WHERE I BELONGS
Resettlement — moving small coastal communities to larger centres — has long been a part of Newfoundland’s history. Today, it continues to be a hot-button, often divisive, issue. At stake? The future of the island’s outports.
C-COMING INTO the sheltered harbour of Little Bay Islands on Newfoundland’s northeast coast, it’s hard to believe fewer than 100 people call the place home. At first glance, the long string of buildings along the waterfront — homes and sheds and stores, a church, a modern school and playground — suggests several hundred people at least are living here. What isn’t immediately obvious is that many of these houses are owned by seasonal residents from the Canadian mainland or the United States and sit empty much of the year. Others simply sit empty. During the winter, the population drops below 50. As in most Newfoundland outports that were settled to prosecute the cod fishery, Little Bay Islands has seen most of its young people leave since a moratorium on commercial cod fishing was imposed in 1992. The majority of full-time residents here now are seniors. The school, complete with full gymnasium, is attended by two students. There isn’t so much as a corner store where people can buy milk or bread. Little Bay Islands was once at the heart of the local cod industry. Today, it is at the centre of a resurgent debate about resettlement and the future of outport Newfoundland. For the first time since the moratorium, there are signs that cod stocks in Newfoundland waters are on the verge of a major rebuild. It’s a welcome forecast for the hundreds of communities that have been slipping deeper into economic and social crisis without the fishery. But for some, the news has come too late. In 2002, Great Harbour Deep on the Northern Peninsula became the first outport in a generation to resettle, taking a government compensation package to leave en masse. Petites did the same in 2003, and Grand Bruit, also on the island’s south coast, followed suit in 2010. Those people left for Newfoundland communities that were less isolated, or to live with family who had found work on the Canadian mainland. In 2011, the full-time residents of Little Bay Islands held a vote on resettlement in which 60 per cent supported the move, far below the 90 per cent threshold set by the government. But the 2013 provincial budget upped the maximum one-time cash payment to homeowners from $100,000 to $270,000, and the movement gained new momentum. A referendum in late 2013 saw 55 of 69 residents voting to close up their houses and move away for good, and the town council officially requested that the provincial government initiate a relocation process for their community. I visited Little Bay Islands shortly afterward, in the summer of 2014. I was travelling with Gerry Strong, who had spent his earliest years here before leaving with his family at the age of seven. Strong was born into the merchant family that ran the local salt fish trade for generations. The Strongs bought and cured cod from fishermen in outports along the coast. As we walked, Strong pointed out the location of “Strong’s Room,” where the salted cod was laid out to cure. There were three acres of drying flakes here, rail tracks running down the centre to help put out the fish in the morning and collect it again before sunset. In those days, trading vessels from Europe and the Mediterranean sailed into Little Bay Islands every fall to buy
salt cod. When Strong’s father was a boy, he often fell asleep listening to the Greek sailors drinking and playing music on their ships at anchor in the harbour. Strong showed me where a large sandbox once sat on the waterfront near Strong’s Room. Strong and other youngsters used it as a playground. It was only in retrospect that he realized the sand in his childhood shoes came from the Mediterranean and north Africa, brought to Newfoundland as ballast in trading ships from Greece and Egypt, from Spain and France and India. The rise of trawlers and mechanized fish plants after Confederation with Canada marked the end of that world. But Little Bay Islands not only survived the transition from the salt fish trade to fresh frozen, it thrived. In 1960, there were two schools operating in the outport — public and Salvation Army — with a total enrolment of 140 students. A fish plant operated here until the ongoing moratorium ended the commercial cod fishery completely. Since that time, the town has existed in a kind of limbo, facing the inevitable bleed of its young people to jobs in other parts of the province, or farther afield to Ontario, and to the oil sands in Alberta before the crash in oil prices. An official vote on resettlement was finally held in the fall of 2015. The government determined that 95 people qualified as permanent residents and were eligible to cast a ballot, and 89.47 per cent of those voted in favour of leaving — a hair shy of the 90 per cent required. Only 10 people voted against the move, but they carried the day. At least for now.
RESETTLEMENT IN ONE FORM or another has been a part of Newfoundland and Labrador’s story as long as Europeans have lived here. Early census records reveal a constantly shifting population, with small villages abandoned as the fishing ebbed, as the press of poor seasons or illness and disease forced families to relocate. Between 1945 and 1954 alone, an estimated 49 outport communities resettled of their own volition. But the advent of Confederation ushered in a new era of government-sponsored centralization and resettlement programs. In 1949, there were a mere 195 kilometres of paved road on the island of Newfoundland. Less than half the population had access to electricity. Premier Joey Smallwood’s administration faced the immediate
and near-impossible task of providing education and health care, along with basic infrastructure such as roads, sewerage and telecommunication, to some 1,200 communities (many with fewer than 250 residents) scattered along 29,000 kilometres of coastline. Newfoundland’s economic mainstay, the cod fishery, was also in transition, moving from the traditional small boat salt cod fishery to a more industrial model that used trawlers, fish plants and modernized harbour facilities. Eliminating the smallest and most isolated communities offered a practical approach to both issues. A provincially sponsored centralization program that gave cash payments to “voluntary resettlers” was initiated in 1954. And in 1957, Smallwood called on medical officials, school supervisors, welfare and police officers, agricultural and fishery fieldmen to compile a list of communities “with no great future” that might benefit from resettlement. The reports filed in response to Smallwood’s request present a stark portrait. The residents of Castor River had “no school or church, people and children illiterate.” Current Island was “infested with tuberculosis and no fit place for anyone to live.” All told, more than 200 communities with a combined population of approximately 25,000 were identified as candidates for resettlement. In 1965, the centralization project was replaced by the Fisheries Household Resettlement Program, a federal-provincial partnership that was renewed in 1970 as the Newfoundland Resettlement Program. Between 1954 and 1975, more than 300 communities were resettled under the aegis of these programs.
