1 PERSONAL GAIN VERSUS GREATER GOOD: SHAKY FOUNDATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT

The earliest signs of habitation in the Port Hope Simpson area are marks dating from 1773 carved in a rock known as

“The Stamp From Our Past”

when a few inhabitants were wintering at various places on Alexis and Gilbert Bays. Job Notley and his family were the first permanent inhabitants in the locality living on an island at Light Tickle, to the east of the town’s site and in 1884 a census recorded eight persons living at Alexis River. However, it was not until 50 years later in August 1934 that the first permanent settlement started at the site of a logging camp run by the Labrador Development Company and named after Sir John Hope Simpson. The first Company Town in Labrador had been born and large scale commercial development of the woods around Alexis and Lewis Bays for the export of pit props to south Wales had begun.
In a wider sense, 1934 to 1949 was the period when the commission of government, responsible to the dominions office in London, administered Newfoundland and Labrador. The governor of Newfoundland acted as chairman and signed the commissioners’ laws, as Britain had taken over responsibility in 1932 for the management of the debt of its oldest colony, a sum of $97,638,732. The British government appointed three Newfoundland commissioners, each to the departments of justice; public health and welfare; and home affairs and education, and three British commissioners to natural resources; public utilities; and finance. However, sheer geographical distances and extremes of snow, ice, and gales inevitably meant that it was easier for the commission to administer law and order over the island of Newfoundland than over the vast, untamed wilderness of Labrador to the north.
Sir John Hope Simpson enters the story as a former Indian civil servant who had retired 18 years earlier in 1916, after holding numerous government posts. However, at 66 years of age and in need of work to pay his bills including outstanding tax debts, he came out of retirement to become the colony’s first commissioner of natural resources and its acting – commissioner of justice from 1934–1936.
The British government had decided to keep the affairs of the Labrador
Development Company at Port Hope Simpson 1934–1949 secret until 1996–1998 because it would not have been in the public and national interest to do otherwise. In the lead up to the Second World War, a climate of trust was vital in our political leaders. The last thing the United Kingdom and its steadfast ally Newfoundland wanted was to be distracted from the war by a relatively trifling dispute about what
was going on at Port Hope Simpson. Newfoundland had already suffered from a lack of available work and the low wages of the Great
Depression. It needed work for its population like never before and
The Labrador Development Company appeared to be offering just that. However, the effect of the political shenanigans of Sir John Hope Simpson; John Osborn Williams, the owner of the company; the commission of government and the dominions office, their political
masters in London, upon the brave crowd of early settlers in Port Hope
Simpson was to make it impossible for them to find out what was going on behind the scenes.
Thomas Lodge, commissioner of public utilities from 1934–1937 concluded that it had been the Secretary of State who had failed to give guidance to the commission who were a collection of individuals running their own departments. He described the commission as an experiment in dictatorship and claimed he left his post because he could no longer carry on working with people who completely failed to agree on a positive policy and because he could not convince the Secretary of State to adopt his own point of view. The dominions office removed Lodge from his position of commissioner early in 1937 and the publication of his book,

“Dictatorship in Newfoundland”

