Crossroads Country

Alexander D. Gregor is director of the Centre for Higher Education
Research and Development at the University of Manitoba and the co-editor
of Postsecondary Education in Canada: The Cultural Agenda.

Crossroads Country presents the transcripts of interviews with 28
Newfoundlanders who experienced the most significant period in that
island’s history: the 1948–49 debate over federation with Canada.
The book extends well beyond the constitutional issue by proving a
portrait of life in Newfoundland from the 1920s through the 1940s. The
interviewees were chosen from among graduates of Memorial University
College. The author, a professional historian at Memorial University,
subsequently discovered that they were fairly representative of the
larger population.

A principal purpose of the study was to test the longstanding
assumption that pre-Confederation Newfoundland lived in “aloof
isolation” from other societies, particularly Britain, Canada, and the
United States. The findings reveal that the islanders had close and
frequent contacts with those three societies—contacts facilitated by
family, education, magazines, radio, and war (collectively, the
“crossroads” referred to in the book’s title). Education was a
major factor, with 22 of the subjects having studied outside the colony.
On the basis of the study, MacLeod declares isolation on the part of
Newfoundland a “fallacy,” with the caveat that “isolation and
ignorance … emanated not from the smaller crossroads country offshore,
but from the mainland end of the Newfoundland–Canada connection.”

The interviewees represent a broad spectrum of professions and
vocations, from clergy to university administrators. Each is introduced
by a brief biography, and they are brought further to life by the
book’s numerous photographs. Crossroads Country brings an important
new element to our understanding of this significant period in Canadian
constitutional and social history.