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| Newfoundland: Journey Into a Lost Nation | | Author: | Michael Crummey | ISBN: | 0771061420 | Format: | Handover | Publish Date: | June, 2005 | | | | | | | | | Book Review | | | Newfoundland: Journey Into a Lost Nation FROM THE PUBLISHER Greg Locke had been away from Newfoundland for years, working as a photojournalist in Canada, the United States, and in many of the world's most troubled regions, when he decided to go home - and stay. The photographs in Newfoundland were taken over a period of more than a decade. They chronicle the passage of Canada's easternmost province from a time when cod were still plentiful and the fishery shaped the lives of most of the island's inhabitants, to the present, when a vibrant economy, propelled by oil and mineral development, is recasting the island's identity in a new mould.
What Locke's photographs reveal is at once forward-looking and nostalgic, beautiful and harsh. Above all, his Newfoundland ispopulated by survivors: a people who are resourceful, funny, resilient, and strong.
Poet and novelist Michael Crummey draws upon deep-seated memories of his own and of his father's experience to evoke passing traditions and a disappearing way of life. But, just as Locke's photographs reveal the emergence of a new, more urban and cosmopolitan Newfoundland, so does Crummey's writing emphasize the continuing sense of belonging and the determination to persevere that are characteristic of his compatriots. He writes admiringly of a "culture deep enough to accommodate a world of influences without surrendering what makes it unmistakably of this place. Something alive and leaning towards the future." This book embodies both a vision and a voice of rare power.
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