in 1939 put him out of favour in London. Nevertheless, he became a government director of the Labrador Development Company in 1940.
Peter Neary tells us much about the Simpsons’ way of life after they arrived in St John’s on 15 February 1934. Sir John and his wife, Lady Quita spent much of their two years traveling around Newfoundland in a dark, powder blue, leather–lined Austin 16.6 automobile they had brought out with them from England. They combined business with pleasure because they loved travelling and the landscape they found. They based themselves and their administration at the best address in town, The Newfoundland Hotel. They went once on board ship to Labrador.
To travel as they did in such style and luxury was in itself rare enough in the Newfoundland of the 1930s. However, in view of Sir John’s role in Newfoundland, where subsistence and survival were the most important priorities for the people, his example in government was aloof and over–bearing to some of the people he met.
The prevailing view was that the commission must remove patronage, denominationalism and undue reliance on government. Sir John wanted to provide opportunities for the people to help themselves and emphasised leadership, cooperation and education in his approach to the work. He set–up one of the most successful administrative units in the commission of government and he certainly helped to reduce the country’s burden of debt. However, with the benefit of hindsight, his work seriously delayed good long–term economic development at Port Hope Simpson. In 1937 in recognition of his most distinguished service, Sir John received the Knight’s Commander of the British Empire medal not so very long after his return from Newfoundland.
Born at 46 George Street, Cardiff, Wales at his parents’ home, John Osborn Williams was the youngest son of Silas and Mary Williams. He was one of eight children and was known as “Jack” within the family. He was to become the owner of the logging and pit prop exporting business known as The Labrador Development Company based in Port Hope Simpson from 1934-1948. J O, as he was usually known, had been a commercial clerk like two of his brothers, Hiram and Arthur. The family’s heavy industrial and clerical occupational experience was the background for at least two other logging, trading and shipping agency companies he was to set up.
He left school at 14 in 1900 and entered the timber exporting business. A commercial clerk at 15, in 1908 at 22 years of age, he moved to work for Evans and Reed, Cardiff coal exporters and importers of pit props. In 1914 during the First World War, he worked in the Baltic area, and in August of that year, he went to Montreal, spending September to December 1914 in Newfoundland. From the end of the war, he sought to develop his business interests on the island. In 1921, he obtained £10,000 backing from Franklin Thomas and Company, Cardiff coal importer, to help him set up J O Williams Company in 1925.
However, the liquidation of the British and North American Trading Company inwhich he had invested bankrupted him. From 1923–1940 Williams did have other businesses in Finland.At some point during the 1920s he built Labrador House, in Ogmore–by–Sea, near Bridgend in Wales. But, strangely, about 20 years later, Ogmore-by-Sea was not included as part of the address he chose for himself and Ethel to be engraved on his son and granddaughter’s epitaph. The first of six discrepancies now comes to light: instead of Ogmore-by-Sea, the name of Southerndown (actually located only about a mile from Ogmore-by-Sea)was chosen instead.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Williams registered at least three
different companies: Jayo Shipping Company Limited in England; 5 June 1927 The Labrador Development Company in St John’s, Newfoundland; 20 April 1934 J O Williams and Company Limited in England; 5 July 1934
In 1935, Keith Yonge who had worked with Eric Williams for his father whilst based in Helsinki, Finland, returned to Port Hope Simpson as manager of the Labrador Development Company. Yonge had come out in search of adventure. Also according to the original correspondence, it seems as if J O regarded Keith and Eric as being the best of friends.
Regarding building development at Port Hope Simpson, by the winter of 1935 a community hall and a hospital or seven-room medical clinic were standing on the site. A general store, a hall (also used as a church and a school) had also been erected at adjacent Mill Point cove.
Eric according to his father was with the first party who landed in Port Hope Simpson in 1934 and was in charge of the loading of the first two steamers in Port Hope Simpson. He had married Olga D’Anitoff, the daughter of Count Vladimir D’Anitoff of independent means on 18 August 1937 and Erica their daughter was born on 15 July 1936. Therefore, assuming Eric recorded the date of birth for her certificate correctly, a second discrepancy is now apparent: Erica’s age at death was 43 months 2 days and not 18 months as carved in stone at Port Hope Simpson. This remains a large discrepancy in the illegitimate child’s age. J O Williams who chose the words for the inscription and who supervised their carving in Wales, deliberately concealed the truth about his own granddaughter’s age. Instead, he used the deaths of both Eric and Erica in 1940 to suit his own two-fold purpose.
Firstly, he saw the deaths as a way of maximising the effect of public sympathy on the judgment of those who would be scrutinising his own business situation in the impending public enquiry. Secondly, J O Williams himself was prepared to do whatever it took to avoid any risk of a scandal reflecting badly upon him. By using its contacts in Cardiff, the dominions office in London was trying to collect as much damning evidence against him as possible in the belief that it would be disclosed by the independent public enquiry they had cunningly set in motion as a way of finally extricating themselves from their business dealings with him. On the other hand, of course, he may have made a genuine mistake about his granddaughter’s age. However, that is difficult to believe because there is a considerable difference in size between an 18-month-old infant and a three-and-a-half-year-old child.
Deliberately altering Erica’s age on her tombstone in order to maximise the effect of public sympathy was also her grandfather’s way of distracting attention away from any possible scandalous allegations. Since local people believed that Eric’s wife was having an affair with Keith Yonge, the local company manager at the time, Williams’ strategy was to keep public sympathy uppermost in people’s minds. Considering the nature of the newspaper articles that followed this seems to have been successful. No whiff of a scandal ever got back to the sharp– minded Clutterbuck or Chadwick at the dominions office, who would have welcomed it as proof that J O Williams was of an unreliable and untrustworthy character and ill– suited to be entrusted with the devlopment going on inLabrador.

"Erica’s body was found amongst the charred remains of the house in the early morning of 3 February 1940 with her feet burnt away, cradled in her dead father’s arms."