NESTLED INTO THE ARM of a forested hillside in the Bay of Islands on Newfoundland’s west coast is Brake’s Cove, one of the many communities targeted for resettlement in the 1960s. The cove is a narrow crescent of beachfront with a steep, hand-cleared meadow rising behind it. According to former resident Joan Oxford, it was originally settled by a Mi’kmaq man named Ben Brake at the turn of the 20th century. At its height, it was home to 17 families, many of those with 10 to 12 children. In 1966 and 1967, the residents shifted across the bay to Cox’s Cove, near Corner Brook. Posts and shores are all that remain of the herring stores on the waterfront. There’s a single row of cabins near the water now, built by people who left nearly 50 years ago and still return to spend part of every summer here. Oxford, a direct descendant of founder Ben Brake, was only eight years old when her family left for Cox’s Cove. She offers the same kind of “ghost tour” that Gerry Strong gave me in Little Bay Islands, pointing out the former location of the Roman Catholic school, the level section above the brook where her grandmother’s house was located. For a time there was a nurse who served Brake’s Cove and one other outport, delivering children, pulling teeth and performing some basic surgeries. After the nurse left, people in need of medical attention were forced to take a fivehour boat ride into Corner Brook. An integrated school replaced the Catholic school in the early ’60s, the building floated over from Cox’s Cove. When the government closed the school in 1967, it was towed back across the bay. “They should have just put a motor on it and used it as a boat,” Oxford says. To hear Oxford tell it, no one wanted to leave Brake’s Cove. The imminent loss of the school was coupled with the offer of a one-time cash payment to force the option on them. Take the money now, was the message, or you’re on your own. People resented what they saw as the bald use of blackmail, and some resisted the move. But eventually the place emptied out. Oxford hasn’t slept a night here since she left, but she still considers it home. “Cox’s Cove is just a place to live,” she says. “Brake’s Cove is where I belongs.”
Little Bay Islands was once at the heart of the local cod industry. Today, it is at the centre of a resurgent debate about the future of outport Newfoundland.
Most families resettled by the Smallwood programs appear to have been more or less satisfied with the move. And much of that migration may have occurred without government intervention as the salt cod fishery declined and employment shifted to the fresh-frozen sector in larger centres. But the note of grievance in Oxford’s story of leaving Brake’s Cove has been one of the most persistent legacies of resettlement as social policy. The offer of cash payments combined with the threatened loss of local teachers and health care services resulted in frequent infighting and bad blood within communities. Many people felt they were moved under duress. By the early 1970s the program had become controversial enough that the government shut it down. And until very recently, that was where the story of Newfoundland resettlement ended.
THE MOVE to resettle Little Bay Islands has not been without its own drama. Rumours of armtwisting and veiled threats within the community before the 2014 referendum appeared in local and national news media after the fact. Perry Locke is a former mayor of Little Bay Islands and the most public face of opposition to relocation. He refers to his small bloc of voters, jokingly, as “the Terrible Ten.” But he also claims to have received threats on social media from people who want to leave and feel they’re being held hostage by the minority. Some residents, he says, refuse to acknowledge or talk to him. He’s given up attending the local church to avoid the animosity. The failure of the 2015 vote was a win for Perry Locke and the nine other residents who want to remain in Little Bay Islands. Though it does feel more like a temporary stay of execution, rather than a victory. A government assessment determined that resettlement of Little Bay Islands would cost $14 million, but would save the province $20 million over the next two decades. That reality, and the money still on the table as a payout for households to leave, means the issue is far from over. It is unclear, however, where things go from here, for Little Bay Islands or any other community considering relocation. Newfoundland still hasn’t quite escaped the long hangover of the old resettlement programs, with its legacy of feuding and resentments. And the uncertainties and idiosyncrasies of the current program seem destined to add another layer to that history. For starters, none of these votes are binding on the government. In Nippers Harbour, 98 per cent voted in favour of leaving in 2013, but a government cost-benefit analysis concluded it was less expensive to keep the community operating than to resettle it. Only one person voted against relocation in Williams Harbour in 2015, but a judicial review has been filed by two families who were deemed “non-residents” and the process has been delayed pending the outcome. Likewise, the seasonal residents of Little Bay Islands who did not meet the minimum residency requirements to be granted a vote have no say in the matter. Like everyone else, they will lose regular ferry service and access to electricity if and when the move happens, but they will not have access to the $270,000 payment being offered to permanent residents. Eddie Joyce, the minister of municipal affairs in the recently elected provincial Liberal government, has announced a review of the entire relocation process. Little Bay Islands would be eligible to “reapply” once this review is concluded, something the vast majority in the community will likely opt for. This means that, at some point in the not too distant future, another divisive vote will be held. And it is harder and harder to see the residents who want to stay holding out against the growing number who want to leave. A generation of Newfoundlanders has grown up in the shadow of the moratorium, without a cod fishery at the centre of daily life, and many people seem ready to move on to other things. Despite the first tentative signs of a cod resurgence, some of the island’s oldest outports may not be around to take advantage of it.
Between 1954 and 1975, more than 300 communities were resettled in Newfoundland and Labrador.