The Tradition of the Crew: Community, Voice, and the Many Ways of Doing History

By E.G. Hynes

A “crew” tradition seems predictable for a relatively isolated place historically dependent on the fishery and transatlantic trade. What I find interesting and inspiring is just how deeply this tradition continued to be embedded in many areas of social life, even as the fishery declined. In Newfoundland and Labrador’s arts community of the late 1960s and 1970s, the sense of collectivity was particularly remarkable. “Life’s a benefit and then you die,” blues singer and songwriter Mary Barry cheerfully quipped, referring to every local performing artist’s seeming duty to play for free at fundraisers supporting fellow artists. Don Walsh, former lead guitarist for the trad rock band Red Island, recalled a willingness to “tear off home” just to get a microphone for a fellow musician whose own microphone suddenly stopped working during their set. All of the people I interviewed for this project seemed to share an extraordinary sense of both community and purpose.

What’s more, because Newfoundland and Labrador’s arts industry was built against the backdrop of a regional nationalist movement committed to resisting political, economic, and cultural colonialism from Canada, the United States, and Britain, the goal of situating your own artistic voice in the place you come from became an important guiding feature of what came to be called the “Newfoundland renaissance.” Mirroring folk-roots movements and artist-led decolonization or liberation efforts taking place concurrently all over the Atlantic world, Newfoundland and Labrador artists helped articulate the individual and collective experiences of people in the province during the turbulent post-Confederation years. In both their work and discourse, artists indicted Canada and Britain for the manner and handling of Confederation, criticized Canada’s stewardship of the provincial fishing industry, condemned community-destroying resettlement policies, and rejected Canada’s long history of cultural denigration for Newfoundlanders. “Everyone,” recalled musician Pamela Morgan, lead singer of Figgy Duff, “was determined to shake off the mantle of the “stupid Newfie” stereotype, and to present it with pride rather than shame.” Morgan spoke proudly not only of the province’s musicians and songwriters, but also of the impact that comedy acts like CODCO, or shows like This Hour Has 22 Minutes have had on Canada’s culture nationally. “Back then, people laughed at us. But we produced some of the best comedians ever, and for the first time, we were in control of the laughter. And that’s great—that’s really fantastic.” By championing the concept of voice in-place, encouraging people to tell their stories, and by telling their own, artists helped Newfoundlanders and Labradorians take possession of their own historical narrative. As a result of working on this project, my own perspectives and practice as a historian have altered permanently.

When I first started my research for Mom, Dad, and the Newfoundland Renaissance, I still wasn’t quite sure what kind of book I was going to write. With the ink barely dry on my master’s degree, I did feel a certain duty to approach history work with as little personal bias as possible. But considering I was setting out to document a movement in which my own parents were active participants, I wondered how realistic that goal actually was. Why, I wondered, should I take a dry detached approach with my reader when my inherent bias is already so obvious? I had some doubts when I considered how a divided voice—the academic versus the personal—might render the book muddy or confusing. “I think there’s something to be said for acknowledging your own positionality, even in an academic text,” my editor told me later and my doubts receded somewhat. Despite my closeness to the subject matter, I was determined not to write any kind of memoir.  Yet, as I progressed through my oral history interviews, the strong emphasis on voice in-place among those artists inspired me to allow my own voice to come through: “Here are my experiences, my biases, and my sentimentalities and this is how they shape my perspective— make of that what you will.”

My outlook on history work has shifted in other ways too as a result of working on this book. The impressive sense of collectivity among the artists I interviewed changed the way I see working partnerships in general. Many arts communities have famously cut-throat reputations. Any actor, musician, dancer, or writer who has worked in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, or London will tell you of the level of competition and ruthlessness one has to endure on the road to personal success. In contrast, the artists who led the Newfoundland renaissance all seemed to want to bring everyone along with them. Andy Jones appeared to have cast every working actor in the province in his 1986 film, The Adventures of Faustus Bidgood. When Dudley Cox was given the directorship of the 1972 Provincial Drama Festival, he invited visual and craft artists to participate and get some visibility as well as the actors and playwrights whose work would be shown. During the six days of the festival, painters, sculptors, weavers, and other visual artists could be seen working on projects throughout the extensive lobby of the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, while theatre-goers watched, milling about outside the theatre between performances. Many Newfoundland and Labrador artists of that generation still do things this way. Pam Hall’s extremely impressive recent multi-volume book, Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge, was completed in partnership with Mi’kmaq visual artist Jerry Evans, as well as many collaborators from outport and Indigenous communities. For my own part, I would like to approach my next book in a similar way. Visual artists are able to offer a fascinating dimension to historical scholarship by rendering rather sober documentary evidence and academic commentary in exquisite illustration. Moreover, inviting contributors from different disciplines to collaborate is a decidedly enriching factor, as well as one which builds community across regions and industries. In many ways, it was the interdisciplinarity of the province’s art and artists as well as their collectivity that made them stand out so much in the broader Canadian landscape.

Finally, this project has made me more aware than ever of how many ways there are of “doing” history. Most of us think of history as something that is, rather than something one does, but history is not a great dull truth that a scholar uncovers and then writes in stone for the rest of us to memorize as catechism. History is explored, constructed, curated, questioned, debated, contextualized, and reconceptualized on a regular basis. Historians use myriad tools and methods, the variety of which has only increased over time as technological and professional development in other disciplines and industries has swelled the contents of our toolboxes. Historians have benefitted from the added legitimacy lent to us by the fields of archaeology, biology, medicine and genetics, as well as by the social sciences like anthropology, psychology, sociology, and economics. The marvellous thing about history is that while it is decidedly weaker and shakier as a discipline without the borrowed legitimacy of advances in other fields, it also, paradoxically, encompasses and permeates all other fields nonetheless. Everything, quite literally everything, has a history and everyone, to a certain extent, “does” history.

Historians like me “do” history when we examine documents and maps, collect oral histories and artifacts, and reach conclusions in a reasoned, logical way, but everyday people with no history training do history too. A kid listening to their elders tell stories is doing history.  A party-goer researching medieval fashion for costume ideas is doing history. Professionals in other industries do history all the time.  Novelists research the material culture and social conditions of the periods in which their books are set. Police investigators may do extensive library archive work to move cases forward. Hell, even plumbers and sewer inspectors do history, and could likely teach you all about Roman aqueducts and how your city’s old pumping stations used to work. In the last several years, I’ve heard murmurs among historians and educators within the still rather rarified sphere of the Academy. Declining enrolment in graduate-level history programs, declining funding for the arts and humanities—these trends disquiet history professionals who see their numbers aging and shrinking while public interest in the academic field is waning. Some have suggested an opening up of the Academy in a decidedly communitarian and interdisciplinary way, one which welcomes and partners with all kinds of professionals and individuals who do history, other than those with graduate degrees in the field.

What might such a history department look like? What kinds of exciting new projects and collaborations might develop between university and community? Well, roughly fifty years ago, a loose coalition of academics, social development workers, and artists showed us just what is possible when the many and varied voices speak together. They began to articulate a shared history and regional culture. They worked together to resist political and economic exploitation and cultural colonialism. They built up important institutions. They pioneered a new arts industry which opened doors for every generation of artists who came after them. Truly, anything can be achieved when the tradition of the “crew” is employed.