Joseph Roberts Smallwood: A Biographical Sketch, 1900–1934

newfoundland and labrador studies, 33, 2 (2018) 1719-1726 further and deeper understanding of both the private and public selves of a truly extraordinary Newfoundland public figure.The Smallwood family came to Newfoundland from Prince Edward Island.David Smallwood, a carpenter by trade, arrived in St. John's from Charlottetown in 1861 and soon after married Julia Cooper in his adopted city.5 They had a large family, and the third of their 11 sons was Charles William, who became a lumber surveyor.In 1900, he and Mary Devanna were married in St. John's.Charles was nominally a Congregationalist, while Mary (known as Minnie) had been brought up as a Roman Catholic, but their nuptials were conducted by the Rev. H.P. Cowperthwaite, a Methodist.6 Charles and Minnie produced another large family, seven girls and six boys, of whom Joseph Roberts Smallwood was the oldest.He was born on 24 December 1900 in Gambo, Bonavista Bay, where his father was temporarily employed.He was baptized in May 1901 by the Rev. Charles Lench, a rising figure in Newfoundland Methodism, a religion that would figure prominently in Smallwood's intellectual life and in his extensive career as a book collector.Smallwood's given names were apparently suggested by his grandfather -"Joseph" in honour of prominent British politician Joseph Chamberlain, and "Roberts" in honour of Field Marshal Lord Roberts, at the time commander of the British forces in the Boer War.His grandfather's anglophile outlook found many echoes in Smallwood's own later life.In his political career, Smallwood made much of the fact that he had been born in an outport, as the many small coastal communities spread along the Newfoundland coast and away from the capital of St. John's are called.In fact, though, Smallwood was taken to St. John's at an early age and grew up there, amid many family ups and downs.Charles Smallwood had a drinking problem, moved from job to job, and was an unreliable breadwinner.As his first-born later remembered, "brief times of prosperity" were combined "with long periods of stringency, and sometimes hunger."7 The family first lived in St. John's newfoundland and labrador studies, 33, 2 (2018) 1719-1726 Church Lads' Brigade (an Anglican youth organization) and joined the Boy Scouts, a movement that was new to Newfoundland; in 1914 he accompanied the First Five Hundred of the Newfoundland Regiment as they marched from their training camp at Quidi Vidi and along Water Street to the SS Florizel, the ship that transported them overseas to the battlefields of the 1914-18 war.At this historic moment, Smallwood carried the officer's bag of Adolph Ernest Bernard, who won the Military Cross at Gallipoli in faraway Turkey.Already radically minded, reflecting youthful convictions about unfair distribution of wealth, Smallwood clashed with authority at Bishop Feild College.He was involved in a protest over the quality of the food being served and led a resistance to punishment meted out to a number of boarders who had skipped evening service at nearby St. Thomas' Anglican Church.In 1915, he left school in a huff over a dispute with a housemaster.Having bolted Bishop Feild, he worked as a printer's devil 17 at the Plaindealer, a St. John's weekly under lay Catholic auspices.After six months there learning the trade, he moved over to the Spectator, founded as a temperance newspaper, where he worked as a typesetter.He next spent two years as a circulation clerk at the Daily News.While in this job, writing under the pen name "Avalond," he published letters in the St. John's Evening Advocate, the daily newspaper of the Fishermen's Protective Union.18 Founded in 1908, the FPU had ventured into party politics under the banner of the Union Party (Grimes was one of its stalwarts).It was led by William Ford Coaker, who had become Smallwood's first role model in public life.From 1910 the Union published the Fishermen's Advocate, a well-written and widely read weekly.The Evening Advocate dated from 2 January 1917 and was commonly referred to as the Advocate, a designation that will be used here.19 In a January 1918 article in the paper, Smallwood eulogized Coaker as "a man amongst men . . . the super genius, the man who directed the fishermen's efforts."20 Later that year Smallwood rounded out his introduction to the newspaper business when he became a reporter for the Evening Telegram.He wrote easily and well and was resourceful in the pursuit of

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