Wonderful reflective (if that's the right word) piece, if we have lost interest in our roots in recent years.
That apart from Quebec, only NL seems to have the distinctive culture, most due to small communities and rural areas, as to it's history, and here that has been little written about.
For me, I have never met a French Canadian that I did't like,.... perhaps only one that was just a pain, at times.
My first exposure was age 19 and early 20s, when driving through rural Quebec towns, the people were so friendly, and knew a bit of English, where I knew nothing of the French language, having done Latin here at school in the 50s and 60s. There carving of wood was spectacular.
Then working at Churchill Falls, with experienced fellas knowing about the best types of soil for dikes being built, as I was testing that for compaction. And others at various fields and some who played poker, or smoked weed or hashish, on occasion, on Saturday night, and their common use of the F word, .but not in a vulgar way, and that was new to me to see and hear.
Then later in business with a manufacturer who made products for hydronic heating for buildings in Nl. They were technically very good, produced great quality and competitively priced. And great service and always on time, and visited here regular to assist local design engineers.
Of my dealing with companies from Ont , PQ, and a couple of the USA states, PQ people I interacted with were the best, US second and Ont third, as good people to work with. For decades never a dispute, products always on time, critical as to contractors schedules.
So the distaste of the unfair CFs contract in NL, is real, and the present MOU for more of the same, seems to reflect the poor foresight or ability of NL politicians, and some advisers and local business people who want to make the quick buck.
That the idea locally that in general the people of PQ is not good people, is wrong from my feelings and from my experience.
That the people from PQ , like NL, has struggled to survive and prosper. We have much in common, and should learn from their history and struggles.
I have been deeply interested in the struggles of rural Nl, especially the Depression era. Over several decades, I have gathered considerable quantity of local stories from elders from my area of birth, (from the late 1890s to the 1980s on their struggles and way of life, and is prime material for a writer with ability to organise it......It is not fiction.
If you go back through my archive, you'll at least one piece everyNovember that dives into this idea of the underclass or under-represented or invisible people.
It's really glaring and it is really consistent.
So in this case it was literally a guy who could have been standing next to Newfoundland migrant labourers in a field in he Annapolis Valley and he picked out the ones he wanted by skin-colour and never thought for a second that it was weird that in the 21st century you have migrant labourers from Newfoundland who can only make a living by picking fruit in Nova Scotia.
There are so many ways that is odd, not least of which is that almost 90 years after Confederation we *still* have people travelling outside Newfoundland and Labrador to find a job.
Yet no one - literally NO ONE - mentions it.
We have a play and a book about Newfoundland women who went off to work in Canadian factories in the 1940s. Interesting enough as it is, I wonder where the writers and journalists are teling the stories of the women working in factories today or in other industries today.
Those are stories that will inform public discussion and therefore public policy. It's a variation on another point I've made before about people importing policy ideas from other places and deliberately avoiding policy issues locally. *Those* get silenced and suppressed, informally.
Wonderful reflective (if that's the right word) piece, if we have lost interest in our roots in recent years.
That apart from Quebec, only NL seems to have the distinctive culture, most due to small communities and rural areas, as to it's history, and here that has been little written about.
For me, I have never met a French Canadian that I did't like,.... perhaps only one that was just a pain, at times.
My first exposure was age 19 and early 20s, when driving through rural Quebec towns, the people were so friendly, and knew a bit of English, where I knew nothing of the French language, having done Latin here at school in the 50s and 60s. There carving of wood was spectacular.
Then working at Churchill Falls, with experienced fellas knowing about the best types of soil for dikes being built, as I was testing that for compaction. And others at various fields and some who played poker, or smoked weed or hashish, on occasion, on Saturday night, and their common use of the F word, .but not in a vulgar way, and that was new to me to see and hear.
Then later in business with a manufacturer who made products for hydronic heating for buildings in Nl. They were technically very good, produced great quality and competitively priced. And great service and always on time, and visited here regular to assist local design engineers.
Of my dealing with companies from Ont , PQ, and a couple of the USA states, PQ people I interacted with were the best, US second and Ont third, as good people to work with. For decades never a dispute, products always on time, critical as to contractors schedules.
So the distaste of the unfair CFs contract in NL, is real, and the present MOU for more of the same, seems to reflect the poor foresight or ability of NL politicians, and some advisers and local business people who want to make the quick buck.
That the idea locally that in general the people of PQ is not good people, is wrong from my feelings and from my experience.
That the people from PQ , like NL, has struggled to survive and prosper. We have much in common, and should learn from their history and struggles.
I have been deeply interested in the struggles of rural Nl, especially the Depression era. Over several decades, I have gathered considerable quantity of local stories from elders from my area of birth, (from the late 1890s to the 1980s on their struggles and way of life, and is prime material for a writer with ability to organise it......It is not fiction.
.
If you go back through my archive, you'll at least one piece everyNovember that dives into this idea of the underclass or under-represented or invisible people.
It's really glaring and it is really consistent.
So in this case it was literally a guy who could have been standing next to Newfoundland migrant labourers in a field in he Annapolis Valley and he picked out the ones he wanted by skin-colour and never thought for a second that it was weird that in the 21st century you have migrant labourers from Newfoundland who can only make a living by picking fruit in Nova Scotia.
There are so many ways that is odd, not least of which is that almost 90 years after Confederation we *still* have people travelling outside Newfoundland and Labrador to find a job.
Yet no one - literally NO ONE - mentions it.
We have a play and a book about Newfoundland women who went off to work in Canadian factories in the 1940s. Interesting enough as it is, I wonder where the writers and journalists are teling the stories of the women working in factories today or in other industries today.
Those are stories that will inform public discussion and therefore public policy. It's a variation on another point I've made before about people importing policy ideas from other places and deliberately avoiding policy issues locally. *Those* get silenced and suppressed, informally.