Peter J. Cashin (Cinco De Mayo)

Major Peter John Cashin (March 8, 1890 - May 21, 1977) was a politician and soldier from Newfoundland who played a major role in Newfoundland's roles in World War One, the Canadian Civil War, World War Two and eventually the Newfoundland Crisis. Cashin was the Minister of Defence for the Free State of Newfoundland during World War Two and eventually served dually as Minister and as Chairman of the Newfoundland Civil Defence. As the war wound to a close, he broke off from the War Government of Joey Smallwood and formed the United Newfoundland Party, becoming a key figure in the Newfoundland republican movement. His UNP won an unexpected majority in the 1946 general election called by Smallwood due to defections in the Assembly of Newfoundland from both the left and the right.

Cashin was elected Prime Minister by his majority government and he immediately set out on initiating a strongly pro-republican agenda. On December 20, 1946, Cashin delivered a fateful address to the Assembly in which he attacked the Drummondville Agreement as "an infringement upon the sovereignty of the Free State" and advocated for the creation of "an independent, inviolable Republic of Newfoundland - separate from Canada, separate from Britain." Though his speech was mostly a hypothetical statement of goals, it sparked three years of political turmoil between the various factions of the Free State government as well as the Blue Canadian government which shared St. John's as its seat of government. Cashin, angered by attacks on his character and what he perceived as the demeaning of Newfoundland by Red Canada, Blue Canada and the United States, declared a plebiscite in 1949 as well as a snap election to immediately precede it. When republicans overwhelmingly won both, the Proletarian Republic of Canada invaded Newfoundland to seize it before the Americans could, citing the formation of an independent Newfoundland as a violation of the Drummondville Agreement. This triggered the Newfoundland Crisis, for which Cashin was held almost exclusively responsible by later Canadian governments-in-exile. A political pariah in the West afterwards, Cashin died in obscurity in St. Louis, Missouri in 1977.