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Newfoundland is one of the most intriguing places in North America, a land of breathtaking but cruel beauty, populated by some of the saltiest, oddest characters you’ll ever find. In Theatre of Fish, John Gimlette vividly describes the dense forests and forbidding coastlines and recounts the colorful and often tragic history of the region. He introduces us to the inhabitants, from the birds and moose to the descendants of the outlaws, deserters, and fishermen who settled this eastern edge of North America. Leavened with irreverence and affection, this is an irresistible portrait of life in extremis. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

It was OK.
In thinking about my friends and family who live in Newfoundland - I think they probably would've felt a little bit offended by meeting the author of Theatre of Fish.At times the writing is difficult to follow.He is a very witty English fellow.I was not fond of the first chapter (or scene, as he writes them) - which opens in a strip bar in St. John's.He describes the people of Newfoundland as freaks - which they aren't.With his colorful observations of the way things look, feel and smell - its a disservice he doesn't try to describe the countrymen with a bit more flourish.I would've liked to have read that.

Who would have known?
Who would have known?Well John Gimlette knew. Following his great grandfather's footsteps and using that forebearer's journal the author has enlightened us to the topography, history, politics and diversity of this rocky place at the "edge of the world". Newfoundland and Labrador, far away, cold and wet. Who would have ever imagined that this harsh, forbidding area was so incredibly involved in the growth of the "new world". The author has provided us with a look into the past of this oldest settled region of Canada and a view of the present in this economically challenged area of the world.
Little thought is given in this modern era to Newfoundland and Labrador as important crossroads of history. John Gimlette's research and travels however reveal that manycolorful events and interesting decisions concerning this region influenced decisions in the evolving western world. With his wonderful command of the English language, his sly humor and keen interest in history John Gimlette has again used travel to excite and educate the reader. Gimlette is the type of author that a travel reader seriously enjoys.

Terrific writing
Reading John Gimlette is a real treat. His use of the language is extraordinary as he gives a clear-eyed, sympathetic yet unsentimental portrait of a place you'll want to know more about.I'll read him writing about anything.

A new classic
It's hard to imagine how this book could be improved upon.It is, first, a wonderful work of descriptive prose, containing brilliant character sketches in St. Johns, the horrors of a demoralized Native village, and the beauties of the various landscapes he encounters.

To this, add a piercing historical review, containing not only exhaustive research but also the incomparable advantage of his grandfather's diaries, giving a first-hand account of perhaps the most significant events in the province's history.This would be akin to having the private papers of George Washington's aide-de-camp while writing about Valley Forge.

To this, add Gimlette's inimitable writing style, which is deadly precise when needed and startling funny when the mood strikes him.His unprovoked description of moose as "luggage-faced, ugly, skinny-arsed, bog-squelching oafs" still makes me laugh.There's really nothing to be gained by romanticizing these creatures, as Gimlette understands.

Falling Out of Love
I wonder if Newfoundland or Labrador has a Tourist Board or some such.If so, I don't think you'll find this book among their recommendations.Time and again, Gimlette promises to treat the land and its denizens fairly.This, he does.Unfortunately, this retelling the story of the people and their history is gruesome, despairing, horrific and almost irremediably bleak. From expert methods of scalping (down to the lips) by the historical aborigines to death by silicosis and the epidemic of glue-sniffing youth in more contemporary times, Gimlette spares not a detail in depicting a place I, for one, do not EVER want to visit, any more than I would want to visit Central Europe during the Thirty Years War.I see that a fellow reviewer has already packed up his kit.I wonder how long he'll last.

I don't understand either why Gimlette's language has been dubbed "poetic".Perhaps these reviewers haven't read much poetry, but suffused with dark humour more aptly describes the writing.Visiting the outpost of Burgeo, Gimlette remarks, "I can think of no more perfect place to fall out of love."I can think of no more perfect book to make me stay away from Newfies and their land.Those of you who found this book somehow endearing must have turned the pages when the going got gruesome---about three/fourths of it.To Romanticize Newfoundland or Labrador is to Romanticize Hell on Earth.

I am reminded of what the poet John Masefield (a great adventurer in his youth) said about it in his later years, "Have you ever seen a lost dog turning one way and then another to avoid being killed by a motorcar in the middle of a busy street? That's adventure."

