From it’s founding in 1788 as a penal colony Sydney served as a destination for Britain’s burgeoning surplus of convicted persons up until 1850. One of the most distinctive episodes of the transportation history in the period involved the sojourn in New South Wales of 58 French Canadians from Lower Canada (today Quebec) in the early 1840s.Their crimes, having participated in revolts against the inequities of British rule in Canada in 1837 and 1838.
(Image: Canadian Encyclopedia)
Both Lower Canada and Upper Canada (present-day Ontario province) rose up against the prevailing political “stitch-up” in British Canada. Power in Lower Canada rested firmly in the hands of a English speaking merchant oligarchy known as the “Château Clique”Ⓐ, controlling the executive and legislative councils, the judiciary and the senior bureaucracy. An additional grievance of the Francophone discontents was economic – widespread crop failures in 1836/37 had forced many into subsistence farming. The Les patriotes movement under Louis-Joseph Papineau, repeatedly thwarted by the ruling aristocracy in it’s efforts to secure a better deal, took to arms. The rebels in Upper Canada led by William Lyon Mackenzie, similarly frustrated by the denial of political reform, followed the lead of Les rébelles francophones, declaring the “Republic of Canada”. Mackenzie’s forces were aided by the incursion of American volunteers from the borderland states, partly inspired by patriotism and partly by a sense of adventure and the desire to strike a blow against the thraldom of their northern neighbours by the British (Maxine Dagenais, ‘The American Response to the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38’, The Canadian Encyclopedia, 09-Oct-2019, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca). Both insurrections however were easily and comprehensively crushed by the superior British and loyalist forces…the principal leaders of the uprisings fled to the USA but some 29 of Les patriotes were executedⒷ.
Historic map detailing extent of Longbottom area (Source: docplayer.net)
Political prisoners removed to the remote Antipodes
A further 58 French speaking Canadian rebels from Lower Canada, originally intended for the “hell-hole” of Norfolk Island, were allowed after intercession by Catholic Archbishop Polding to serve their sentences in Sydney. The patriotes were assigned to the Longbottom Stockage (formerly the Longbottom Government Farm) in Concord (map), housed in crudely-built trenches on the present site of Concord Oval. The less skilled of the exiles found themselves in a quarry gang, tasked with the back-breaking work of breaking and carting rocks for construction of Parramatta Road. Others were employed felling trees and sawing blocks of wood for house construction or firing bricks for use in public works.
“Of good character”
The French Canadians political prisoners were far from the hardened criminals that could be found in much of Sydney Town at the time. In fact they had no previous convictions before being transported, some had been skilled rural artisans in Canada. By the account of no less than Governor Gipps himself, the exiles’ behaviour during their term of imprisonment had been ‘exemplary’, though unbeknownst to the authorities some of their number were also engaging in the odd illicit activity to earn a bit of money on the side, selling purloined wood, collecting oyster shells in nearby Hen and Chicken Bay to sell (Sheena Coupe, Concord – A Centenary History, (1983)).
Ticket-of-leave from Longbottom
The French Canadian exiles were deemed sufficiently responsible that by 1842 the government started releasing them from the stockade to live with ”respectable people”, working for food and lodgings. The political prisoners were then issued with tickets-of-leave into the community so they can earn wages. By the end of 1843, early 1844, the governor awarded free pardons to all of the exiles. 55 of the patriotes took the chance to return to Quebec (once they had raised the necessary passage – which took some up to four years as jobs were scarce in the 1840s Depression) and only one, Joseph Marceau, opted to stay, marrying an Australian woman and settling near Wollongong (two of the original exiled men died while in prison). With the departure of the Canadians the Longbottom Stockade fell into disrepair, its only practical use, a makeshift lockup for ”noisy drunks apprehended on Parramatta Road” (Coupe).
