Can Any Good Thing Come Out of Crockers Cove?

Christopher English is a history professor at Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

Teacher, magistrate, Speaker of the House of Assembly, and lawyer—the
upward curve of George W. Clarke’s career, like those of his
contemporaries who escaped pre–World War I outport Newfoundland to
rise to prominence, is a testimony to optimism, grit, and determination.
A four-month teacher-training course was Clarke’s passport to three
years of indentured service in an isolated one-room school, where a
meagre salary required him to moonlight as insurance salesman,
bookkeeper, agent for bespoke tailoring, and summer marker for the
regional school. Through it all Clarke maintained his determination to
go to university, to complete a degree in Canada, and to explore
whatever job options presented themselves. The story has been told by
others, but Clarke provides a nice evocation of the plight and the
prospects of outport teachers in the depressed Newfoundland economy of
the interwar years.

However, it is on Clarke’s career as magistrate in Springdale and
Twillingate from 1946 to 1956 that the book offers something new. More
information on the details of daily life from one who was called on not
only to dispense summary justice but to act as government agent with
regard to roads, public works, welfare, and elections would have been
welcome. Clarke is discreet about the political subtext to all of this,
as he is about his 15-year career as member of the House of Assembly and
then Speaker. About his law career he is almost entirely silent. Indeed,
whether through discretion or difficulties of recall, he compresses the
last 30 years of his career and retirement into fewer than 25 pages, a
contrast to his almost total recall of the early years.