3 stars for the historical interest.Deo Laus, though, to be finished with this chronicle of rape, murder, suicide and chronic depression.
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Product Description
In the late 1940s Elmer Harp, a young Ph.D candidate at Harvard, began the first of five summers of exploration along the coast of the Strait of Belle Isle. Interested in studying early human activity in the area, he came to be equally fascinated with life in outport communities. During the summers of 1949-50 and 1961-63, he explored the coast, travelling from one isolated outport village to the next, initially by open boat and later on rudimentary roads, vividly capturing everyday life in his journals and through his extensive Kodachrome slides. In her introduction, Priscilla Renouf places Harp's story of rural northen Newfoundland in historical and anthropological context. She notes that there are economic and cultural continuities from prehistoric times to the present and shows that the fundamental structure of outport life based on fishing and hunting remains stable to this very day. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1892, after receiving complaints about working conditions in the Labrador fishery, the London-based Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen sent an expedition led by Wilfred Grenfell to distribute food and clothing to residents of the Labrador coast and to treat sick and disabled fishermen. This expedition unofficially marked the beginning of what would become known as the Grenfell Mission. Eliot Curwen, a young medical doctor, joined Grenfell on the second Labrador voyage. His journal and photographs provide a record of the expedition and of social conditions in Newfoundland and Labrador a century ago. A religious, well-educated Victorian, Curwen takes us into the heart of the colonial society he encountered, revealing the pervasive sectarianism, the tawdry political world of St John's, the rudimentary conditions aboard the fishing schooners, and the poverty of the Labrador "livyers", and the permanent White settlers who had intermarried with the Inuit. ... Read more

Product Description
Twentieth-Century Newfoundland: Explorations brings together ten papers by eight well known historians of Newfoundland and Labrador. The papers address a wide variety of subject matter and open many avenues for further research. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography on Newfoundland and Labrador in the twentieth century. This bibliography is organized by topic and will serve the needs of the general reader and specialist alike. ... Read more

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A pilot textbook presenting information on Newfoundland and Labrador and including maps, photographs, and activities. ... Read more

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Similar to the CBC and BBC, the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland was a public broadcaster that was at the centre of a cultural and political change from 1939 to 1949, during which Newfoundland faced wartime challenges and engaged in a constitutional debate about whether to become integrated into Canada. The Voice of Newfoundland studies these changes by taking a close look at the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland's radio programming and the responses of their listeners.

Making excellent use of program recordings, scripts, and letters from listeners, as well as government and corporate archives, Jeff A. Webb examines several innovative programs that responded to the challenges of the Great Depression and Second World War. Webb explores the roles that radio played in society and culture during a vibrant and pivotal time in Newfoundland's history, and demonstrates how the broadcaster's decision to air political debates was pivotal in Newfoundlanders's decision to join Canada and to become part of North American consumer society.

An engaging study rich in details of some of twentieth-century Newfoundland's most fascinating figures, The Voice of Newfoundland is a remarkable history of its politics and culture and an important analysis of the influence of the media and the participation of listeners.

Product Description
In 2008 Wayne Johnston became the second prominent Canadian writer to enlighten and entertain audiences as a speaker in the Canadian Literature Centre's Henry Kreisel Lecture Series. He spoke to an enthusiastic audience at the University of Alberta about the myths and realities surrounding his native Newfoundland. A master storyteller, Johnston peppered the lecture with impromptu asides, delighting his listeners with true tales and well-spun yarns. ... Read more

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"The Forgotten Labrador" recounts the history of a remarkable area of Canada - the Quebec part of the Labrador coast that extends eastward from Kegashka to Blanc Sablon. Cleophas Belvin describes the arrival of the Aboriginals and the activities of the Breton and Basque fishermen and French- and English-speaking merchants from Quebec City who controlled the region for more than one hundred and fifty years. He paints a vivid picture of the lifestyle and living conditions of the early French- and English-speaking pioneers and their descendants, offering an analysis of why they settled in the region and how they dealt with the precariousness of the seal, salmon, and cod fisheries. "The Forgotten Labrador" also explores the role of the Anglican and Catholic missionaries, the establishment of educational, medical, transportation, and communication services and the various government and local initiatives that were undertaken to provide the people with some form of economic prosperity. ... Read more

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Combining innovative archaeological analysis with historical research, Peter E. Pope examines the way of life that developed in seventeenth-century Newfoundland, where settlement was sustained by seasonal migration to North America's oldest industry, the cod fishery.

The unregulated English settlements that grew up around the exchange of fish for wine served the fishery by catering to nascent consumer demand. The English Shore became a hub of transatlantic trade, linking Newfoundland with the Chesapeake and New England, England, southern Europe, and the Atlantic islands. Pope gives special attention to Ferryland, the proprietary colony founded by Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, in 1621, but later taken over by the London merchant Sir David Kirke and his remarkable family. The saga of the Kirkes provides a narrative line connecting social and economic developments on the English Shore with metropolitan merchants, proprietary rivalries, and French competition.

