Harry A. Cuff et al., eds. Where Once We Stood. The Newfoundland Quarterly 100th Anniversary Anthology. Harry Cuff Publications, St. John's, 2001, ISBN 1-896338-21-6

AS ITS SUBTITLE suggests, this volume celebrates the 100th anniversary of The Newfoundland Quarterly. The editors of Where Once We Stood have therefore assembled a selection of material from past issues, including articles, short stories, poetry, memoirs, book reviews, and photographs. Many of the contributors and supporters of the Quarterly appearing in its pages read like a "Who's Who" of Newfoundland literature, history, and culture—George Story, Michael Harrington, Patrick O'Flaherty, Paul O'Neill, Percy Janes, Leslie Harris, Art Scammell, and others. The year 2001 also marked the centenary of the first successful trans-Atlantic wireless signal, received by Guglielmo Marconi on Signal Hill in St. John's. Several of the pieces in Where Once We Stood therefore also commemorate that "signal" event, together with the radio communications developments that ensued. Other events and developments that hold significance for Newfoundland and Labrador are also featured, from the sealing disaster of 1914 to the "tidal wave" of 1929 to the Ocean Ranger disaster of 1984. Historians like James Hiller and Melvin Baker look back on such key developments as the construction of the Newfoundland Railway and the Great Fire of 1892 in St. John's. Newfoundland's contribution to the Great War is remembered, as is the establishment of Memorial College, later Memorial University of Newfoundland, founded as a living memorial to those who were willing to sacrifice their all in that great struggle. There is a sampling of book reviews, poetry and short fiction. Those content to dip, sample, and browse their way through this eclectic mix may well be content with this addition to their personal libraries. But for those expecting a more coherent overview of The Newfoundland Quarterly's contribution to the cultural and intellectual life of this province, the volume may prove a disappointment.

It should, perhaps, be remarked that the 75th and 85th anniversaries were also marked by special publications, and there were two compilations of the best of the Quarterly's poetry. Compared with these earlier volumes, Where Once We Stood lacks coherence and focus. The 75th-anniversary volume offered a selection of articles and essays reprinted in chronological sequence; readers could, in effect, trace the history and evolution of the Quarterly directly. Essays in the present volume, in contrast, follow one after the other with no apparent rhyme or reason—an essay on Victoria Cross-winning Corporal Ricketts is followed by one on the Labrador Boundary dispute, then Art Scammell's classic re-writing of St. Luke's account of the miraculous haul of fishes, which in turn is followed by some photographs of Labrador. Though substantial attention is given in the opening pages to Marconi's achievements in 1901, the visit by Marconi's daughter many years later (when exactly? we are not told) is relegated to page 119. Nor are the pieces arranged in chronological order of original appearance; indeed, too often we are not told when a piece was originally written or published. Such drawbacks limit the worth of the volume.

Nor have the editors provided introductions to the essays that might have explained their significance to new readers. The late Keith Matthews's essay on "Historical Fence-Building," for instance, has been re-printed several times, as befits an essay that challenged how we perceived our past. An introduction by one of his students would have placed Matthews within the context of Newfoundland historiography even as it provided an opportunity to explain the degree to which our understanding of Newfoundland history has evolved beyond Matthews's own revisionism.

The 85th-anniversary volume did not reprint past material, but instead offered a series of commissioned essays about the Quarterly, followed by a compendium Table of Contents covering the entire period from 1901 to 1986. Had that feature been updated for the Quarterly's centennial, it would have made Where Once We Stood a valuable research tool. Instead, we have a number of selections from past issues that, individually, may be interesting, but which collectively are not. Indeed, some of the pieces are simply recycled from the previous anniversary volumes. Will readers recognize that the "Overview" of the Quarterly by Percy Janes in the closing pages first appeared in the 85th-anniversary volume and has not been updated to cover the subsequent years of publication?

In short, this volume is an opportunity missed. Though the Quarterly has, over its many years, published an enormous volume of material of inestimable worth to historians, geographers, sociologists, folklorists, literary scholars, and specialists in many, many other disciplines, this particular collection will disappoint those who might have turned to it as a research tool. "But the Quarterly has never aspired to be a scholarly publication," some might quickly insist; "this is more a time capsule of what the Quarterly has had to offer for the past century." True. Yet even a time capsule can be assembled and its contents organized, and at the very least explained, so that those who examine its contents end up with a better understanding of the legacy contained therein. Such an anthology would have provided a stronger sense of the role that The Newfoundland Quarterly has played in the past century in defining not only who we are today but truly revealing where once we stood.