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Well, it's been some time since I bothered to write anything in here, but I've got a bevy of complaints built up.
First, as I've said before, this seal hunt bullshit has got to stop. Got. To. Stop. I come from a place, the only example of Canadian Imperialism seen in the last one hundred and fifty years, where the indigenous culture was almost exclusively rooted in subsistence-level primary industries. When the ice broke, men took to the seas to fish while women and children tended the gardens and “made” the aforementioned fish. When the time came, we sculled caplin. When that was done, we went squid-jigging. When that was done, we went hauling fire wood, so that we might not freeze to death. When the worst of the winter was past, with perhaps the occasional moose or caribou to help fend off malnutrition, and the ice began to descend from the north, we went sealing, for oil, pelts, and meat. Swiling provided people with clothes, with money for incidentals, and with a way to keep body and soul together for an entire populace for hundreds of years.
Time passed on, and Americanization, War, Depression, and British Imperialism all worked to change the face of Newfoundland. Entire generations of young men left, never to be heard from again. Some became contractors in “New Burmsick,” others signed on ships and saw home for less than a month out of every twelve. Still others built the skyscrapers of New York with blood and sweat, or signed up to fight in someone else's bloody war and were slaughtered by the hundreds. Still, the mainstay and lifeblood of the bulk of the people were these professions.
Enter 1949, and a young busybody named Joseph R. Smallwood. He decided he was going to make Newfoundland a member of the Canadian Federation come hell or high water. He went about promising jobs, baby bonus, old age pension, “cheap tea and molasses,” and a bevy of other things, and still he could barely muster half the populace. Then, and despite what the History Texts may record, on March 31st in the year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Forty Nine at 11:55pm, with a vote of 51% for and 49% against, Newfoundland was dragged kicking and screaming into Confederation.
What were the advantages? Well, the populations were dragged from their homes and centralized to Government-appointed municipalities who were not geared to handle a massive influx of population. Places like Meresheen Island, Sandy Point, Cat Harbour, and a bevy of other municipalities with their own culture, customs, practices, and traditions were all expected to join into this new melting pot of Canadianism and supposed prosperity. People left behind their honoured dead, their roots, and their history for a promised future that failed to deliver, so every spring, people trekked back to their native homes, fished for the season, and then returned to their squalid hovels in the overcrowded and underfunded municipal centers.
In the fall, wood was still chopped, but now all the children went to school. The one advance of the Canadian invaders' regime was the sharp rise in literacy. Unfortunately, with this came the literocentrism of North American society, and a strong despite for all things Newfoundlandia. People made conscious effort to suppress their brogue and dialectics. The stories, songs, lore, and folk tales all but disappeared. You would not be caught dead with an accordion or a tin whistle. In short, the Newfoundland Character that we are supposedly known for was almost entirely wiped out.
Over the last twenty-five years, efforts have been made to restore various points of the national character of the Newfoundlanders, despite being the victim of constant environmental and financial rape from Canadian conquerers and their foreign allies. The fish are all but gone, the Atlantic Cod a species on the verge of extinction that no one in the world seems to care about. The Oil we've found off-shore was, until recently, being shipped West for processing and distribution, leaving us with a pittance for our trouble while the money all sat in the fat coffers of the Canadian Shield. One of the only purely-Newfoundland industries was the fur trade.
Now, poorly-informed, ill-bred, uneducated louts from across the world are protesting our sealing with, at best, a cursory understanding of the nature of the hunt and the nature of the animal in question. Seals are vicious, savage animals who bear in their saliva a virulent infectious agent that is curable only by amputation. They feed on the Atlantic Cod, and have a population so rabidly out of control for the ecosystem that all kinds of new diseases – diabetes, cancers, and such – are developing in their populace. The fact that we, as a people, hunt less than 0.01% of their population once per annum, eat the flesh, wear the pelts, and market the organs overseas, thus using all portions of the animal has caused the sensationalist brain-dead lunatics of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and other extremist bands of eco-terrorists to paint my people with the brush of barbarism, savagery, and hate.
Sealers have been beaten, had their families threatened, received harassing phone calls day and night, and are generally harangued by the uneducated proles who blindly follow the propaganda smear campaigns conducted by these multi-million dollar for-profit “environmentalist” organizations, and quite frankly, it makes me sick.
Yes, we hunt seals. Your makeup is made of whale, your buttons are made of hooves (so is your Jell-o), your shoes are made of leather, and you regularly eat meat. Just because you never have to look a cow in the face before it's electrocuted to death or has its brains smashed out by an impact gun doesn't mean it's not an animal of the same caliber of the seal. They're equally animalistic, equally vicious, and equally stupid. Since time immemorial, has man consumed the flesh of beasts and worn their pelts. Why should we be selective in what we eat or wear, just because some moron shows you a picture of a whitecoat (which have not been hunted in almost 30 years) and says, “Aaaaaawwwwww! Isn't he cute! That evil in-bred Newfie is gonna make him into a hat! Get him!”
These people all need to grow up and get a bit of sense. I grow infinitely weary of people pointing out the splinter in the eye of their neighbor whilst having a long in their own. You don't eat meat? That's your business. You don't wear furs? Also your business. Leave me and mine to our business, and I'm sure we can all get along just fine.
I could go on further about Canadian Imperialism, the farce of Confederation, or the Newfoundlander as a second-class citizen, but this is coming up on two pages, and I'm tired of typing it.
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Righteously Indignant