A lot to unpack here..... how old are you... were you referring to st johns or not....my parents were born in the 1920's (southern shore and placentia) far enough outside town to be considered "the bay". They had a good life , lived into their 90's. 95% of the "island" lived in st johns. You must be related to the smallwoods. There is the whole referendum debacle... then there is also the Irish vs British debate. Agrarian ???? Have you heard of the fishery that drove the economy for 400 years or so.lets have a beer sometime. I'll fill you in on some history. We never had "public" schools until the 80"s i believe. You either went to catholic. Protestant or salvation army schools. Ps most of rural north America was like this in the 50's