Spring 2010, Volume 102 Number 4

THE SECOND WORLD WAR LIFTED NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR OUT OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF THE 1930S AND FOSTERED IMPRESSIVE SOCIAL CHANGE IN WHAT WAS THEN STILL A SEPARATE COUNTRY.¹ WHEN THE WAR STARTED, NEWFOUNDLAND (THE PRESENT-DAY PROVINCE ONLY BECAME NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR IN 2001) WAS BEING GOVERNED BY A BRITISH-APPOINTED COMMISSION OF GOVERNMENT. THIS SYSTEM HAD BEEN IN EFFECT SINCE 16 FEBRUARY 1934 AND HAD BEEN FORCED ON THE THEN DOMINION OF NEWFOUNDLAND BY A DEEP FINANCIAL CRISIS BROUGHT ON BY WORLD ECONOMIC EVENTS FOLLOWING THE WALL STREET CRASH OF 29 OCTOBER 1929. INSTEAD OF AN ELECTED LEGISLATURE AND CABINET, NEWFOUNDLAND HAD A GOVERNOR AND SIX COMMISSIONERS, THREE FROM NEWFOUNDLAND AND THREE FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM - BUT ALL APPOINTED BY LONDON, WHICH PROVIDED AN ANNUAL GRANT-IN-AID TO ALLOW HARD-PRESSED NEWFOUNDLAND TO BALANCE ITS BOOKS. THE COMMISSION HAD BOTH LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY: IT COULD BOTH MAKE LAWS AND CARRY THEM OUT. BUT IT WAS ACCOUNTABLE NOT TO THE NEWFOUNDLAND ELECTORATE BUT TO THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT. AFTER 1934 THE COMMISSION TRIED VARIOUS MEANS TO REVIVE THE ECONOMY, BUT IN THE SPRING OF 1939 THERE WERE AS MANY PEOPLE ON RELIEF IN THE COUNTRY (ROUGHLY ONE-THIRD OF THE ENTIRE POPULATION) AS THERE HAD BEEN IN THE SPRING OF 1934. THANKS TO WARTIME DEVELOPMENTS, HOWEVER, ALL THIS SOON CHANGED.

Because of its constitutional relationship with the United Kingdom through the Commission of Government, Newfoundland went to war on 3 September 1939 when the British went to war (King George VI declared war on behalf of Canada a week later). The commission responded to the emergency by passing, on 1 September, An Act for the Defence of Newfoundland, the Newfoundland equivalent of the Canadian War Measures Act. A defence plan had been adopted in 1936 and, in keeping with this, legislation was passed in October 1939 to create the Newfoundland Militia, later renamed the Newfoundland Regiment and augmented by an Auxiliary Militia or Home Guard. In the First World War Newfoundland had recruited a regiment and sent it overseas - at great human and financial cost. Eventually, the divisive policy of conscription had to be introduced to maintain the war effort. In 1939 the commission set out in a very different direction. This time Newfoundland would contribute by acting to defend its own territory and by directing volunteers into the British forces.

The largest group of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to serve in uniform with the British went into the Royal Navy, but many others found their way into service in units identified with Newfoundland in the Royal Artillery and the Royal Air Force. When the atomic bomb was exploded above Nagasaki, Japan, on 9 August 1945, one survivor was John Ford, a Newfoundlander who had volunteered with the RAF and was now a prisoner of war labouring at the Mitsubishi naval dockyard. Eventually, Canada was also allowed to recruit in Newfoundland and found many enlistees, both male and female, for its fighting forces. Interestingly, the largest single group of Newfoundlanders to go overseas during the Second World War did not go in uniform, but as members of the Newfoundland Forestry Unit, recruitment for which was started by the Commission of Government, at British request, in October 1939. Members of this unit worked mainly in Scotland and their experience paralleled that of Canadian foresters, who did serve in uniform. Altogether, more than 12,000 Newfoundlanders served abroad in one form or another during the war (the 1945 population of Newfoundland and Labrador was 321,819).

