Labrador town ready for change

MAYOR IN LABRADOR WANTS TOWN TO JOIN QUEBEC

The mayor of a small town in southern Labrador says he has grown so frustrated with the potholes in the Trans-Labrador Highway that he is openly advocating for his town to become part of Quebec.

“All we’ve got to do is move the border, pave our roads and we’re there,” Hedley Ryland, mayor of L’Anse-au-Loup, said in an interview Monday.

He has taken part in a series of roadside protests, which on Monday included blockades of the local highway maintenance depot and the office of the area’s member of the legislature.

“We won’t drive in the nighttime when it’s dark and there’s fog,” Ryland said. “We’d be down in a pothole, and have blowouts ... It is absolutely dangerous. It is not a road issue now. It is a safety issue.”

During this past weekend, about 100 local protesters gathered along the highway near the Quebec border, where they delayed all commercial vehicles as police looked on, he said.

“This is just a start,” the mayor said. “We’re going to continue until we get answers.”

Photos taken Monday from outside the constituency office of Lisa Dempster, the Liberal member for Cartwright-L’Anse-auClair, show a handful of protesters standing next to hand-painted placards. One of them reads: “Power of the people is stronger than the people in power.”

Ryland said there are so many holes along a 44-kilometre section of the highway that local garages are making a fortune repairing bent rims and damaged suspensions.

The province recently committed to fixing an 11-kilometre section, but Ryland said the protests won’t stop until Premier Dwight Ball agrees to fill the holes along a 20-kilometre portion that stretches from the Quebec border to Ryland’s community of 700.