Baltimore's Mansion

by Wayne Johnston

This intimate story of family and place - the perfect book to follow the success of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams - will join The Danger Tree and Angela's Ashes on the shelf reserved for most valued memoirs.

Baltimore's Mansion - a story of the vivid, moving, hilarious machinations of three generations of fathers and sons - will speak to readers everywhere about the hardships, blessings and power of family relationships. Charlie Johnston is the famed blacksmith of Ferryland, a Catholic colony founded by Lord Baltimore in the 1620s on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland. But he must spend the first cold hours of every working day fishing at sea with his sons, one of whom, Wayne's father Arthur, vows that as an adult he will never look to the sea for his livelihood. In the heady months leading to the referendum that results in Newfoundland being "inducted" into Canada, Art leaves the island, parting on mysterious terms with Charlie who dies while he's away, and is plunged into a lifelong battle with the personal demons that haunted the end of their relationship. Years later, Wayne prepares to leave at the same age his father was when he said good-bye, and old patterns threaten to repeat themselves.

In this year that commemorates the 50th anniversary of Newfoundland as a province, there will be no book that captures, for all time, both the seductive spirit of the Rock and the   universal spirit of family (no matter how delightfully eccentric) like Baltimore's Mansion.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Canada, Biography Memoir, History, Canadian Literature, Biography

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Wayne Johnston was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. After a brief stint in pre-Med, Wayne obtained a BA in English from Memorial University. He worked as a reporter for the St. John's Daily News before deciding to devote himself full-time to writing.

En route to being published, Wayne earned an MA in Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick. Then he got off to a quick start. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, published when he was 27 years old, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel award for the best first novel published in the English language in Canada in that year. The Divine Ryans was adapted to a film, for which Wayne wrote the screenplay. Baltimore's Mansion, a memoire dealing with his grandfather, his father and Wayne himself, won the Charles Taylor Prize. Both The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York were on bestseller lists in Canada and have been published in the US, Britain, Germany, Holland, China and Spain. Colony was identified by the Globe and Mail newspaper as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever produced.

Reviews

[James Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful memoir of growing up in Newfoundland, in a harsh climate, at a time when the fishing industry was in decline and in the aftermath of the 1949 referendum, when the population narrowly voted to stop being a self-governing British Dominion and become the 10th Province of Canada. The author's father and most of his family were bitterly opposed to this move. The theme of identity is central to this thoughtful and finely written book: family, island, country, nation, province - to what do people really belong, and what makes them feel so strongly about such connections? The intensity of father-son relationships in which much more is expressed through silence than through words is also explored. The descriptions of winter storms and journeys are first-class.

[Candice Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wayne Johnston never fails to give me a book hangover. I feel like this should be required reading for all Newfoundlanders. I actually cried when I finished.

[Jacob Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can hardly think of any memoir I've read that was more beautiful, more reflective, and more intertwined with incredible prose. Johnston is a master writer, and this book is no exception. 

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

From its opening with an iceberg in the shape of the Virgin Mary, to its beautiful concluding description of the death of his grandfather, who dreams of drinking the meltwater from the iceberg to soothe his cancerous throat, Canadian Wayne Johnston displays his stunning writing skills. This memoir is one of the most remarkable books I've ever encountered, one to cherish, and hopefully re-read. Newfoundland, the setting for the story, and Johnston's family members who lived there are superbly entwined in the stories and events described. Moving, delightful, at times heart-wrenching writing. Well done Wayne Johnston. I look forward to reading some of your novels.

[☯Lilbookworm☮ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved and learned from this book. Powerfully composed, characters that managed to bring my home province of Newfoundland to my heart.

