Join the U.S.?

In Newfoundland you can start an argument over confederation with Canada faster than you can say Annieopsquotch.* Independent Newfoundlanders voted against becoming a Canadian province in 1869, sang political ditties like "Come near at your peril, Canadian wolf," stubbornly snowed under every party that proposed confederation.

Last summer Newfoundlanders elected a national convention of 45 members to see if they should carry on with a British-appointed commission as the ruling body, or if it was time for a change. When the convention met, a fortnight ago, Delegate Joseph Smallwood, 46, who had turned from writing to farming and from pig raising to politics, came out flatly for confederation. He proposed that the convention send a delegation to Ottawa at once to ask for terms. It was just like old times. Delegate Kenneth Brown, president of the Fishermen's Protective Union, jumped to his feet, roared his opposition with such vigor that he collapsed and had to be carried out. When just about every delegate had had his say, the convention voted, rejected the confederation motion 25-18.

Amid the hubbub, Ottawa maintained a discreet silence. But all knew that Canada would like to take Newfoundland and Labrador into the family. Poor cousin Newfoundland, with its national debt trimmed to $74,000,000 and with $28,669,000 in the bank, looked more attractive than she had in decades. Moreover, her war-built airports have helped make Newfoundland the aerial crossroads of the North Atlantic, a new, potent bargaining point. Of the five major airports, Canada holds two (Torbay and Goose Bay), Newfoundland one (Gander) and the U.S. two (Harmon Field and Argentia) --most of them still involved in controversy over civil air rights. This has given some Newfoundlanders the idea that they might do better bargaining, not with Ottawa, but with the U.S.

Convention delegate Albert Butt last week rose and asked if they had the power to recommend that Newfoundland join the U.S. Replied the convention's British-appointed constitutional expert, Oxford don K. C. Wheare: "Yes . . . but [you] will have to get the consent of the U.S. Government and of course . . . the consent of the United Kingdom."

* A Newfoundland mountain range, rhymes with can he hopscotch.

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