National Network for Equitable Library Service

“In the harsh, bitter, cold environment we work in, seal harvesting and fishing are two of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The North Atlantic has no friends. It just makes you believe it is your friend when it offers up its beauty and bounty. Without notice it can turn ugly, a ravenous enemy ready to devour! It doesn’t matter if you are the greatest or the worst fishing captain in the North Atlantic: if the sea wants you, it will get you.” This is the memoir of John Gillett, a fisherman and staunch advocate of the Newfoundland seal hunt.

Before he walked onto the political stage, Norman Doyle grew up in Avondale, Conception Bay, in a family of nine children. He followed in his father’s footsteps and made his way to New York City, where he found employment as an ironworker on the site of the World Trade Center. Later, he returned home, where his political aspirations took root. Inspired by the fiery speeches of Brian Peckford, and with the encouragement of the local ironworkers, Norman threw his hat in the ring and was elected to the House of Assembly in 1979.

Philip Riteman is a Holocaust survivor whose mission is to educate today’s youth on the atrocities committed against millions of Jews and Gentiles by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime during World War II. From the Pruzhany Ghetto, Poland, Philip and his family were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. There, his entire family was exterminated.

The story of Bay Roberts is one of an ordinary people who lived through a turbulent and extraordinary past. Adventure, murder, religious strife, inventions, successful local newspapers, and enterprise make up the collective history of a community thriving in Newfoundland today. The town has hosted tragedies, unprecedented commercial prosperity (and failure), famous sea captains, buried treasure, ancient tombstones, and intriguing grave markers. Stories of eccentric characters, war heroes, and horrible shipwrecks fill these pages.

Humor writer Ed Smiths inspiring story of his struggle to come to grips with quadriplegia after a motor vehicle accident.

Gwendolyn Poole Molnar’s recollections offer us a rare look into the life of a child growing up in Pilley’s Island in the first decades of the twentieth century, before roads, electricity, and telephones connected the island community to its Newfoundland neighbours. Rich with real people and vivid scenes, redolent with roasted caplin and Nujol oil, Tapestry of Yesteryear quietly accepts the strength of past generations as a given and reminds us that all was not doom and gloom in the outports of pre-Confederation Newfoundland.

Riots and Religion in Newfoundland delves into the history of conflict between our English and Irish ancestors, a controversial topic that has been overlooked, diminished, or completely ignored in many history books. David Dawe retraces the foundation of Newfoundland's religious history and explains how the battle between the English Protestants and the Irish Roman Catholics continued from the old country to the New World.

The picturesque Port of St. John’s is an enduring symbol of Newfoundlanders’ inextricable link to the sea. Indeed, it was the geographic features of St. John’s harbour that encouraged initial settlement here, the starting point from which the city expanded. But the legacy of the growth of the port is a unique history unto itself. Playing a major role in the international salt fish trade, the port has been a safe haven for fishermen in the North Atlantic since at least the 1500s, and it later proved a strategic position in WWII during the Battle of the Atlantic.

On December 10, 1942, at the height of the Second World War, a crew of seven men boarded the bomber plane Time’s A Wastin’ and departed the American air base at Narsarsuaq, Greenland, on their way back to the United States via Goose Bay, Labrador. After crossing the Davis Strait between Greenland and Labrador, the B-26 Marauder ran into rough weather and crashed at Saglek, Labrador. All of the crew survived. As per their training, they initially stayed with the wreck to wait for rescuers—but rescue never came.

This is a collection of true Newfoundland and Labrador stories about crime and punishment on land and sea. Included here are tales of murder, mutiny, and smuggling on the high seas, as well as riots, assaults, and frauds perpetrated in some of the strangest criminal cases this province has ever seen.