Herbert L Pottle

At the time this book was published, Herbert L. Pottle was seventy-two years old. Looking at his photo on the jacket flap, I would have guessed at least a dozen years older. And reading the text, I would have guessed... much the same.

This is an old man's book. It drones on about things younger people wouldn't know and probably wouldn't want to know. Which is truly unfortunate, because Pottle was witness to very important events: Newfoundland's final years under "commission of government" and its union with Canada. Pottle was, in fact, an important player in that process; he was one of the commissioners of the government (the appointed board that ran the island) after World War II, and he was one of those who helped shape Confederation with Canada, and he was part of the Newfoundland provincial government after the island became "The Tenth Province." He saw firsthand how Joseph Smallwood first brought the former Dominion into Canada and how Smallwood then turned into a single-minded zealot-without-a-cause. Or at least zealot-without-a-single-good-idea. Smallwood for more than twenty years ran Newfoundland, and created a new economic model for the island. A model that didn't produce prosperity -- but that displaced many people, and destroyed cultures and history, and deeply divided the nation.

All this Pottle saw, first as an insider and then as an irritated outsider. As you can probably tell, there was a lot to be irritated about. But Pottle can't really make it clear what made him so testy. He describes many of Smallwood's more absurd choices, such as his forced relocation program that destroyed many historic communities. But while Pottle fulminates against this awful policy, he has no policy of his own, and he has no coherent program to offer in return.

I know more Newfoundland history than most, but I found the result very hard to understand. All I came away with was a picture of a cranky old man having a series of hissy fits. There just isn't any coherence to this book -- a problem made even worse by the lack of an index. I suspect that historians will find this a useful resource, but for the rest of us, it's just too much work for too little reward.… (meer)