[David]

In reading fiction, I have always preferred circumlocution about facts to simply ignoring them. I prefer Anthony Powell’s “in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square” or “just off Fitzroy Square” or “somewhere just behind Rutland Gate” (all approximate ‘quotations’ from memory), or full-on invention—a specific street address for a street that exists only in the author’s imagination—than the fictional use of factual places, addresses, directions, etc. And for years I have been mildly annoyed by Wayne Johnston’s St. John’s, which he never claims is factual, but which contains many factual references, interspersed with inventions — e.g. two parallel streets in fact, intersecting in fiction, etc. I have long held that while his novels must—even if I don’t want to—be forgiven for such fact-bending, his non-fiction book, Baltimore’s Mansion, should not be excused such lapses. And there are many. A sample:
—Fleming’s Fling Out the Flag, asserted as being composed in 1888 v. 1902 (66), supposedly “18 years” (factually 14, if at all true) before Cavendish Boyle’s “Ode”
—Cormack’s journey map over-simplified (frontispiece)
—Moon landing anticipated by 7 months (94); Johnston speaks in December 1968 about an event that doesn’t occur until July 1969
—The Experimental Farm so labelled in 1948 (but, not officially, anyway, called that at the time)(122)
—And my favourite passage, the family driving to the airport in 1992 on the verge of moving to Alberta. Father plans, when driving to the airport on the last morning in Newfoundland, to take “the newer north-side arterial and skirt the city altogether” (241). The narrative time is 1992; the north-side arterial was not completed until 2000, at least not to the extent that would allow one to “skirt the city”. Equally, to take that route from the Petty Harbour Road would have meant going nearly 10km out of the way (although, to be fair, the detour might be thought worthwhile; it might take much the same time to drive, although 10km longer, because there is more driving in a 100km/h limit zone). Later on the same page, Johnston observes “At Rawlin’s Cross my father turned right instead of left, onto Military Road”. It soon becomes evident that he wanted a last look at the Colonial Building. But why he might have turned left is beyond me; he’s going to the airport, not The Basilica. Coming up through downtown from Pitts Memorial Drive and reaching Rawlin’s Cross there is no reason to turn at all to proceed to the airport. On the next page they pass Confederation Building. No idea why—except, of course, for its symbolic value. The shortest route to the airport should have left the Confederation Building off to the left, half-visible.

But I am compelled to look up “memoir.” Baltimore’s Mansion: A Memoir. OED: “Records of events or history written from the personal knowledge or experience of the writer, or based on special sources of information.” Exemplified by, among others, “1769   N. Nicholls in Gray's Corr. (1843) 97   Why then a writer of memoirs is a better thing than an historian.” Or “1790   W. Paley Horæ Paulinæ i. 1   To deliver the history, or rather memoirs of the history, of this same person.” Or “1860   B. F. Westcott Introd. Study Gospels (ed. 5) vii. 347   Their whole structure..serves to prove that they [sc. the Synoptic Gospels] are memoirs and not histories.” So I am back where I was with the fiction: a memoir is not fiction, but it’s not non-fiction either.

So I will henceforth stop complaining that Johnston does things I don’t like with his ‘facts.’ The parallel upheaval in the lives of Lord Baltimore, centuries before, grandfather Charlie Johnston in 1948, and the entire Newfoundland population at the time of confederation are interwoven effectively and emotionally powerful. Questions about fathers, sons, expectations, and betrayals abound here as they do in Johnston’s fictions. Ever-present is the sense that all we think we know as history, personal and political, might have been utterly different had just one thing happened slightly differently.

I will probably never get over my discomfort with aspects of Johnston’s writing. I have been giving him a career-wide retrospective re-reading this year before tackling his latest, First Snow, Last Light. He will likely always trigger me. But I’ll stop complaining. In public anyway.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wayne Johnston is one of Newfoundland’s best known writers and for those who have enjoyed his work, this is an interesting memoir. For those who have not had the pleasure but are interested in the history and culture of the huge island that makes up a large part of Canada’s’ eastern geography, this novel is well worth their time and attention. It provides important insights into its culture and the people who were born or have lived there. In my mind, this book is a small gem.

Johnston has focused his reminiscences on three generations in his family and although his mother’s family and their background is mentioned, this book belongs largely to his father’s side of the family, to Wayne, his father Arthur and his grandfather Charles.

