The Lioness Speaks

Danny Williams, the Premier of the Province of Newfoundland, in a stunt, the purpose of which escapes me, decided to "punish" Paul Martin and his government. How? By lowering the Canadian flag throughout his Province.

Silly, without a doubt. But it got to the Lioness, who is really a Honey Bee. So she asked me to post a poem that she wrote some time ago. I think it says it all.

"I Never Got To Newfoundland
(On Flying Over Newfoundland)

Newfoundland joined the Dominion
when I was a child, a union
secured by a small majority vote -
a grudging consent by the Islanders.
I welcomed that cold and windswept Isle,
thinking, "how brave an outpost on our eastern shore
standing on guard, O Canada, for thee".
I have loved Newfoundland ever since, from a distance.

I thought about St. John's, city of valour,
survivor of old fires, veteran of old wars.
I thought about the lonely fishing villages
that dot the coastal coves and bays.
Their music drifted westward; their dances
clung to the fleeing feet of the young;
and with it all came their charming folkways.
I've thought about Newfoundland, from a distance.

The Beothuk are gone, a precious first, now extinct,
leaving their traces sealed in the rockbed.
Settlers' children's children to Ontari-ari-o have fled.
Trees cut down, seals gone, whales gone, fish dead,
British might, French rights, Spanish trawlers, Federal bawlers.
Brave Newfoundlanders, who have for so long
wrested their legitimate harvest from land and sea!
I salute what was and what will be, from a distance.

I never got to Newfoundland
although I often planned to go.
Schedules, maps, and tourist things
littered the kitchen table
and then disappeared, replaced
by transatlantic tickets to another place.
"We are now flying over Gander, Newfoundland."
Words that pluck the unconscious strands of my regret."