What's your NewfNat 911?

Another little gem from Sue Kelland-Dyer's Thursday call to Backtalk on the Labrador boundary non-issue. Emphasis added in a futile attempt to capture the hilarity of her rage:

I’m going to use several things that have happened, I guess, that would tweak my interest. The Quebec electoral office, in its official map, also has the border changed. And when the provincial election was on in Quebec the last time, CBC Newsworld was covering their election, and guess what map they used?

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When you’re sitting in a country where someone is obviously changing your borders on all of their official maps. The Department of Transport. If you go to look for a mineral exploration license in Quebec, you’re looking at that new map. If you’re going to the electoral office, you’re looking at that new map. I mean, we can’t just ignore it, Linda.

Not only can we ignore it... we should. To argue the merits of Quebec's supposed claim is to beg the question of whether that so-called claim has merits to begin with. It does not, and should not be so treated.

In any event, the really funny part of this latest SKD rant is her insistence on the newness of "that new map".

Sue Kelland-Dyer's research skills could use a little up-brushing. "That new map" has been around, off and on, and inconsistently, since the 1960s. Here, for example, is a piece from the Globe and Mail from September 1, 1979:

Not giving up claim, Government says
Quebec map draws new Labrador border

By RICHARD CLEROUX
Globe and Mail Reporter

MONTREAL - A new map put out by the Quebec Government redraws the boundary between Quebec and Labrador, giving Quebec a portion of Labrador north of the territory's southern boundary as set in 1927, but apparently ceding the rest of the territory for the first time to Newfoundland.

"We don't know where that map came from or who drew it, but we are certainly going to find out", Michel Remillard, press secretary to Lands and Forests Minister Yves Berube, said yesterday.

The new map, issued by the Lands and Forests Department on Aug. 15, shows the boundary that was set by the Imperial Privy Council in 1927, when Labrador was given to Newfoundland.

But the map also marks a second jagged boundary, north of the 52nd Parallel, that the Privy Council had set as Labrador's southern limits. That new boundary places the headwaters of rivers that flow into the Gulf of St. Lawrence inside Quebec's border.

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The G&M story was accompanied by the following graphic:

Sue's "that new map" has been in open and notorious circulation for thirty or forty years. Yet, somehow, it's news to her.

Which makes a body wonder... If she's that slow to twig to a trivial issue, how long would it take her to twig to a really important one?