The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami is a major new work of nonfiction by one of Canada’s top writers.

On November 18, 1929, a tsunami struck Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula. Giant waves, up to three storeys high, hit the coast at a hundred kilometres per hour, flooding dozens of communities and washing entire houses out to sea. The disaster killed 28 people and left hundreds more homeless or destitute, claiming hundreds if not thousands more lives in the decades to follow.

Linden MacIntyre was born near St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, one of the villages virtually destroyed by the tsunami. By the time of his birth, the cod-fishing industry lay in ruins and the village had become a mining town. MacIntyre’s father, lured from Cape Breton to Newfoundland by a steady salary, worked in St. Lawrence in an underground mine that was later found to be radioactive. Hundreds of miners struggled to survive through shortened lives profoundly compromised by a range of lung diseases. And by the time the village returned to its roots and set up as a cod fishery again, the stocks in the Grand Banks had plummeted and St. Lawrence found itself once more on the brink of disaster.

DIVE DEEPER

Article

• “Linden MacIntyre’s top book picks to mark 70 years since Newfoundland’s divisive decision to join Canada” — The Globe and Mail
• “On The Bookshelf: Linden Macintyre revisits a piece of Canadian — and family — history in The Wake” — Guelph Today

Review

• “The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Tsunami by Linden MacIntyre” — Words, Pages, Books