Elliston: The Story of a Newfoundland Outport

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Memorial
University and reviews editor of The Northern Mariner.

This book is clearly a labor of love. Its author has spent years
researching the little community in which he grew up. His book covers
all the topics for which documentary material is likely to have
survived: origins, population growth, local families, merchants,
religion, education, law enforcement, military service, postal service,
hardships, and tragedies.

Unfortunately, these pages—filled with extensive extracts of letters,
newspaper stories, official reports, and statistical data—show scant
evidence of any attempt to provide context, analysis, or interpretation.
For instance, a brief chapter titled “The Post” is little more than
a list of people who were employed in the postal service, while the
chapter on roads consists of nothing more than a chronologically
arranged series of reports on—or petitions for—local road
construction. The enormous literature on the history of 19th-century
Newfoundland is nowhere in evidence, so that we have no idea how
Elliston responded to the various political issues, economic cycles, and
social conditions that confronted its citizens since the community’s
founding in the early 1800s.

Students may find some use for the book’s exhaustive primary
material. “[The] definitive work on Elliston and area,” which the
publisher purports Elliston to be, remains to be written.