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A personal campaign for Joey?

Broadcast Date: Oct. 15, 1973

Confederation was very much a personal campaign, CBC host Peter Gzowski says in a 1973 radio broadcast. Gzowski is interviewing father of Confederation Joey Smallwood who prepares for the 25th anniversary of Newfoundland joining the union. To Gzowski's remark, Smallwood says he was God's agent in 1949 and calls Confederation God's greatest gift to Newfoundlanders. The former premier of Newfoundland, a small but tough man, talks about anniversary celebrations the "old fighting Confederates" will attend.

A personal campaign for Joey?

• In 1968 Smallwood announced his retirement as Liberal leader but changed his mind two weeks before the leadership convention. He won the race and was premier until he lost to Progressive Conservatives candidate Frank Moores in 1971. Smallwood retired from politics in 1977.
• After political life, Smallwood worked on the Encyclopaedia of Newfoundland and Labrador until 1984 when he suffered a stroke.

• In 1987, a national controversy erupted over the former premier's inability to meet payments for his Encyclopaedia. The negative press worked in his favour. A fund for the project's completion was set up, along with the Smallwood Institute of Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University.
• Smallwood died in 1991 without seeing the completion of the Encyclopaedia in 1994.

• Smallwood started his career as a radio and newspaper journalist.
• An opponent of his anti-Confederate politician Grace Sparks was also a former journalist. While they were reporters, Sparks said Smallwood was ruthless and vindictive. She claimed he wrote the editor of the Daily News insisting she be fired on more than one occasion.
• Before Newfoundland joined Confederation, Sparks travelled across the island giving anti-union speeches.

• Sparks argued that the proponents of Confederation had an endless money supply. She said one man was paid $5,000 to end an anti-Confederation rally and airplanes dropped pro-Confederation pamphlets.

A personal campaign for Joey?

Medium: Radio

Program: This Country in the Morning

Broadcast Date: Oct. 15, 1973

Guest(s): Joey Smallwood, Joey Smallwood

Host: Peter Gzowski

Duration: 5:50

Last updated:
Aug. 14, 2003