I had little idea of what to expect of Himself, for he was then 87. I had hoped to interview him about Newfoundland history, for I was writing a thesis on confederation, and had discovered in the papers of the Responsible Government League that he had been involved in the anti-confederate campaigns of 1948. I also heard that he had been Archbishop Roche's solicitor, and I thought that he might have some good stories about the archbishop's legendary opposition to confederation. In one of those rare twists of fate, as Newfoundland's Chief Justice in 1972, he had ended the Smallwood era when in the court case after a disputed election result, he peremptorily removed the Only Living Father's majority in the House, observing that he as Justice did not recognize precedents of the Supreme Court of Canada which pre-dated Newfoundland's entry into confederation.

I cautiously entered the parlour, where an old man in a haggard wing-back chair peered out the window, lost in the memories of another world.

He caught sight of me. "Good afternoon, Mister Fitz-Jar'ld!" he proffered, in an old Anglo-Irish St. John's accent. After a few pleasantries, I explained that I had wanted to interview him about the League, and the involvement of the elusive Archbishop in the referendum. My words wound him up. His eyes narrowed to slits and he cut me off: "His Grace was not inaccessible! He was most accessible to me!"

This was not a man mentally hindered by age.

For the next two hours he crustily lectured me about the goals and methods of the League ("Who were we supposed to get to lead the League? The garbagemen?!"), and while skilfully circumventing any idle chatter about his legal relationship with the Archbishop ("It was lawyer-client confidentiality, you know..."), he made sure I knew that a dour Welshman, Governor Gordon MacDonald, who had been given the sobriquet "The Bastard" by some anonymous poet in The Evening Telegram, ran such a teetotal Government House that guests invariably resorted to the West Lodge for drink.

Over the next two years, I occasionally visited the Old Justice at Winterton. He gradually opened up, becoming less formal, and told me more stories, richly populated by the people, places, and events of old Newfoundland. He was delighted that he had rejected Smallwood's overtures in August 1948 to join his first cabinet: "Joe", he smiled, "I hate your guts, politically!", he said, before showing Smallwood the door. He told me of the three unhappy days he'd spent in 1959 before accepting Diefenbaker's offer of the Chief Justiceship of Newfoundland. In his retirement he loved to read, and remember. Occasionally he got mad, when his hearing-aid squealed, and he'd utter "Godd-dammit!" when his grisled old crackie howled, or when his old grey cat cried like a screaming child in the cradle. On one visit he met me at the door, wearing a crimson silk archbishop's beretta with a pom-pom tassel. "It's Archbishop Roche's! He left it to me!"

And then there was Winterton itself, a former coaching house and way-station for the stage-coach to Portugal Cove, a museum of three centuries of Newfoundland books, artworks, pictures, and artifacts. Every last inch of the floors and tables of its dark rooms were jam-packed with high stacks and teetering piles of dusty old books, but his library, The Library, the jewel in the crown, was the most guarded room of the house, and one was only introduced to it by the Old Justice himself. Even the housekeeper was instructed not to enter. To be shown it was a mark of trust, a signal honour of acceptance.

One afternoon he asked whether I'd like to see his collection of rare Newfoundland books. I happily said that I would very much like to, whereupon he barked at his housekeeper to get his cane, a bark which set the grizzled old crackie howling and the cat screeching. "Godd-Dammitt!," he cursed.

When the cane arrived he took it and pointed to the door."Follow me," he ordered. "Yes, Milord", I almost replied. He set off down the hall into the dusty gloom, with the dog in high procession behind him, the cat behind the dog, and me behind the cat. A procession through the law courts with Mr. Chief Justice. He loved processions.

To get from the parlour to the Library, one had to pass through a long hallway lined off with rare Best lithographs of eighteenth century Newfoundland, precariously hanging by strings from the walls at jaunty angles. The Library was a small, low, gloomy room, perhaps 15 x 15, with a cold fireplace, over which hung the only-known original rendering of the King's Beach in St. John's, circa 1780. Through the gloom I saw a crackled old leather wing-back chair, placed over a hole in the floorboards, next to an ancient dried dog turd on the floor. And there, next to the chair, in a small half-height bookcase on the north-west wall, were the rare books. Furlong reverently handed me the only known copy of Wreaths of Smoke, a book by the 19^th century St. John's physician Henry Hunt Stabb. Then came Richard Whitbourne's Discourse and Discovery (1620) and the most precious book, Robert Hayman's little book of essays, Quodlibets (1628), bound in white vellum and in a vellum slipcase, believed to be the first book ever written in Newfoundland, on the subject of Hayman's colony at Bristol's Hope. Then there was the second edition Kelmscott Chaucer, and an eighteenth^-century Book of Common Prayer that had belonged to the explorer Captain John Cartwright. The Old Justice had inherited his father's books and augmented them with his own acquisitions. The collection was one of the best private collections in Newfoundland.

Who were his family? His sister had run a small school at Winterton for children of the local elite. His father had been Martin Williams Furlong, a brilliant lawyer who renegotiated the 1898 Reid Railway contract, and provided legal assistance to P.T. McGrath in the Labrador Boundary Dispute, which was resolved in Newfoundland's favour by the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council in 1927. His son was born in 1904, and grew to show an interest in law. After graduation from St. Bonaventure's in 1921, he articled in St. John's and was called to the Newfoundland Bar in 1926. During World War II, he was a media censor, and a member of the Board of Governors of the Broadcast Corporation of Newfoundland, the managing board of radio station VONF. In another twist of fate, he knew or was related to many of the leading public figures in Newfoundland public life before confederation, but never married, remaining engaged to the same woman until her death. One of his great friends was his second cousin, Major Peter Cashin, the fiery unofficial leader of the anti-confederate movement who had once sued his own mother. The Old Justice and Cashin often disagreed and had arguments, some quite public, the most celebrated of which was in 1947. Cashin was charged by members of the Commission of Government with making libellous statements in the National Convention, so he defended himself against cross-examination from his cousin, who was the solicitor for the plaintiffs. When a hung jury returned to the courtroom, Cashin refused to accept a majority verdict, and thus escaped the Commissioners' wrath into the arms of a cheering public outside the courthouse. Through his mother, the Old Justice was related to F.M. O'Leary, the leader of the League, and through Cashin, he was related to Mr. Justice Cyril Fox (Cashin's brother- in-law), the Chairman (in 1946) of the Newfoundland National Convention, and through Fox, to the leading lights of the Catholic aristocracy of 19^th and 20^th century Newfoundland, the Morrisses and Howleys among them. But the real pedigree of the old Justice was that he had lived through most of twentieth-century Newfoundland history, knew its participants and their history intimately, and generously shared his knowledge with others who appreciated it.

Unfortunately, Winterton and the Old Justice himself, passed into history on the morning of 9 February 1996, a snotty old winter day, replete with freezing rain. A fire started when some old wiring in the attic sparkled and caught alight. The Old Justice was overcome by the smoke, and the house was a ruin, but by some stroke of providence, and some dedicated friends, his great love, a few of the rare books in his Library were saved before the house was pulled down.

John FitzGerald