4 ILLUSION OF DEVELOPMENT FOUNDED ON DECEPTION AND TRICKERY

When the dominions office found out that the 400 houses were not being built at Port Hope Simpson and money had effectively been borrowed under false pretences on Simpson’s say – so it brought about a complete change in their attitude towards Simpson and Williams. Simpson was recalled to the dominions office in London in November 1934 not on the pretence of some constitutional issue or other but to face severe reprimand for what he and Lodge had allowed to happen. But whether that meant Simpson’s personal dealings with Williams fundamentally changed or not is another matter.
For instance, when he knew about the lack of security that Williams was putting up for the colonial loan he recommended to the government that they should take control of both the J O Williams and Labrador Development companies instead of making the more obvious recommendation that the British government should completely cease to fund him. Payment orders were transferred from the colonial fund to the bank of Montreal in London for the Newfoundland government to pay Williams.
Simpson had originally wanted the money from the colonial development fund released at a 3½% rate of interest and then lent to the Labrador Development Company at 5%, making 1½% extra revenue for the government in the process. Why Simpson would have wanted to make repayments so much more expensive for Williams is unclear, but The British treasury would not hear of it.
Williams had written to the government in his proposal for a loan, to advance his Labrador Development Company up to $200,000 for building 400 houses. He had formerly applied on the understanding that 400 houses would be erected but that understanding was never formalised as a legally binding requirement.
As far as the house he built on top of the cliff slopes at Ogmore–by–Sea was concerned, the name he chose represented his 1920s ambition for developing large areas of The Labrador. He had built it himself overlooking the Bristol Channel near Bridgend, South Wales with a nameplate that does not say Labrador House at all, which is how the property is known by locals and how it appears on his son and granddaughter’s epitaph in Port Hope Simpson, but only as

“Labrador.”

In November 1934 Lodge’s view of Williams was that he was an odd bird with very large ideas about the future.
On 6 December 1934 the newsprint corporations had agreed to pay loggers from January 1935 a minimum wage of $15.00 monthly after board and doctors’ fees had been deducted. By 7 January 1935 the governor of Newfoundland wrote that he anticipated that 400 houses would be built. But by 29 January 1935 it was clear that the Labrador Development Company was taking maximum advantage of the fact that exploitation of the woods could happen in an unregulated way. This state of affairs carried on from 1935 to 1940. It wasn’t until after a government director was appointed to its board from 1940 and a public enquiry into its affairs took place in 1944 that Williams’s activities were finally controlled. He completely ceased his Port Hope Simpson logging operations in 1948 because if he had agreed to any more timber contracts then he would have had to pay the extra export tax set by the confederation of Canadian states in 1949.
On 31 January 1935 Williams’ formal application for a loan to the colonial development advisory committee was completed but later on, the wording that ‘housing’ was a stipulation of the loan became lost in the exchange of letters, memos and telegrams between the commission in Newfoundland and the dominion office in London as they focussed upon the monetary aspect of the loan. It was noted by the British treasury that there was some considerable departure from the originally approved scheme. The early activities of The Labrador Development Company in Port Hope Simpson created a great deal of resentment, particularly among those workers who had moved all their family and possessions out to the area in the hope of creating a better life for themselves. The evidence shows conclusively that the supply of housing remained a top priority throughout with regard to repeated government loans to Williams. For instance, on 4 February 1935 a formal recommendation was made by the colonial development advisory committee in London that the advance was

“for [the] erection of houses for additional loggers”

at Port Hope Simpson.[7] But by the beginning of 1935 Williams had lost his own government’s support and assistance. By March 1938 Williams felt that government policy towards him had steadily deteriorated and by the time of the public enquiry in 1945 he was fighting a long lost cause. Disaffection with the Labrador Development Company representatives on site quickly set in whilst J O Williams was 3,000 miles away in Britain living in luxury in Cardiff city centre next door to Eric by 15 March 1938. [8]