Newfie

But right now, some Ray McLean from Tom, Dick, and Harry, FM 98.5.

There's a man down in Newfie, a man you all know.

His right name is Joseph, but we call him Joe.

He was Newfoundland's premier for many a year, and while he held office, you had nothing to fear.

Tonight we're doing Home Again This Year.

And, of course, all the songs that Dick packed onto this record.

There was Home Again This Year, Little Boats of Newfoundland, which we just heard, Johnny's Moonshine, The Fellow That Looked Like Me, Newfie Boy, Eyes to Boy, Fiddler's Green, The Badger Drive, and Thank God We're Surrounded by Water.

Nine tracks mixing Newfoundland tradition, country music, humor, and stories of home.

Um, I, I would...

We'd have to ask Newfies to give us a little more insight on how that joke might be fully told.

But-

Mm

Do you want to say what the saying is? Sure.

All of our Newfies are texting in.

Not a thing wrong with this one, bye.

So you as a screecher are supposed to say, is you a Newfoundlander?

The Newfoundland steak, you've got to have that.

Do you want to say what the saying is? Sure.

All of our Newfies are texting in.

Not a thing wrong with this one, bye.

She used to...

She's hilarious, and um, she used to do impressions of N- they call them Newfies.

Oh.

And it's people from Newfoundland, and she'd always go, "Oh, no, I burned my face in a chip fire."

Oh, my God.

Very common thing-

... apparently to, to Newfoundland specifically, but let's not pin that on them entirely.

They're the best.

One said, did you know why Newfie scuba divers go into the water backwards? Because if they went forward, they'd still be in the boat.

When the passengers of Delta Flight 15 finally headed home, they called each other by name, swapped stories and contact info.

It was as if we'd been on a cruise, said one.

That would be Newfoundland.

Newfies are part of Canada, but they can't communicate with us because they speak an unknown dialect of English.

[laughs]

You can probably tell from my accent that I am from British Columbia.

Newfoundland had just recently joined the rest of Canada, and in some ways they were treated similarly to other immigrants.

There was even in the 50s, there was a councillor, I don't remember his name, but it's crazy to see some statements back then talking about Newfoundlanders or Newfies.

In the same sort of othering that happened towards other immigrants, you know, saying, oh, they are coming here, stealing our jobs.

They are coming here and taking our social housing.

And a lot of Maritimes, I guess, were based, lived on Parkdale.

So anyways, it was a story of outsiders trying to break into the established Anglo-Canadian, for instance, building trade unions, which were at the time very discriminatory against these immigrants.

And Newfies.

Yes.

And so the smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporations you're willing to have.

And you may know as a Canadian that there's a joke from Newfoundland, not a Newfie joke, but a joke from Newfoundland, whose punchline is, if you wanted to get there, I wouldn't start from here.

We are now in a situation where these firms are so large that it is hard to imagine regulating them and basically impossible to imagine regulating them in meaningful ways without the cooperation of the American state that, you know, get extracting fines for them or even imposing what's called structural remedies on them where we say, all right, Facebook, we never should have let you buy WhatsApp and Instagram.

You have to sell them off.

We were told to be grateful for being Canadians and that we were lucky Canada took us in and Canada was supporting us.

And people like, you know, Stephen Harper could say we can't afford to support a bunch of Newfies lying around on a rock.

And, you know, you know, and that Canada saved Newfoundland.

Well, the opposite was true all the time.