Who we are

Time to give thanks, thank-you Danny, you have helped secure a future for my daughter and the youth of this province and for that I will always be gratetful. Elected officials normally mirror the will of a people. you reflected the soul of a people. Thank-you for giving Newfoundlanders a new found reason to be proud. Thanks for bringing home the oil but let us never forget it was the hardened Newfoundlander who fueled this great rock and the dept of our spirit lubricated it. Thankyou for the lower churchill but the unstopable unrelenting force of our character is what has made Nl so great. Thank-you Mr. Premier for your leadership but you've been leading a great army, a supporting cast so too speak that carries on its weathered shoulders a unfinching toughness normally reserved for great gladitars and combatants...and our local rugby players. Our natural resources that had given us prosperity we have never seen but never forget our most valuable natural resource, our gritty fellow newfoundlanders have always been here supporting one another and will be here long after our non renewable resources start to faulter. And thanks most of all for the families who are slowing coming home though for years were forced to leave their homes, not with guns and grenades fighting foes overseas but with degrees and determination, to provide for their families.



My long winded point is this. We are a humble group who need to shed this skin of inferiority we are known for, as recently reveiled compliments of wikileaks. While our neighbors to the south panic as certain states see an unemployment rate of fourteen percent, we have consistantly survived with unemployment rates of twenty-five percent. If you count the under employed, it was closer to fifty percent. We have done this by doing what we take for granted but what foreigners consider, well foreign. We leaned on each other. We babysat our neighbors children, we mended each others fences we hunted and fished to fill our bellies. We burnt wood for warmth and knitted for clothes. We are one generation removed from wondering where the next meal is coming from and were taught to finish all our suppers, to not leave a crumb on our plate because food was never taken for granted.

I sit here trying to clothes my thoughts in words but words do not do jusictice , We survived sicknesses without proper medicine and weather that has kept away all but thirteen native animal species to this rugged place. a place where you had to be an accomplished horticulturist just to grow some potatoes.

We still go out in the woods and kill eight hundred pound Animals for food but while our prosperity will no doubt make us softer let's celebrate how we got here, by fighting everyday. No wonders we were so celebrated during war times. We faked our ages to go fight in a war because we needed boots to wear and a petticoat to keep us warm.

So as we starting to reap the rewards that are so deserving give thanks, God knows we want it but we don't need anything but each other. Give thanks for ancestors that handed down the genes that have made us undefeatable and always walk with your head high. We have an unbreakable bound similar to soldiers that have seen battle, I feel It when I meet a Newfoundlander abroad. I feel it each time a newfy does something great on a world stage and I feel it when I walk down Water street, give the newfy head fake to a stranger and get one back or a warm hello. We are truly unigue; outlast, outwit, outsurvive. That's us. Power goes in many cities, a state of energy is called, here we just put on a sweater and cook over some propane. 30 cm of snow and metropolitans call in the national guard, we don't stop clearing a path til every neighbor's driveway is cleared. Sure I'm as townie as it gets and I can still start a fire in the wettest conditions, build a lean to for shelter, know what berries you can and can't eat and can catch a feed of trout using a branch, 6 feet of cat gut and a piece of worm, which appartantly are not native to this place either. And when hurricane igor struck September 21st, we did what we have always done we proved why we are the most generous people in Canada. My point is don't ever take for granted how we got here unlike most mainlanders who are specific industrialists, we are plural industrailists we are resislient, compassionate, intelligent great people!