Peer Pressure

This article explores how professional status becomes a tool of social control in Newfoundland, where teachers, administrators, and other credentialed actors quietly enforce what can and cannot be said. Rather than overt censorship, it’s posture, tone, and strategic silence that keep dissent contained—until, when that fails, the courtroom is used. The piece also examines the 2025 Education Accord scandal, where fake citations in a government-endorsed roadmap exposed the fragility of credentialed trust. By tracing how truth is filtered through class optics and respectability politics, it reveals the quiet mechanics of soft-authority systems. Read More...

This article examines how polarization within Newfoundland’s civic and activist communities often leads to mirrored dysfunction rather than genuine progress. What begins as a split over values or strategy quickly devolves into a pattern where rival factions replicate the same control tactics they claim to oppose. Drawing on personal experience and prior exposés, the piece explores how slander, silence, and strategic erasure are used to protect group image and loyalty — not truth. It highlights how individuals who speak outside the accepted narrative are sidelined or reframed, even when their insights are accurate and well-sourced. In the absence of real accountability, reputation becomes currency, and power flows through personal allegiance rather than principle — leaving the entire province locked in cycles of compliance, division, and missed opportunity. Read More...

This article explores how Newfoundland mistakes compliance for unity, showing how social rehearsal and enforced consensus keep communities stuck in dysfunctional cycles. From laughter on cue at staged meetings, to Paul Pike directing “acceptable” debate in Facebook groups, to Rae Miller choreographing opposition door-to-door, to Catherine Fenwick’s ideological loyalty tests and the intimidation of Nadine and Duran Felix — the culture rewards conformity and punishes deviation. Even elites like Andrew Parsons, Tony Cornect, and Chief Mi’sel Joe follow the same script, stepping into safe roles that preserve the cycle. The result is a province locked into megaproject failures and consultant schemes, not only by weak governance and opportunistic operators, but by its own rehearsal of safe narratives. Read More...

Vanishing Evidence: The 404 Strategy of Selective Activism exposes how inconvenient truths in Newfoundland activism are erased — sometimes through outright deletion, sometimes through strategic silence. Using the Environmental Transparency Committee’s August 2025 post about quarry water use as a case study, the article shows how selective outrage distracts from bigger threats like fracking, despite leaders’ political, bureaucratic, and financial ties to the energy sector. From deleted posts and suppressed petitions to institutional 404s, the piece demonstrates how vanishing evidence shapes consensus, silences dissent, and reinforces hidden loyalties. Read More...

This article examines the cultural pattern in Newfoundland where independent voices are often sidelined for speaking up too early. Using cases like Brenda Kitchen’s boundary-setting, Rae Miller’s role in delaying a petition with 85% local opposition to a wind project, and Duran Felix’s public confrontation during a protest, it shows how early dissent is reframed as disruption, punished socially, and later rewritten out of the narrative. The piece connects these incidents to broader community dynamics where unity is mistaken for conformity, making it easier for outside actors to control local debates. It argues that being early should be an asset, not a liability, in healthy communities. Read More...