O! Canada

It's March 31st, which means it's time for the annual hand-wringing, black-armband, pink-white-and-green lament for a crypto-nation on the part of the Newfoundland nationalists and crypto-separatists who want us all to think the whole thing was a big mistake.

Not a few of whom have had their careers as Professional Newfoundlanders underwritten by the Canada Council and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Labradorians' sense of attachment to Canada is not, contrary to Newfoundland nationalist paranoid orthodoxy, the result of becoming vendus through 56 years of federal government cheques. Newfoundland nationalists, if they had any shame, which they don't, would do well to refer back to what Labrador residents themselves said in the leadup to the Labrador boundary case, more than 80 years ago. Malcolm McLean, progenitor of a large Labrador clan:

The inhabitants of this country are dissatisfied with the present state of things and are anxious, according to my knowledge, hardly without exception, that this country should be held to constitute part of Canada rather than Newfoundland. They believe that their lot cannot be any worse and expect that it is likely to be a great deal better if the question as to the boundary is decided in that way.

The joint statement by Thomas L. Blake, Amon Chaulk, and Joseph Michelin:

…we have never been given any representation in the Newfoundland Legislature nor any return for the revenue contributed by the inhabitants of Labrador except a mail service, which at best is a very poor one… According to our information, the inhabitants of Lake Melville and the Hamilton Inlet are, without a single exception that we have heard of, most anxious that Labrador shall be held to constitute part of the Dominion of Canada.

When the unelected Commission of Government finally gave Labrador what elected Newfoundlanders would not, the right to vote, in the National Convention election, Labradorians elected a solidly and openly pro-Confederation delegate, the Rev. Lester Burry. In the first round of the 1948 referendum, Labrador voted pro-Confederation at a higher percentage than any district in Newfoundland. In the second round, Confederation outpolled irResponsible Government more than three to one.

Remember this, Newfoundland nationalists: for over 100 years, your ancestors denied to mine the fundamental right of your so-called "nationhood"; the democratic franchise.

Don't ask me to mourn for your nation. And don't ask me not to celebrate the birth of mine.

O Canada! nunagivaptigit
Inungnit naglingersiorpotit
Omativut tettdlarput
TatuKoruptigit
Nunatsiavut! pivlutit
Pigâtsainarpogut
O Canada! NunatsiaK
pigârpogut, inôjogut illa,
Pigârpogut pivlutit Canada