JIMMY JAMES'S ROCK WAS ANOTHER COUNTRY - George Jonas

I'm not going to comment on the recent contretemps between Canada's
easternmost province and the federal government. What I know about
Newfoundland can be poured into a beer mug and it was, more than once, by
the late Jimmy James, associate drama chief for CBC radio in the 1960's.

Jimmy was a Newfoundlander. He spoke mainland while the sun was up and Rock
as soon as it went down. He used to prepare meals of steamer clams and seal
meat which we washed down with callibogus, a drink you obtain by adding rum
and molasses to spruce beer. After a few calliboguses or is it
callisbogus? I usually said I couldn't care less if Newfoundland sank,
and Jimmy said HE couldn't care less if Canada sank, and neither could most
Newfoundlanders. On convoy duty during the battle of the Atlantic he and
some Newfie shipmates became convinced that Canada HAD sunk "the b'ys
said they couldn't see it anyplace" but after the war they realized it
was just wishful thinking.

Jimmy was a naval college type, like many CBC executives in the old days,
and he always drove his car in majestic zigzags as if trying to avoid
submarines. ("Steer a straight course, with all these cars trying to ram
me?" he'd ask. "I'm not suicidal.") In the post-war years the Corporation
often offered berths to returning veterans. Few had any expertise in show
business, but they knew enough, in the words of the CBC's legendary
second-in-command, Captain W. E. S. Briggs, "not to foul their own nests."
It's a lesson that has eluded many of their successors since.

For Jimmy, Newfoundland was always another country. "When I first came to
Canada," he'd explain, "I never dreamt that Joey Smallwood would ship the
whole damn place after me. I tried to wave 'em off, but they were such
stubborn souls, they'd forge ahead like a school of whales, sucking in all
that plankton. 'Aye, laddies, and will you ever regret it,' I said to them,
but they just carried on, with those big plumes of spray coming out their
blow-holes."

"Stubborn souls" was what Gordon ("The Rowdyman") Pinsent called
Newfoundlanders, too at least that's how I remember him describing his
compatriots to another old CBC hand, drama chief Esse W. Ljungh, a brooding
Swede and a stubborn soul himself. When I was an apprentice, Mr. Ljungh
chased me around Studio "G" with a fire axe for some suggestion he found
aesthetically displeasing. Chasing apprentices with fire axes would be
considered politically incorrect these days but the golden age of CBC was
in those days, not these days.

The smart set used to joke about Captain Briggs, RCN, ruling Canada's
airwaves, but the CBC could have turned to worse places than the Navy to
run the show (and did turn to worse places, in later years.) At least the
Navy knew about signals and keeping things shipshape. The smart set knew
only how to be "vitrid," as Jimmy put it, the word signifying a combination
of vapid and venomous, with putrid thrown in for good measure. It served
equally well to describe rotting fish and the chattering classes.

The Joey Smallwood show might have benefited from being run by the Navy,
too, but it wasn't. England's oldest colony became Canada's youngest
province strictly as a civilian venture. It took two referenda for the
union to squeak through during the summer of 1948: "nay" in June, "yea" in
July. According to Jimmy, many Newfoundlanders thought they were invited to
a champagne-and-caviar party at least that's what they heard Joey
Smallwood tell them but once they got to Canada, the party turned out to
be just crackers-and-beer. Not only that, but it was bring your own bottle,
and pack a few slices of cod's tongue while you're at it.

Today some Newfoundlanders regret having come to the party, as the flag
furor has demonstrated. I see Jimmy himself raising a cup of callibogus to
Premier Danny Williams from the grave. Not that Jimmy had anything against
the Maple Leaf, or even the federal government, but all governments were
brass weren't they, laddie? interspersed with head office types, and
any ancient mariner would know that brass were not to be trusted. As for
head office types, they would "steal your eyes out, me son, and crap in the
holes." As bad as fouling one's own nest, I suppose, if not worse.

Still, the party was then. This is now. If Newfoundlanders left the party
today, chances are they'd regret it no less than they regret having come.
More, even, for although Ottawa is a cold place ("cold enough to cut the
skin off you") with the nerve to demand shiploads of natural resources for
hosting that sumptuous do of b.y.o.b. by the Rideau Canal, the Atlantic
winds blow even colder, especially on the wrong side of the Gulf stream.

But Ottawa should still think twice about its
oil-and-gas-for-beer-and-crackers program. Scaring off Jimmy's shipmates
might give ideas to all those maverick cowpokes in Alberta and when that
herd stampedes, watch out, Canada.

© National Post

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JIMMY JAMES'S ROCK WAS ANOTHER COUNTRY by George Jonas National Post January 17, 2005

JIMMY JAMES'S ROCK WAS ANOTHER COUNTRY
by George Jonas
National Post
January 17, 2005