1890 map identifies “Longbottom Estate” (Source: Coupe)Reminders of the Canadien exiles’ presence
While nothing remains of the stockade (above ground anyway), the exiles are remembered in the Concord locale’s nomenclature – Exile Bay, Canada Bay, France Bay, Châteauguay Walk (named after Prieur’s village in Montreal), Marceau Drive. Bayview Park in Concord—where the French Canadians disembarked at the park’s wharf in 1840 on route to Longbottom Stockade—contains a monument to the exiles. First-hand accounts of the exiles
Three of the 58 transported Canadiens left accounts of their time in Sydney—Francois-Maurice Lepailleur, Léon Ducharme and Francois Xavier Prieur—the only transported convicts in 1840s Sydney who kept daily records of their experiences (Beverley Boissery, A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason, Trials and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion , (1995)). Impression Bay Probation Station. North American prisoners did hard labour at the network of probation stations on Van Diemens Land’ (Image: UTAS)
American ‘Borderlander’ political prisoners in Van Diemens Land
The same ship that brought the Canadiens to Sydney, HMS Buffalo , also transported between 82 and 93 Upper Canada rebelsⒸ to the penal colony in Van Diemens Land. These were predominantly American ‘borderlanders’ who had invaded Upper Canada to ’liberate’ the Canadians from the British ‘yoke’. The American prisoners‘ experience ran parallel to that of their French Canadian counterparts but their suffering and hardship in the Van Diemens Land colony was much, much worse. Some of the US exiles like William Gates, Linus Miller and Benjamin Wait(e)Ⓓ later wrote accounts of their treatment in Tasmanian prison camps …chain ganged together, treated like slaves, subjected to draconian regimes of labour and living conditions (14 of the patriots died during the incarceration). And unlike the well-regarded Canadiens in Sydney the Americans were vilified by the local press as the epitome of disloyalty (“Americans of the lowest order”) (Carter, J. C. (2009). Most achieved their ticket-of-leave after three to five years although a few escaped on whaler boats ‘One Way Ticket to a Penal Colony: North American Political Prisoners in Van Diemen’s Land’, Ontario History, 101(2), 188-221. http://doi.org/10.7292/1065618ar).
Concord Oval: Longbottom trenches excavated in 1984 (Credit: Canada Bay Connections)
Endnote: Longbottom Stockage and surrounds encompassed a large area. The stockage itself sat on land which today is occupied by three recreational fields, Concord Oval, St Luke’s Park and Cintra Park.
꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~
Ⓐ the equivalent dominant entity in Upper Canada was the “Family Compact”
Ⓑ the (failed) rebellions nonetheless indirectly led eventually to responsible self-government for the Union of the two Canadian provinces (as proposed by Lord Durham)
Ⓒ accounts differ as the number, possibly due to conflation as a number of other American prisoners arrived from Canada in 1839
Ⓓ Wait (or Waite) was Canadian by birth though his father was American and Wait on return lived the rest of his life in the US
The first time I wandered through Waverley Cemetery in the chic, beachside eastern suburbs of Sydney I was somewhat bemused to find in the midst of the congested maze of gravesites of famous Australians—poets, politicians and judges, sports men and women, aviation pioneers among others—a large, impressive marble, bronze and mosaic memorial to the martyrs of the 1798 Irish Rebellion.
Honouring the sacrifices of 1798
The connexion only became clear to me later when I did some research on the ‘mystery’. The nexus linking the heroic but lost cause of nascent Éireannach 18th century insurrection against the indignities of English rule to a Sydney cemetery turned out to be one Michael Dwyer, whose remains along with those of his wife are buried within the grand monument. The memorial was constructed for the 100-year anniversary (1898) of the uprising, the plot and monument paid for by the local Irish community in New South Wales.
Michael Dwyer, hero of Wicklow resistance
Dwyer in the ‘Pantheon’ of Irish independence heroes
Native Wicklow man ‘Captain’ Dwyer fought in the ‘98 Rebellion, later leading an effective guerrilla campaign against the British army in the Wicklow Mountains. Dwyer held out till 1803, earning himself the sobriquet “the Wicklow Chief” before his eventual capture and transportion to the NSW colony (not America as he had been promised). In any event Dwyer got off pretty lightly compared to many of the rebels – given his freedom and a land grant of 100 acres on Cabramatta Creek. Dwyer’s life in Australia was a roller coaster of a ride and colourful to put it mildly…twice imprisoned and tried for plotting an Irish insurrection against the British authorities in NSW, a highly dubious charge that that he was acquitted of (though he still had to do time in Norfolk Island and Van Diemens Land penal colonies). When the NSW Corps overthrew Governor Bligh in the Rum Rebellion, Dwyer was reinstated as a free man, fortune favoured him again a couple of years later when he was made chief constable of police at Liverpool, NSW, and then it deserted him once more when Dwyer ended up in debtors’ prison (Ruan O’Donnell, ‘Dwyer, Michael (1772–1825)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/dwyer-michael-12896/text23301, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 9 September 2021; O’Sullivan, Michael, 1798 Memorial, Waverley Cemetery, Dictionary of Sydney, 2012, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/1798_memorial_waverley_cemetery, viewed 10 Sep 2021).
