The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (64 page)

Governor William MacGregor calls on Morris to form an administration. Morris accepts. MacGregor dissolves the House. Another election is called. Morris campaigns this time as the leader of the ruling party rather than the leader of the opposition; it is only
his confidence that is enhanced by this distinction, not, as Bond asserts, his ability to dispense patronage at will.

Confidence and Morris win the day. Shortly thereafter, the Railway Extension Act is passed. The Reids, by way of token reparation, are asked to build six new branch lines, thereafter known as “the olive branch lines.”

Defeated again in 1913, Bond resigns, spends the rest of his life in sulking seclusion and, in 1918, when there is a bid to bring him back to lead the Liberals, declares: “I have had a surfeit of Newfoundland politics, and I turn from the dirty business with contempt and loathing.”

Despite the, alas, too-numerous-to-mention ways that Morris improves the lives of Newfoundlanders, it is not until the ascension to the prime ministership in 1919 of Sir Richard Squires that Newfoundland turns the corner to prosperity and self-respect.

As we intend to end our history with a postscript selection from
Quodlibets
, we would like here to thank Sir Richard Squires for the commendation that begins our book. We can think of no one more appropriate, or by whose kindness we could be more flattered, than Sir Richard to commend to the public a book that his record in office has inspired us to write and whose virtues, if any there be, are animated by his own.

We have said “end our history.” But this is in fact but its beginning, the start of its maiden voyage. That it will still be afloat when its rivals are with barnacles encrusted at the bottom of the sea we have no doubt. Nor do we doubt that she will have put in to every port before her day is done.

There, the bottle of champagne smashed against her hull, the blocks removed, she goes sliding down the slip — and Lo, is Launched!

Junket

I
TOLD THE
N
EWFOUNDLAND
people that Valdmanis was so highly qualified that I was going to pay him more than three times what I paid myself. I was making about seven thousand dollars a year; Valdmanis I would pay twenty-five thousand.

Valdmanis was a Latvian economist with an obscure past who gave everyone he met a different version of his life story. He told me that as a schoolboy, he was recruited into some sort of elite education corps whose purpose was to turn out the future leaders of Latvia; that during the war he had been a leader of his country’s resistance movement; that sometime between leaving Latvia and coming to Canada, he had been given the highest award the Swedish government could give, the Stella Polaris.

Though rumours flew about that his doctorate was self-conferred; that he had not received the Stella Polaris but some citation that could be had from the Swedish government for the equivalent of box-tops; that far from leading his country’s resistance movement, he had been a Nazi collaborator or quisling during the war, I said I had not the slightest doubt that Valdmanis was the real thing, “a man of honour.”

Valdmanis gave himself the title of director general of economic development, telling me that it would “impress the Europeans.”

I picked him up at the airport myself in the Chrysler Imperial my cabinet insisted I own and drive, as it was more befitting a premier than my battered Dodge, which I had hated to part with.

He was about five foot seven, slightly, compactly built, with a full head of tightly curled black hair, a very high forehead and intense green eyes. His most distinctive physical characteristic was one he brought to my attention, floating irises, he called it, explaining, only hours after we had first met, what he meant by this.

“In most people,” he said, bringing his face to within about six inches of mine so I could get a better look, “the iris” — he pointed, all but touched his eye with his forefinger — “the coloured part of the eye, extends from the upper eyelid to the lower eyelid. In a person with floating irises, people who generally have larger than usual eyes, the iris does not extend all the way to the lids, a portion of the eyeball is visible above and below the iris, so the iris appears to be, and is said to be, ‘floating.’ Only about 2 per cent of the population have floating irises.”

The effect of his floating irises, as I had no doubt he knew, was to focus his stare, to give you the impression that you were being looked at from behind his eyes, as though through a pair of peepholes.

“Where are your wife and children?” I said.

“They’re staying in Montreal for the time being,” he said. “The children have travelled a lot. My wife doesn’t think I’ll last more than a few months in Newfoundland because of what she’s heard about the weather. Once she sees that I’m here to stay, she and the children will join me.” It seemed odd to me that a wife and mother would base such an important decision on weather rumours, but I said nothing.

He quickly took my measure, I suppose, and the measure of Newfoundland — its historical measure, that is. I saw this and did not mind. Perhaps he had some charm or charisma he could turn
on or off at will, for though I was greatly taken with him, it soon became clear that my ministers were not. He affected with them a humility and courtesy whose insincerity was meant to be transparent, to offend. He referred to each of them as “your excellency” and whenever he met them bowed in what to me seemed a playfully unctuous manner, like a send-up of some Old World court tradition.

Perhaps, to others, his flattery of me, his devotion to me, was just as transparently insincere. To me, it was as if he believed it was merely a happy coincidence that the one man of real ability in Newfoundland happened to be the man in charge, the elected leader. I convinced myself that it was because of my ability, not because of my office and power, that he took to me.

His belittlement of others I took as an indirect compliment. I thought his contempt of so many demonstrated, not arrogance, but high standards and discriminating judgment, and I was flattered that he should be so impressed with me.

I saw Valdmanis as a kindred spirit together with whom I could accomplish more than I could with all the members of my Cabinet. I also saw him as harmless. He was an outsider and so would never be a political rival.

Five minutes after we met, he said he believed that in Newfoundland, he had found his “spiritual home.” I did not think this was insincere, because I could not imagine that anyone would try in so guileless a manner to curry favour.

Perhaps what appealed to me most about him was that he seemed not only so lonely, but also isolated, enisled, as if the world within which he had been designed to excel had ceased to exist or had never come about in the first place. Enisled.

