The chunky little Marvita was on her strangest assignment. The 122-ton Newfoundland customs cutter, with election officials and ballot boxes aboard, was serving as a floating polling booth for the first election in Labrador's history.
The voting list was the census. That excluded Labrador's several hundred white stationers who go down north from Newfoundland every summer to live in frame and moss tilts and fish inshore, also the 1,200 summer floaters who fish from vessels offshore. Only the 4,000 year-around white livyers (meaning live here) and the 1,500 Eskimos, half-breeds, Nascopie and Montagnais Indians could vote.
Last week the Marvita chugged...
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