Also according to the oral evidence of Lemuel Penney, a current resident of Port Hope Simpson,

"
The first men at the Williams’ house had pulled her mother, Mrs Olga Williams, out of a window in the early hours of the morning, covered in blood yet without a mark on her."

Eric’s decapitated head was discovered soon afterwards at the bottom of a slope near to the remains of the Company house after a boiler in which it had been placed had been emptied.Instructions given at the time by person(s) unknown the day before meant that axes had been left in every room in the wooden single storey house and the cellar was full of firewood on the night of the deaths.
Study of the correspondence around the date of the deaths reveals that Eric had returned to Hope Simpson in 1939 to review and report back to his father about what was going on, in particular about the excess amount of stores held by Keith Yonge, the manager. Local men, acting on the instructions of the company manager (who effectively ruled the way of life in the settlement), quickly buried the remains of Erica and Eric in a concrete grave with a simple, inscribed headstone. A tombstone was later built on top. The tombstone was a memorial to Eric according to his father. However, when I re-visited the tombstone on 29 July 2002 I read, after scraping away decades of discoloration on the small broken concrete headstone of the original grave, additional words compared to the final epitaph that is there today

"
Having saved his wife he died in the flames with his daughter Erica.
”

Williams had deliberately left out the above words when the final inscription was carved back in Cardiff before shipment back out under his supervision. By then he would have known about the completely different circumstances leading up to the deaths than the one relating to their accidental deaths in a forest fire.A

“forest fire”

