Develop or Perish: A Pictorial Record of J.R. Smallwood’s New Industries is an illustrated companion to Escape Hatch by Dr. Gerhard P. Bassler.

Most of the pictures in the book were offered for publication by the more than 100 immigrants and Newfoundlanders interviewed about Newfoundland’s “new industries” of the 1950s and 1960s. The immigrant interviewees included German, Austrian and Latvian workers and managers, as well as some of their wives and adult children.

Post-Confederation industrialization

Then-premier J.R. Smallwood had recruited them from Germany, along with 15 of the 17 industries that employed them, to industrialize Newfoundland after it had joined Canada in 1949.

Along with additional images from archives and newspapers, these photos provide an unique pictorial record of the New Industries story.

Develop or Perish is published by Flanker Press.

Dr. Bassler is professor emeritus at Memorial University and is a specialist in modern German history and Canadian migration history. His previous books include Escape Hatch: Newfoundland’s Quest for German Industry and Immigration, 195-70, Vikings to U-Boats: The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador, Alfred Valdmanis and the Politics of Survival, Sanctuary Denied: Refugees from the Third Reich and Newfoundland Immigration Policy, 1906-49 and the German Canadian Mosiac Today and Yesterday.