It was a slow process.
Before we joined Canada, St. John's was still colourful but they were strong colours - navy blue, forest green, burgundy, etc. And this was only in the Downtown from the above photos.
Georgestown, Rabbittown, and the entire rest of the city was white and grey. I'm not exaggerating at all.
After Confederation, we had two main big changes:
1. Little Canada. They built this area (it's part of the East End) to show us how mainland Canadians lived. Front lawns. Bungalows. Driveways. It was like an Expo for St. John's. That made people who lived downtown in upper class areas want to move to the suburbs for more lebensraum. And it elevated the suburbs as being worth living in. Suddenly, you started to see strong, dark-coloured houses going up in the burbs.
2. Put on a Happy Face. A beautification campaign launched in the 1960s, encouraging homeowners to paint their houses cheerful colours, instead of the deep and dark ones we'd been using. THAT'S when things really started to change, especially in poorer areas.
And it's still ongoing. my purple house with the orange door was white before the previous owner fixed it up. It's actually still white on Google street view:
But these days, yeah, it's completely normal to want a bright colour, everywhere, even the suburbs.
You can even buy little plaques sort of like "God Bless This House" that say:
"Good Neighbours
May my house colour ever be complimentary to yours"
*****
Now they tell tourists a bunch of stupid reasons, the most popular one being so that the colourful city was visible through the fog to returning fishermen (wrong on two counts - St. John's was a merchant city. What fishermen?).
But, as Mom eloquently put it, aloud, on a guided walking tour we did together with tourists one afternoon:
"Bullshit... oh, sorry, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, God forgive me. That's not correct."
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