First steps on a long road to liberty
The inspiration for a surge in Irish nationalism and a sovereign republic free of English domination came from the French and to a lesser extent American revolutions. Ireland had a parliament of its own in Dublin but democratic participation was strictly limited by religious and property entitlements, squeezing out Catholics and Presbyterians and leaving the “Protestant Ascendency” in control of the country. The Society of United Irishmen (SUI), a secular organisation not restricted to Catholics¹,was formed to push for real autonomy for the Irish. Some reforms were forthcoming such as the franchise for non-Protestants but this was not near enough for the more radical elements of SUI.
Wolfe Tone
The SUI leader (Theobald) Wolfe Tone forged links with French republicans aimed at overthrowing English rule, leading to a 1796 invasion of Ireland by a nearly 14,000-strong French army. Unfortunately nature intervened and the invasion fleet ran into storms off the Irish west coast, loss of vessels and lives forced the abandonment of the invasion. The response of the government in Ireland—symbolically known as Dublin Castle—was to crack down heavily on the SUI radicals. The SUI was driven underground in a wave of repression culminating in the imprisonment of many of the organisation’s leaders. Though the Irish republicanism of SUI was a popular sentiment in the country, it didn’t have universal support even on the Catholic side, the Catholic Church strongly opposed what it saw as the ‘atheistic’ United Irishmen (‘The 1798 Rebellion – A Brief Overview’, John Dorney, The Irish Story, 28-Oct-2017, www.theirishstory.com).
Battle of Vinegar Hill
An uncoordinated insurrection
The Irish rising in 1798 was ill-timed and badly organised – most of the SUI leadership was still incarcerated. The insurgents’ planning was strategically inept, the rebellion was intended to be nationwide, but was largely confined to isolated pockets – Wexford, Leinster, Mayo, Antrim and Down. Dublin which should have been central to the revolt played virtually no part in it (Dorney). Historian Thomas Bartlett disputes the commonly held view of the rebellion being a localised affair…he argues that far from being confined to the east coast, the uprising produced “tremors throughout the country” with disturbance occurring in a very large number of counties (Bartlett, Thomas. “Why the History of the 1798 Rebellion Has Yet to Be Written.” Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an Dá Chultúr15 (2000): 181-90. Accessed September 8, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30071449). The rebels had some brief, early successes (especially the Battle of Oulart), but superior English troops and weaponry overwhelmed the poorly equiped Irish force inside a month. A subsequent incursion from a small French expeditionary force offered a momentary flicker of hope for the rebel cause but this was quickly snuffed out as the English-led forces took complete charge of the country. Retribution against the rebel leaders was swift and uncompromisingly brutal, most were summarily executed (or in Wolfe Tone’s case took his own life while awaiting execution). Atrocities were committed on both sides. A large number of the insurgents (like Michael Dwyer later on) were transported to the penal colony in New Holland. The failed ‘98 rising left a mixed legacy, intensifying the level of sectarian bitterness in Ireland but also inspiring countless Irish republicans and revolutionaries to continue the struggle for a free Ireland (‘The 1798 Irish Rebellion’, Thomas Bartlett, BBC, 17-Feb-2011, www.bbc.co.uk).
1800 Act of Union
In the wake of the crushing of the rebellion by the Marquis Cornwallis², fundamental political changes were enacted. The Irish Parliament was dissolved and direct British rule imposed by virtue of the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland, a situation that would stay in force until the Irish Free State came into being in 1922.
