Canadian

This book is obviously well-researched and very well written. I am embarrassed by how little I know of pre-confederation Newfoundland & Labrador! I had no idea there had been a tsunami there, had never heard of fluorspar. And while I learned a lot of history, and about mining, it was the stories of individuals that grabbed me and that will stay with me.

Two things I have taken away from this book: the perils of the lack of accountable governance. The bureaucrats running the colony weren't elected by or accountable to the citizens, and their bosses in England had no interest in their work. This compounded many problems, including the lack of health and safety standards in the mines.

Second -- and this is something I know well from other books -- this book is a testimony to the resilience and kindness of the people of Newfoundland & Labrador who live and work in such difficult circumstances. ( )

This is a very readable and entertaining book that starts with a description of the 1929 tsunami that devastated Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula killing 47 people as well as the fishery on that coast for many years. This led to the desperate fishermen accepting jobs in a feldspar mine that an American shyster opened in St. Lawrence and this would have devastating affects on the health and life of the men and their families.

McIntyre adds the history of Newfoundland as it moves from the status of a Dominion in the British Empire back to a bankrupt colony and eventually after a major divisive battle a province in Canada. These issues also play a role in the way the poor people of Newfoundland badly used and abused in the 20th Century by both outsiders and their own government. ( )

Over the past several years Linden MacIntyre has become one of my favorite writers. In Canada he is a well-known journalist and TV personality, as well as a best-selling author. But down here in the States he is hardly known at all. So far I have read his first four novels (all excellent, and the fifth, THE ONLY CAFE, is currently on my teetering "to-read" pile), as well as CAUSEWAY, his memoir of growing up in Nova Scotia's remote Cape Breton region.

THE WAKE: THE DEADLY LEGACY OF A TSUNAMI is MacIntyre 's newest book. It's non-fiction, and is a totally different kind of animal, a combination of investigative reporting, history, and some very personal reflections on the author's relationship with his own father, Dan Rory MacIntyre, who died fifty years ago, at the age of fifty.

The elder MacIntyre was a "hard-rock" miner who was often working in faraway places, returning home whenever he could. In one of the book's four "Conversations with the Dead" segments, the author explains -

"... I really didn't know my father very well. He always seemed to be away when I was growing up. He always had to go away to find work."

THE WAKE is purportedly about the far-reaching and long-lasting consequences of a 1929 earthquake and tidal wave (that "tsunami") which wiped out whole small communities and killed 28 people on the Burin peninsula of southern Newfoundland. The tsunami also seemed to have emptied the surrounding waters of the fisheries, which were the livelihood of the area. In subsequent decades, fishing was replaced by the mining of "fluorspar," (or fluorite), a mineral which, frankly, I had never heard of, but one that is vital in the smelting of iron, steel and aluminum, and is also essential in numerous other industries too. MacIntyre painstakingly traces the development of fluorspar mines on the Burin, particularly around St Lawrence, from the early 30s, through the Depression and war years and beyond into the new century. Individuals' and families' stories are woven skillfully into the narrative, with a special emphasis on the deadly health hazards of the mining industry. The author delves into the "mysterious" miners' illness, initially thought to be tuberculosis, which was very common at the time, but then later found to be silicosis, from breathing the toxic underground dust, and, much later, cancer, from the long-undetected radon in the underground water seepage. There are many heartbreaking personal tales of slow and painful deaths of miners, many only in their fifties, forties, or even thirties, leaving behind large families and widows fighting the mining and government bureaucracy for compensation, often unsuccessfully.

On the historical side, I learned that Newfoundland was an independent country, then a "Dominion," and finally, in near financial ruin, became a Canadian province in 1949. I had assumed it was always a province, an assumption shared by the author (about my age), who didn't find out until, as a young boy, he discovered a document identifying him as a "landed immigrant," because he was born in St Lawrence, where his father was working in the mines.

While I do not often read books about history, I found THE WAKE to be a fascinating peek into the more recent history of Newfoundland, an island province I knew little of, as well as an education in the dangers and hardships of mining, and an introduction to a little-known mineral, fluorspar, and its uses.

But it was the personal side of the book that I enjoyed most, the stories of the plucky, hard-pressed families of the Burin peninsula. And MacIntyre's own family connection was, for me, perhaps the most moving of all - those reflections of his father, those "Conversations with the Dead." I suspect that lost relationship may have been the real impetus for his writing this probing, questioning book requiring years of research , obvious from the more than a dozen pages of small print end-notes. Well done, Linden. I get it. I miss my father too.

This is simply a superb piece of writing, history made personal. I suspect Newfoundlanders and residents of the maritime provinces will devour this book. Very, very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )