DECEMBER 1994
By Barry Stagg
THE ROYALTIES OF ANNIE PROULX
Annie Proulx has successfully mined Newfoundland in the same way that American mining prospectors and British industrialists mined and logged the land for profit in the early twentieth century. Proulx, with her best selling novel based in Newfoundland, has turned the late Newfoundland linguist, George Story into her faithful Indian guide in much the same way as an American geologist might have used some native Labradorian to lead him to the riches of iron ore and uranium in Labrador in the 1940's.
Newfoundland once again is there for the mining, for the purpose of extracting by people who come from elsewhere. Newfoundlanders could do it themselves. Newfoundlanders can develop the mines and the forest and they can write entertaining stories about their society and about their language and about their insular and unique customs. However Newfoundlanders seem to have the remnants of the white aboriginal spirit that must stem from the ancient Celts, Angles and Saxons who populated the British Isles and who are the ancestors of Newfoundlanders. The aboriginal urge is to leave the land alone, to let the land lie and to enjoy the land as it is. Unfortunately this often involves just letting the shovels lie on the surface without digging in. This is the way that it was in 1920 when British industrialists farmed the forests and put the paper mills in Grand Falls and Corner Brook. This is the way it was in the 1950's when the ground was laid bare in Labrador for the great iron mines in, what was then, Carol Lake (now Labrador City) and Wabush. It is that way now when Annie Proulx with her faithful guide George Story ,through the astute use of his Dictionary of Newfoundland English, comes to Newfoundland, lives among the natives and writes an exquisitely accurate best seller.
Why does the name of that book escape me? Why am I writing in the first person trying to remember the name of a book written about Newfoundland, written in the same way that a travel text is written, written well, written onto the best seller lists of New York and ultimately extracting Newfoundland energy and Newfoundland resources from Newfoundlanders. Why can't I remember the name of that book? I will look it up and I will buy the book from the best seller list of Coles Book Store. I will make a point to buy it from a Coles Book Store, the pedestrian streetside book vendor that we commoners patronize. I will contribute a few more cents to the royalties of Annie Proulx. Maybe that is a title for a new book. I will write a book and I will title it "The Royalties of Annie Proulx".
The Celts, the Angles and the Saxons are in my blood today. They are thrashing around, they are surging, they are saying: "Re- embrace the land. You survived when others failed. You went against His Majesty, you climbed among the rocks and you spread our ancient culture and our ancient rites to the new land. You moved west. You are the last of the white nomads. You are our tribal heirs, you are anarchy. You are left alone to practice the ancient rituals. You must not let the King's people take away our spirits, you must protect us, you must protect yourself and you must go on. Embrace the land."
A long evening in June draws to a close. The sun hangs longer in the sky today than any other day. Over the water, still a tinge of blue, the sun sets, growing orange, already ebbing away at the daylight until the windy fall. Salt spray wafts inland, a perfume from the ages and a perfect marker for the summer solstice. When night comes down, there comes the realization that already with summer only barely begun in this coastal land, that the sun is already receding. The days are already growing shorter even as the land warms and summer lends her hand to briefly warm the ancient spirits of this granite marsh.
The foggy fall will have at us soon. Maybe even in July when we expect it, but when we regret it the most. We hear hollow, silent murmurs strangely like cackles and chuckles as those who came before us remind us that these wet, cold fogs are like armament that kept away the invaders for all these centuries. In our bones, in our kneecaps and elbows and in our sinuses we understand and we move on tolerating the mist, tolerating the damp and waiting for that brief blue glimpse that lets us know that the fog bank moves on and the bright sunny uplands are possible again.
Here comes a shaggy pony, tiny by horse standards and running wild, no bridle and simply free in the brief dryness of summer and heading straight for the shoreline. Three of his friends are already there as they romp in the shoals, and swim in the shallow water of the sea. Spooked now by my presence, they thunder back to the level sand and surge on galloping in a shaggy symmetry toward the summer crisp boglands.
There are people in this piece, but the people keep to themselves, they move along the land, around the land and with the land. They pull rowboats around the flat water and they drive murmuring cars along the banks stopping and often looking outward, looking out to sea, looking eastward, looking inward, enjoying High Summer before the damn thing even gets going. June 21, what a day for Annie Proulx to be mining. What a day for Annie Proulx to be prospecting. What a day for Annie Proulx to be collecting. What a day for Annie Proulx to be guided. What a day. The day moves on.