Vignettes of a Small Town

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

Vignettes of a Small Town consists of a collection of essays, most of
which were written by the author (and, in many instances, previously
published in newspapers and journals), and a few extracts from books and
newspaper articles that were written by others. All have one thing in
common: they describe some aspect of the bank-fishing centre of Grand
Bank, Newfoundland— usually in this century, but occasionally in the
19th century and once in the 18th. No attempt is made to provide a
coherent history of his home town; for this, Parsons recommends reading
Garfield Fizzard’s Unto the Sea (1987). Instead, he chronicles Grand
Bank life—the fishery during the age of the banks fishery; schooners
and fishermen who were lost at sea; people who achieved local or
Newfoundland prominence; and community life; with lists of schooner
crews, soccer teams, war casualties, and so forth—and provides little
if any analysis outside of the chapter endnotes. For example, Parsons
lists the names of the 14 men who lost their lives during the Great War
(and whose names appear on the local war memorial), but fails to explain
why six of those men died not in Newfoundland service but in Canadian
service. Nor do we learn what gave Grand Bank so strong a link with
Canada compared with other substantial Newfoundland communities—a link
also evident in the history of shipbuilding and purchasing, dory design,
and trade? This lack of analysis or context, unfortunately, minimizes
the book’s appeal. In short, Vignettes of a Small Town has too little
substance to recommend it to anyone who does not have a personal
connection with Grand Bank.