We were no less enisled for having joined Canada, not yet, at least. Perhaps that is why it seemed to me that Newfoundland, this world apart, was just the place for Valdmanis, and he for it. Enisled, a Newfoundlander by predilection if not by birth.

In his first few months in Newfoundland, he revealed his social and cultural talents one by one until it seemed he would never run out of ways of surprising us. At a Christmas party, he sang Christmas carols in what was obviously a trained voice. A month later, at a Government House ball, he waltzed about the floor, as if their feet were melded to his, women who had no more idea than I did how to waltz. He was a multi-linguist who charmed visitors from other countries by conversing with them in their language while the rest of us stood by in open-mouthed, astonished silence. He played half a dozen musical instruments — the piano, the violin, the flute — flawlessly. But the question was always, faintly comically, what for? For he seemed to take no pleasure in his talents, seemed more to be saddled with them than anything else.

It was at the suggestion of Valdmanis that I switched tactics where Fielding was concerned. Unlike my Cabinet ministers, he did not try to convince me of her insignificance or recommend that I ignore her. He assured me that I was right in thinking that her criticisms of me must somehow be “neutralized.”

He urged me to invite her to travel with us, at government expense. She would, if she agreed, join Valdmanis and me and our retinue of civil servants as we travelled throughout the countries of Europe on what I called, when I announced it to the press, a trade mission, the purpose of which would be to entice “world-class investors” to Newfoundland.

“What would be the point?” I said. “If you think Fielding is going to tone down her attacks on us in exchange for a trip abroad —”

“I want to get to know Miss Fielding,” Valdmanis said. “I cannot think of any other way of contriving to spend time with her than to invite her on such a trip.”

“She’ll write about everything we do,” I said.

Valdmanis shrugged. “She’ll write about us if she comes along or not.”

In the end I agreed, though I foresaw a fiasco. Valdmanis told me how I should extend the invitation. I rang Fielding up on the telephone.

“We want you to come along with us, Fielding,” I said. “We want you to see just how hard we work. Once you get to know Dr. Valdmanis and see close up what he is trying to do on behalf of Newfoundland, once you see the sort of obstacles that we are up against, once you have a feel for what it is really like to be a leader, a premier, a politician, I believe you will see us both in a different light.”

“Smallwood, tell me something,” she said, “aren’t you at all worried by how eager all these people of his seem to be to ‘invest’ in Newfoundland?” (There had been a piece in the
Daily News
about the scores of potential investors Valdmanis had arranged for us to meet.)

“Not a bit,” I said. “After all, you don’t say no to Santa Claus.”

“And you want me to come along so that once I see how hard it is to run a province, I’ll become a more — what? — a more responsible reporter? Come on, Smallwood, what’s this really all about? I’m not going to mysteriously disappear on this trip or something, am I?”

I laughed. In the end, unable, I suppose, to resist finding out what our ulterior motive might be, she accepted our invitation.

I announced it at the junket press conference as a kind of coup. “Would I invite Miss Fielding along,” I said, “Miss Fielding of all people, if, as the leader of the opposition claims, I had something to hide?”

“It will be interesting to see,” one
Telegram
reader wrote in a letter to the editor a few days later, “if after being wined and dined and God knows what else for a month throughout the principalities of Europe, our Miss Fielding will ever be the same.”

We flew to London and gathered ourselves there for a tour of the major European cities at the rate of two or three a week. We
spent our days in offices and factories and our evenings at the opera, the ballet, the theatre, after which we were wined and dined by people who, in Valdmanis’s obscure former life, had been, as he described them, “associates” of his. Wherever he took us, he seemed not only to know everyone but also to be held in high esteem. “What do you expect?” Fielding said. “If you were showing visitors around Newfoundland, how many Catholics would you introduce them to?”

Fielding’s columns ran daily throughout this month-long junket, filed one day from London, the next from Paris, the next from Hamburg. By three days into the trip, I was receiving word about the columns Fielding was filing, which were appearing in the
Telegram
back home. She knew I knew about her columns, but I pretended to think that she would eventually come round.

We let her accompany us almost everywhere we went, Valdmanis acting as if he thought the sheer splendour and luxury of her surroundings would win her over.

“I want her to think that this is our strategy,” he said. As for me, I was as interested as Fielding to know what our ulterior motive might be, but whenever I questioned Valdmanis, all he said was that he merely wanted “to get to know” Fielding, and that to do so would take time.

Valdmanis, using his old diplomatic contacts, got us a brief audience with Pope Pius XII at Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s “home away from Rome,” as Fielding called it in her column. I kept looking at Fielding to see if she was suitably impressed — I was starting to think we really had brought her along in the hopes of winning her over to our side.

I introduced her. “Your Holiness,” I said, “this is Miss Fielding, a prominent journalist in Newfoundland. She writes for the
Evening Telegram
, one of the great small newspapers in the world.” My God, Fielding’s expression seemed to say as she looked at me, why don’t you just have me killed if it means that much to
you to shut me up? I was surprised myself that I did not choke on the words.

I had with me a suitcase full of prayer beads and holy medals, which Valdmanis had bought in shops near the Vatican, and the pope agreed to bless them after I told him of my plan to distribute them to Catholics back home.

“He plans to hand them out with pictures of himself in Catholic ridings in the next election,” Fielding said. The pope smiled, assuming, I suppose, that she was joking, though that was exactly what I planned to do. I felt myself blushing deep red and I tried to smile as if I too thought it was a joke. Valdmanis remained expressionless, as if Vatican protocol forbade levity in the presence of the pope, which for all I know it did.