Charles was a blacksmith in the town of Ferryland on the Avalon Peninsula and fished part time to supplement his income. His two sons Gordon and Arthur went fishing early every morning before school to supplement the family’s income. Arthur was always seasick and hated fishing.

Charlie had a forge at the back of his house. It was the place he shoed horses and made the grapnel anchors used by small boat fishermen. He was proud of the work he did, a craft he learned from his father that was now being abandoned as foundries mass produced goods more quickly and cheaply. There would no longer be blacksmiths in the Johnston family and so Charlie urged his sons to become fishermen.

Arthur however chose to train at the agricultural college in Truro Nova Scotia instead. He wanted to become an agricultural technician and work at the government run Experimental Farm near St John’s. He completed the course and worked at the Farm, the only job he ever really enjoyed. But the project was short lived and when it shut down, the workforce was transferred to the fishery.

Arthur and his wife had four sons and a daughter. Wayne was one of four brothers , a boy born in St John’s who loved his home but eventually left Newfoundland to become a writer. He knew he had to leave his home to write about it and so he has, becoming one of Newfoundland’s more successful sons.

The Everards were his mother’s side of the family. They were considered one step up on the social scale because as farmers who only fished part time, they were more dependent on merchant and trucking systems than the cod. Johnston however, focuses on the fathers and sons on his father’s side, pulling up memories and reconstructed reminiscences against the backdrop of two dominant themes: the vote in 1984 to join Confederation and a mysterious long kept secret of what happened on the beach the morning Arthur said good-bye to his father and left for school in Truro. Whatever happened there caused a rift in their relationship that lasted a lifetime.

The memoir is filled with a number of dramatic and memorable scenes. Among them a long and treacherous trudge home through a cold winter night as Charles and Arthur returned home from a trip to St John’s. Charles had bought a new anvil for his forge and they were bringing home a load of ice when they had a terrible accident. The sled overturned in a curve in the road, Arthur was thrown and they lost the sled and one of the horses. Father and son were forced to walk home led by a single jittery young horse they hoped knew the way. It was never clear to either of them whether they would make it, but neither breathed a word to the other knowing the affect it might have. Even though they were not sure where they were going, they tried not to panic knowing the horse would sense their unease and bolt. Charlie was in his mid-fifties and Arthur was just twenty-one at the time. Both knew they lived in a place where a man could die if he spent the night outdoors in this treacherous and unforgiving environment. It was only after they arrived home they learned that Arthur had walked for hours with a ruptured spleen. They had both just survived a brush with death.

Another haunting scene is the reimagined death of Arthur’s father Charlie, who died of a heart attack in his beloved forge. Others include the long days that Arthur spent in the labs at the province’s Federal Department of Fisheries tasting fish samples, a day so long and nauseating that he could hardly stand the sight or smell of fish for days afterwards. And then there are the days at sea, when Arthur travelled as an inspector for the fisheries department, checking fish plants to ensure they were meeting provincial standards. In one town where they had to close down the plant, he and his men were confronted by an angry crowd of strong armed men and screaming women who hurled fish guts at them as they make their escape.

But clearly the best scenes are those in which Johnston describes the fierce debates over Joey Smallwood’s scheme to have Newfoundland join Confederation. Newfoundland’s independence and Smallwood, who won elections by landslides despite an unbroken record of failures, were the hot topics of every social gathering. Arthur was an adamant proponent of independence and fought long and hard for the island to remain a separate nation. Most people voting in the referendum had never left the island and could hardly conceive of the whole of Newfoundland let alone a place called Canada. The island was their entire world and they had no desire to leave it. These fierce debates also give rise to the mystery which skirts the entire narrative, a secret long kept between Arthur and Charles that forever affected their relationship.

Johnson's literary works are filled with wonderful descriptions of his home province marked by its huge rock formations, miles of bogs and barrens and its harsh ever changing sea which has always been its lifeblood. Readers will get a good sense of how this land which was such an important part of his childhood has also become so much a part of his writing.

