Governor Sir Humphrey Walwyn’s Memorandum to His Successor at Government House, St. John’s

Peter Neary began 2024 thinking about the mise en scène in the Peter Francis and Margaret (Dalton) Neary household (folks like us didn't have house numbers then) on Quigley's Line, Bell Island, Conception Bay, as the count started in the decisive 22 July 1948 referendum on the constitutional future of Newfoundland. Harbour Main-Bell Island, the electoral district in which Quigley's Line was located, voted in favour of "RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT as it existed in1933" (6,784) and against "CONFEDERATION WITH CANADA" (1,431). 

Melvin Baker holds a PhD in history from the University of Western Ontario. Currently, he is writing a biography of Sir William Coaker and a history of the Newfoundland salt codfish trade, 1908–39. He is co-author (with Raymond B. Blake) of Where Once They Stood: Newfoundland ’s Rocky Road towards Confederation (University of Regina Press, 2019), co-author (with Peter Neary) of Joseph Roberts Smallwood: Masthead Newfoundlander, 1900–1949 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), and co-editor (with Peter Neary) of the forthcoming Out Here: Governor Sir Humphrey Walwyn’s Quarterly Reports from Newfoundland, 1936–1946 (McGill-Queen’s University Press).