This is a study of the Fishermen's Protective Union, a remarkable populist movement that flourished in Newfoundland between 1908 and the mid-1920s. Under the dynamic leadership of William Coaker, the union set out to reform the fishing industry and to obtain social and political reforms, which would ensure that the rural workers--fishermen, sealers and loggers--received "their own": a fair and just return for their labour, and a voice in the country's affairs. This book seeks to explain why the crusade, which seemed to promise so much, ended in disillusion.

Ian McDonald was born in Montreal in 1942 and died in St. John's in 1977. After early education in Toronto, he graduated from Memorial University with joint honours in History and Philosophy in 1965. He received a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University in 1971. He joined the History Department at Memorial University in 1972.

Ian D.H. McDonald's profile page

James Hiller came to Newfoundland as a graduate student in the mid-1960s and became a member of Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Department of History in 1972. He retired as a University Research Professor in 2007 and was appointed professor emeritus in 2010. In 2011, Dr. Hiller received the Newfoundland and Labrador Historical Society’s Heritage Award. He has been widely recognized for his contributions to the history of both Newfoundland and Labrador.

James K. Hiller's profile page

"This is the story of a newly independent colony in which people are struggling for power within a parliamentary democracy easily manipulated by mercantile capitalists. It is a story of the Fishermen’s Protective Union, a radical social movement of impoverished fishermen, led by an energetic organizer…MacDonald’s work is a good example of political history as ehnography of politicians and politics."

Bonnie McCay, Applied Anthropology