At the same time thousands of Allied servicemen and women were stationed in Newfoundland and Labrador. Early in the war the Commission of Government concluded that it could not from its own resources defend the vital military installations in the country, especially the Newfoundland Airport at what is now Gander and the seaplane base at Botwood. These facilities had been built in the late 1930s by Newfoundland and the United Kingdom in connection with experimental flights aimed at the introduction of transatlantic air service. From 1940 the British, now fighting for their own survival, were likewise compromised in relation to the defence of Newfoundland. Accordingly, Canada was invited to send forces to Newfoundland to meet an urgent need. Understanding that her own defence was closely tied to that of her eastern neighbour, Canada readily agreed and Canadian forces arrived at the Newfoundland Airport on 16 June 1940. Canada then ran this strategically located facility, which, from November 1940 onwards, was a key base for ferrying aircraft produced in North America to the United Kingdom. Subsequently, Canada built airbases at Torbay (site of the present-day St. John’s airport) and, to assist in the ferrying operation, at Goose Bay, Labrador. From 1941 Canada operated a naval base at St. John’s on behalf of the Royal Navy. Included among the Canadian forces who went to Newfoundland and Labrador during the war were six war artists - Thomas Harold Beament, Frank Leonard Brooks, Albert Edouard Cloutier, Paul Alexander Goranson, George Campbell Tinning, and Thomas Charles Wood - who left behind them a stunning visual record (now part of the art collection of the Canadian War Museum) of their country’s diverse, extensive, and costly military effort there, on land, sea, and in the air.

Thomas Wood. Harbour, St. John’s, Newfoundland. CWM 19710261-4875. Beaverbrook Collection of War Art © Canadian War Museum

Canadians were soon followed to Newfoundland by even larger numbers of American forces. In September 1940, the United Kingdom promised the United States base sites for 99 years in a number of its transatlantic territories in exchange for 50 used destroyers. This arrangement is known to history as the “destroyers for bases” agreement, but in the case of Newfoundland and Bermuda the Americans were permitted to establish themselves “freely and without consideration.” A visiting American party led by Admiral J.L. Devers eventually chose sites at St. John’s, Argentia, and Stephenville. The full details of the American occupation of the properties thus acquired were spelled out in the Anglo-American leased bases agreement of 27 March 1941. Newfoundland was represented in London in the talks leading to this agreement by Commissioner for Justice and Defence L.E. Emerson, a Newfoundlander; and Commissioner for Finance John N. Penson, a Scot. The Americans bargained hard and obtained sweeping jurisdictional rights. By contrast, Canada had undertaken expensive wartime commitments in Newfoundland without any such general longterm agreement. The difference was striking, though in 1944, following protracted negotiations, Ottawa was able to extract a 99-year lease to the Goose Bay site.

In an age of air and submarine warfare, Newfoundland and Labrador were strategically located and the presence of so many Canadian and American forces in the country acknowledged this reality. In truth, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians had front-row seats for the war and in particular witnessed first-hand the battle for control of the North Atlantic. 1942 brought an especially grim toll to the region - the USS Truxtun and the USS Pollux were lost near St. Lawrence; there were two submarine raids near Bell Island, Conception Bay, with the loss of four merchant ships and many lives; the passenger ferry Caribou was torpedoed in the Cabot Strait with many more casualties; and 99 people lost their lives in a fire at the Knights of Columbus hostel in St. John’s. These were sombre developments that transfixed the country. Many years later, long after the war was over, it became known that Germans had landed on the coast of Labrador and established an automatic weather station. If the war brought prosperity to Newfoundland, it also brought anxiety, destruction, and death.

Initially, the Commission of Government believed that wartime expenditures would necessitate retrenchment in its development plans, but in practice recruitment for service abroad and Canadian and American base construction at home touched off the biggest economic boom Newfoundland had ever known. By 1942 Newfoundland was enjoying full employment and in the process making interestfree loans to the British, on whom it had previously relied for financial assistance. In becoming “a garrison country,”² Newfoundland had left behind the hard times of the 1930s and entered a new phase in its history. Writing from booming St. John’s through the war years, United States Consul General George Hopper provided his Washington superiors with ripe commentary on the transformation of Newfoundland, while Governor Sir Humphrey Walwyn observed in 1943 that Newfoundlanders were “dazzled by American dollars, hygiene and efficiency.”³ In 1944 Walwyn reported that the Americans were contributing “much towards the modernization of Newfoundland building, architecture, communications systems, and the art of better and more comfortable living generally.”⁴

The rising economic tide in Newfoundland heralded the end of British rule there. Understanding that wartime prosperity in Newfoundland would make political adjustment unavoidable, the British acted decisively to direct the process of change. In 1942 Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee of the United Kingdom made a brief visit to St. John’s and in 1943 the British sent a parliamentary mission to Newfoundland. The mission toured the country and helped keep the political temperature down. In December 1943 the British promised that at the end of the war in Europe they would provide the Newfoundland people with machinery whereby they could decide their own constitutional future. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians would decide - but the British would decide how they would decide. This development set the stage for the 1949 union of Newfoundland with Canada, an outcome facilitated by the wartime interaction of the two countries. Constitutionally, as in so much else, the changes brought on by the Second World War were lasting and fundamental.

Anticipating events, on 18 October 1939 the Secretary of State for the Dominions instructed governments under his authority to take immediate steps “to ensure that the essential material required for a history of the war” was “collected and preserved in a convenient form.”⁵ Specifically, the governments circularized, including that of Newfoundland, were asked to submit quarterly reports “summarizing the more important events, decisions, etc., taken…during the period under review.” These reports were to cover not only “actual warlike events…but any measures taken as regards internal security (e.g., the internment or release of enemy aliens) and any important war economic measures introduced.” So rapid was the pace of change in Newfoundland that the Commission of Government found it impossible to comply with this request in the manner specified, but in November 1942 it appointed Allan M. Fraser, professor of history and political science at Memorial University College, to write a history of the country’s war effort.⁶ His job would be “to compile a digest suitable for transmission to the Secretary of State, and, later, a more expanded account with a view to publication in book form, after the close of hostilities, of a complete History of our War effort.”⁷ Fraser was given access to government records, paid $2 per hour for his efforts, and had as his first task the writing of an account of events to 31 December 1942.⁸ In connection with this work he visited the Newfoundland Airport at Gander (where he met with Squadron Leader Harold A.L. Pattison, the Commission of Government’s agent there), and interviewed “representatives of unofficial bodies such as the Women’s and Men’s Patriotic Associations, the Red Cross, etc.”

In February 1944 Commissioner for Home Affairs and Education H.A. Winter reported that Fraser was preparing his final draft on the period September 1939-December 1942 and would thereafter move on to an account of what had happened in 1943. His pending report, Winter noted, was required by London and would “also form the basis for a History of Newfoundland’s War Effort” towards which the Great War Veterans’ Association was preparing and which public opinion would “ultimately demand.”⁹ To the end of 1943, Fraser’s billing totaled $2,376.¹⁰ The ultimate result of his research and writing for the Commission of Government was a manuscript entitled “History of the Participation by Newfoundland in World War II.” Handwritten drafts by Fraser are now in the collection of his papers at The Rooms Provincial Archives Division (MG286), St. John’s, along with a typescript of the entire work. There is also a typewritten copy in the records of the Department of National Defence in Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (RG 24, vol. 10995, file 290-NFD-013-(D1). With the agreement of the Commonwealth Relations Office, London, the latter copy was forwarded to Assistant Under Secretary of State W.P. J. O’Meara by Newfoundland Lieutenant-Governor Sir Leonard Outerbridge on 7 May 1951.¹¹ This action followed a June 1950 inquiry to Government House, St. John’s, and a separate request to Fraser himself by Colonel C.P. Stacey, director of the Historical Section, Army Headquarters, Department of National Defence, for information about the status of his project.¹² The typescript sent to Ottawa that eventually found its way into the holdings of Library and Archives Canada runs to 480 pages (double spaced), is organized topically, and includes capsule histories of the Royal Artillery’s 166th (Newfoundland) Field Regiment, the 59th (Newfoundland) Heavy Regiment, and the 125th (Newfoundland) Squadron of the Royal Air Force.

Fraser’s work is mainly a chronology of events, does not include documentary references, and is written in “stiff “official” prose (with the occasional rhetorical flourish, as when he calls Newfoundland “one of the sally-ports of freedom” and the bombers ferried through Gander “an avenging host from out of the West”).¹³ It is very much a “work in progress” but is nevertheless a useful introduction and guide to a period of rapid and sweeping change and a reference source of considerable value. It is certainly a good place to start research on a range of topics relating to the history of Newfoundland, 1939-45.

Allan MacPherson Fraser, the author of this wartime narrative, was born on 9 July 1906 in Inverness, Scotland, the son of Allan and Teresa Fraser.¹⁴ His father was a haberdasher, and the family eventually moved from Inverness to Nairn, farther out the Moray Firth. Allan went to school at Inverness Academy and then Nairn Academy. In 1928 he completed the MA (Honours) degree in history at the University of Edinburgh. The same year he answered an advertisement from Memorial University College, St. John’s, and was duly appointed, at age twenty-two, as lecturer in history, economics and political science and given charge of the department encompassing those subjects (he also apparently sometimes taught English literature). Satisfying denominational interests was a political reality at Memorial, and the fact that Fraser was Roman Catholic seems to have influenced his appointment, though he was well qualified academically. His passage to St. John’s was paid by his new employer, and he was advised by Memorial principal J.L. Paton to bring with him “a good supply of clothes & underclothing.”¹⁵ In 1933 Fraser was made associate professor of history and economics and in 1937 achieved the rank of professor.¹⁶ During his first years at Memorial, in addition to his regular teaching duties, he offered a weekly evening class for members of the general public and in 1935-36 “conducted two evening classes per week for selected members of the Civil Service.”¹⁷ In this period Fraser also made himself available as a speaker to various St. John’s literary and social service clubs, and prepared two reports for the Newfoundland Board of Trade. In 1937 he was published in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science.¹⁸

