Read Online Baltimore's Mansion by Wayne Johnston - Free Book Online

Irish independence,” my father said. “Hounded to his death by priests because he had a fling with a married woman named Kitty O’Shea.”
    â€œWhat’s a fling?”
    â€œA sinfully delicious piece of pastry,” Uncle Harold said.
    â€œWe ruled ourselves for eighty years,” my father said. “From 1855 to 1934. And then that bloody British Commission of Government was set up. To save us, they said. To save Newfoundland from going bankrupt.”
    And then he got on to Joey Smallwood, who was leader of the confederates at the National Convention from 1946 to 1948. The National Convention was an assembly elected to decide what forms of government should be offered to the people ofNewfoundland in a referendum. The Convention voted not to include Confederation with Canada on the ballot, but Whitehall ruled that it should be included anyway.
    â€œEverybody knows the referendum was rigged,” my father said. England, supposed to be neutral on the issue, had been in cahoots with Canada, and Canada had been in cahoots with Joey; all of them, in some way that my father deemed to be past my understanding, had rigged the referendum.
    I watched my father and noted how the grown-ups watched him, hanging on his every word as Cashin’s followers must have hung on his in the 1940s. He seemed to me no less a leader than his namesake, King Arthur, or Parnell or Cashin, all the more impressive for being, as each of them had been, the patron of a lost, just cause.
    â€œEven with it rigged, they barely won,” he said scornfully, as if the nearness of the vote somehow proved that it was rigged. “I can tell you this much — if Newfoundland had stayed a country and Peter Cashin had become prime minister —”
    â€œHe would have done away with fog and drizzle,” Uncle Dennis said. I thought this was pretty funny, but the silence that followed this remark was so censorious Dennis didn’t speak another word for hours. He had gone away to Canada — as the Canadian mainland was still referred to by members of my family, though we had been Canadians for twenty years — and it had taken him seventeen years to see the error of his ways. Not many remarks of this kind would have been tolerated from anyone, but especially not from him.
    As I regarded them, it seemed possible, even inevitable, that Confederation would somehow be undone. How could anything stand when so many grown-ups were against it? Theywere still able to summon up some scorn, some indignation, still able to suspend their disbelief in the reversibility of Confederation and act as if they would no longer put up with having had their country taken from them.
    â€œOne thing is certain,” my father said, “and that is this: all who voted for Newfoundland did so out of love for Newfoundland. Are we agreed on that point?” They all gave their vigorous assent, nodding their heads, Uncle Dennis, trying to make amends for his gaffe of a moment ago, Uncle Harold and Uncle Jim flanking my father, their eyes averted from his as if to indicate how intently they were listening. They wound up in a close circle around him, holding their glasses, smoking, Harold and Jim rising up ever so slightly on their toes from time to time in a way that was somehow linked to the rhythm of my father’s voice, as though they were urging him on, as though he was rolling now. Whenever my father made some point, Aunt Marg looked at my mother as if to say, There now, there it is — at last someone has said it. My father began speaking as though someone present was opposing him, though no one was.
    â€œNow,” my father said, “of those who voted for Confederation, of how many can it be said that they did so out of love for Canada?” At this, Uncle Harold and Uncle Jim pursed their lips doubtfully.
    â€œThe numbers tell the tale,” my father said.
    â€œIndeed they do,” said Aunt