Joey Smallwood

This is the portrait of him that my Nan had in her
stairwell that gave me nightmares.

Hello again! Tim here, your favourite Newfoundland adventurer. So, someone who's been coming up a lot lately has been Joey Smallwood. As I've been researching and reading up on some Newfoundland history and destinations, his name has been coming up over and over again. If I was to list everything I know about Joey Smallwood I would say that he played a big role in Newfoundland joining Confederation, that he wore big funny glasses, that there was a ferry between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia named after him, and that my Nan had a huge picture of him hung up in our stairwell as a kid that used to give me nightmares. I actually know very little about him, so I figured I would dig into him a little bit to give us all a better understanding of him since he's been popping up all over the place.

So, if you've been following along with my adventures you may have seen how I found a picture of him in Brigus and Cupids, as well as the horse weather vane in Brigus that is mistakenly called 'Joey's Horse'. I am not joking when I say that he pops up everywhere.

A campaign poster of Smallwood back
in his political days.

If there's anything I can open up with when talking about Joey Smallwood, it's that his legacy is very divided. When you ask some Newfoundlanders about him, they sing his praises. When you ask others, they thought he was a complete buffoon, which well explains why many young people such as myself are so confused about who he was.

Smallwood began working as a journalist, became a campaign manager for politicians, then became a politician himself, left politics to become a radio personality, had a brief period operating a pig farm, and then returned to politics. It's a very unique career track to say the least.

He was an entertaining figure. He was flamboyant, he was upfront, and he was influential. A lot of the stories I've read about him give me the vibe of a small town Winston Churchill, but less abrasive. One time, when Smallwood was walking down a road in Corner Brook, he jokingly said the road reminded him of Broadway (Let the record show that the road is nothing like Broadway.). That road, to this day, is still called Broadway Street.

Smallwood, once he became a proper politician himself, pushed for Newfoundland to join Confederation. He founded the Confederation Association that campaigned for Confederation, and persuaded 52.3% of Newfoundlanders to vote to join Canada. This was not an entirely popular decision and to this day some people still question whether or not we should have. He then became the first Premier of Newfoundland, and to this day is still the longest reigning Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, holding office for 23 years with almost no opposition. ("and Labrador" was not added to the title until 2001.)

Smallwood heavily pushed for the welfare state in Newfoundland, creating a movement for the creation of 'baby bonuses' and various other welfare programs. He also pushed for the industrialization of Newfoundland with the creation of various paper mills, mining, and hydroelectricity.

A bust of Smallwood at the Memorial
University of Newfoundland in St. John's.

His memory is not pristine, however. He did make some rather large mistakes. The most notable of these mistakes was with Churchill Falls. Churchill Falls is a source of a massive amount of hydroelectricity in Labrador. When it was decided that it fell within the boundaries of Labrador and not Quebec, All of it's profit should have gone to Newfoundland when they had decided to route it to Northeastern USA, but there was no practical way to wire it down to them without bringing it through Quebec. Because Smallwood was so determined to have Churchill Falls in operation, he agreed to a deal with Quebec that in exchange for routing the electricity through Quebec, Quebec would get so much of the profit from it. Sounds like a great deal, eh? Nope. For decades, Quebec was making a fortune (some nine digits or more) while Newfoundland actually lost money on it.  Now some people consider the fact that it would have been highly impractical to go around Quebec to the extent that Newfoundland never would have made a profit off of it, but the reality is that through the inflation of the price of electricity it most likely would have.

I find it interesting to look back at Smallwood and ponder what he would have been like in person. He passed away in 1991, three years before I was born, so I never had the chance to meet him. I hear great things, I hear awful things. I guess, at the end of the day, it really does depend on who you ask.