Distant Shores: Pages from Newfoundland's Past

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.

This is a collection of essays written by the author for the now-defunct
regional magazine Atlantic Insight. They are a series of vignettes about
the history and people of Newfoundland in general and about a
substantial number of individual communities in particular. Some, like
the essays on coastal boats, folk medicine, and the Eaton’s catalogue,
provide tantalizing glimpses of a culture that is rapidly disappearing.
The author is not nearly so successful in recounting the history of his
province and many of its communities. Factual and interpretive errors
abound, and are useful only in revealing the degree to which myth and
legend permeate the way in which too many people continue to perceive
Newfoundland history today. James Cook never explored or charted
Newfoundland’s northeast coast; Corner Brook did not exist in 1894;
the summer population of 17th-century Placentia was never as high as
15,000 people; the Sallee Rovers never cruised in Newfoundland waters; I
doubt that Eaton’s catalogues charged $100 to $150 for bicycles in the
late 1800s.

The pieces in this collection were allegedly revised since their
original publication, yet discrepancies remain in factual details from
one essay to the next, as in Bartholomew Roberts’s raid on Trepassey.
Other observations remain unchanged, though they have been rendered
invalid by research during the past decade (as with the French at
Trinity in 1762). Even when Coish is on the relatively safe ground of
witnessing his own culture, his essays degenerate too frequently into
rambling lists of people or events; see, for instance, the essays on
shipwrecks or transatlantic aviation. Little if any context or meaning
is attached—how do aviators who crashed on takeoff or disappeared in
the North Atlantic qualify as “milestones” in aviation? Had the
essays attempted to interpret Newfoundland culture for non-Newfoundland
readers, this might have been a worthwhile book. In its present form, it
is not recommended.