Terrific journey to a time and place, Newfoundland before joining Canada. ( )

The ultimate story of the history of Newfoundland and the life of its first Premier, Joey Smallwood, told by himself and Sheilagh Fielding, his first and only true love. Through misunderstanding and unawareness, Smallwood and Fielding never move beyond friendship but the story they tell is outstanding. As a young man, Smallwood walks across New Foundland trying to unionize railway workers. (The abject poverty is a theme throughout.) When he is nearing the end of his trek, he is caught on the tracks in a blinding snowstorm. Fielding saves his life. She has rented a circuit shack and receives word that Smallwood is coming. The book is filled with stories like that: man vs. man; man vs. nature are continual themes, also. Just a fantastic read; a real page-turner. ( )

I wanted desperately to give this novel a rating of five stars, but I just couldn't do it. It is a Great book until about half-way through. From that point it becomes a Good book. The beginnings of the book concern the younger years of a fictionalized Joey Smallwood. Writing about young children and coming-of age stories is Johnston's strength and he demonstrates that strength admirably here. Once Smallwood grows up and enters politics I felt that the quality of the book slipped a little bit. Still, it is a must read. Johnston is one of the few authors that I make a point of reading all of their work. ( )

This novel really has two protagonists, Joe Smallwood and the country whose first premier he was after it became a Canadian province in 1949. Joe Smallwood (a historical figure) was born in 1900 when most people in Newfoundland, with its relentless climate and its inhospitable landscape, lived a life on the margins of existence. Witnessing the deaths of a large number of sealers in a blizzard because of the callousness of a ship's captain made him an advocate for the poor and gave direction to his ambition to become a figure of note. However, this is not a biography, but a novel about a historical figure. In order to emphaisize this the author created the fictional character of Sheilagh Fielding who plays a prominent part in this novel and with whom Smallwood is made to have a convoluted love-hate-relationship. Unfortunately, Fielding and the mysterie concerning a letter she allegedly wrote, for me somewhat spoiled the book. The chapters dealing with Smallwood walking the entire length of the Newfoundland railway to unionize its workers and his attempt to do the same for the poor isolated fishermen in the South are excellent, as are the chapters describing Smallwood's parents, for Johnston is a great storysteller. But the figure of Fielding and her rather farfetched story lack credibility and marred the book for me. ( )

A long, long time ago, in the previous millenium, I discovered a band called Great Big Sea. They are from a place whose pronunciation gets worse treatment than my last name. Newfoundland. Aside from excellent music both traditional and pop, they are the province's best ambassadors. Through their music, I was introduced to landscapes and people never before encountered. I still haven't made it up there, but one day...

In the meantime, I have Wayne Johnston to provide snapshots of a culture that has flourished in its isolation. Back in that previous millenium, I read the Divine Ryans. A hilarious and tragic story of a family. At book club, one of the Canadians had brought Colony of Unrequited Dreams also by Johnston. Not recognizing the author's name, but appreciating the subject, I asked to borrow it. The other Canadian there pointed out that he had written quite a lot about Newfoundland, and looking in the front cover, I saw that he had written the Divine Ryans.

It did take me a few months to read Colony, partly because I didn't make time, and partly because I deliberately read it slowly. Johnston makes you feel the grinding poverty of the coastal fisherman and the tragedy of the seal hunters. His sympathetic portrait of Smallwood only falters towards the end, when you feel as though Smallwood was too public a figure to give Johnston any room to work with.

I don't know how interesting it would be for anyone who doesn't have a tendre for big rocks off the coast of Canada, but Johnston is a gifted writer with a knack for comedy even in the face of despair.
Originally posted March 5, 2006

This book took a bit to get into - however I loved the character Joy Fielding, almost more than Joey himself. A wonderful read. ( )

A work of historical fiction, the novel presents a fictionalized portrayal of real-life Newfoundland politician Joey Smallwood, the political leader who brought the province into Canadian Confederation in 1949. A major literary device in the novel is his lifelong correspondence with (fictional) journalist Sheilagh Fielding. ( )

This is a big book, at 562 pages, but it moves quickly because the story is interesting, the characters are real and you care about them, and the writing is fluid. It is, I suppose, an historical fiction in that it is based on the life of Joey Smallwood, first Premier of Newfoundland, a man who, given his background, was a most unlikely candidate to have so emerged, but he hitched his future to the star of Confederation and pulled it off. This after coming from the wrong side of town with a drunken father, and with a string of mediocre or failed careers as a journalist in St.John's and New York, a union organizer for fishermen and railway workers, and a Liberal party worker. His greatest success was in radio where he hosted a regular program on Newfoundland for Newfoundlanders, and thus built name-recognition that he was able to turn to political advantage. That and his understanding that Newfoundland consisted of more than just the "townies" of St.John's, but also included the small fishing hamlets and villages dotted along the coastline where people had lived for generations with very little change in their lives.

The novel is at the same time, or perhaps principally, an unrequited, or perhaps better, unfulfilled love story between Joey and Sheilagh Fielding (always called only be her last name) from their days in school through a period of neophyte socialists, to Fielding's being one of Smallwood's most trenchant critics in a daily newspaper column filled with her ironic and acerbic wit. Their paths cross and re-cross throughout their lives and they each, as Fielding puts it about herself towards the end, lived with two separate rives of existence that never quite merged and about which one is always left with the question of whether it would have worked out if they had. But the realization, at the end, that they should at least have tried, is poignant and wonderfully presented.

The book is also a capsule history of Newfoundland, from its discovery by the Cabot through the trials of its periods as a colony, then self-governing, then reverting to colonial status again, before emerging, not as independent, which had been the dream of so many, but as the 10th province of Canada. No other province had a similar history, in particular in relatively recent time, of having to make that stark choice. Nor does the history theme gloss over the failures of Smallwood as Premier. Rather it dwells upon them: the long list of scams and schemes that Smallwood supported and threw money at, almost all of which enriched only the scam artists and left rusted refineries, mines, factories and unused roads all over the province. It essentially presents Smallwood as a fervent small "p" patriot, dedicated to Newfoundland, but out of his depth as Premier and without the confidence in his own character and position that might have let him be less gullible in supporting wacky schemes and dreams.

Finally, the novel depicts wonderfully the very harsh life of people who take their sustenance from the sea in an unforgiving climate, where death is a mainstay of existence, and where men worked incredible hours and incredibly hard for pennies a day to try to sustain their families.

The book is wonderfully written. Almost every character is fully-drawn, understandable, and credible, and Fielding and Smallwood themselves are so real that you cannot help but feel for them and to care where and how they develop, singly and together.