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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #60130 Medium The Newfoundland referendums of 1948: two votes on the way into Canada

Read the following passage.

A. In 1948, the people of Newfoundland voted twice to decide how they would be governed. The ballot offered three paths: continue with the Commission Government, join Canada, or return to responsible government as an independent dominion. The question had a long history. Attempts to bring Newfoundland into Confederation in the 1860s and 1890s had met with lukewarm interest. Then, facing bankruptcy during the Great Depression, the colony's leaders suspended responsible government in 1934 and accepted an unelected Commission Government directed by Britain. The two referendums would settle which of the three paths the colony would follow.

B. The Second World War made Newfoundland an important military base, and American, British and Canadian military spending brought back prosperity. In 1946, voters elected a National Convention to study the colony's political future, and two years of vigorous debate followed. The British government then decided to include confederation on the referendum ballot. The confederation side, led by F. Gordon Bradley and Joey Smallwood, had probably expected this. The anti-confederates, by contrast, seem to have been taken by surprise.

C. The anti-confederate side was divided. The Responsible Government League wanted a simple return to Newfoundland's status in 1933, while the Economic Union Party, led by Chesley Crosbie, promoted a special economic relationship with the United States. Their campaign was inadequately funded and organized. The confederates had more money and an island-wide network, and Smallwood predicted that confederation would win between 60,000 and 70,000 votes on 3 June. He was right: it received 64,066 votes, or 41.1 percent. Responsible government came first with 69,400 votes, or 44.6 percent, and Commission Government, which finished last, was dropped from the second ballot.

D. The second campaign, before the vote on 22 July, was unpleasant. The confederates stressed the role the Roman Catholic Church had played in the first referendum in order to swing Protestant votes, and they attacked the Economic Union Party as disloyal and anti-British. This time confederation won with 78,323 votes, or 52.3 percent. In both referendums, the Avalon Peninsula supported responsible government, while the rest of the country chose confederation. The British and Canadian parliaments then approved the union, and on 31 March 1949 Newfoundland became Canada's 10th province, with Smallwood as its first premier.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

- 1.
People in one part of Newfoundland backed the same choice both times they went to the polls.

- 2.
An elected assembly spent a couple of years debating the future of Newfoundland.

- 3.
Smallwood based his forecast of the first result on reports from local organizers.

- 4.
Those against confederation were split into two parties with different aims.

- 5.
Money troubles led the leaders to hand power to a body nobody had elected.

- 6.
Money spent on military bases during the war helped Newfoundland become prosperous again.

- 7.
Before the second vote, one side tried to use religious differences to win support.

- 8.
Decades earlier, proposals to join Confederation drew only weak support.

- 9.
The option that came first in the opening vote still won less than half of the support.

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