”Wayne Johnston's diminutive The Old Lost Land of Newfoundland flirts with the maxim that 'good things come in small packages'.... The lecture reflects on the impact Newfoundland's confederation had on the identities of the province and Johnston's family. Here the familial frame works marvelously, since the Johnstons become a microcosmic window onto the social rifts hewn out by Newfoundland's 1949 'annexation,' as the Johnston patriarch calls it.... While Johnston retreads old territory, he broadens his scope by examining the unstable relationships among collective memory, communal identity, history, and fiction. Newfoundland may be the focus of the lecture, but certainly not its terminus. Johnston is a remarkable humourist and personality, both of which adorn this admirable but too-brief text.”
~ Ryan Porter, Canadian Literature