President Trump has been talking up Canada as the 51^st state and, in the ensuing outrage, people have lost track of historical events. It wasn’t so long ago that Canada itself expanded on a grand scale. In 1949, Canada acquired Newfoundland and Labrador, a territory of 156,000 square miles. For much of their history, the people of Newfoundland were opposed to union with Canada, and not fully informed of the forces behind the acquisition. That is the contention of Greg Malone in Don’t Tell the Newfoundlanders: The True Story of Newfoundland’s Confederation with Canada.

“Newfoundland was Britain’s oldest possession and nearest territory,” Malone explains, “but the Island was always too valuable an asset for England to allow it to be colonized.” Newfoundland was an “autonomous country” and in 1907, at the Imperial conference in London, “it was elevated to Dominion status with Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” On the other hand, “fully one hundred years after self-government had been granted, Britain still regarded Newfoundland as its own, to possess or dispose of at will.”

The 1941 Atlantic Charter asserted the right of all peoples to self-determination. That year the United States joined World War II, bringing change to Newfoundland, strategically placed in the Atlantic. In 1943, Malone notes, “Newfoundland opinion was almost unanimously against any union with Canada,” which “wanted the prize of Labrador,” rich in iron ore.

“By 1944, after just three years of American activity on the island,” Malone notes, “not only was there full employment but the Commission of Government was running surpluses—an astonishing turnaround.” As the war carried on, “both the Canadians and the British in Newfoundland were increasingly embarrassed by the Americans, who were far more popular than the Canadians and were clearly spending more and doing more for the Island than its British rulers had ever done.” For Canada’s ruling class, the greatest threat was the possible union of Newfoundland with the United States.

By Malone’s count, “there were hundreds of thousands of Newfoundlanders living and working in New York and Boston, outspoken against union with Canada and in favor of coming in with the USA.” The “proper procedure” would have been to allow Newfoundlanders to make their own choice, but it was not to be.

Malone gathered “top-secret memos” that “mark beginning of the high-level operation between Britain and Canada to bring Newfoundland into confederation without the knowledge of the people of Newfoundland.” Don’t Tell the Newfoundlanders reads like an epistolary novel, with names straight out of Evelyn Waugh: Alexander Clutterbuck, Hume Wrong, A.A. Butt, and Jack Pickersgill—executive assistant to Canadian Prime Minister McKenzie King.

The “whole future of Canada,” Pickersgill contended, depended on Newfoundland and if the U.S. took over, Canada would be “strangled not physically but spiritually.” King’s assistant seemed to have forgotten the recent conflict against Hitler’s National Socialist Germany. From 1939 to 1941, during the Hitler-Stalin Pact, many Americans came to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and fight Nazism. Canadians and Americans fought together in the First Special Service Force and on D-Day both nations took the fight to the occupying Nazis.

With German National Socialism in defeat, the USSR held Eastern Europe captive and sought footholds in Asia and South American. Given these realities, it’s hard to understand how possession of Newfoundland by the United States, a neighbor and ally in two world wars, would spiritually “strangle” Canada. Malone cites evidence that this was not a new sentiment.

According to a cabinet statement “each phase of expansion in Canada has been a tactical move designed to forestall, counteract or restrain the northward expansion of American economic and political influence.” Above all else, Malone explains, “the Canadians did not want to be put into competition with the Americans,” so inclusion of the U.S. on the ballot would be “undesirable.”

During World War II, Canada’s ambassador to the United States was Lester Pearson, who went on to serve as undersecretary of state for external affairs. As the secret memos reveal, Pearson was “extremely nervous that the extent of the Canadian involvement in the referendum process would become known.” Many believed the vote in the 1948 referenda had been tampered with, and ballots were burned rather than being preserved for a recount. It did become clear that the winner failed to stick the landing.

“Canada failed utterly to develop the new East Coast it had acquired,” contends Malone. “Bad roads, no real development money, just handouts.” Newfoundland “went from an international hub to a Canadian backwater overnight.” When relocating across Canada, the Newfoundlanders ran up against a “wall of ignorance and prejudice” and found themselves treated with “condescension and contempt.”

When people in Toronto found out he was from Newfoundland, Malone recalls, they would “laugh in my face and ask if I had ever seen a television set and if I really lived in an igloo.” Across Canada, the operative term was “stupid Newfies,” which Canadians of a certain age can verify. Malone says he “went to Toronto a Canadian and came back a Newfoundlander,” but Newfoundland was not the only territory with complaints about Canada, noticed by foreign leaders.

In 1967, Canada’s centennial year, French president Charles De Gaulle stood on a balcony in Montreal and shouted “Vive le Québec libre!” Prime Minister Lester Pearson, who had been so secretive about Newfoundland, said the speech was “unacceptable to the Canadian people,” but it helped launch a strong separatist movement in the largely French-speaking province. Separatist sentiments are now surging in Alberta, where some Albertans seek economic association with the United States or possibly full statehood. Consider Greg Malone’s thoughts for his island homeland.

“As Newfoundland slowly gains more control over its resources, it will be empowered to determine its own destiny in a way it was not permitted to do in 1948. Perhaps one day the diaspora will return, our sons and daughters will remain at home, and, if they so choose, Newfoundland and Labrador will be an independent country once again.” As such, the people would be free to make their own choices.

Though Newfoundland has a lot in common with Canada, which “leans to the left,” Malone believes “Newfoundlanders would make great Americans, and would be free in the United States of the negative preconceptions that have hampered them in Confederation.” If they sent a delegation to Washington, President Trump would surely give them a listen. In the style of De Gaulle, maybe Trump could visit the provincial capital of St. John’s and proclaim “Vive Terre-Neuve libre!”

Lately the president has been casting an eye on Greenland, which just voted in a government favoring independence. So as Trump likes to say, we’ll have to see what happens.