that was supposed to have happened on 2 February 1940, yet of which there is no mention in newspaper articles of the time. I also understand that the RCMP serious crimes team investigating the deaths have found no evidence of the same.
The final version of the epitaph shows that true to form, J O Williams was not even prepared to praise his own son’s final, possibly heroic, actions. Instead, he chose to change the whole tone of the message (which was even more surprising considering the high regard still held for Eric in the family) from a tribute to a choice and style of words to suit his own purpose. Indeed, close examination of the final epitaph shows that half of the writing consists of a statement that Arthur Eric Williams was the son of Mr and Mrs J O Williams living at a false address. Sadly, the myth that the tombstone is a proper family memorial to Eric is still perpetuated by Williams’ descendants today.
Before the company arrived at the present day site of Port Hope
Simpson, certain events had taken place. It was on board the SS Sylvia en route to St John’s from Halifax that Williams first discussed his ambitions for the Labrador with Sir John Hope Simpson and Thomas Lodge. He won them over with his enthusiasm, optimism and experience and convinced them he was just the sort of entrepreneurial man they were looking for. For their part, they could not believe their good luck in having met him. They viewed Williams as somebody who could help them make an impact in their new posts. However, time would tell that Sir John and Thomas Lodge had made an error of judgement about entering into a business relationship with J O who was to prove more than a match for all the civil servants in London and St.John’s combined.
Another aspect of preparing the ground for the introduction of the commissioners into Newfoundland and to the UK public was also noteworthy but for quite a different reason. 22 January 1934 had officially marked the appointment of Sir John Hope Simpson to the commission of government in Newfoundland but six days earlier a photograph of a much younger looking Sir John Hope Simpson had appeared in The Times newspaper. The newspaper incorrectly portrayed the 66 year-old retired Indian civil servant as a much younger man in his 30s although The Times may not have deliberately intended to be misleading. Instead, the photograph may simply have been the only photograph to hand.
At about the same time as Sir John Hope Simpson was appointed, Thomas Lodge, took up his post but his support for the Labrador Development Company was inconsistent from 1934–1940.
Sir John stayed in post for two years from 1934–36 which was quite normal for the commissioners at that time. But as early as November 1934, after Simpson had returned to England over Christmas to meet with officials at the dominions office, it had become apparent that J O Williams had lost his government’s support.
Another aspect of the political groundwork that was going on to help the Labrador Development Company was a deliberate act by Sir John Hope Simpson. The Gordon Bradley commission of enquiry (launched by Sir John himself) into the conditions and wages of the forest workers was buried by the commission at the same time that Simpson was encouraging and giving assistance to Williams’ logging operation. By ignoring Bradley’s views, Simpson helped to keep down Williams’ overheads, including his wage payments. Bradley’s report into loggers’ working conditions was never made widely available. It was very awkward for Simpson that he could not act upon Bradley’s advice. If he had done so he would have had to side with the loggers’ grievances in Port Hope Simpson about their very low pay and against the Labrador Development Company.
Much to Sir Wilfred Grenfell’s anger, no royalties on the export of pit props were imposed by Sir John. Simpson also recommended that British government funding for the Labrador Development Company should continue without the requirement that 400 houses should be built in Port Hope Simpson, the basis on which the original loan was first made to Williams. Early in 1935, Simpson was aware that Williams was financially unsound. He had already recommended to the British government that they should take over control of J O Williams and Company and the Labrador Development Company as security for their loans. From 1934 to 1935 it was clearly Simpson's own actions that had changed the basis on which the original loan was allocated - so that it relied upon his personal opinions regarding security for the loan and for meeting the commission's forestry requirements. Both of which he controlled. Simpson offered the necessary security for the loan by arranging for Williams to mortgage two of his companies to the government. Furthermore, as acting commissioner of justice he could have made sure that the articles of association of J O Williams and Company were changed so that a government director was appointed. Although a variety of names do appear in the J O Williams Company's list of directors it has not been found that a government-appointed director was ever on the board at any time from 1934 to 1939 when Williams was in a position of extreme liquidity.
Simpson allowed the Labrador Development Company to prosper by ignoring both what Bradley had to say and the basis on which Williams had been allocated his colonial loan.Sir John was also obsessive about keeping the Newfoundland rangers under his own department of natural resources enabling him to check their reports as they came in instead of within its more natural home at the department of justice. The two commissioners,Simpson and Lodge were in discussion with William Richard Howley,commissioner of justice from 31 January 1934 to 14 September 1937 over an unqualified strictly constitutional issue between London and St. John's. On 3 December 1935 Sir John Hope and Howley left for England on official business.
On the afternoon of 16 February 1934, in the ballroom of the Newfoundland Hotel the commission of government was legally installed for Newfoundland and Labrador. Sir John explained that the suspension of the constitution in no way meant that a dictatorship had been put in its place. However, five years later, Thomas Lodge showed his frustration with the intransigent civil service administrators who lacked good leadership. He knew by this time that nowhere near the anticipated number of houses had been built by J O Williams at Port Hope Simpson and he was confused about how much pit wood was being exported because tallies were drawn up to include exports from the island of Newfoundland as well. Strikes by the loggers at Port Hope Simpson also indicated to Lodge that something was seriously wrong with the way the operation was being handled. Towards the end of his period in office he wanted to disassociate himself from J O Williams altogether and distance himself from Sir John who had become more open in his criticism of his fellow commissioner.
On Thursday, 12 April 1934 the day after Simpson met Bradley, who by that time had been commissioned to enquire into the conditions of men employed in the forests, Simpson mentioned that he had met with a man who wanted permission to export timber from the Labrador. 12 April 1934 was only two months after he had first taken up his post in Newfoundland. It was out of keeping with the rest of his letters that no mention of whom he had met was made by Simpson.
The commission aimed to promote more of a sense of honesty between the governed and the government. John Thomas, the secretary of State for the Dominions had stated he felt confident that all would work loyally together to regain prosperity and Newfoundland and Labrador’s responsible government. But at least as far as the people of Port Hope Simpson were concerned, it was well nigh impossible for them to have felt any trust in their government when they were treated so badly by Yonge, as they were trying to set up a permanent place in which to live. Furthermore, they were governed by an English commissioner who had personally recommended, financially supported and administratively assisted the Labrador Development Company in taking money out of the settlement: a company living on borrowed money that had not been used as it was meant to be. It had been on Simpson’s word that money was released from the colonial fund to Williams. It had been Simpson’s decision not to risk alienating the business men by legislating to improve the working conditions and the wages of the loggers. It was because Simpson had left out of his official correspondence that a large part of the money had to be used for housing that Williams was allowed to avoid providing houses for his workers and their families. It was because Simpson was too much under the spell of Williams’ visionary zeal, drive and determination to develop the Labrador that Williams got clean away with developing its resources for himself. Governor Anderson’s view of Simpson, clearly with Williams in mind, was that Simpson was too impulsive and tended to be carried away by unreliable people. Hardly a stable foundation for future good long – term economic growth.
By entrusting the work to private foreign capital at Port Hope Simpson the main effect of the commission’s decision about how to develop the Labrador was to assist the flow of income out of the country. At Alexis Bay, Simpson foolishly agreed to the site being named after himself, purportedly at Williams’ request. By doing so, Simpson had enabled Williams to leave behind him in the settlement’s name a permanent reminder of the commissioner’s own uniquely clumsy contribution towards the early growth of the place. Williams was to prove on more than one occasion that he was a business man who was more than capable of defending himself against the interests of others.