From the Coast to Far Inland: Collected Writings on Labrador

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

The centrepiece of this impressive collection of descriptive sketches of
Labrador is a selection from Elizabeth Goudie’s Woman of Labrador
(1973), perhaps one of the finest, most intimate, and certainly most
poignant, personal accounts of Labrador life on record. Bracketing it
are seven works that take us back into the history and early Native
culture of that vast strip of land, including excerpts from The Vinland
Sagas, from George Cartwright’s journal, from the memoirs of the
Moravian missionary Jens Haven, and from Elliott Merrick’s True North.
These are followed by 10 works that bring us to the present, some
politically motivated, some merely descriptive of lifestyle and local
culture, but all quite enlightening, from the pens of such writers as
Mina Hubbard, Norman Duncan, Michael Crummey, W.A. Paddon, and George
Rich. The whole is an admiral addition to the literature of Labrador, a
must for those who know little of that “mysterious,” sometimes
forbidding, but awe-inspiring land.

We must, of course, deplore the exclusion of Wilfred Grenfell (a piece
from Vikings of Today would seem to be almost essential) for his name is
inextricably linked to Labrador, and perhaps even Henry Bryant’s early
description of the Grand (now Churchill) Falls in its pristine beauty
would seem an important inclusion. These regrets aside, this is a
valuable, very elegantly printed book, with an excellent introduction
and some fine photographs.

If you still think that Labrador is “the land God gave Cain,” this
book will soon disabuse you of that notion. It is, as these excerpts
reveal, a seemingly rugged and barren country, but there is also much
beauty in the land and much courage in its people.