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Originally Posted by FrAnKs
What is the reason NFL joined canada in 1949 ? , I lost my canadian history since I left school lol
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Just be warned you probably won't get the same answer from any two Newfoundlanders, haha. ;-)
We joined Canada by a vote of 52% Yes to 48% No. Most of those who supported Confederation were rural or poor, most of those who didn't were urban or wealthy. For example, when the results were announced, merchants in downtown St. John's draped their businesses with black tarps as a symbol of mourning.
There are a lot of reasons why people voted to join. The two World Wars (especially the first) and the Great Depression devastated Newfoundland. Wealth inequality was extreme. The ruling, merchant classes basically held the rest of the population in indebted servitude.
Canada promised the moon to them. If you look at posters from that era, you'll see "Don't sell your country to Canada!" and slogans like that on one side, while the other has slogans such as, "Canada is offering more and better social services!", etc.
Then, politically, Newfoundland was a mess. We are one of the only democracies to have ever voted itself out of existence. A lot of people think this happened in 1949, when we joined Canada, but it actually happened in 1930s, when we voted to suspend our government and once again be governed directly by London.
We were still allowed to keep the title Dominion of Newfoundland (the same title Canada and other commonwealth countries used at the time), but we were basically a colony again. One London REALLY wanted to unload on someone else.
So those pressures were at work behind the scenes.
All of these things combined led to Confederation JUST scraping by at the polls. And even today, there's still a bit of a divide. For example, July 1 is also Memorial Day in Newfoundland. It's our version of Remembrance Day. We're doing parades, war memorials, poppies, etc... the whole works while the rest of country is just focussed on Canada Day.
All that said, I think it's safe to say, while most people feel very connected to Newfoundland and their identity as Newfoundlanders, a majority of them are also very proud of Canada and being Canadian. The best way I've heard it described is "For us, Newfoundlander is a noun, Canadian is an adjective."