As a classroom performer, Fraser was known for his prodigious memory but also had the reputation for being shy and aloof. He was rigid in approach and on occasion would have students read in turn from the course textbook. In an account of the origins of the Memorial history department, archivist/historian William Whiteley, who knew Fraser in the 1950s and 1960s, offered this account of him as a young instructor:

Allan Fraser’s teaching was in ancient history, modern history, British history and political science, economics, and later Newfoundland history…Fraser was in his prime in teaching in the 1930s and 40s. He used to go to the lecture room and have a smoke before class outside. He was well groomed, an old fashioned lecturer rather than a teacher. He was formal, clear, elegant, and authoritative, and his history courses were not necessarily original. In his ancient history and modern history he had texts. He kept up with the literature and dictated the relevant sections to the class from the textbooks. He had three-piece suits for every day of the week. He was collected, friendly, but apart, [and] was a thorough man of the world. He came into the classroom with no notes, didn’t look at the students and dictated the lectures. He didn’t want any questions in class but sometimes the students would go to his office and see him. He was happy, unperturbed, and selfreserved… His amazing memory of his subjects stuck in the memory of many of his students. He went to student dances and…danced with the girls and faculty wives.¹⁹

The eligible bachelor and bon vivant was also well known as a tennis player. He was the first president of the Newfoundland Tennis Association (1930-33), was the North of Scotland men’s single’s champion in 1930, 1931, and 1933, and the Newfoundland tennis champion in 1935 and 1936. Fraser also liked to play bridge (the City Club on Water Street became a favourite venue) and chess. Another considerable interest in this phase of his life was the work of the Newfoundland branch of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA). In 1938 he represented the Newfoundland organization at a Commonwealth relations conference the Institute sponsored in Sydney, Australia.²⁰ On this occasion he went to Vancouver and then travelled by boat to Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand, returning from Australia via India, the Suez Canal, and the United Kingdom. In 1939 his interest in international affairs took a different tack when he began broadcasting commentaries on radio station VONF of the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland. Eventually, he gave a weekly paid fifteen-minute radio talk on world affairs, and in the 1950s brought his expertise on geopolitics to television. He was also active in the 1940s and 1950s in Newfoundland’s extensive program of school broadcasts.

Kathleen Mary (Kennedy) Fraser (8 December 1914-8 February 1998) and Allan MacPherson Fraser (9 July 1906-16 November 1969) aboard the SS Newfoundland, 1939. They were married at St. Michael’s Oratory, Belvedere, St. John’s, on 12 June 1939 and left the next day for an extended honeymoon in England, Scotland and on the continent. They were overseas when the Second World War began and returned home in a convoy, arriving at St. John’s on 15 September. Photo courtesy Frankie O’Neill.

In 1939 Fraser married Memorial biology instructor Kathleen Kennedy, a Harbour Grace native whose father, Ronald Kennedy (1881- 1942), was a prominent educational administrator and one of the founding trustees of Memorial University College. Under Memorial’s rules, she forfeited her job with their nuptials. The couple honeymooned in Scotland, were overseas when the Second World War started, and returned to Newfoundland aboard the SS Newfoundland in the first Atlantic convoy. In 1939 and 1940 the Frasers lived in the Newfoundland Hotel and thereafter, successively, on Forest Road, Rennie’s Mill Road, and Waterford Bridge Road, where they occupied an apartment owned by Justice Brian Dunfield. In August 1941 Fraser was named to a trade dispute tribunal, appointed by the Commission of Government under recently promulgated regulations for the avoidance of strikes and lockouts, to settle a strike by miners at Buchans.²¹ He accepted this appointment without the promise of remuneration other than expenses but the government agreed to “make good to him the amount which he would lose through not being able to give his broadcasts on International Affairs over V.O.N.F.”²² Ultimately, because the work of the tribunal took more than a month, Fraser requested and received an honorarium of $250.²³ In December 1941 he was named chairman of a trade dispute board appointed to settle another complex labour dispute, this one in the fluorspar mining community of St. Lawrence.²⁴ Another foray into wartime labour relations came in May 1942 when he was appointed to a board to settle a dispute between the Newfoundland Protective Association of Shop and Office Employees and various employers in the St. John’s wholesale and retail trades.²⁵ Following the completion of this work, he was paid $750 for his services. In 1944 he was paid the same amount for his work on the Grand Falls Shop and Office Trade Dispute Board.²⁶ Fraser was also coopted during the war period to the formative Commission of Enquiry into Housing and Town Planning in St. John’s.²⁷ He helped write the commission’s reports, and in a 15 October 1943 byelection was elected to the St. John’s City Council, serving on that body until 1945 (he did not contest that year’s civic election) and promoting the cause of urban renewal in the capital.²⁸

