One of the reasons I love Newfoundlanders is that they like nothing better than (as they say), “Havin’ a toime”. I’ve never been anywhere (apart from Bali, perhaps) where there are so many festivals per capita (in the tourism guide book I counted over 200, and that didn’t include Canada Day).
The great thing, though, is that these aren’t just for mainlander tourists (the “come-from-aways”). They’re for the locals, and they celebrate everything from blueberries to icebergs, and a whole lot in between. There’s even a festival for molasses (or lassi), the universal Newfoundland condiment.
The locals also love live theatre, but from my small sampling these aren’t the sorts of local amateur dramatic society productions we’re used to back home. They’re extremely professional, and always include up-and-coming young talent (on summer break from theatre schools), as well as more well-established names.
And here’s the thing – these aren’t just one-offs, or maybe a single play for the week. They’re a series, often with 4 or 5 different offerings, and run right through the summer.
As an example, the village of Cowhead (population less than 300, and at the wilderness end of Gros Morne National Park), runs a programme that includes a dinner theatre, two comedies (including the legendary Cod on a Stick, the show that made the group CodCo a household name throughout Canada), a serious drama, and two musicals, all Newfoundland-written and produced.
The programme runs from June until September, and there are two different performances every night of the week except Mondays (when you can hear live music instead).
There are at least 18 similar summer theatre series running throughout Newfoundland, and as we found to our dismay, the performances are usually booked out days in advance. Clearly Newfoundlanders can find better things to do on a summer evening than sit on their butts and watch TV.
And then of course there’s the music. Newfoundland has a proud tradition of what these days is called “traditional music”, which in other parts of the world tends to be a very small genre.
They say local music died away for a while in the 1990s, but from what we could see it’s now back with a very youthful twist, thanks in no small part to the music programmes in the schools, the last such ones in Canada.
In fact, you have to wonder if the kids here have somehow missed out on hip-hop, burn-outs, and wearing baseball caps sideways on their heads.
Maybe that’s not the case. But what I do know is that either instead of (or in addition to), they spend a lot of time working on “der Gawd givin’ talent”. And when they stand up and sing it’s not the latest Beyonce or Britney; it’s often modern takes on sea shanties and murder ballads and songs of lament that sound like they’re from the turn of the century (sometimes the 18th one!).
To see what I mean, check out The Once, a fascinating young group from St. John’s (“the once” is a Newfoundland term that refers to an indeterminant time frame, as in “they’ll be comin the once”).
The Once – By the Glow of the Kerosene Light
ooOOoo
I was lucky enough to attend the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival in St. John’s, and I was absolutely amazed at the array of talent on an island with less than half a million people.
There were even several sessions of recitation, a wonderful pastime (and some might say competitive sport) that has always been popular in the outports. The fable of two lads who were told to go catch something for tea, and then ended up rowing all around the world throwing things back, only to find their much-put-out mother jigging for cod in the bay when they returned, absolutely brought the house down.
I especially enjoyed the kids tent. It ran all day for the three days of the festival, and I at first assumed it was for entertainers playing child-oriented music to keep the littlies entertained.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I instead found it full of shockingly gifted musicians and singers as young as 7 years of age who were being given a chance to get up and do their thing in front of a live audience. You couldn’t ask for a better way to preserve the music of Newfoundland for the future.
With all this talent spread right across the province, you have to wonder what the competition must be like at local Talent Quests. And it’s any wonder that so much of the entertainment that Canadians appreciate (singing, comedy and drama) comes from this sparsely populated island a long way off the coast.
In Newfoundland it would seem that artistic expression is in everyone’s blood.
ooOOoo
Newfoundlanders are also known for their accents, and the unusual words (at least to the rest of Canada) that they use. The Lonely Planet Guide describes the way people speak here as “Irish meets Canadian while chewing a mouthful of cod”.
The cod aside, there’s no doubt that English as it was spoken in both Ireland and England formed the basis for “Newfoundlandese”, since people from both countries were virtually the entire source of immigrants during the settlement of the colony.
And the other thing that cemented the accent and idioms, compared to areas with similar settlers in both Canada and the United States, was the isolation. Fishing was all about “outports”, those tiny villages on a protected harbour or inlet that allowed people in small, non-motorised boats to access the cod.
