigan, the pride of Upper Gullies. One of his many claims to fame was the time in the House of Commons one afternoon back in 1968 when he and another MP, Lincoln Alexander, taunted Daddy Trudeau to the point where Trudeau lost it, rose in the House and told them both to go “Fuddle Duddle” themselves.  Don’t know about that? Ask a grandparent. It was a national sensation.

In any case, Lundrigan told me of working in his office on Parliament Hill on a quiet Sunday afternoon in 1968 when this kid with a big mop of curly black hair, blue jeans, and no shoes knocked on his door. The kid said his name was Cabot Martin and he was a grad student. He told Lundrigan of the vast potential for oil off the shores of Newfoundland and proceeded to outline to him the legal, constitutional, and political obstacles to our province of ever seeing any financial benefits from this resource. Lundrigan told me he leant forward to sniff the air, as students did have a reputation for smoking lots of pot.

He was astonished how on the ball this young grad student was. Exploratory drilling for oil had only just begun and here’s a kid with a Geology degree from MUN, now working on a Law Degree and already fully versed on the struggles our little province faced to get any benefit from any oil they might find.

And it turned out to be a mighty struggle, and many who knew him far better than I will tell you Martin threw himself into it. Many say he was the driving force behind the Atlantic Accord. Younger people may not know, but at the time the federal Trudeau Liberals had every intention in keeping the oil revenue for themselves. Martin wasn’t having any of that.

Years later, at an age when most people have hung up their skates, Martin came out guns blazing against Muskrat Falls. He felt so strongly that Muskrat Falls was a monumental mistake that he wrote a book called Muskrat Madness, and then drove about the province talking to people and selling the book out of the trunk of his car. Behind the scenes senior Tories implied to me he was past his prime, maybe a little senile. The utter arrogance of those people.

Just last week he published a column on the Uncle Gnarley blog outlining his huge problems with the Furey Liberals’ wind hydrogen deal. He said they were “nuts.”  I read it carefully. You might want to do the same.

Died with his boots on. Wow.

Sometimes when I drive through Paradise, CBS and other rapidly growing communities, I look at the many new subdivisions full of modern houses and I think of Cabot and his colleagues. They fought so hard for our prosperity, and I think of how we all owe them so much.

Then I look for his name on something. Nothing. I see the names of politicians plastered on all kinds of monuments, buildings, and streets to whom we all owe – well, not so much.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com

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