Social and Economic Studies – serie

Of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants who left Eastern Europe between the 1880s and the early 1920s, a handful settled in Newfoundland. These Yiddish-speaking, Eastern European Jews lived alongside English Protestants and Irish Catholics. This book brings to life the moving story of the Jews of St. John's through the voices and words of the immigrants and their children.

Gomes, a biologist, draws on a study of commercial fish assemblages on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to illustrate how uncertainty about the structure of ecological models confounds attempts to predict community dynamics over time; concluding that new adaptive management strategies may be needed to deal with this inherent uncertainty.

In 1991 the Atlantic groundfish fishery in Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick experienced diminishing resources and overcapacity in the inshore mobile-gear fleet. The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans instituted individual quotas (IQs) for this sector of the fishery. Soon thereafter the IQs became individual transferable quotas (ITQs). Enclosing the Commons explores the industrial micropolitics associated with the creation of the ITQ Group and the push to reduce overcapacity through economic concentration of quota shares. This important study provides the first critical examination of an ITQ approach to fisheries management.

In 1988, Merrell Dow, an American transnational company, proposed to build a chemical factory in a dairy farming locality in County Cork, Ireland. Local residents organized a social protest movement to defend their economic livelihood and rural way of life. Their campaign forced a public hearing before Ireland's national planning review body, to try to overturn early county council permission to go ahead with the corporation's plan. This anthropological study demonstrates how subtle persuasion in a controlled context helps to create, maintain, produce, and reproduce hegemony in social democratic politics.

At the age of eighty-three, Paulus Maggo, a highly respected Inuit elder residing in Nain on the Northern Labrador Coast, began narrating his experiences; from a child riding on his father's kayak to a senior citizen watching TV programs beamed by satellite to the community. His reflections provide a rare insight on the Inuit lifestyle, social relationships, and influences causing change in Aboriginal society during the twentieth century. Remembering the Years of My Life is the story of a man with compelling dignity and wisdom, and is a testament to Inuit ingenuity, cooperation, and self-governance that existed prior to the union of Newfoundland and Labrador with Canada in 1949. An authoritative introduction traces the genealogies of Paulus Maggo and his late wife, Naeme, to the eighteenth century and places his personal life history in the broader context of Labrador history.

In Global Game, Local Arena, geographer Glen Norcliffe explores how powerful forces of global economic integration have played out in Corner Brook and interprets the town's creation as a company town in the colonial era, its slow transformation into a public municipality, and the phase of vigorous restructuring launched in 1984 to raise the paper mill's performance in response to increased global competition. Restructuring introduced lean production, and in turn this impacted on workers' families, and on the larger community. Through extensive interviews with former and present mill workers and their families, and by examining written records — newspaper accounts, legislative acts, earlier published sources — the author sheds valuable light on how the process of globalization has played out in one small but typical local arena. Since 1984 Corner Brook has experienced large-scale out-migration of younger adults, and a rapid aging of the population. Community resistance to this process has been mostly subtle, taking the form of a reconnection to the population's local roots in outports and the woods.

I Never Knowed It Was Hard, the memoirs of Naskaupi River trapper and fiddler Louie Montague, a 77-year-old Nunatsiavut (Inuit) elder from North West River, Labrador, recounts in rich detail the way of life in "them days." Louie has travelled Labrador extensively as a trapper, hunter, prospector, and guide, and as an employee of the provincial forestry and wildlife departments.His remarkable memory and unique understanding of nature, acquired by study and first-hand experience, is complemented by his being an avid reader who constantly seeks more knowledge of Labrador and Arctic history. Here he talks about his family, trapping, hunting, caring for sled dogs, encounters with Innu in the country, woodworking, and most importantly, life on the Naskaupi River, especially as this has been impacted since the damming of its source for the Upper Churchill project in the 1970s. While Louie Montague's story tells about and draws from the past—his Great-Grandfather Montague came to Labrador from the Orkney Islands in the nineteenth century—he is very much a man of the present: he still goes to the land whenever he can; he remains busy as an accomplished craftsman; and he is deeply aware of how changes to the land have affected the present and will impact the future. He also describes the changes in life with the coming of the Goose Bay Air Base in the 1940s and his jobs there and elsewhere over the years.