In 1941 his academic career entered a new phase when the RIIA formed a committee to supervise a venture in Newfoundland studies.²⁹ The supervisory group was chaired by Sir Campbell Stuart, and included representatives of the Institute’s Newfoundland branch and the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. In addition to Stuart, who was chairman of the RIIA’s Imperial Committee, those involved were Memorial Board of Regents chairman V.P. Burke; Memorial English, French and German instructor Captain Rudolph (Paddy) Duder; Princeton Institute for Advanced Study professor E.M. Earle; University of Toronto political economy professor H.A. Innis (author of the influential 1940 The Cod Fisheries: the history of an international economy); University of British Columbia president N.A.M. MacKenzie; RIIA research director Sir John Hope Simpson (he had been one of the original members of the Commission of Government, 1934-36); British Press Service notable John W. Wheeler-Bennett; and R.A. MacKay, Eric Dennis Memorial Professor of Government and Political Science at Dalhousie University. Alternates for Innis and MacKenzie were, respectively, University of Toronto political science professor Alexander Brady and Dalhousie law professor George Curtis. Innis was treasurer of the group and MacKay the secretary and director of research.

In connection with this initiative, Fraser was granted sabbatical leave at half-pay by Memorial to undertake historical research on Newfoundland. He was away from his regular duties for sixteen months in 1941-42, and his efforts eventually bore fruit in his contributions to the 1946 Newfoundland: Economic, Diplomatic and Strategic Studies, a work that remains in use and that highlighted Newfoundland’s emergence militarily in the 1940s. Edited by MacKay, who became a key player on the Canadian side in the subsequent events whereby Newfoundland became a province of Canada,³⁰ the volume was published by Oxford University Press, Toronto, under the auspices of the RIIA. It encompassed 577 pages, had a preface by the editor and a foreword by Stuart, and, following an introduction (“The Problem of Newfoundland”) by the editor (3-38), was divided into Part I, “The Economy of Newfoundland” (41-242), and II, “From Fishing Station to Atlantic Bastion: Diplomatic and Strategic Studies” (243-508). There were also five appendices, four maps, and an index. In addition to Stuart, MacKay and Fraser, the other contributors to the volume were Dalhousie economist S.A. Saunders (he and MacKay wrote Part I); Queen’s University historian Gerald S. Graham; United College (Winnipeg) professor A.R.M. Lower; and G.S. Watts of the research division of the Bank of Canada. Fraser was responsible for the entire sections on the French Shore (275-332), fishery negotiations with the United States (333-410), and relations with Canada (411-483). These totaled approximately 60,000 words (the lengthiest offering by any author in the collection), and constitute the scholarly work for which Fraser is perhaps now best remembered

In the intense political round in Newfoundland that followed the war and culminated in Confederation with Canada, Fraser supported the Responsible Government League, which wanted Newfoundland to return to independent selfgovernment. This cause failed in the decisive constitutional referendum of 22 July 1948, and union with Canada followed on 31 March 1949. During the summer of 1949 Fraser was seconded to the Department of External Affairs, Ottawa, a posting that suited both his temperament and research interests. But union with Canada also brought an unexpected and disconcerting consequence for him academically. One of the early acts of the first provincial government, led by J.R. Smallwood, who had spearheaded the campaign for Confederation (Fraser first knew him as a fellow broadcaster), was to secure legislation raising Memorial University College to the status of a degree-granting institution. This, in turn, triggered at Memorial an effort to raise faculty qualifications. Unless he obtained a doctorate by 1 September 1956, Fraser found himself in the position of facing financial disadvantage and downgrading in rank to “Acting Professor.”³¹ In the circumstances, he obtained leave from the university in 1952 to begin study for the PhD at Columbia University, New York. While registered there, he and Kay lived in the comfortable 3½ room apartment 2B, 552 Riverside Drive, a fifteen-minute walk from the university. They also enjoyed the cultural amenities of the city and got to see four games (at Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field) in the 1952 Subway Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Under Memorial rules, Fraser had to report every three months on his work, which progressed smoothly. He chose “the history of Great Britain and the British Empire” as his major field of study and “the history of Western Europe” as his minor field.³² He was especially appreciative of efforts on his behalf by Professor John Bartlet Brebner (author of the 1945 North Atlantic Triangle: the interplay of Canada, the United States, and Great Britain), and told Memorial president Raymond Gushue soon after his arrival that “in many ways” he was being “treated more as a colleague than as a student.”³³ Fraser had hoped that Columbia would accept his “published work in lieu of a doctoral dissertation” but in the event university rules did not permit this.³⁴ Eventually, working with Brebner, he was approved to write a dissertation on “The History of Newfoundland from the Suspension of Dominion Status to Federal Union with Canada.”³⁵ Thanks to a generous credit for his MA work at Edinburgh, he was able to jump the last of the preliminary PhD hurdles in May 1953, whereupon he headed back to St. John’s to research and write his dissertation. He travelled home via London, Ontario, where he attended meetings of the Canadian Historical Association, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, and the Social Science Research Council, another national organization in which he had been active for some time.³⁶ On 19 May, Brebner told Raymond Gushue that Fraser had both “the ability and the opportunity to produce a more than ordinarily distinguished piece of work” and that “he might well give Canadian scholars a new level to emulate.”³⁷ “He has a rare opportunity,” the distinguished Columbia academic ventured, “…and both Newfoundland and Canada as a whole might benefit considerably if he were able to exploit it thoroughly at leisure. I cannot, of course, speak for my Faculty, which will judge his dissertation, but it is inconceivable to me that his essay would fail to commend itself even if it merely kept up to the level he has already attained. If there were ways by which he could be encouraged to take the time necessary to capitalize more highly on his unique opportunity, I hope that they might be indicated to him. It has been a pleasure to me and a benefit to my seminar to have him with us.” In reply, Gushue thanked Brebner for his interest both in the man and the proposed work, and promised to discuss matters thoroughly with Fraser on his return.

