Mounties, Moose, and Moonshine: The Patterns and Context of Outport Crime

Les Harding is the author of The Voyages of Lesser Men: Thumbnail
Sketches in Canadian Exploration and The Journeys of Remarkable Women:
Their Travels on the Canadian Frontier.

The Outport villages of Newfoundland are home to a unique culture that
is almost completely unknown in the rest of Canada. As part of his
analysis of crime in this society, the author of this clearly written
and well-researched book provides evidence that Outport culture is an
admirable one, based on the virtues of hard work, self-reliance,
adaptation, and nonviolence. Crime committed by Outport residents tends
to be restricted to violations of hunting and alcohol regulations.
Ever-increasing government regulation has criminalized activities that
Outport people have seen as traditional and noncriminal. Government
regulation is probably as much of a threat to the continued existence of
the Outports as the collapse of the cod fishery in the northwest
Atlantic.

The other type of Outport crime—the most serious but least reported
and addressed—is that committed against Outport residents by those in
positions of power and dominance: fish-plant owners, merchants, police,
and game wardens. Economic subjugation and violations of human rights
have been routine occurrences.

The book provides information on the history of Outport settlement;
economic development, law enforcement; crime rates and reporting;
patterns of big-game poaching and moonshining; interpersonal crime and
vandalism; crimes of the powerful; and government policy and social
order in a collapsed economy. Okihiro, who spent 10 years living in and
visiting the Outports of Newfoundland, concludes with the hope that his
book will contribute to the development of enlightened government
policies that will strengthen and preserve the Outport culture.