Requiem for Rex Murphy: A Tribute to Newfoundland

Hello everyone, uh, particularly my fellow Canadians. As many of you know, we lost, uh, one of our greatest citizens very recently, Mr. Rex Murphy, who everyone knew. I would say perhaps he is Canada's most outstanding journalist.

Um, I had the great privilege of traveling to New Finland with Rex, and we filmed a documentary about that great Province and its history. We're very pleased to be able to bring you that documentary as a tribute to Rex in the aftermath of his passing. So, I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did making it, although I can't see how that's possible because I really enjoyed making it. I'm really going to miss him, and he was a great man.

The past is still truly alive. The past becomes increasingly valuable to come somewhere here and see these deep roots and this deep particularity. There's a relief in it that's akin to the relief of looking at a great landscape vista. It's literally and metaphorically revivifying.

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And action! Hello everyone. I have the great privilege and honor to be here in New Finland with Mr. Rex Murphy. Um, Rex was a friend of mine, I would say, and of many Canadians. He's one of Canada's great journalists. He is one of the most recognized and loved figures in all the country.

When Newlanders were crawling out of the shock and misery of the cod collapse, Fort McMurray was like a rescue center. So, we're here in Newland, in this great old part of Canada, with a unique culture born of isolation in many ways. Rex has kindly agreed to spend a week showing us around and talking to us about the culture.

New Finlanders think of New Finland as a personality. Newland has a distinct personal relationship with it that goes deep. Well, one of the things that's really striking about meeting people from New Finland is they're often extremely tough and extremely funny. When I reflected on that, even prior to knowing you, I thought, well, this was a very, very isolated place, and that meant that people made their own music and they made their own art.

That's part of what we want to shine light on while being here. We're inviting you along on the trip. Uh, we're making this up in the most professional manner we can as we go along, and, uh, making it up. You just heard it being made up in front of your ears.

Go on with your man. All right, onward and upward through New Finland.

This is St. John's Harbor, and incidentally, it's St. John's Harbor on a sunny day, which is one of three since 1497. This is one of the most spectacular views that we've ever had here.

Uh, New Finland is not number one in the priority consciousness of the rest of the world. To explain its singularity, you have to explain the communities. New Finland is a province of outports, and "outport" is a key semantic term in the understanding of New Finland. The outports were where the culture started. The outports were where the fishery was.

We're also standing on Signal Hill, and Signal Hill happened to be the site of the first wireless communication between the continent of Europe and the continent of North America. When the airplane industry finally got really going in the 30s, Gander was also a communications point. All the airlines of the world had to stop somewhere before they left Europe or Asia. Gander was the spot.

So, in many ways, New Finland is at the kind of transaction point either between modernity, even though we're probably the oldest and, in a sense, most conservative society in North America. Nonetheless, it had pioneer moments that were in contrast but also associated deeply with communication. That’s interestingly associated too with the fact that New Finlanders, as a culture, are masters of word and wit.

I remember being down on a wharf in New Finland, and it was, by the way, a day like this. I looked, and this is a beautiful, beautiful day. Three or four fishermen were next to me, and they said, "Oh yeah, we're going to pay for this." They're not going to accept good fortune. There's always going to be attacks of pain or humiliation that follow.

All right, and where are we off to next? I think we'll go down to the Southern Shore. All right, we may never return. All right, thank you very much, sir.

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Okaying here.

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I'm here in the Newland town of Bay Bulls, speaking with Captain Joe O'Brian. I was just out for two hours on Captain Joe's boat, so why don't we start with a story about how this enterprise came to be?

I would say so myself. My brother and I were fishermen with our father. We saw the fishing wasn't looking so good, and we were spending more money on bait and hooks and fuel than we were having value for our fish, for our catch. We started helping the university do a little bit of research on seabirds, and they said we should start taking people to see seabirds.

We took some people out, and we charged them some money, and then it just snowballed from that, huh? The people that you hire and work with, they seem pretty damn happy to be working for you. So, what are you doing right, do you think?

Handling people is a very serious business today, and accountability and human resources is a very difficult thing. So, if you're an owner and you're sitting there and you're nitpicking and people are telling you this and that and they're getting on with silly talk, you become bogged down, right?

Right. So, if you give people autonomy, you have freedom, you have the freedom to do what you do well, and that's to take care of people.

Great to meet you, man. Thanks again. That was a great day.