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¹ in fact many of the leaders like Wolfe Tone, Harvey and Keogh were Protestant
² the same (Lord) Cornwallis in the forefront of the ignominy associated with the 1781 English surrender at Yorktown which ended the land conflict in the American War of Independence
〝 The principle of preventing the spread of infectious disease by which people, baggage…likely to be infected or coming form an infected place are isolated at frontiers or ports until their harmlessness has been proven…〞 ~ Port Nepean Q-Station‘s definition of ’Quarantine‘
Since the initial strains of Covid-19 turned the world upside down and inside out early last year, the word ‘quarantine’ has found a renewed vigour in the lexicon. In a previous blog the history of Sydney’s early animal quarantine station for imported livestock was outlined – ‘Sydney Foreshore’s Animal House of Detention and Segregation on Hen and Chicken Bay’, 21-Apr-2018. Human quarantine in Sydney has a much longer history. The story starts with governor of the colony of New South Wales Ralph Darling. In response to the cholera pandemic sweeping Europe and the risks of ship-borne disease being transported on vessels coming to the colony, Darling initiated a Quarantine Act in 1832 “subjecting Vessels coming to New South Wales from certain places to the performance of Quarantine”❅.
(Source: researchgate.net / Peter Freeman Pty. 2000)
Darling set aside the entire North Head peninsula (277 hectares)—on indigenous Gayamagal country in Manly on Sydney’s northern beaches—for the grounds of the quarantine processing centre. The exact site chosen for the Q-station, Spring Cove, overlooking Sydney Harbour, was already housing an infected and quarantined merchant ship, the Bussorah Merchant.
In the early years of the station’s operation, the practice was to keep sick passengers on board the vessels on arrival at Spring Cove. After complaints from the merchants about the delay and cost of keeping the ships tied up at North Head, the authorities started bringing the sick onshore to free up the transport ships, this required the construction of more substantial permanent accommodation and storage facilities at the Q-Station to replace the original makeshift buildings [‘North Head Quarantine Station’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Passengers disembarking at North Head Q-Station, 1940s (Photo: State Library of NSW)
Q-Station longevity
The old Quarantine Station enjoyed a surprisingly long lifespan at the North Head site, surviving albeit with decreasing utilisation until 1984⌖, this despite periodical calls for its closure…as far back as 1923 Manly Council alderman and later mayor Percy Nolan was advocating for the Q-Station’s removal in favour of open public space [Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Quarantine Station. Proposed Removal’, 31-May-1923 (Trove)].
Slabs of cut sandstone near the station’s wharf bear the markings of passengers detailing the dates and ship names of their journey to North Head
First class expectations
Conditions and facilities at the Q-station were regularly under scrutiny from the better-off passengers. First class passengers were not slow in bringing deficiencies in housing to the attention of the authorities, leading in the 1870s to the building of a new section of Q-Station passenger accommodation in what was known as “the Healthy Grounds” (Wiki).
A 1881 smallpox epidemic resulting in a large number of internee deaths❧ at North Head facility exposed major shortcomings in the management of the Q-Station, including the lack ofa medical superintendent with a grasp of infection control; no clean linen and towels, soap or medical supplies for patients isolated with smallpox [Allen, Raelene, Smallpox epidemic 1881, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/smallpox_epidemic_1881, viewed 06 Sep 2021].
Aerial view of Nth Head Q-Station – c.1930 (Image: Office of Environment & Heritage)
Bulwark against plagues, viruses, bacteria, etc.
Over the decades the Q-Station at Manly has housed the victims of numerous diseases including smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, measles and the bubonic plague, as well as victims of natural disasters. The Q-Station provided a refuge for returning WWI veterans suffering from TB and VD. At war’s end it served as the frontline defence against the lethal assault of the Spanish Flu.
(Photo: environment.
nsw.gov.au)
Gradual obsolescence
Post-WWII, as air travel gradually replaced passenger ships, the Q-Station’s role diminished in importance. In its final decades of operation the quarantine station was put to diverse use…housing the unvaccinated (eg, pregnant immigrants), accommodating Vietnamese orphans and as a temporary abode for women and children evacuated from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy decimated that city in 1974 [‘The plague, smallpox and Spanish flu: How Sydney quarantined sick travellers throughout history’, Sarah Swain, 9 News, 2020, www.9news.com.au; ’Q Station on Manly’s North Head echoes with history of pandemics past’, Kathy Sharpe, Mandurah Mail, 21-Jul-2021, www.mandurahmail.com.au].