Bringing Home Animals is an ethnography detailing what the author learned as a result of travelling and working with Iinuu (Cree) hunters and their families in Northern Quebec. The study was conducted from 1969–1971, and is a rich example of subsistence hunting in an Indigenous territory. The second edition revisits and updates contextual material following the construction of the James Bay hydroelectric project in the region, while preserving the original argument. Bringing Home Animals explores the way of life of the Mistissini Iinuu hunters, their understanding of and adaptation to the ecology of their hunting grounds, their subsistence-based economy and its relation to market production, their land tenure system, the impact of external agencies on them, and their rich spiritual and symbolic life, particularly the rituals that show respect for the animals before, during, and following the hunt.

Throughout Northern Ireland, the term "civil society" refers to community and voluntary sector organisations, many of which are constituted by women as the majority of their membership. This book examines some of the invitations extended to women's civil society organisations to contribute towards conflict transformation efforts, during the post-Good Friday Agreement period in Northern Ireland. Its focus is a case study approach of the Moyle Women's Forum (1999-2004), an all-women's, cross-community organisation in the Moyle District, County Antrim. Although the inclusion of women's civil society organisations appears to "correct" women's historical exclusion, this book demonstrates that women's inclusion in invited spaces is insufficient to ensure their participation, and recognise their contributions. Their inclusion can subject women's civil society organisations to regimes of governmentality, shaped by persistent gender stereotypes. The author argues that women's civil society efforts should, instead, actively adopt a "patchwork-like" approach that intentionally extends beyond the limited spaces into which they are invited. With a specific focus on Northern Ireland and its current transition away from the prolonged period of conflict, the book raises key questions about the expectations placed on civil society organisations in the ongoing and complex processes of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland.

John Nick Jeddore's richly detailed memoir begins when he was a boy in the 1920s and 1930s. His historical account makes a major contribution to our understanding of life "on the country" and in Conne River, Bay D'Espoir, as well as what it was like to be confined to a tuberculosis sanatorium and to serve overseas in the Forestry Service during WWII. John Nick recounts a lifetime of following in his ancestors' footsteps and reflects on his attempts to reconcile that heritage with a changing social and cultural world. His book will serve as an important legacy for many generations of scholars and general readers.

The lack of decent urban housing — a problem neither new nor unique to Newfoundland — was widely recognized during the twentieth century. After numerous piecemeal attempts to find a solution, a remarkable and successful government-supported "sweat equity" program was established in 1952, where homes were built cooperatively and, upon completion, became owner-occupied. This labor (about 2,000 hours per man) was accepted in lieu of a down payment. Tracing public policy during the Commission of Government and the early days of the Smallwood administration, and sourced from archival material and interviews with surviving members of the cooperatives, Sweat Equity outlines how people in Newfoundland tried to solve the housing shortage themselves by building more than 500 houses in the 1950s and 1960s. This critical monograph-length study — the first of its kind on the subject — is the story of how the Commission of Government and the then new provincial government recognized the desperate need for decent accommodation and what they did to provide it.

While well-known songs such as "The Badger Drive" and "Tickle Cove Pond" provide glimpses into the hard labour and rich culture of woods work in early twentieth-century Newfoundland and Labrador, little has been written about the lives of woods workers and the extent of their enduring cultural legacies. Songs, stories, recitations, poems, and instrumental tunes flourished in the woods camps. Many of them were created locally and reflect the people and experiences of woods work. Passed down by oral tradition in bunkhouses and at work sites, in family kitchens and at community concerts, these songs and stories address a gap in our understanding of this occupational culture and its history. This book is the first comprehensive collection of musical compositions, recitations, poems, and narratives written by, for, and about twentieth-century woods workers in Newfoundland and Labrador. It analyzes their significance—as both grassroots social history texts and creative and musical contributions—and creates a portrait of a culture shaped by the harvesting of timber. Inside you will find: a history of lumbering and logging; an exploration of the place of song and story in woods work and culture; musical transcriptions of 76 locally composed songs and tunes, with analysis of this musical tradition; complete song lyrics with contextual discussion; more than 70 archival photos; and a glossary of occupational words.

