As for the food, I vowed never to mention it to my father, who managed once or twice a month to snare a few rabbits in the woods behind the house so we could have our meal of meals, rabbit stew, our only fresh-meat meal. My mother sometimes cobbled together “shipwreck” dinner or jig’s dinner, boiled cabbage and potatoes and salt beef, along with pease pudding made from peas boiled in a cloth bag. Mostly we ate salt cod and potatoes.

Wayne Johnston, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, 24

For Joey Smallwood (first Premier of Newfoundland, narrator of Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams), rabbit stew is the meal of meals – the occasional hint of fresh meat in a diet of sald cod, salt beef and more than a fare share of hunger.

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