Newfoundland and Labrador:
A History
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by Sean T. Cadigan
University of Toronto Press, UTP, Toronto, 2009, $29.95
Just as the two island provinces on Canada’s East Coast are worlds apart in climate, geography, history, and heritage, two recent books offer very different approaches to their respective histories.
Newfoundland and Labrador: A History is a scholarly work, a linear telling of the province’s beginnings that centres on its ecological reality. Newfoundland and Labrador’s forbidding geography and climate mean that its fabulous riches are found more offshore than on — from its fishery to the oil and gas locked beneath the Grand Banks. Efforts to wring something out of the rocky land itself have been less fruitful.
Sean T. Cadigan, an associate history professor at Memorial University, pays particular attention to the way the environment has shaped the history and culture of Canada’s newest province.
Prince Edward Island: An Illustrated History has a more popular, easy-to-read feel. Few pages are without an illustration or chart of some kind. These might be distracting to readers who prefer a less cluttered read, but they will please those who are prone to flipping through books and skimming for highlights. It was jarring to have a fictional character — Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables — quoted in author Douglas Baldwin’s introduction; but the rest of the book stays clear of references to this international “celebrity,” except for a page and a half devoted to author Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Both books are informative. Cadigan’s Newfoundland is heavier going but will reward those who want plenty of detail. Baldwin’s Prince Edward Island requires less of an investment of time and effort.
— Nelle Oosterom (Read bio)
Nelle Oosterom is the Senior Editor of Canada's History magazine.