That the bounty which brought us here was, very neatly, exhausted on the very cusp of the moment we decided to throw a mid-millennium celebration of our arrival. It's not every birthday party that coincides with a near post-mortem. But then, we seem to have been chartered to heroic ambiguities. The very idea of Newfoundland seems to demand some collision or, at the very least, encounter with fundamental challenge or perplexity of fate. Whatever its destiny from this day forward, the cultural force and animation of the fishery is too deeply intertissued with our being here, its presence will flourish always, secure and unimpeded.
Defiance is mixed in with our being.
And then, of course, there has always been the weather and local politics. I can say that. I stress the personal here. My ignorance of the Newfoundland fishery is so complete I may one day write editorials for the Toronto Globe and Mail or, God save the mark, be president of Greenpeace and get to rub noses with the mediocrities of Canadian film, stage and letters, and sip decaf in Yorkville and Queen Street, and gum veggie burgers outside Love Craft then, fully stricken by that strange yuppie fever of minding other people's business, swear by Jeanne Beker and Alicia Silverstone that Birkenstock and Gucci together, we shall not rest till every penis of every seal is where it should be. The fishery is the DNA of Newfoundland life.