This was all very hopeful, but in practice nothing came of Fraser’s plan, for in June 1953 he accepted the Liberal nomination in the federal riding of St. John’s East for the national election held on 10 August of that year. On the grounds that the university “would not wish any member of its Staff to be identified with any political party,” he resigned from the Memorial faculty in a letter to Gushue dated 25 June.³⁸ On the same day, in accordance with rule 36 of the university, he gave Paul Winter, the secretary of the Board of Regents, a cheque for $2,868.75 in repayment of the salary he had been paid during his sabbatical leave, September 1952-May 1953.³⁹ His successor at Memorial was Gordon Oliver Rothney, a King’s College, London University PhD, a native of Richmond, Quebec, and the unsuccessful candidate in Brome for the Bloc Populaire Canadien in the Quebec provincial election of 1944.

The part of the province covered by the federal constituency of St. John’s East had voted strongly in 1948 in favour of a return to self-government, and the Progressive Conservative Party, the political heir of the Newfoundland proponents of independence and responsible government, had easily carried the seat in the federal election of 1949. The Tory incumbent was St. John’s lawyer Gordon F. Higgins, and in normal circumstances he could look forward to easy re-election. In 1953, however, Peter J. Cashin, an anti- Confederate stalwart, ran as an independent, thereby splitting the Tory vote. This allowed Fraser to carry the seat. On election day, he won 8,310 votes, to 6,691 for Higgins and 4,459 for Cashin (who soon after was made director of civil defence by the provincial Liberal government).⁴⁰ Through adept party management - the hands of Premier Smallwood were all over this - Fraser had prevailed and was thus launched into a new career. He made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 24 November 1953 (he drew upon his unpublished wartime history),⁴¹ and as an MP took a special interest in foreign affairs. In 1957 he was a member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. Unfortunately for him, however, he faced a united Tory vote in the general election of 1957 and lost his seat to Progressive Conservative candidate James A. McGrath, who then held the constituency for many years. The Tories, moreover, formed the government after this election and John Diefenbaker became prime minister of Canada.

This reversal left Fraser, who was fifty at the time, in need of employment. He sought reinstatement at Memorial but the university declined this on the grounds that the post he had had held had been filled and no other suitable position was available.⁴² Fortunately for Fraser, he was well established as a contributor to the Encyclopedia Americana and since 1951 had been a member of its Canadian advisory committee. Building on this connection, he spent time after his political defeat working for the publication in New York. Then, in 1958, he was appointed by the Smallwood government as Provincial Archivist in the Department of Provincial Affairs, effective 1 April and at a salary of $8,000 per annum (provision was also made for him to carry into his new position the pension rights he had accrued at Memorial).⁴³ The archives had been launched by Memorial University but in 1960 the holdings were transferred to the provincial government. They were then housed at the Colonial Building on Military Road, which was vacated by the House of Assembly in 1960 for new quarters in the recently constructed Confederation Building. With this change, Fraser came to occupy a charming office in an historic setting, along the hallway from the old Assembly chamber. As archivist, he continued his association with the Encylopedia Americana and assisted in the preparation of the Newfoundland Book of Remembrance for the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill, Ottawa.⁴⁴ In (for him) the quiet, late afternoon of life, he also continued to enjoy the delights of polite St. John’s - Bally Haly and Murray’s Pond clubs (golf and fishing, respectively), the St. Andrew’s Society, etc. - which he had cultivated over many years. He looked forward to retirement but, alas, longevity was not to be his. After a brief illness, he died at St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital on 16 November 1969 at age 63.⁴⁵ His funeral mass was said at Corpus Christi Church, Kilbride, on 19 November, and he was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery on Topsail Road.

