Oh, I agree. Unless settlement was prohibited everywhere else in North America, we were never going to be big. But it would have been nice to have kept pace a little more - to have remained up to 25% the size of the big ones through to the end of WWII would have been nice.
*****
So, today I cried in the streets. No joke. And I have no idea why, really - it's not a particularly emotional issue for me. Today was the March of the Florizel, the re-enactment of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment's 1914 parade from its barracks in Pleasantville to the St. John's waterfront, where the men and boys boarded the Florizel and headed off to defend the United Kingdom.
More than the entire population of St. John's at the time turned out to see them off in 1914. And, while the crowds were smaller a century later, they certainly didn't disappoint. I was expecting something similar to the annual Battle of Britain Parade a few weeks ago - a couple hundred in the parade, and maybe 100 onlookers.
I was all smiles, enjoying the pageantry of it all, until I saw the crowd following the parade to pay its respects. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, unscheduled, just marching through the streets behind the parade in silence - and dozens of them wearing blue Forget-Me-Nots (it's like the poppy in Britain and Canada, which we also use).
It just... slayed me. I could hardly talk.
So ridiculous. But gorgeous day for it!
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The city was festooned in Honour Our 100 posters.
They broke out the Blue Puttees they're named after for one of the first times in the past century.
Premier Davis speaking at the ceremony on the harbourfront.
And, right on queue, the sky turned overcast.
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That'd be just perfect.
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