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The ghost that haunts us
Artwork featuring

1949 Smallwood

quote offers insight

into a moment

of history and a

‘grievous action’
By STEPHANIE PORTER
Friday, September 15, 2006
By Mandy Cook

The Independent



Tucked away on the top floor of a T-shirt store in downtown St. John’s hangs a picture. A quotation, printed from top to bottom in aged, newspaper-style stencil, reads:



“I don’t need you,” said Smallwood. “I’ve been elected, but you need me. I’m sitting on top of the public chest and not one red cent will come out of it unless Greg Power is elected. Unless you vote for my man, you’ll be out in the cold for the next five years. Those settlements which vote against Greg Power will get nothing, absolutely nothing.”



It takes a few minutes for the eyes to adjust, but as they do, the face of Joey Smallwood materializes through the lurid, Liberal red splash of ink beneath the text. The picture is entitled The ghost that haunts us.

It’s a startling picture, and one has to wonder: Is that quote for real? Who made it? And is it for sale?

Dave Hopeley, proprietor of the store, Living Planet, says the piece was given to him by a friend who found it whipping in the wind on a downtown street. He says the artist made a set of lithographic prints — a technique whereby the artist etches a design into limestone, inks it and runs it through a printing press — as a project while he was attending Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook.

“Originally it was done by a gentleman named Mark O’Neill,” Hopeley says, leaning back in the swivel chair in front of the frame. “He silkscreen printed these posters of the text of Joey Smallwood with the reddish image behind, and he posted them around town in different venues, outside on poles and sometimes in bars. It was sort of a guerilla art thing.”

Jeff Webb, professor of history with Memorial University, says William Browne authenticates the quote in his autobiography, 84 Years a Newfoundlander.

Browne ran against and beat out Liberal Greg Power in the district of Ferryland in 1949, taking 2,456 votes of the 3,160 cast, thus securing a seat in Parliament. On five separate occasions during the campaign, Smallwood attempted to bully the people by insisting they would not receive “one red cent” if they defied his demands.

In the end, Joey’s threats alienated voters and they subsequently snubbed his man. Webb is equally aghast at Smallwood’s heavy-handed threat.

“To be so naked in your partisanship,” Webb muses. “Some people say Joey wasn’t always corrupt, that it happened over time. But this speech was in 1949 — the very first election after Confederation. It’s quite a grievous action.”

The artist thought so, too. O’Neill says he was familiar with Smallwood’s character and notorious thirst for power, but was still shocked. Once he stumbled upon the Ferryland speech, he started looking for a suitable picture of Smallwood to fit his concept. He chose the picture the then-premier picked to illustrate himself in the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland.

O’Neill is not sure if the image is the picture Smallwood commissioned by famed portraitist Yousuf Karsh (famed for his grumpy Winston Churchill portrait), but he was interested by the fact Smallwood chose to be remembered in Newfoundland’s history books sporting a

different tie.

“When you look up Joey Smallwood in the encyclopedia, this is the picture that’s there,” O’Neill says. “I was quite intrigued by this one because he’s got a long tie on, he don’t have his bowtie.

“Some people will say, ‘The dictator we had, we remember him by his bowtie.’ It was quite different and this is how he was representing himself in the history books, if you will.”

O’Neill says he’s amazed how some younger Newfoundlander and Labradorians are unaware of Smallwood’s era and how Newfoundland and Labrador became part of Canada. His own thoughts on the matter are implied in the title of the work.

“It’s reflecting of the image where he is somewhat ghostly,” O’Neill says. “But it’s also of Smallwood himself. He does haunt us. He’s long gone but the decisions that he made are still here — we’re still living with them.”

O’Neill didn’t keep any of the 15 prints he made of Joey’s head — he says he doesn’t want Smallwood staring at him all day.

But Hopeley, reflecting on the picture in his shop, points out that the picture serves a purpose.

“It’s part of the history of Newfoundland,” he says. “We can’t forget about stuff like that.”

mandy.cook@theindependent.ca
 
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