Johnston also describes his love of weather watching and how he picked this up from his father. Charlie would always rise early to check the weather and his son would join him. Together they would listen to the forecasts, note changes in the temperature, the direction and the velocity of the wind and dutifully record them. Wane soon learned how to predict the weather from the look of the water and the sky. He still loves to watch storms gather and readers will see it reflected in his writing.

The underlying theme of the memoir, the need to leave the island to earn a living and the ache to stay with family and the land they know, is beautifully portrayed through these three generations of the Johnston family. Those who leave always long to return to the island they affectionately call “The Rock”, the place they stay connected to that will always be their home. Johnston’s memories also provide the reader with a sense of the Newfoundlander’s character. They are an independent minded people, fiercely loyal to their families despite petty or not so petty conflicts.

Johnston also shows us how the fishery has always been the heart of the land, providing the jobs and the food that have allowed its population to live but never flourish. The specter of fish is everywhere. Even as the sea stocks are depleted, men are still bound to the fish by working in industries that connect or flow from it. Even Wayne’s father Arthur who had worked so hard to get away from it, eventually ended up back at the work he had tried so hard to avoid.

Those who know or have visited Newfoundland are often struck by the charming and quirky place names found throughout province. This vast island is dotted with names such as Hearts Content, Dildo, Come By Chance, Cow’s Head and Happy Valley. Johnson also adds more to the list with names that shaped the geography of his youth: Ferryland, the Gaze, the Downs and Hare’s Ears.

This is a wonderful memoir that takes a different approach from many in the genre. It does not list the author’s achievements or describe everything that happened to him in his early life. Instead he has presented the reader with these pages and has said, “Here, here is my heritage. If you want to understand my writing, read this and you will have a true sense of the person I am”.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

None of my great-aunts ever came back home. It was as if they had gone to a place from which Newfoundland seemed so other-wordly they had stopped believing it was real. Home, when they left it, had ceased to exist. (50)

Inspired by a family reunion in July, I have been reading a lot of Newfoundland fiction for the last month or so. I scoured my not well organized bookshelves and found quite a few books I had not read yet. I may have more Newfoundland books stashed away, but for now I’m finishing up my current Newfoundland binge with "Baltimore’s Mansion: a Memoir."

Wayne Johnston is another of the talented crop of writers, including Michael Crummey, Lisa Moore, and Michael Winter, who came out of Newfoundland in the 1990s. Of the novels, I’ve read by him, my favorite is "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" (1998). "Baltimore’s Mansion" is a memoir focused primarily on his father, Arthur, and grandfather, Charlie, who lived in Ferryland, an outport town in the Avalon Peninsula about 50 miles south of St. John’s. Ferryland had been an important fishing harbor since the 16th C. Lord Baltimore was given a charter to found a colony there, called the Colony of Avalon, and colonists began arriving in 1621. They built a mansion for Lord Baltimore, who arrived with his family with the intention of staying in 1628, but conditions were so wretched that he left in 1629 and settled in Maryland instead. Ferryland and the Avalon Peninsula was founded as Catholic, and many Irish immigrants who came to Newfoundland, like the Johnston family, settled in the Avalon.

"Baltimore’s Mansion" is Johnston’s attempt to come to grips with his identity as a Newfoundlander and, more particularly, with his roots in the Avalon Peninsula. In one sense, his identity is pretty firm: like so many, he is a Newfoundlander who has chosen to live much of his adult life on the mainland (Canada, US), yet unlike his great-aunts, who seem to have forgotten their Newfoundland pasts (see introductory quotation), he is using "Baltimore’s Mansion," and so many of his other books as well, to affirm his familial, provincial, country, and mythic identity.

For Johnston, everything is conflicted. Avalon references the island in Mallory’s "Mort d’Arthur," where Arthur goes to be healed of his wounds, a kind of heaven. Thus, Newfoundland and Ferryland are a kind of heaven. Conversely, the colony’s founder, Lord Baltimore, fled Avalon because of its wretched weather and living conditions, a hell rather than heaven. Within this conflicted space of myth and history, Johnston takes up his family’s story.

