While I was unplugged and on vacation in New Brunswick, PEI and the Magdalen Islands, I missed the challenge of infusing my vocabulary with an Internet-generated word-of-the day. I did, however, bolster my Atlantic Canada vernacular by reading Wayne Johnson's, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.
A triumvirate of terms I plucked from Johnson's novel about Newfoundland's first premier, Joe Smallwood, and the history of this colony/country/province:
syllogism: a crafty argument
dory: short, flat-bottomed boat with high flaring sides
confederation: alliance
Tempers flared, like the sides of dories, as politicians and all manner of pundits cast their syllogisms in favor and against Newfoundland's proposed confederaton with Canada.
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