The Barbour of St. Barbe

Cowardly attack on new MHA by Libs, Dippers, and CBC

Andrea Barbour campaigning. (Image: PC Party of NL)

“After being bullied all my life for simply being me, I finally understood this: what others think of me is none of my business. Their perception does not define me. Their hate cannot stop my light,” the newly elected Andrea Barbour wrote on her social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram on 09 November.

The videos, stills, and comments that helped propel Barbour from political unknown to a Cabinet seat in the surprise result of the October 14 general election are still there, although Barbour did get rid of her TikTok account.

“N.L. tourism minister wipes social media days after MHA swearing-in ceremony,” screamed the CBC headline a day after Barbour’s social media post. The story by Jenna Head, completely false, was the vehicle for a pair of opposition politicians to attack Barbour.

CBC buried the explanation for that - Barbour deleted an account she opened for the campaign but left everything else open - at the end of its piece that appeared on the 10th.

Never let facts get in the way of a shitty, half-assed smear job by the Toronto-centric broadcaster’s Newfie branch plant.

Bettina Ford, the Liberal opposition’s shadow minister for tourism accused Barbour of being a racist.

Not openly, of course. Not honestly, surely. Not forthrightly, mind you. But in a sleazy, cowardly insinuation, aided by CBC’s false claim that Barbour beat incumbent Liberal Krista-Lynn Howell “after a persistent social media campaign.” Barbour won fair and square. She out hustled her like the Pea Seas outhustled the blindingly incompetent, arrogant Liberals who could not imagine they’d need a campaign to get re-elected against a rabble no one could possibly want up against their beauteous perfection.

“Her statements that ‘Newfoundland tradition is being washed out’ and that when she ‘grew up, it was just Newfoundlanders,’ Ford, the former deputy mayor of suburbia in the woods, told CBC.

“Does that mean that she does not support immigration, including other Canadians, to our province?”

Barbour’s own words are different.

Shocker.

CBC quoted the deleted TikTok video:

“Now the government here in Newfoundland has put a lot of money into tourism, but I don’t think they got it straight. I don’t think they got it right. They should put money into the Newfoundlanders, more into the tradition.”

There’s no legit way to take those concerns of someone from rural Newfoundland and Labrador about the representation of the province in the government’s tourism campaigns and spin it into an anti-immigration thread. Yet the party of Gen X Townies, the rump of the most arrogant, most incompetent, most fiscally irresponsible administration in Newfoundland and Labrador’s post Confederation history never said die if they’d have a chance to prove how butt hurt and tone deaf they are.

For the Ceeb, it was just another story in line with their nakedly racist policies that are fashionable in Tranna. And God knows everyone wants to be in Tranna.

Meanwhile, the other Townie party took a familiar sneering, high tone.

“We have to put on our big pants here and we’re in a role where we have a very serious responsibility to represent our constituents and to do so in a manner that is very professional as well.”

People love being talked down to and, by the gods of the toney part of Town former Townie deputy mayor Sheilagh O’Leary grew up in, she’s good at it.

There’s a huge learning curve for people who have not been involved in public representation. So, I think it’s extremely important that we just take our time, see how people actually act in their professional role."

Who Andrea Barbour really is and what she actually said compared to the Mainland-Townie bullshit for the Dippers and Liberals and Cee Bee Cee reflect Newfoundland and Labrador 25 years into the 21st century.

There’s Barbour quoted on VOCM on 16 October: “It’s like going back in time. The health care needs attention, the roads need attention, cell phone service is horrible up here. Banks are closing, there’s hardly any doctors anymore in the communities…things are fading. If you go to small communities on The Straights, you’re in a small community, it’s normal…there’s 15 houses that are empty. People are leaving and there’s not a lot of children.”

We are not the envy of ourselves and voters said so. This was Celebritocracy, overthrown. But now Elites in the Globe or the Ceeb with KMs are back. No reflection. No thoughtfulness. Just ploughing ahead. Telling off the Bayman. Putting them back in their place. In the old Townie view, either a Noble Peasant when they gave way to their supposed betters - time to put on your big pants, said Sheilagh with no hint of self-awareness at her condescension - or the lazy, stupid ruination of the country, as the anti-Confederate crowd lately embodied in Dipper hero Greg Malone put it or any Townie dependent on unbearable government suspending when anyone talks of trimming.

This is the disappearing of community. Not history. Not facts. Alex Marland, Cee Bee Cee’s speed-dialed expert, wrong so unbelievably often it is jarring to see him touted upalong as a brilliantly insightful anything. Steve Tomblin, full of Mainland arrogance and ignorance of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians as poor, backward, stupid. Confused, to use his word. Or constantly dependent, to use another phrase. A Newfoundlander by postal code, only. Advisor to Andrew Furey on economics and health.

The world Barbour is from is one the Mainlanders and Townies do not know. Do not want to know. Only know as the place below their plane on their way to Tranna and New Yawk or Shicargo. In the United States, people talk about fly-over states. The country is dominated by issues and people on the east and west coasts. Everything in the middle is the bits of the country the people from the east and west coast fly over on their way from one to the other.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the fly-over would be everything west of Costco and east of Pearson. Unimportant. Townies fly to Europe cheap with government cash but Labradorians pay out-of-pocket and even the government’s Labrador fare subsidy is promised but not delivered years later than the Townie bonus. Same as the hospital in Corner Brook. Took almost 20 years to build and even then, cannot provide basic services despite needs and demand being well known inside the bureaucracy over the past 20 years.