By the time of Fraser’s death, the events of the Second World War had become a distant memory in Newfoundland, and his history of the period was rarely acknowledged. He made no attempt to publish it. Nor, after his exit from politics, did he attempt to write the thesis he had been inspired to undertake at Columbia. Yet his wartime account has much to offer the student of a pivotal time in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador. Though not continuous and systematic, Fraser’s narrative has an encyclopedic quality that gives it lasting value. It deserves to be better known and more readily available. The work is unfinished but is nevertheless an extensive and useful account by a purposeful historian of times that were exceptional both for his adopted country and for himself.

Peter Neary and Melvin Baker are researchers with a continuing interest in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador under Commission of Government.

¹ For a survey of the history of the period see Peter Neary, Newfoundland in the North Atlantic World, 1929-1949 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988).
² Ibid., 183.
³ Ibid., 174.
⁴ Ibid., 213.
⁵ United Kingdom, Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, Dominions Office (DO) 35/744/N231/1, Macdonald circular letter, 18 October 1939.
⁶ PRO, DO 35/744/N231/1, Carew to Pugh, 7 July 1942; The Rooms, Provincial Archives Division (RPA), St. John’s, GN 1/3/A, 1951, box 297, file 3/51, H.A.E. 11-’44, “Report on Newfoundland’s War Effort.” 21 February 1944.
⁷ RPA, GN 1/3/A, 1951, box 297, file 3/51, H.A.E. 50-’42, “Record of Newfoundland’s War Effort,” 22 October 1944.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Ottawa, RG 24 (Records of the Department of National Defence), 1983-84/167, box 4567, file 1453-1, pt.3, Outerbridge to O’Meara, 7 May 1951.
¹² Ibid., Stacey to Fraser, 6 February 1951.
¹³ LAC, RG 24, vol. 10995, file 290-NFD-013-D(1), “History of the Participation by Newfoundland in World War II,” 446.
¹⁴ The account of his life that follows draws on various Newfoundland and Canadian Who’s Who entries; relevant correspondence in the institutional files of Memorial University; two unpublished sources - William H. Whiteley, “Contrast in the Headship of the History Department in the Memorial University; Allan Fraser and Gordon Rothney, 1928-1963,” (in the possession of the authors), and Malcolm MacLeod’s account of Allan and Kathleen Fraser in “The Human Face of Higher Education” (Queen Elizabeth II Library, Centre for Newfoundland Studies, LE 3 M422 M3); and MacLeod’s A Bridge Built Halfway: a History of Memorial University College, 1925-1950 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990) and his Crossroads Country: Memories of Pre-Confederation Newfoundland, at the Intersection of American, British and Canadian Connections (St. John’s: Breakwater, 1999). The authors thank the late Leslie Harris, President of Memorial University, 1981-90, for granting access to the University’s files, and Professors Whiteley and MacLeod for making their unpublished work available.
¹⁵ Memorial University Records Archives (MURA), President’s office files, box PO-9, file “Staff Applications to 1933,” Paton to Fraser, 18 May 1928.
¹⁶ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-2, file “Board of Governors 1937,” Mews to Hatcher, 6 December 1937.
¹⁷ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-5, file “Memorial University Faculty Promotions 1935-49,” Fraser to Hatcher, 6 April 1936.
¹⁸ A.F.W. Plumptre, A.M. Fraser and H.A. Innis, “Newfoundland, Economic and Political,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. 3, no. 1 (February 1937), 58-85. This was a three-part survey: A.F.W. Plumptre, “The Amulree Report (1933): A Review” (58-71); A.M. Fraser, “Governmentby- Commission (1934-6): A Survey” (71-83); and H.A.Innis, “Basic Problems of Government in Newfoundland” (83-85).
¹⁹ Whiteley, “Contrast in the Headship,” 3-4.
²⁰ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-2, file “Board of Governors 1938,” Fraser to Hatcher, 21 April 1938. The conference was held 3-17 September.
²¹ He discusses the Buchans strike in detail in his history but does not refer to his own involvement. The other members of the tribunal were Justice Brian Dunfield and George P. Bradney. For the report of the tribunal see Evening Telegram, 12 September 1941, 5, 12.
²² RPA, GN 1/8/5, box 4, PU 82-’41, memorandum by Commissioner for Public Utilities, 20 Oct1941.
²³ RPA, GN 38/S1-1, 848-’41.
