Journalism

In 1965, and in the years which follow, the rural Newfoundlander faces an environment in which he will have growing mobility, greater purchasing power, greater educational opportunities, and a growing involvement by governments in the way he makes his living, retains his health, and takes his leisure. He faces a world in which his traditional techniques for earning a living are almost totally obsolete…He is being confronted with technical change and the transformation of social patterns at a rate unparalleled in Newfoundland history. He must be given opportunities for education, in its broadest scope… (but) no matter how obvious the trend toward centralization and population concentrations, the character, tradition and interests of the Newfoundlander and the dictates of the economic both militate against a total urban population in this Province. 1

The Fogo Island film partnership of the National Film Board and the Memorial University of Newfoundland Extension Service helped establish a fisheries cooperative on Fogo Island and, in the process, a template for the NFB’s Challenge for Change program. The Fogo Island films have achieved near-mythic status in film studies and film history as a coup for the NFB, but the role of the Newfoundland partners has been largely ignored. This article addresses this gap in the literature, and traces how the project and the process behind it helped to spark the "cultural revolution" of the 1970s in Newfoundland and Labrador. Resume Le partenariat en cinema forme par l’Office national du film (ONF) et le Memorial University of Newfoundland Extension Service a l’ile Fogo a aide a l’etablissement d’une cooperative de peche dans l’ile Fogo et, par la meme occasion, a la creation d’un modele de reference pour le programme Societe nouvelle, de l’ONF. Les films de l’ile Fogo ont acquis un s...

In 1965, and in the years which follow, the rural Newfoundlander faces an environment in which he will have growing mobility, greater purchasing power, greater educational opportunities, and a growing involvement by governments in the way he makes his living, retains his health, and takes his leisure. He faces a world in which his traditional techniques for earning a living are almost totally obsolete...He is being confronted with technical change and the transformation of social patterns at a rate unparalleled in Newfoundland history. He must be given opportunities for education, in its broadest scope... (but) no matter how obvious the trend toward centralization and population concentrations, the character, tradition and interests of the Newfoundlander and the dictates of the economic both militate against a total urban population in this Province. 1

In December 1916, the Canadian cargo ship S.S. Mount Temple sailed from Montreal towards London.  In her hold stood 40 horses, ready to be sent to the warfront in France; on the decks above a mixture of Navy men and civilians hitching a ride.  Packed next to the horses, swathed in a coat of white plaster and linen, were 22 crates filled with hundreds of dinosaur bones unearthed by Charles Sternberg from quarries in Alberta’s badlands. They were headed for the halls of the British Museum, but before she reached England the German warship SMS Möwe captured the Mount Temple.  Misreading a signal from a Canadian passenger, the Germans fired on the ship and sunk it on 6 December 1916.  The bones rest on the floor of the Atlantic, and are unlikely to ever be brought to the surface. 

The sinking of the Mount Temple serves as an example of the power of war on the international trade of culture and scientific development.  This paper argues that the First World War took place during an auspicious time for palaeontological acquisition, and that the conflict’s effect on historical institutions prevented them from expanding their storerooms and exhibitions.  It contrasts that European sparsity with an exploration into the boom in freelance palaeontology happening in the West – because many young Canadian palaeontologists were sent to war before their American colleagues, a cottage industry sprung up north of the border for American “diggers”. Through correspondence between Sternberg and the British Museum, we learn how war affected the transfer of trans-national environmental knowledge.