Even within the government’s Top Three - health care, education, and energy - there is a pecking order. Old people and mental health are not important. They are underfunded, chronically. That’s how you get a new acute and chronic care complex in Corner Brook that cannot deal with known acute or chronic care need. In Sin Jawns, the Premier put replacing his office (St. Clare’s) ahead of all other priorities for the health department and, to make sure all could see the unconcealed connection of power, arrogance, and social class bought land from a politically-connected business family *and* increased the value of their adjacent land even though the government had more than enough land of its own nearby for the hospital and more besides.

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Andrea Barbour is fresh, honest, and authentic. Rare qualities in anybody and almost unheard of in politicians. Science degree from Memorial. Small business owner. Real estate agent. Mother. A person for whom religious faith is central to her life. Proud of where she comes from, if not, as she posted on the supposedly disappeared social media, always proud of herself. Barbour is a modern woman in every sense but not the right kind of modern for the three women who would run her down - figuratively speaking of course - for CBC.

Barbour’s not necessarily aware of some Newfoundland and Labrador basics, to be honest. At least she doesn’t seem to be. “In the House of Assembly, above the Speaker’s chair,” she wrote on FB and Insta, “are the words: Primum quaerite regnum Dei — Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.”

“And those same sacred words are found on the Coat of Arms of Newfoundland and Labrador — “Quaerite primum regnum Dei.”

What a powerful message woven into both our leadership and our heritage — a reminder that faith has always been at the foundation of who we are as a people.

These words are more than history — they are a calling. To lead with humility. To serve with purpose. To trust that when we put God first, everything else will fall into place in His perfect timing.

Barbour knew where the words came from - Matthew 6:33: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

In the Tranna world, which is the American world, which is the Red and Orange on the one side and the Blue on the other, religious faith is a mark of stupidity and backwardness, of Trump, of the political right, of Pierre Poilievre and anti-vaxxers. When people in Central died of COVID because they refused vaccinations for religious reasons, too many Townies said - some quite literally said in some cases - their deaths were their own faults. Polarized and polarizing? No. Splitting. Dividing. Ignorant. Deliberately so. The coded language in the attacks on Barbour, the words to inflame prejudice and bigotry and assumption, are unmistakeable.

Barbour’s own words on social media despite the claim they’ve all been deleted are strikingly different:

I am deeply honoured and humbled to have been elected as your Member of the House of Assembly. From the bottom of my heart—thank you for believing in me, for opening your doors, sharing your stories, and placing your trust in me.

This campaign was built on community, hope, and a shared vision for the future of the Northern Peninsula. I couldn’t have done it without the incredible support of my family, friends, volunteers, and every person who took the time to lend a helping hand or share a kind word along the way.

The real work begins now—and I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and be a strong, compassionate voice for the people of our district. Together, we’ll make a difference.”

This is the opposite of the self-aggrandizing Celbritocracy. This is the motto on the Coat of Arms. Translate it into modern English. Lose the poetry but gain the clarity, effortlessly:

Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven.

When you give to someone in need, don’t do as the hypocrites do—blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get.

But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

Our society failed entirely if we have somebody elected to the legislature, and they are now in Cabinet, who is missing basic civic knowledge. Never been to the House of Assembly maybe. No idea how it works. Unfamiliar with some of the symbols of our province and before that our country.

To say that is not to make fun at Barbour’s expense or poke at her talent and intelligence. It is about us as a society not giving her and lots of others the skills to succeed for herself and the rest of us. If I am right, then Andrea is going into her job at a deficit. She will have to work harder to catch up not from her lack of ability but from a weight we hobbled her with. A great many people, far too many, grow up in our society and get elected to all sorts of public offices and have to learn on the job some basic stuff that they should’ve known before they got there.

That’s not on her. That’s on the rest of us.

As far as Barbour’s campaign goes, people should notice that she was incredibly effective at connecting with people. People knew her before she ran, for her quirky videos m, and her outgoing way from before she even became a candidate. In that respect, Andrea was much like Christopher Mitchelmore, another odd duck who came out of nowhere and got no help from the party he ran for - the Dippers - but won the seat anyway.

Christopher was and is his own person. Capable. Articulate. Like Andrea in some ways. Both of them in separate elections got on the ballot and won the election largely on their own. In Barbour’s case, people volunteered - experienced people like Trevor Taylor - who were not initially involved but once they recognized that she was doing well decided to lend her some support. That’s the way elections work.

And in that sense, the overarching theme to put on Andrea Barbour’s election is that this is fundamentally how our democracy works or should work. You have a candidate who resonates with, who connects with local constituents. And as much as she was an odd duck before, there was obviously a great deal about Andrea Barbour that appealed to the people who voted for her.

You can take out of that a whole bunch of other things, including why something like proportional representation doesn’t really work. Our democracy should be ordinary people electing one of their own to represent them in the legislature. That is community based. It’s culturally based. Lots of different people reflecting lots of groups with different languages, religious views, you name it.

In that sense, like Lela Evans or any other member of the legislature, regardless of what party we’re talking about, the people we elect should reflect us in our communities. In a legislature that’s working properly, our elected delegates would then sort out the complicated problems that our whole province faces. There are no easy answers. There are no prescriptions. There’s no playbook. Those people have to figure out with their own values and our collective values where the solutions are to the difficult questions that we have in our time.

If we want to fix our province and take it in a new direction, we need to recognize that we’re not doing things properly. We need to make sure in our civic education in schools, in our own news media - which we must have run in our own province and in our own communities - and in all the public discussions that we have, there is a shared sense of community across the province. If not, we need to build one. We need to give the people we send to the House of Assembly a much better foundation in our shared political and social values than we’ve been giving them.

The problem’s not Andrea.

She’s got her head screwed on pretty straight.

This is about Bettina and Sheilagh and Jenna and people who think that what they did here is okay. Normal. Acceptable. Right.

Those are the folks who need to think about what they do and say.

They need to find new pants and put ‘em on quickly.

No one in Newfoundland and Labrador has time for their petty crap.

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