Wonderful memoir of growing up in Newfoundland, in a harsh climate, at a time when the fishing industry was in decline and in the aftermath of the 1949 referendum, when the population narrowly voted to stop being a self-governing British Dominion and become the 10th Province of Canada. The author's father and most of his family were bitterly opposed to this move. The theme of identity is central to this thoughtful and finely written book: family, island, country, nation, province - to what do people really belong, and what makes them feel so strongly about such connections? The intensity of father-son relationships in which much more is expressed through silence than through words is also explored. The descriptions of winter storms and journeys are first-class.
Oh Canada. I lived there for a time, and managed to avoid a slew of great writers. I think I came across this in a Quality Paperbacks brochure and gave it a try. Johnston is a newsman by trade, and his prose has some of the good qualities of reporting: concrete, fast, muscular. But it's all in the service of a sort of Newfie Celtic Twilight, as seen through the eyes of the young boy he was growing up in a colony destined to be drawn into the country that would be Canada. His narrative of the slow, painful death of that old Celtic culture is one of the best I've come across in 20 years of reading such memoirs.
Do You like book Baltimore's Mansion: A Memoir (2001)?