First elected to Newfoundland's House of Assembly in 1882, Robert Bond served as a member of government and opposition—and notably as prime minister—in an era filled with challenges that still resonate today. During three turbulent decades, St. John's burned down, the banks failed, and the drive for economic diversification caused difficult problems (and included railway building, the century's favoured mega-project). As for external affairs—Bond struggled to negotiate reciprocity with the United States, to navigate tricky issues concerning the French Shore and to deal successfully with imperial powers in London whose priorities could vary greatly from those in Newfoundland.In this in-depth examination of Bond's political activity, James Hiller explores the stakes, the rivalries and the competing visions at play during the period, and he highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the man who was often at or near centre stage: Robert Bond, politician, leader and Newfoundland patriot.

Phebe Florence Miller was a poet and postmistress who lived in Topsail, Newfoundland and Labrador from 1889–1979. Despite her success as a poetic voice in the 1920s and '30s, Miller is an obscure figure for today's readers. This book brings her life and her contributions to Newfoundland and Labrador culture back into focus through the lens of her most personal writing. Mistress of the Blue Castle: The Writing Life of Phebe Florence Miller is an evocative exploration of the ways that identity and place are created together through the diaries, journals, poems and letters that this mercurial artist left behind.

Shaped by Silence brings together the powerful stories of five women from Ireland, Canada, and Australia whose lives were shaped by forced confinement in Magdalene laundries and other institutions operated by the Roman Catholic Order of Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Their narratives include one teenager's experience in a Good Shepherd training school in Canada; another story of a child who was born in a Canadian Good Shepherd laundry; and three accounts of adolescent girls held in Good Shepherd Magdalene laundries in Ireland and Australia. In these institutions, women and girls became a coerced workforce. Hard, unpaid and relentless physical toil, isolation, enforced silence, and prayer constituted the nuns' strategy for converting their "fallen" charges into the Christian image of pure womanhood. Within this regime, girls and women suffered physical, psychological, and emotional abuse.While intimately capturing the dark and enduring after-effects of ill-treatment, the stories recounted in Shaped by Silence also describe survivors' efforts to heal and rebuild their lives. This important book shines a light on a pervasive and systemic pattern of cruelty and exploitation. It reveals the unwarranted confinement of generations of girls and women in Good Shepherd institutions around the world and constitutes a call for full acknowledgement of their suffering.

At the end of World War I, after four years of unimaginable man-made destruction, a swiftly killing virus travelled the planet. Up to one hundred million people perished in the most lethal pandemic in recorded history, the so-called "Spanish" influenza. More than half those who died were young adults aged between twenty and forty. Nowhere on earth was the flu more deadly than in isolated settlements on the far northeastern coast of North America.In We All Expected to Die: Spanish Influenza in Labrador, 1918–1919, Anne Budgell reconstructs the horrific impact of the pandemic in hard-hit Labrador locations, such as the Inuit villages of Okak and Hebron where the mortality rate was 71%. Using the recollections of survivors, diaries kept at the time, Hudson's Bay Company journals, newspaper reports, and government documents, this powerful and uncompromising book tells the story of how the flu travelled to Labrador and wreaked havoc there. It examines how people dealt with the emergency, when all were sick and few were well enough to care for others, and how authorities elsewhere refused to provide assistance. The story We All Expected to Die reveals is both devastating and haunting. It is a story of great loss, but also of human endurance, heroism, and survival.