He focuses not only on his father and grandfather, but on the vote for Confederation in 1949. A little bit of history. Before 1949, Newfoundland had been a quasi-independent country within the British Commonwealth. During the Depression when Newfoundland ran into severe economic difficulties, Britain took over running the country. After WWII, when Britain was having its own economic difficulties, it relinquished control of Newfoundland, which then had to decide in a referendum whether to be an independent nation or a province of Canada (Confederation). Confederation won by a slim margin, but on the Avalon Peninsula the vote was 2:1 for independence. When Johnston was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, his father and the rest of his family were still angry over that vote. They felt betrayed and that Newfoundland the country had been betrayed.

Johnston’s father and grandfather are dyed-in-the-wool Newfoundland nationalists, and they look at the world through the lens of nationalist symbols: examples, the iceberg in the shape of the Virgin Mary that floated by Ferryland in 1905, the train that crossed the island between St. John’s to Port aux Basque, the fish (cod, capelin), the weather. Johnston takes up these symbols to understand how they operate, but he also includes an important symbol for the family: the forge that Johnston’s grandfather and great grandfather operated. They were the blacksmiths who provided the community with horseshoes, nails, etc. Johnston describes the forge and its heat as the heart of the family and the community, because everyone needs what the forge produced. When the grandfather dies before Confederation is complete, he dies a Newfoundlander and not a Canadian, but at his death the forge goes out. There is no one in the family who will take up the trade, and the community no longer needs horseshoes or nails produced by a local blacksmith. Just talking about it, the symbolism seems a little heavy handed, but Johnston develops it with nuance and an eye for detail and history. Johnston’s father, although an ardent nationalist, is a much more liminal figure and has a much more difficult time negotiating his identity. He does not become a fisherman or a blacksmith like his father. Instead, he leaves the island for college in Nova Scotia in 1949. He doesn’t have the money to return home for his father’s funeral and wake, and he becomes a Canadian while in Nova Scotia. When he returns to Newfoundland, now a trained scientist, he works for the Canadian Fishery, monitoring the quality of the fish stocks around Newfoundland. He works with fish, but he is not a fisherman; he lives and works in Newfoundland, but he works for the nation that ruined his dream of an independent Newfoundland. The grandfather exits the scene early, but Johnston’s father spends his life watching Newfoundland become what he hoped it would never become. He lives a very unsettled life, which has its consequences physically and emotionally.

Wayne Johnston eloquently describes the deaths of his father and grandfather, particularly his grandfather. These chapters are the emotional highlights of the book. I have a sense that Johnston can handle all of the emotional, political, ideological, and psychological traumas of his family around and after Confederation, because his identity is settled, because Confederation is a long time done deal, so he can step outside of the myth and history that ruled his father and grandfather’s generation and make other choices.

[Teddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's the review I posted on Amazon.ca:

A Memoir that reads like a novel.
It took me about 50 pages to get into this book, which is a lot considering how it is only 272 pages long. Johnston used “he”, making the reader work to figure out who “he” was. “He” was different characters at different times. This made the first part very tedious.

After that, it was fairly smooth sailing. The story was still a bit choppy in parts, but overall, worthwhile.

Johnston’s lyrical and visual portrait of New Foundland is breathtaking and at times, bleak. This is not just a memoir of Johnston’s ancestors and family, but of New Foundland and it’s history.

[Padraic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh Canada. I lived there for a time, and managed to avoid a slew of great writers. I think I came across this in a Quality Paperbacks brochure and gave it a try.

Johnston is a newsman by trade, and his prose has some of the good qualities of reporting: concrete, fast, muscular. But it's all in the service of a sort of Newfie Celtic Twilight, as seen through the eyes of the young boy he was growing up in a colony destined to be drawn into the country that would be Canada. His narrative of the slow, painful death of that old Celtic culture is one of the best I've come across in 20 years of reading such memoirs.

