Quick, search the bookshelf and basement, there’s money at stake

I need to read like I need to breathe.

I am always on the hunt for new books and new experiences. I particularly like old books, and old books about Newfoundland top that list. You will often find me at estate sales and house sales hunting for them.

I found myself at an estate sale a few months ago when I stumbled upon a Newfoundland book I had never heard of: The Tenth Island: Being Some Account of Newfoundland, Its People, Its Politics, Its Problems, and its Peculiarities by an author improbably named Beckles Willson. Published in 1897, he titled the book this as he claimed Newfoundland was the tenth largest island in the world (it isn’t, we are 16th. He didn’t have Google back then).

It looked old, it smelled old, and it seemed intriguing, so I put a bid on it. I really wanted it, so I deliberately bid high – $30.

When I found out it went for over $600, I had to be helped to a chair. Apparently, there is a hot market these days for old Newfoundland books, and collectors are willing to pay top dollar.

A pause now while Shoreline readers race off to pan for gold in their libraries…

Okay. You’re back. Happily, I have a tablet, and the book is online for free.

Beckles Willson was a Canadian journalist who visited Newfoundland in the late 1890’s. It’s a travelogue, general readership type book, and it’s a fascinating snapshot of what this place was like almost 130 years ago.

Were I going to reissue the book, I would subtitle it “Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose” because although lots has changed here, apparently a lot has stayed the same.

Take the forward for example, written by the Prime Minister of the time, Sir William Whiteway. He says the tough times are over, and prosperity is just around the corner. He is brimming with optimism for a rosy future, listing Newfoundland’s vast untapped resources, which besides the fishery, promise to bring great prosperity to all inhabitants. Sound familiar?

Wilson writes about the many problems they faced at the time. The railway was a national headache. Built by private capitalist Robert Reid, it was kept afloat by government revenue. It was, in a sense, their Muskrat Falls (except we today have become much better at creating disastrous public projects. Muskrat Falls is significantly worse.)

He didn’t have much time for Newfoundland politicians or politics. That alone is worth the read. Sadly, not much has changed in that area.

Willson couldn’t say enough about how friendly and hospitable the people were in the fishing communities he visited. “I did not meet a single surly fisherman in Newfoundland, although I have met many such in other parts of the world…” He was amazed at their kindness and generosity – especially given how desperately poor they were.

Interestingly for the time, he was appalled by the seal hunt, calling it a “carnival of cruelty and bloodshed” not just for the brutality inflicted on baby seals, but upon the sealers themselves.

“Many a man who has shipped aboard these sealing steamers for the sake of experience has lived to regret it. The huddling together in filth of 350 men in a small boat for five or six weeks, without room to lie down and rest – men standing elbow to elbow and swallowing their food like dogs – is a scandal already stirring the colony.”

How, he asks, can there be laws limiting the number of cattle shipped in a boat and nothing regarding human beings?

Shoreline readers will be interested on his observation of Topsail. He saw its potential as a health resort for Canadians and Americans because of its cool summer climate (these were the days before air-conditioning) He advocated luring big international hotel chains to invest in spas there.

He also wrote about the good folk of Foxtrap rioting against the construction of the railway in the early 1880s. A “frenzied mob of 500 people of both sexes, armed with sealing guns, stones, and bludgeons” chased off the railway crew for five days, with only a handful of police to intervene. The Shoreline crew would have had a field day covering that!

If you have a computer or a tablet, and want some fun summer reading, this could be the book for you.

One quote jumped out at me, sadly still true 130 years later. A British aristocrat, Lord Salisbury, commenting on the history of the colony of Newfoundland, said she has been “the sport of historic misfortunes.”

When he said that we were just getting warmed up.
Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com