Cabot Martin and the Reading List

The Reading List for 02 Sep 22

Cabot Martin is at the centre of this photo, fittingly enough, his hand on Brian Peckford’s chair. The 1985 Atlantic Accord was arguably one of the three great moments of Newfoundland history that happened in the 20th century.

Never say in grief you are sorry he's gone. Rather, say in thankfulness you are grateful he was here.

Some Internet access issues while traveling bumped last week’s reading list until Monday, which is just as well.

Saturday morning, I got an email that told me Cabot Martin had passed away. Others will write a proper bit for Cabot. The good one will come from someone like Des Sullivan who knew him for a long time. Others may have their personal reminiscences of him, which is part of what I have.'

Cabot was heavily involved in the Hibernia negotiations when the April 1989 election produced a change of party running the Confederation Building. Clyde Wells kept Cabot on as part of the team that delivered the final agreement in September 1990. The crowd involved had the greatest knowledge and Cabot had been deeply involved in every aspect of the provincial fight over the offshore since the early 1970s.

To give you a taste, go back to this piece from 1975 - the only one of his articles I could find a ink to - that lays out the provincial case for control of the offshore. Bill Gilmore’s book Newfoundland and Dominion Status relies heavily on Cabot’s knowledge and understanding. Again, if you have not read that book, go find a copy and eat it. Gilmore also published a few articles on the same topic.

I didn’t meet Cabot until much later through our shared opposition to the Muskrat Falls development. While I never knew him well, those were fascinating days in their own right if only because it brought together so many people so knowledgeable about energy policy going back decades… and me and few others who were not in that category at all.

Cabot was prickly, funny, insightful, and a whole raft of other things. He could write at high speed, witnessed by how quickly he pumped out his critique of the project and published it. Cabot also had all sorts of contacts internationally and while the whole business of quick clay turned out not to be quite as big an issue for the project as it seemed, Cabot was relentless in his pursuit of it.

Shortly before he passed away, Cabot turned his mind and his hand to the wind and hydrogen project on the west coast. If you have not read it yet, then take a few minutes and go through his last column for Uncle Gnarley. The piece covers all the high points and while Cabot wrote it as personal commentary - writing as if he was speaking to you - he got everything in there you will need to understand what is wrong with the whole scheme.

There’s even a bonus, in his admission about the evolution of his views of Muskrat. As in this case, he initially got taken up with the hoopla but started to see problems once he looked more closely. Cabot was not alone on Muskrat Falls but he was one of the very few who took a principled public stand against it.

Cabot is another one of the people who went to their grave never having written a book to put some of their experiences down for others who will come along later and wonder what happened. Edward Roberts was wrong about memoirs: they are not all lies and bullshit. Had either Cabot or Edward had the time or taken the time to write that book, there’d be a better base to start from should anyone in the far distant future decide to follow the example they set: that Newfoundland is worth more than what you can get out of it for yourself, shag the rest of us.

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Here’s the short list that was supposed to go out last Friday. The links are after the paywall.

• Mitch Hempel and polarized politics.

• Lawrence Krauss on Nature magazine’s new editorial policy that doesn’t support free and open inquiry

• Paul Wells on the temperamental centre of Canadian politics.

• Eric Grenier on the start of the Quebec election campaign