[Bill Tress · Rating 3 out of 5]

Browsing in a Library for just anything that will catch your eye can be laborious and time consuming experience. Yet, that is how I came across this book. The title included the word Baltimore, my hometown. The cover included a picture of a small harbor, and this provided more interest. I left the library with this book under my arm.
What I discovered after a more thorough examination was a memoir written by an author unknown to me yet, someone with considerable skill as a writer. The book was not about my hometown, rather it was about Newfoundland, a country I knew nothing about.
Most authors, even when writing fiction, write about what they have experienced. Johnson is no exception he writes about experiences from his earliest recollections of his family and the Country he loved. His stories about his grandfather and father are witty, well done and these stories describe a Newfoundland that had to be experienced to understand.
He presents humorous memories of his father’s frustration with the confederation that ended Newfoundland’s independence and its realignment as a Province of Canada. His father is always ready to defend the old independence of Newfoundland and his nostalgia for the old ways. These emotions overflowed during a rail trip that Johnson made with his father. His father had a debate with a fellow passenger on the trip across Newfoundland and Johnson just sat in wonder as the angry words were exchanged. Looking out of a window, a passenger bus could be seen whizzing by the slow-moving train, bickering began between his father and a passenger sitting in the seat directly in front of him regarding the changes being experienced in Newfoundland because of rapid modernization and the new association with Canada. The person in front does not even look back so they parry back and forth without looking at each other. After this confrontation is over, Johnson asks his father if he was going to fight with this other passenger, his father just laughs the episode off and changes the subject. While Johnson loves his father and enjoys their time together, the fact that his father is quick to anger particularly on the point of confederation puzzles him and he senses some secret past that his father is avoiding. We find at the end of this book that the secret sadness is the same debate between his father and his grandfather from many years past. The angry outburst created a gulf between father and son and this great sadness was the reason his father reacted so aggressively to even the mention of Confederation.
A picture of Newfoundland emerges from these memories and this reader has found them to be informative and interesting tales of life in this Canadian province. A most compelling memory of life in this vast and wild land involves an age-old custom that Johnson’s father and grandfather performed collecting ice to be used to store food over the summer. This story provided the author
with an opportunity to describe how Newfoundlander’s cut ice out of the bogs and lakes in the winter for use all year long. After this ice cutting tutorial, we accompanied the pair on their way home in the evening after working all day cutting and lifting huge blocks of ice. They were moving through an unknown part of an icy cold and dark forest. The ice sled was being pulled by two young and unreliable horses over the icy forest floor. A catastrophe happened when the sled slid on the ice and the father, and a horse went over a ravine. After a struggle, the father gets back to the forest path, but he has sustained painful injuries. Now both men must rely on one skittish horse to take them home because the other horse is missing and presumed dead. They hold on to the frightened horse for dear life because only this animal can sense a way out of this forest. An intense snowstorm begins, and both men are faced with the possibility of death. Johnson’s gripping description of the struggle to get home is dramatic. It ends when the grandfather looks up from the blinding ice storm and recognizes a familiar intersecting path in the forest. The reader is not told the outcome of the struggle but is able to form their own image of the successful outcome, Johnson employs a left unsaid interesting literary technique quite well in this story.
This story ends when the Johnson family moves from Newfoundland to mainland Canada. The ending chapters explore the emotions being felt by this move. There are strong emotions involved, grief and a certain finality exists along with a sense of adventure about the future. These final chapters bring a finality to the story that satisfies the readers.
The saying goes "even a blind squirrel will find an acorn occasionally" and so I made a lucky find at the library that day.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The older I get the more I lean towards memoirs and non fiction. I picked this book up at a small community library..... I enjoyed this book and would like to visit Newfoundland one day; imagine myself on a ferry ride from Nova Scotia, the salt air... This book is classified as a memoir, but it felt like a series of short stories about life growing up in Newfoundland.... I enjoyed the various stories including the trip to get ice blocks by horse and sled which turned into a disaster. The story of floating homes from one island to another (reminded me of the movie, The Shipping News, filmed in Nova Scotia). And the story of traveling by horse and wagon to purchase an anvil which ended up being an overnight trip, and thankfully the horse knew the way home... Times were hard!... Then towards the end of the book, the story of the writers trip into solitary confinement, at age 30, to a cabin on an isolated island in order to decide which path his life shall lead ..... I read this during the Covid 19 pandemic and wondered about those soles who stayed behind on Newfoundland’s isolated islands, or any isolated island.. “There are roads you can travel to where they were abandoned fifty years ago, to piers at which boats from smaller islands docked when their owners made the trip to Newfoundland. On each of these islands a lone light burns. In them live people for whom history has been suspended. Some of them are people who, instead of leaving with the fleets of locating houses in the sixties, stayed behind. Others went back to these abandoned islands whose populations from the census thereby rose from none to one or two”..