Left out of the national apology and reconciliation process begun in 2008, survivors of residential schools in Labrador and Newfoundland received a formal apology from the Canadian government in 2017. This recognition finally brought them into the circle of residential school survivors across Canada, and acknowledged their experiences as similarly painful and traumatic.For years, the story of residential schools has been told by the authorities who ran them. A Long Journey helps redress this imbalance by listening closely to the accounts of former students, as well as drawing extensively on government, community, and school archives. The book examines the history of boarding schools in Labrador and St. Anthony, and, in doing so, contextualizes the ongoing determination of Indigenous communities to regain control over their children's education.

The Foresters' Scribe is the first comprehensive study of the Newfoundland Forestry Companies (NFC) of the First World War. It adds a long-overdue and essential chapter to the Great War history of Newfoundland and Labrador.A century has gone by since the NFC was formed in 1917, yet little is known of this small unit of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Its members were men recruited for woods work in the United Kingdom. Their assignment: to cut and mill Scottish timber to supply wood for the war.During the NFC's time overseas, thirty-seven letters were written home by "the Foresters' scribe," Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant John A. Barrett. Published in Newfoundland newspapers, they provided a detailed and articulate account of the NFC's service in Scotland. This book compiles Barrett's letters and examines their historical significance. In addition, it includes letters from other foresters, descriptions of key events that Barrett omitted, and rare photos of the foresters at work. Ursula Kelly complements this material with her own comprehensive account of the formation of the NFC and related issues, and an examination of what the NFC story suggests about the socio-cultural politics of war service and commemoration. The Foresters' Scribe is an insightful and celebratory account of an overlooked military unit that made an important contribution to the Great War effort.

Fairies might be good or bad, and encounters with them funny or fatal. They can take on the form of people or animals, or they may have no form at all, as when a person walking in the woods is "led astray" by some irresistible force. This variability in fairies is matched by the diversity of human attitudes about them.Barbara Rieti's study began in 1983 when she met a young man who told her that he had been followed by the fairies. Subsequent research drew on the hundreds of archival accounts of fairies and on Dr. Rieti's own fieldwork on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. Rieti describes the specific contexts in which fairy experiences are recounted and the manner in which they are told, keeping the storytellers at centre stage. She also highlights themes such as connections between fairies and nature, and the relationships between fairies and people. Comparative material sets the subject in historical and international context and demonstrates the remarkable tenacity of these old yet persistent tales.The fairies may be going, but they are not gone yet. The stories still to be heard offer a window on everyday folklife, as well as on an extraordinary world.

Since the invention of moving pictures, countless Inuit have worked in front of and behind the camera. The diversity and complexity of this body of work makes capturing and conveying its full scale a challenge.Together with Inuit filmmakers, media advocates, and producers, as well as with their collaborators, colleagues, and families, Inuit TakugatsaliuKatiget On Inuit Cinema begins an important and overdue conversation.  Composed of interviews, new writing, a catalogue of moments in the history of Inuit cinema, and a filmography of 500 films and televisions shows both about and by Inuit, Inuit TakugatsaliuKatiget On Inuit Cinema tells a story about Inuit cinema that centres on the people involved in its creation.This book is essential reading for students, scholars, and all readers interested in Inuit, Indigenous and circumpolar media.Contributors: Sarah Abel · asinnajaq · Kat Baulu · Marie-Hélène Cousineau · Inuk Silis Høegh · Madeline Ivalu · Blandina Makkik · Stephen Agluvak Puskas · Lucy Tulugarjuk · Jobie Weetaluktuk · Fran Williams

Fishing Measures investigates the introduction of fisheries science to Newfoundland's saltfishery between the 1880s and 1930s. Banoub argues that during this period fishers' embodied knowledge came to be seen as less reliable and authoritative than modern scientific state management. Fishing Measures situates this crucial shift in the history of capitalism, showing how the development of abstract scientific knowledge is integral to capitalist value relations.Fishing Measures trawls a variety of archival sources to document the introduction of scientific knowledge to the extraction, processing, and consumption of saltfish. The book lucidly documents scientific developments on subjects ranging from artificial propagation, to curing techniques, to cod liver oil production. Fishing Measures makes an invaluable contribution to contemporary debates regarding relationships between capitalism, the environment, and science.