Being the New Guy in My Old Birthplace

I haven’t been from Newfoundland in a very long while ▬ 

Sources ▬ 

○ “List of municipalities in Newfoundland and Labrador,” Wikipedia, November 1, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_municipalities_in_Newfoundland_and_Labrador

○ Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Immigration, Population Growth and Skills, St. John’s Population and Labour Market Overview Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), February 2023, https://www.gov.nl.ca/labourmarketinformation/files/Census-2021-Profile-St.-Johns-CMA.pdf

○ Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency, St. John’s Census Metropolitan Area, 2016, https://www.stats.gov.nl.ca/Maps/pdfs/StJohnsCMA.pdf

○ Statistics Canada, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population: Profile Table, Newfoundland and Labrador, February 1, 2023, https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&SearchText=Newfoundland%20and%20Labrador&DGUIDlist=2021A000210&GENDERlist=1,2,3&STATISTIClist=1,4&HEADERlist=0 ▬ 

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Newfoundland Boy, part memoir, part anecdotes, and all about the Canadian province of Newfoundland. This is episode 2: “Being the New Guy in My Old Birthplace.”

It’s an interesting feeling to arrive back in the province you were born in after being away for 42 years. In some way, at least I imagine for some people, it must seem like a step backward, so to speak. You’ve made your career and your life somewhere else, so why return to spend your retirement years in a place you don’t know and likely with people you don’t know any more either?

For others, especially those Newfoundlanders who consider the place always home no matter where they are or have been, it seems like the most obvious and natural move in the world. They’ve worked in Ontario or some other place, but year after year always with the ultimate plan of moving “back home,” as they say, as soon as they can. They make frequent visits and stay in touch with relatives and friends. I was once on a plane from Toronto to Newfoundland around Christmas, and the thing was chock full of laughing and partying Newfies. Super friendly. I remember that one of them asked the flight attendant how long it would be before the plane landed, and when she told him a time that he thought was too far away, he asked if the pilot could “give ’er the gas.” I still love the idea of a pilot being able to treat the plane like a Ford F-150—just jam down on the accelerator pedal and get the passengers home sooner.

I’m in St. John’s, the capital and biggest city in Newfoundland. In fact, Newfoundland has a population of about 510,000 people and over 40% of them live in the St. John’s area. There are actually only two other cities in the province: Corner Brook, on the west coast of the island, and Mount Pearl, which is in effect a suburb of St. John’s.

I feel that I’m in a kind of limbo with a vague and intermediate status in St. John’s. I’ve only been here for six months and I haven’t lived here since 1982. I’m always quick to tell people that I was born in Corner Brook so as to give myself at least some semblance of credibility. Newfies have a term for people who are “not from here”: they are CFA’s, come-from-aways. It has a bit of a negative connotation, though you may know that a musical with that title has been a big hit internationally (I’ve seen it when I happened to be in London, England). It’s about the city and citizens of Gander, Newfoundland, and its airport was where some American planes landed as the air space in the United States was being cleared on 9/11. I’m technically not a CFA because I was born here. But I don’t have any accent any more, so the odd person might be a bit suspicious of me. Wass dat feller up to anyways, I wonder?

So, what’s St. John’s like? What are my impressions so far? One thing I’m happy to report is that the stereotype of Newfoundlanders being friendly is true. Now, of course the fact is that I haven’t met all of them, or even all the people in St. John’s, so I am sure there are unpleasant people as there are everywhere, from Abilene to Zembla. But the overall feeling I get reminds me a little of when I lived in Boston for about five years in the late 1990’s. People don’t come off as reserved and aloof here. They are open and make an effort to put you at ease. The women who work in service industries, say, in retail or as restaurant servers, don’t hesitate to call you my love or sweetheart. It reminds me of the American South, states like Georgia and Texas. There’s no flirting intended: it’s just the natural way to refer to someone that you want to be friendly to in a commercial environment. And I don’t think they limit such names to men: a woman working in a department store is just as likely to say it to a woman customer she is serving. Yes, my love, doze are twenty percent off, so yer gettin a nice bargain.

And it’s not just retail and restaurants. A few months ago I parked my car and was heading to a framing store to get a couple of maps of the island framed. I was focused on my task—this was in the winter—and so I locked the car and headed on my way to the store. There was a man about my age or older walking in the middle of the road—you have to do that sometimes in St. John’s if the snowplows have been by and the sidewalks are where all the snow is piled—I walked by him and he just out of nowhere said hi. It threw me off a little at first, and I quickly said the same back to him, because I definitely didn’t want that kind of civil kindness to go, literally, unanswered.

A similar thing happened earlier this week in a grocery store. I’m on my way out and a man just nodded his head at me and said hello. And again: these are not flirtations. I’m not the super handsome stud that all the gay tradesmen and retired fishermen in St. John’s have been waiting for years to finally arrive there. It’s just acknowledgment. I have to say I really like it and I’ve taken to initiating it myself now.

I talked to my brother on the phone earlier this evening and we got on the topic of the culture and the weather (I won’t get into the weather here, but it’s a major preoccupation that I’ll deal with in a future episode, or a dozen episodes). I told him that I feel a little like I’m on a movie set here. There’s the people, as I just mentioned, but there’s also the location and the architecture. There’s the working harbour at sea level, right next to what’s called downtown, and then there are very steep hills that lead up closer to what’s called central St. John’s. It’s the variety that really strikes me. Yes, there are lots of those multicoloured townhouses you’ve probably heard about and seen, but there are modern homes too, as well as some pretty grimy rundown ones. And everything is pretty compact. I live in central, and so I am about a 15-minute car ride away from pretty much everything. You drive by those houses and there’s a huge public park, and the art gallery called the Rooms, and finally the building that kind of dominates the city in more ways than one, the Basilica, a Catholic church. Well, I guess, a former Catholic church, as it had to be sold to help pay compensaton to the victims of the sexual abuse scandal involving an order called the Christian Brothers (more about that in a future episode: not everything is pretty here).

And so there you have it, or at least a slice of it. I feel very comfortable in St. John’s. I said for years that I would never want to move back, but I was wrong, and it turns out that the city suits me in many ways. You should come visit some time. Look me up if you do.

And that’s all for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And please join me again on Tuesday.