The only contact with the outside world was periodic trips by a schooner, owned by the one or two merchants in any village, to the fish exporters in St. John’s, and the return voyage with a back-load of the things fisher-families needed, like salt (for the cod), twine (for lines and nets), flour (for bread) and molasses (of course).
For all that, however, in my almost four weeks on the island I found a lot less of what you might call a “hard out” Newfie accent than I expected. People often said “dis” and “dat” and “ting”, and they sounded a bit garbled when they talked. But they also seemed almost apologetic, saying that they talked too fast.
I also went to a dinner theatre performance that was being attended mostly by Newfoundlanders, and they seemed somewhat self-conscious about the way the performers spoke, laughing at phrases that most New Zealanders would take for granted, like “gob-smacked”, “knickers twisted”, “how’ya goin‘” and “youse”. In fact, many of the idioms Newfoundlanders use would fit in quite nicely with the way we speak at home.
They say that there are at least 60 different dialects spoken in the province, and I have no doubt that is true. I was hard-pressed to discern any truly regional differences, though. Rather, during a tour I took of an outport with four different guides, all from villages within a 10km radius, each of them spoke with a distinctly different accent.
My own theory is that these days Newfoundlanders are bi-lingual, but in the same language. They speak two kinds of English – the Canadian one they hear on TV and are taught in school, which all the rest of us can also understand; and the one they learned from their parents and grandparents, with its own words and phrasing, and spoken very quickly and softly.
It’s the language they reserve for having a chat with each other, and if you’re an outsider you have to listen very closely if you even manage to hear it at all. I found that was only likely to happen if you were standing nearby and they thought you were out of earshot.
For instance, here’s a greeting I over-heard in Stephenville while I was eaves-dropping in the next aisle in a convenience store:
W’hal bae, har’ya? (Well, boy, how are you?)
Still sittin’ ap! (still sitting up!)
Aye, enny day ya’s a’top a da saad’s a day ets wort keepin’. (Yes, any day you’re on top of the sod is a day it’s worth keeping.)
Oi’m ceer’tan ah dat! (I’m certain of that!)
My favourite story about a Newfoundland accent, though, is much older. About 40 years ago, the mother of a Newfie friend was visiting out west. She was from the previous era, of course, and the advent of Canadian media hadn’t impacted her in quite the way it has in the most recent generation.
I loved listening to her talk, although sometimes I wasn’t quite sure what was being said. The gist of it was that she was having a problem with the local Stephenville council over driveway access, and since she wasn’t getting much help from the bureaucrats, she had to consult what she said was a liar.
I interrupted her, and said, “Excuse me, but did you say “liar” or “lawyer”?
A twinkle came into her eye, and she responded, “Well, me son, I tink I said a bit o’ both!”
ooOOoo
Well, my travels on The Rock are now over, and it’s time for this come-from-away to head back to the mainland. I had a wonderful time, in an amazing province, one that is part of Canada, but then again most definitely is not.
The people here have been universally kind, and generous, and always ready to have a chat. I’ve heard their music, listened to their stories, and read several of their books (check out Galore, by Michael Crummey, a novel that was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, for a slice of magical realism that is quintessentially Newfoundland).
I’m also sure, however, that I don’t understand the place. To stand any sort of chance, I would need to experience one of their winters, and I’m now much too soft and “South Pacific” for that. Even then, things at another level would still be a mystery.
And that, finally, is perhaps the reason the rest of Canada remains so fascinated with Newfoundland. It’s not just the music and acting and writing, or the itinerants in the “oil patch” in Alberta. It’s an awful lot deeper; so deep that you just don’t know what might be there, down below.
There is one thing, though, that must be obvious to even the most short-term visitor to Newfoundland. When you drive along the province’s portion of the Trans-Canada Highway, unless you’re near St. John’s, or one of the few regional centres like Cornerbrook, Grand Falls-Windsor, or Clarenville, when you look up at a hill, or across a valley, chances are you’re seeing the wilderness the way it has always been.
This is an island where nature has in almost all cases won out over mankind, despite half a millennium of human habitation. And maybe that’s the most wonderful thing about Newfoundland – there are very few places in this modern world of ours where that can still be said.
(Part four of a four-part series)
~first composed in August, 2012~
