A Settlement of Memory

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and the author of The Salvation
Army and the Public.

At the turn of the century, Newfoundland fishermen lived in bondage to
the merchants who supplied their material wants in return for fish, the
food and gear being bartered at three times the value of the fish. In
1908, William F. Coaker formed the Fisherman’s Protective Union. To
break the merchant monopoly, the union instituted its own trading
company, newspaper, and fisherman’s cooperative. Eventually, it
enlisted more than 20,000 fishermen and saw 13 of its members elected to
government under the union banner.

Loosely based on Coaker’s achievement, this novel casts Tom Vincent
as Coaker. Rodgers attempts to recreate the personal and political
tensions, the physical hardships, the victories and disappointments that
characterized union organization at that time. The social issues are
well defined and Vincent’s political genius and instant rapport with
the fishermen are convincing. Less believable are the secondary
characters: the merchants are flat and dull, the fishermen cardboard
cutouts. The novel is also marred by the author’s failure to evoke a
strong sense of time or place.