The stairway (connecting the wharf with the housing) replaced the funicular in use during Q-Station period (Photo: Sydney Coast Walks)
No longer a quarantine station, the surviving 65 heritage buildings are set against the beautiful natural bush land of the Sydney Harbour National Park. Today the old Q-station is converted into a hotel complex (104 rooms including nine self-contained cottages, managed by Accor) with all the tourist trappings, including sleepovers and nocturnal “Ghost and Paranormal tours”.
Pt Nepean Q-Station (Photo: Parks Vic)
Footnote: Port Nepean, North Head’s counterpart In Melbourne, that city’s historic quarantine station can be found on the Heads of Port Phillip Bay. Port Nepean Quarantine Station can point to a similar eventful history to that of the North Head facility. Like it, the Melbourne Q-Station owes it’s existence to an infected immigrant ship…the arrival of the SS Ticonderoga in 1852 with 300 passengers stricken from disease, necessitating the ship’s quarantining at Port Nepean, which led to it’s establishment as a Quarantine Station (originally called “the Sanitary Station”). By the 20th century Port Nepean Q-Station had developed a number of innovative processing features including the memorably named “Foul Luggage Receiving Store”. The station’s Disinfectant and Boiler buildings also became models for other quarantine stations in Australia [‘Quarantine Station’, Parks Victoria, www.parks.vic.gov.au]. At one point animals were also quarantined at the location. By 1978 Port Nepean had ceased operating as a quarantine facility and was closed in 1980. Subsequent uses of the site and holdings include a military encampment and a temporary refuge for 400 Kosovar refugees fleeing the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.
➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿
❅ “to prevent the introduction of the disease called the malignant Cholera and other infectious disease”
⌖ during that one-and-a-half centuries the Q-Station was the initial home in Sydney for an estimated 13,000 passengers
❧ and the need to build a third Q-Station cemetery to accommodate the rise in mortality
Contemporary Scandinavian society is rich and appetising fodder for sociologists and behaviouralists. The peculiar strain of egalitarianism that runs through the Nordic countries manifests itself in a concept known as Jantelagen in Swedish or Janteloven in Danish and Norwegian⊡. The origin of the word ‘Janteloven’ comes from a 1933 satirical novel by a Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose. A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks, set in a fictional Danish town called ‘Jante’, is “a thinly veiled roman à clef about his hometown Nykøbing Mors”, Denmark, in which he skewers the inhabitants for their foibles – “pettiness, envy, backbiting, gossip, inverted snobbery and small-mindedness” [‘The Law of Jante’, Michael Booth, Paris Review, 11-Feb-2015 www.parisreview.org]. One small portion of En flyktning krysser sitt spor (the Norwegian title) is of lasting significance, the “Laws of Jante”⊞, the list of ten principles designed to put non-conformists in Nordic society in their place. Sandemose’s so-called ‘Laws’ draw on long and widely held, deeply engrained Scandinavian attitudes⊟.
The 10 Laws of Jante
A society devoid of exceptionalism and ‘oneupmanship’ Janteloven/Jantelagen is a concept which celebrates Nordic self-restraint, “stoic humbleness and modesty”. Any sense of individual superiority and ambition is actively discouraged, as is talking about one’s personal success. The Jante laws are cultural codes which eschew declarations of a self-congratulatory or immodest kind. Nordic “Jante-ism” offers no haven for those seeking to stand out from the crowd. The benefits for adherence, Scandinavians assert, are collective ones, good for the nation as a whole, resulting in enhanced quality of life, a contribution to the “GNP of happiness” enjoyed by its citizens⊠ [‘Jantelagen: The Law of Jante Explained’, Swedes in the States, 22-Feb-2021, www.swedesinthestates.com].
(Source: worldlife expectancy.com)
The Jante Law instructs on what citizens need to do to fit in to the community, but it has a punitive purpose too…if an individual fails to fit in, it provides a way of “socially stigmatising anyone who break the rules”. According to author Michael Booth, it affects the everyday choices Scandinavians make, what clothes you wear, what car you buy, etc [‘Forget hygge: The laws that really rule in Scandinavia’, (BBC Ideas video, 2018, www.bbc.co.uk].
“We are all equal!”