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wayne Johnston has not disappointed me so far. This was a fascinating read. I’m not much for memoirs, but since I will be visiting Ferryland and the Colony of Avalon in a couple of weeks, I grabbed this book at a book sale as soon as I saw it.
This is a gentle story of Newfoundland, and of the growing-up years of the author during the time of Newfoundland’s vote to join Confederation (1949) and declining fisheries. I was not previously aware of the forceful dissent and rifts caused by the Confederation referendum. The story delves into the relationships of fathers and sons, of the harsh climate, and the recognition that there are families who have lived within 30 miles of a place for generations. The story is told in a series of vignettes held together by a master storyteller.
What not to like – you cannot assume that anything you read in a Wayne Johnston book as historical fact is, indeed, a fact. For facts you need to check with Wikipedia or other sources. I also didn’t care for the jumping around in time, but I got used to it. I often could not tell whether I was reading about Wayne, or his dad Art, or his grandfather Charlie.
Despite these two complaints, I will say that for a well-woven story, you cannot do better.

[Megan George · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a memoir of 3 generations of Johnstons who lived in Ferryland, Newfoundland and spans roughly 100 years. This book was just okay for me. The timeline of the story jumped around quite a bit, from past to present to further past and not so far past. The years weren’t always called out so I’d get partway through a chapter before realizing the timeline had shifted again. It also wasn’t clear who’s story was being told as the grandfather, father, and Wayne were all referred to as ‘he’ or ‘him.’ Only when there were other characters was it clear who a particular chapter was about.

Outside of the timeline and confusing characters, I did enjoy reading about the history in that area of Newfoundland and some of the major historical events that happened throughout the province. I learned some new information about the referendum for confederation, the train being decommissioned, and the imminent cod moratorium. I will seek out other books on these topics because I find them so interesting. The talking points on confederation, fishing, and horse shoes did get a bit repetitive.

Read more reviews: meganevelyn.com/books

[Jrwest · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was billed as a memoir however many of the stories told are that of the author's father and grandfather who lived in Ferryland Newfoundland. Many of the stories deal with Wayne's father and grandfather's anti Confederacy beliefs and how they felt so cheated and frustrated when the pro confederate faction won the referendum and Newfoundland went from a colony of Canada to a province of Canada in 1949. I had never realized how close the referendum had been and how long the independence supporters had held a grudge against Canada and Joey Smallwood. The stories dealing with Wayne's grandfather's life as a blacksmith were also interesting. The memoir also touches on the difficulty that Newfoundlanders have balancing the love for their province and their need to leave the island to pursue careers and employment. I think I have a better understanding of Newfoundlanders now from having read this book.

[Tary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a memoir of Newfoundland and the Irish Catholics who settled there told by forth generation Wayne Johnston, who writes beautifully. I had no idea that Lord Baltimore founded a colony there (he lasted one winter before leaving to found another in Maryland,) so I expected the memoir to Be about Baltimore, Md., near where I am from. Instead I got a funny and spellbinding account of the bitter winters, the farmers who became fishermen, their survival methods, and most centrally, an account of the referendum in 1946 when Newfoundlanders had to vote to stay a separate country or join the country of Canada. Wayne's family were all fanatic patriots, and his account of the conversations of Islanders of whether to join or not were both comic and satiric, and still happening with our politics in the U.S. today. Thoroughly enjoyable!

