Feller from McCallum

  Sir Henry Edward McCallum was born in Yeovil, England—a town, at the time (1852), of 6,000 people. Today, Yeovil has a population of 72,000. With a more moderate climate than the rest of England, Yeovil is susceptible to cloud cover collecting among its hilly terrain. Temperatures in Yeovil, on average, range from 1° C in the winter to 21° in the summer. That’s a rather fitting weather-related beginning for the man McCallum Newfoundland was named after. But I wish the town of McCallum had remained Bonne Bay rather than be changed to honour the Newfoundland governor at the time of his term (1899-1901). Bonne Bay is a poetic name, a lovely tribute to the southwest coast’s French history, and geographically accurate given ‘bonne’ means ‘good.’ Henry McCallum attended the Royal Military College in Woolwich before beginning colonial service in 1874. After serving as an engineer in Singapore—where today there is a street named after him for designing their National Museum—Henry was appointed governor of Lagos. At the time (1897-1899), Lagos was a colony in what is now southern Nigeria. When McCallum ruled Lagos, approximately 60,000 people lived there, but today Lagos is the largest city in West Africa with a population of 9 million. After serving three years in Lagos, Henry was appointed governor of Newfoundland, which, at the time had 230,000 residents, half of the number that resides on the island today. The only joy I get from knowing this incredible community was named after a British colonizer comes from learning that Sir Henry didn’t get along with Newfoundland Premier (and later Prime Minister) Robert Bond. And that that is the reason Sir Henry was in Newfoundland for such a short period of time before being summoned back to England in an effort to end the growing tension between the two men. Maybe Henry didn’t appreciate government’s typically selfish intentions, or perhaps the opposite occurred—possibly Henry was having more financial success on the backs of Newfoundlanders than was Bond, the son of a St. John’s merchant. After returning to England in 1901, Sir Henry was appointed governor of Natal, a South African region consisting of 200,000 citizens at the time. Today, better known as Zululand, the city’s population totals 10 million. In 1907 Henry was named governor of Ceylon—an Indian Ocean island nation that, at the time, had 4 million inhabitants but, today, known as Sri Lanka, is home to 20 million. Henry retired from colonial service in 1913 at which point he returned to England where he died six years later. A lot has changed in the world since the birth of Henry McCallum—the Earth had only 1.5 billion people compared to 7 billion now. All the colonies Henry was responsible for have grown to be giants, except for Newfoundland. I suspect Newfoundland’s failure to grow as much as Henry McCallum’s other colonies did, is a direct result of government’s mismanagement of the island’s fishery and extended economy. Because I imagine Newfoundlanders gave birth to a comparable number of kids. But with there being no work, Newfoundlanders were forced to assemble their families elsewhere. Which makes me wonder: if government post-Henry McCallum had been competent, how many people would reside in Newfoundland today? And how many would reside in McCallum, a community that when called Bonne Bay, more than one hundred years ago, had a population of 63 but today is barely home to 79.  davidward385@gmail.com