Swedish comparisons are odious: The taboo on money and status Jantelagen is deeply rooted in the Swedish psyche, it is de rigeur for all stratum of society never to talk about one’s wealth or income. Jantelagen also prohibits people from boasting about their social status, firing off a warning shot to allay any notions they may harbour about climbing the social ladder (the codes act as a handbrake on citizens not getting above their station). The reinforcement of the appearance of an egalitarian society helps to keep the balance (ie, serving as a control mechanism, maintaining homogeneity and societal harmony). Stephen Trotter’s study of Janteloven in Norway concludes that it operates as a “form of structural censorship (where) symbolic power is exerted (in the task of) nation-building” [‘Breaking the law of Jante’, SR Trotter, Issue 23 Myth and Nation, www.gla.ac.uk].
(Source: mbastudies.com)
Anything north of average is a win!
The claimed benefits of “Jante-ism” has also been explained in terms of a state of decreased expectations – living by the ten rules installs a sense of average expectations from life, so anything that comes your way “above and beyond the average” will be a welcome bonus, value-adding to your existing store of happiness (Lindsay Dupuis)[‘The happiness of the Danes can easily be explained by 10 cultural rules’, Lila MacLellan, Quartz, 29-Sep-2016, www.qz.com].
A Millennial challenge to the Law of Jante?
The fabric of Jantelagen in a society like Sweden remains firmly intact despite the reality of growing inequalities in income since the 1990s – the top 20% of workers in Sweden earn four times as much as the bottom 20% (OECD). There are some signs in the Scandinavian countries however that the fabric is coming under strain, especially from the changing expectations of the countries’ youth. The inexorable rise of social media presages a Millennial backlash against the Law of Jante… University of Bergen academic Cornelius Cappelen points to the pervasive influence of online platforms to effect behavioural change and undermine the Jante mindset, ie, bragging on Facebook, Instagram, Vlogging, etc, all promoting “rampant individualism” (Cappelin) [‘Law of Jante’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘Jantelagen: Why Swedes won’t talk about wealth’, Maddy Savage, BBC, 18-Oct-2019, www.bbc.com].
(Photo: Sveriges Radio)
Exo-group influences
Aside from pushback from a social media-fuelled Scandinavian youth, challenges to the unspoken social norms of ”Jante-ism” may emerge from other sectors of society. Sweden is increasingly a migrant society, estimates put the proportion of Swedish citizens with a foreign background at around 25%…this growing diversity exposes the community to the influence of outside cultures, many of which have very different socio-cultural norms to the ‘native’ ones, such as the celebration of achievements, skills and talents of the individual (Savage).
Helsinki: Vanha kaupunki (Source: Multi Briefs)
🇩🇰 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇫🇮 🇮🇸
Sandemose’s stern image on a Norwegian jet
Endnote: TPS
Scandinavia’s Jante Law evokes similarities with other cultural phenomenons such as the (albeit less institutionalised) “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. This millennia-old cultural phenomenon—deriving from Ancient Greek and Roman sources—is conspicuously present in but by no means unique to the cultural ethos of Australia and New Zealand. Having freed themselves of the status of British colonies far away in the South-west Pacific, Australians and New Zealanders created through war and statehood a new and separate (mythic) identity for themselves as a ‘superior’ type of Briton…one in which “Jack was as good as his master”. This sustained myth of classlessness, sometimes described as a kind of “ideological egalitarianism down under”, was a conscious attempt to distance these “New Britons” from the rigid class system of the mother country.
⊡ Jante laki in Finnish and Jantelögin in Icelandic
⊞ a sort of mock “informal Scandinavian Ten Commandments” (Booth)
⊟ Sandemose himself by all accounts was hardly a model Nordic citizen, irritable of nature, of questionable morality and thoroughly unpleasant to family according to his granddaughter Iben, also a writer (Booth)
⊠ UN World Happiness Report (2018) ranked the top three countries, in order, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Previously in 2016 Denmark topped the world poll
(Image: Canadian Encyclopedia)
Historic map detailing extent of Longbottom area (Source: docplayer.net)
1890 map identifies “Longbottom Estate” (Source: Coupe)
Reminders of the Canadien exiles’ presence
Impression Bay Probation Station. North American prisoners did hard labour at the network of probation stations on Van Diemens Land’ (Image: UTAS)
Concord Oval: Longbottom trenches excavated in 1984 (Credit: Canada Bay Connections)
