We watched a lot from Turin during the Olympics. I love the Olympics for about two weeks every couple of years. Cindy Klassen made Olympic history. The Brad Gushue rink made Newfoundland history. I guess the women's performance generally and the men's hockey team performance each made history of a kind.
I'm recalling something I heard on the radio, covering the return of the Newfoundland curlers to St John's airport.
A reporter interviewed a man who had driven two hours from Lewisporte to be there at the airport with the throngs of celebrants and well-wishers. Was it worth it, he was asked.
"Oh," he said, "I wouldn't have missed this for a farm out west."
A farm out west. Not a phrase you hear much these days to suggest the allure of riches. I wondered what bit of Newfoundland social and economic history, circa 1910 maybe, was preserved in that little bit of local idiom.
It needs to be set against the bold declaration of Newfoundland anti-confederates in 1866, warning young men that if the colony joined the new confederation, "you will all be conscripted into Canada's armies and will leave your bones in the deserts of the west."
God guard thee, Newfoundland.
