09/02/2026
🗺 HILROY APOLOGIZED FOR ITS MAP. QUEBEC STILL WON’T ACCEPT OURS. ⚜️
Yes, leaving the island of Newfoundland off a map of Canada is insulting. Hilroy screwed up, Newfoundlanders called them out, and the company apologized.
Tony Wakeham was quick to jump on the controversy too, declaring: “You can leave Newfoundland off an exercise book, but you can’t erase us.”
Great line, Tony. Now show some of that backbone where it actually matters.
Because this reeks of desperation from a Premier, government, and party under heavy fire from the public over an extraordinarily unpopular new deal with Quebec. They desperately needed something — anything — to change the conversation, and a scribbler is the best they could come up with.
While Tony fights Hilroy, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are fighting something far more consequential: his new 50-year Churchill Falls deal with Quebec and his broken promise to put it to a referendum. If Tony stood up to Quebec and Ottawa with the same enthusiasm he's showing toward a notebook company, maybe we'd have a better Churchill Falls deal.
And there is a much more insidious map we should be far more worried about.
The Government of Quebec continues to mark the Labrador boundary as “non-definitive” on its official maps. The Parti Québécois has gone further, historically rejecting the 1927 boundary settlement and advancing Quebec's claim to Labrador based on a boundary roughly 50 miles inland from the coast.
THAT is the bastardized map Tony Wakeham should be worried about.
Nearly a century after Newfoundland won the Labrador boundary dispute, Quebec still refuses to fully accept the result. And now our government wants to bind Newfoundland and Labrador to Quebec through another extraordinarily long Churchill Falls agreement lasting until 2077.
A printing mistake on a scribbler can be fixed with another printing run. A 50-year electricity agreement cannot.
If Tony wants to proclaim that Newfoundland cannot be erased, prove it at the negotiating table. Stand up for lower power rates at home, our right to sell our power to the highest bidder, our interests when dealing with Quebec and Ottawa, and the referendum you promised Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
The symbolism is impossible to ignore. After generations of Quebec disputing the Labrador boundary, Tony Wakeham is offering Quebec another half-century agreement over Labrador's greatest energy resource — on terms so attractive to Quebec that even the Parti Québécois is considering supporting the deal.
At this point, Tony's new Churchill Falls deal looks less like hard bargaining with Quebec and more like reparations for Quebec losing the 1927 Labrador boundary dispute.
Hilroy made a mistake and apologized. Quebec still questions our boundary, and Tony Wakeham wants to give them another 50-year Churchill Falls deal.
We know which map Newfoundlanders and Labradorians should be worried about.