Employing a rich variety of evidence to place the fisheries in the context of transatlantic commerce, Pope makes Newfoundland a fresh point of view for understanding the demographic, economic, and cultural history of the expanding North Atlantic world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Book for Newfoundland Family Research
This book gives anybody doing their Newfoundland family history an in-dept look into the life and times of the Seventeenth Century in the Fisheries Industry in Newfoundland. Well written and entertaining as well as informative.

An Excellent Work in Newfoundland History
Peter Pope writes an excellent account of the Newfoundland Plantation in the seventeenth century. Notably, he details the prominent position that the island held in the trans-Atlantic trade during the same period. It's a wonderful and thorough revisionist account that shifts some focus from the more traditional and well documented trading centres of North America. Overall, a stellar analysis of Early Modern Newfoundland! ... Read more

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In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century, Newfoundlanders, who often lived in small, mobile communities where they supported themselves with strenuous work and ingenuity, increasingly broke away from Anglicanism to find joy and comfort in the Methodist tradition. In this remarkable study of a region's reasons for changing how they practiced their faith, "Shouting, Embracing, and Dancing with Ecstasy" presents a unique perspective on the histories of Methodism and Newfoundland. Contesting previous historical scholarship, Calvin Hollett argues that the growth in Methodism was not the result of clergy-dominated missionary work intended to rescue a degenerated populace. Instead, the author shows how Methodism flourished as a people's movement in which believers in coastal locations were free to experience individual and communal rapture and welcomed at lay revivals in more populous areas. An insightful look at the growth of a religion, "Shouting, Embracing, and Dancing with Ecstasy" reasserts the importance of laypeople in religious matters, while detailing successful ways to bring the religious experience into daily life. ... Read more

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The history of St. John's, like the history of Newfoundland itself, is centred on the sea. The city's initial function was to serve as a seasonal mercantile centre to support the fishing fleets which came to exploit the abundant fish stocks of the island's shores Its secondary function wasas a military garrison town. ... Read more

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Dr Harry Paddon's memoir is an extensive account of life in Labrador prior to its entry into Confederation. As the Grenfell Mission's principal physician for over twenty-five years, Dr Paddon travelled extensively throughout Labrador by both dog team and boat. Through his journals he fashions a portrait of Labrador society in accord with the traditional rhythms of trapping and fishing, as it was before the onset of industrial development. He also chronicles the demands of northern medicine in response to pervasive threats such as tuberculosis and deficiency diseases, including a moving description of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19. Paddon's memoir gives the reader a sense of the resident Innu, Inuit, and settler communities, as well as the prevailing institutions of non-governmental authority: the Hudson's Bay Company, the Moravian Mission, and the International Grenfell Association. At a time when Labrador is undergoing further industrial development and social change, his writings, carefully edited and annotated by Ronald Rompkey, the biographer of Sir Wilfred Grenfell, capture the heart of the region and its people. ... Read more

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Jerry Bannister's The Rule of the Admirals examines governance in Newfoundland from the rule of the fishing admirals in 1699 to the establishment of representative government in 1832. It offers the first in-depth account of the rise and fall of the system of naval government that dominated the island for more than a century.

In this provocative look at legal culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Newfoundland, Bannister explores three topics in detail: naval government in St. John's, surrogate courts in the outports, and patterns in the administration of law. He challenges the conventional view that early Newfoundland was a lawless frontier isolated from the rest of the Atlantic world, and argues that an effective system of naval government emerged to meet the needs of those in power.

An original and perceptive work, Bannister's argument demands that we reconsider much of our knowledge of early Newfoundland history. As he re-examines governance prior to an elected assembly and places his analysis firmly within the material conditions of Newfoundland society, Bannister provides a groundbreaking reinterpretation of a critical period in the island's colonial development. Ultimately, The Rule of the Admirals sheds light on one of the most misunderstood chapters in Canadian and British colonial history.

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In 1997, the Canadian constitution was amended to remove the denominational rights of Newfoundland churches regarding education, erasing the last vestiges of a uniquely organized society. The author of this book presents an analysis of the origins and evolution of developments in both religion and politics in Newfoundland. He reveals the full details of political struggles, presenting them against the background of the historical evolution of churches in the century prior to the granting of representative institutions. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, published by Bibliographical Society of Canada on March 22, 2010. The length of the article is 4201 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Introduction: book culture in Newfoundland and Labrador.(Essay)
Author: Nancy Earle
Publication: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2010
Publisher: Bibliographical Society of Canada
Volume: 48Issue: 1Page: 9(12)

Article Type: Essay

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more