The Crowd from Roaring Cove

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British Views
of Canada, 1880–1914.

“Alfie Lambert be a devilskin, and Uncle Mark is quite the ticket /
But never was there a sleveen as bad as Jonas Pickett. / Lie, cheat and
swindle, and steal from innocent souls, / And according to Uncle Mark,
too lazy to pick his own nose.” Those who want to know more about
Alfie Lambert, Uncle Mark White, Jonas Pickett, Aunt Daisy Snelgrove,
and other denizens of

Roaring Cove, should buy this entertaining little book.

You see, Uncle Mark thinks that the cod moratorium is all bunkum—that
the fishery is on just another downturn as it was in the 1960s when Joey
Smallwood told the Newfoundland fishermen to “burn [your] boats.”
Aunt Daisy Snelgrove, deaf in one ear, thought he said “burn your
goats,” and so—unwilling to doubt the only living Father of
Confederation—set fire to Albert, her yellow-whiskered old billy goat,
who “shot over Aunt Daisy’s back fence like a lightning bolt and
crawled away under Johnny Eddy’s back porch. Fanning the flames as he
dashed across the garden, he barbecued himself—and burned Johnny’s
house to the ground.”

You’re laughing aren’t you? That’s because The Crowd from Roaring
Cove is a fine piece of Newfoundland humor. Bruce Stagg’s soft satire
on outport life is brilliant; his caricatures and unusual situations are
hilarious. Such a “rich look at Newfoundland outport life” should
not to be missed.