[Dianne Everson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved most of this book. It was a little confusing at times as to which Johnson was speaking, and a little too wordy about the hatred of joining Confederation felt by some Newfoundlanders, but I loved it.
That being said, I loved my five visits to Newfoundland, and always enjoy Wayne Johnston books.
This one has some beautiful lines, some humour, lots of interesting history giving the reader more understanding of traditional Irish Newfoundlander ;is imbued with love of the people the author writes about, and makes the reader sad to see it end.
The images the author draws of the isolated outport people leaving their island and taking their homes with them are worth reading the book for, even if you knew the story.
Such is the power of a very good writer.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir about Johnston's father and grandfather and their lives in Newfoundland gave me a strong sense of the history of the island and the vote for confederation with Canada in 1948.
The first sections (not indicated as chapters) are structured like tales with less wandering or musing into past situations. As the book goes on, there are more meditative and shorter sections that delve more into the psychological world of his family. A secret of his father's that Johnston is curious about for years is never really answered. We're left wondering just what it is.
This enigma aside, I enjoyed learning more about Newfoundland, a place with a history much older and different from here on the West Coast.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thoughtful memoir; a loving document in honour of the author's father and to a lesser degree his entire family. A loving document to the history of Newfoundland, the sense of betrayal of confederation and the unfulfilled promise of independence. A loving document of the people of Newfoundland and their unrelenting love for an untamable land that at times gives very little in return. It is a special writing ability that will allow an outsider to be entertained by such a personal portrayal of ones family life. A fascinating, amusing and poignant reveal of what it was and how it felt to be a Newfoundlander in the early to mid twentieth century.

[Mary Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was recently in Newfoundland for the first time and I wish that I had read this book before I went. I knew that Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949 but I didn't know the background or that there was such a contentious opinion about it on both sides. The vote was very close and when I was there recently, there were still areas that flew the flag of Newfoundland the country.
This is written from the point of view of Wayne's father and grandfather's opinions and lives before and during this time. It is a lovely, moving book.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I doubt I’ll ever tire of reading the human stories Wayne Johnston turns into myths or the myths he turns back into human stories. I can’t distinguish the crush I’ve had on Newfoundland ever since my travels there from the crush I have on Johnston when I read one of his books. I can only say that what he writes matters to me. And I’ve found his memoirs especially beautiful and readable, maybe because I like his memoir-telling narrative voice best.

[Margaret McMaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dove into Baltimore's Mansion right after reading Jennie's Boy, which was a good primer on the Johnston family. Baltimore's Mansion filled in the family background and gave more details on the father's, and his father's, work lives. Amazing, unforgettable stories. I loved the book and highly recommend it.

[Donald Leitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had some trouble engaging with this memoir of family relationships in a Newfoundland outport. I was interested in the interaction of the family around the divisive referendum on Newfoundland joining Canada or returning to dominion or national status. However, I found myself failing to connect well with the story.

[Caroline Weber · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant enough read. However, with all the back and forth in time, and duplication of names through the family - or lack of use of names - it is sometimes difficult to follow the story.

It does make me want to take the ferry from NS to Nfld, and travel through the province. And it did give me more of an "inside the family" look at the divisiveness of the referendum on confederation.

[Gayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written in a narrative style. I like Wayne Johnston's books, and this is a memoir of his family. It includes many interesting historical details about Newfoundland. You have a real feeling of being there.

[Dave Capers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful memoir that captures one facet of a fascinating place. I've only visited Newfoundland, I'm not from there so I can't say if it's the definitive picture of it, but it is a compelling one.

[Terry Demers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful memoir of the author and his father as many Newfoundlander’s struggled with joining Canada on April 1, 1949. A warm glimpse of a hard life on the Rock.

[Ericm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should NL join Canada? We know what happens but the story that Wayne weaves about how the decision literally tore families apart. Loved this book. Thanks Wayne for crafting it.

[Sheri-lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great piece of Canadiana. Those Newfie’s. Although there are still a few who consider themselves not Canadian, I really am glad to have them.

[Tina]

Interesting but also confusing! Too much jumping around between grandfather...father...son.