James E. Candow

This will be a book few will approve of.

Frankly, author Candow took on a very big task: Not just writing a history of the sealing industry, but trying to talk to two very different camps. There are those (mostly urban, mostly not from Newfoundland) who oppose the seal hunt, and there are the Newfoundlanders who consider it a deep part of their cultural heritage. The two aren't easy to reconcile, and the task is made even harder because they don't listen to each other.

That is ultimately a large part of this book: A discussion of the protests and legislation (and the economics) that eventually turned the hunting of seals from one of Newfoundland's biggest exports into an industry that existed mostly for its history. It's hard to thread the needle here between opponents and advocates, and I don't think Candow entirely succeeds (he's basically pro-sealing), but at least he tries to see and explain both sides.

What he doesn't do is give a real history of sealing "from the inside.: This is more social history than history of the hunt: It began as Newfoundlanders set out from land in small boats to take seals for their meat. Then they started selling seal oil and (eventually) skins to markets abroad. They started using larger boats, and sealing farther from the shores of the island. Then wooden steamers replaced the old schooners and brigs, then (briefly) steel steamers. Then it all started going back down the scale, as the World Wars took away the steel ships, then the Great Depression and, later, the protests killed the demand for seal products. This is sketched out with decent accuracy. But, in Newfoundland, the lore of sealing revolves around the great ships -- the Neptune, the Ranger, the Terra Nova, the Beothic -- and the great captains -- Abram Kean, William Winsor, Arthur Jackman, Job Knee. But the ships are barely mentioned (the Ranger's 71 years at the ice merit just two citations!) and the captains even less -- only Abram Kean is cited, and less for what he did (about half a century on the ice, and taking more seals than any man in history) than for his observations about the hunt.

Candow is candid that this is only a rough draft of a real history. It's probably pretty good if you want just a general feeling of how sealing affected Newfoundland history. As a briefing book, it's pretty solid. But if you want to get inside the folklore, the songs, the culture, you won't find much here.… (mehr)