THIS YEAR Canada's most eastern province, Newfoundland, celebrates the official 500th anniversary of its discovery by a European.
In 1497, John Cabot (or Giovanni Caboto, an Italian explorer) was employed by the English Crown to sail out of Bristol and claim lands for the empire. While it is doubtful if he was ever in Newfoundland at all, he is popularly hailed as its discoverer - despite the facts that Newfoundland had indigenous inhabitants and that the Norse settled there (if abortively) in the area of the Northern Peninsula now known as l'Anse-Aux-Meadows.
Some fans of St Brendan are inclined to credit him also with the discovery of the island but this has never been proven. Nonetheless, Ireland shares a great deal with Newfoundland - historically, ethnically and economically.
The majority of contemporary Newfoundlanders are descended from settlers from south east Ireland - the hinterlands of the ports of Waterford and Cork - and the south west of England.
Pre-Famine emigration
Between 1770 and 1830 some 30,000 people settled in the province. A census in 1836 showed 47,718 Roman Catholics in the province, almost all Irish, or of Irish descent. Thus Irish emigration to Newfoundland predated the Famine and the numbers did not increase during the Famine years.
Immigrant boys and young men could be recruited in various ways: at fairs, for instance, or through newspaper advertisements. Cash would sometimes be paid to the parents of the younger recruits. The economy of Waterford at this time depended heavily on the Newfoundland trade and many girls waited for their brothers to send dowries home from the fishing ground.
A striking feature of Irish emigration patterns for all the years for which data is available is the remarkably high numbers of women settlers, almost equalling those for men. In 1844, 40 per cent of Irish emigrants were women. Many of these may have arrived after travelling as servants aboard man o' war ships. Women usually married in their early 20s, within a few years of arriving, while men generally married in their middle to late 20s. Irish couples were often married by a priest who had emigrated from the same area.
The strong position of the nuclear family from early days in the Newfoundland settlement, which is not typical of emigration patterns, is one of the reasons why the Irish identity has remained so strong. Irish priests and members of religious bodies provided a Catholic education for many Newfoundland children. Today they are remembered with a mixture of respect and fear, not unlike that inspired by their contemporaries in Ireland.
Cod liver oil
Newfoundland was a British property until 1951, when the island joined the Canadian confederation under the charismatic Joey Smallwood. Under British rule, the economy had remained dreadfully underdeveloped. At the Paris exhibition towards the end of the last century, Newfoundland's only contribution to the trade fair was a bottle of cod liver oil, and even today Newfoundland is still recovering from an over dependence "King Cod".
Today the most Irish part of the island remains the Southern Shore area, directly across the Atlantic from Europe. This part is nicknamed "The Irish Loop", with small communities strung like beads along the main road that runs between them. The people who live here speak in accents almost indistinguishable from those of southeast Ireland and experience the world in a very similar manner to their Irish cousins. Common names include O'Brien, Costello, Kinsella and Murphy.
In earlier days, people spoke of fairies and other beings that any Irish person would recognise from our own folk culture. Newfoundland's first internationally known novelist, Margaret Duley, wrote about a little girl who believed that she had been taken by the fairies. Newfoundlanders share with the Irish the rather self conscious need to constantly recreate and affirm their cultural identity.
Popular traditional musicians play in bands with names such as The Celtic Connection and The Irish Descendants, and one of the island's more successful rock groups is called Sheila's Brush after a woman reputed to have been the wife or sister of St Patrick. The popular song "Sonny Don't Go Away", performed by Christy Moore, among others, was composed by a Newfoundlander.
On the Southern Shore, death customs that were considered archaic a few decades ago have been revived. Now it is common again to hold an Irish wake when somebody dies. To many Newfoundlanders, Ireland is a sort of Mecca. A signpost in the capital, St John's, points to Toronto in one direction and to Ireland in the other. Ireland is closer.
The many historical and ethnic ties have created almost uncanny parallels between the two islands. Reading a newspaper in the capital of the province, St John's, is like reading one in Ireland. Vitriol is spilled by campaigners on both sides of the abortion divide. Anxieties are expressed about the role of religion in schools. People are uneasy about the brain drain that carries so many of the young away, echoing Irish concerns of the 1980s. Yet another scandal about the clergy or Christian Brothers is greeted wearily.
Come Home Year
This summer, Newfoundlanders from all over the world will be returning to the island. Communities all over Newfoundland hold "come home" celebrations every so often, when emigrants try to make it home for a party, but this is the first time the whole province will celebrate at once: 1997 is Newfoundland's great Come Home Year.
The occasion is also going to be marked in Bristol, Cabot's port of departure. A ship will sail from Bristol to Newfoundland in memory of the ship that sailed 500 years ago, and in memory of the English settlers to the province. It would be good to think that the occasion will be remembered in Ireland too. Not only are we historically and ethnically bound together, we are both small islands of the North Atlantic, looking for a place in the sun.