²⁴ The other members of the board were W.J. Walsh and Thomas LeFeuvre. For the report of the board see Newfoundland Government, Settlement of Trade Dispute Board Appointed under the Defence (Control and Conditions of Employment and Disputes Settlement) Regulations, 1941, for the Settlement of a Dispute between the St. Lawrence Corporation of Nfld. Ltd. and the St. Lawrence Workers’ Protective Union (St. John’s: King’s Printer, 1942). Again, while he discusses the work of the board in his history, Fraser does not mention his own role.
²⁵ Fraser’s colleagues on this board were his Buchans associates, Justice Brian Dunfield (who was named chairman), and George P. Bradney. For the findings of the board see Settlement of Trade Dispute Board Appointed under the Defence (Control and Conditions of Employment and Disputes Settlement) Regulations, 1941 for the Settlement of a Dispute between the Newfoundland Protective Association of Shop and Office Employees and Employers in the Wholesale and Retail Trades at St. John’s (Newfoundland Government, 1942). The board was eventually reconstituted and submitted a supplementary report (see Evening Telegram, 8 February 1943, 3). As elsewhere, Fraser is silent in the manuscript about his own role.
²⁶ This board was chaired by Magistrate Nehemiah Short of Corner Brook and had H.G. R. Mews as its third member. The report of the board was signed on 22 April 1944. See RPA, GN 158, box 6, file 42, A.J. Walsh memorandum “Re remuneration of members of the Grand Falls Shop and Office Trade Dispute Board,” 29 April 1944.
²⁷ For the work of the Commission see Jane Lewis and Mark Shrimpton, “Policymaking in Newfoundland during the 1940s: The Case of the St. John’s Housing Corporation,” Canadian Historical Review, vol. 65, no. 2 (June 1984), 209-39.
²⁸ H.G.R. Mews, later mayor of St. John’s, was elected the same day (Daily News, 18 October 1943, p. 3).
²⁹ This account is based on the prefatory information in R.A. MacKay (ed.), Newfoundland: Economic, Diplomatic, and Strategic Studies (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1946).
³⁰ In 1943 MacKay (1894-1979) joined the Department of External Affairs as a special assistant. In 1947 he became Chief of the Defence Liaison Division and from 1952 to 1955 was first Assistant and then Associate Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs. He was a key member of the interdepartmental committee formed within the Government of Canada in 1946 to advise on matters relating to Newfoundland.
³¹ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-5, file “Salaries 1951-52,” Fraser to Hatcher, 2 January 1952. In June 1952 R.A. MacKay told Memorial President Hatcher that Fraser’s contribution to Newfoundland: Economic, Diplomatic and Strategic Studies was ”first-rate” and “quite equal to a Ph.D. thesis” (MURA, President’s office files, box PO-23, file “Board of Governors 1952,” memo by president to secretary, Board of Regents, 18 August 1952). The board, however, was not swayed by this argument.
³² MURA, President’s office files, box PO-4, file “A.M. Fraser,” Fraser to Gushue, 29 November 1952.
³³ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-4, file “A.M. Fraser,” Fraser to Gushue (personal), 29 November 1952.
³⁴ Ibid.
³⁵ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-4, file “A.M. Fraser,” Fraser to Gushue, 25 May 1953.
³⁶ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-5, file “History prior to 1952,” Fraser to Hatcher, 22 May 1951.
³⁷ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-4, file “A.M. Fraser,” Brebner to Gushue, 19 May 1953.
³⁸ MURA, President’s office files, box PO-4, file “A.M. Fraser,” Fraser to Gushue, 25 June 1953.
³⁹ Ibid.
⁴⁰ Report of the Chief Electoral Officer, 1953 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1954), 554. For Cashin’s appointment, effective 1 January 1954, see Archives and Special Collections (ASC), Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, J.R. Smallwood Papers (Coll-75), file 2.02.005, minute of cabinet 1158-’53.
⁴¹ Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1953-54, vol. 1, 277-80.
⁴² MURA, President’s office files, PO-44, file “Government Provincial – Various Departments,” Phelan to Spencer, 11 October 1957.
⁴³ ASC, J.R. Smallwood Papers (Coll-75), file 3.02.012, Fraser to Smallwood, 9 January 1958, and file 2.02.010, minute of cabinet 707’-58.
⁴⁴ For his account of the history of the provincial archives see “The Newfoundland Archives,” The Book of Newfoundland, vol. 4 (St. John’s: Newfoundland Book Publishers (1967) Ltd., 1967), 187-89.
⁴⁵ Evening Telegram, St. John’s, 18 November 1969, 2.