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Newfoundland's resettlement program earns mixed reviews

While economically sound, forced relocation proves difficult on families

Bruce Miller and his family were forced by the government to leave the only home they knew in the 1960s. Miller was only nine months old at the time so he doesn't remember leaving, but he does remember a lot of the stories his family told.

Miller remembers being with his uncle, working in a garden in the town where he was born, then abandoned for over a dozen years. His uncle looked back while leaving the harbour by boat.

"Uncle Joe said 'want to know what one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my life?' and I figured it had something to do with the garden. He said 'it was having to unwillingly leave this harbour.'"

After decades of working odd jobs, including a lot of time crab fishing offshore, Miller now runs Rugged Beauty Boat Tours, which explains the history of the province’s resettled communities.

There are many examples of small towns with declining populations all across Canada as more people move to larger cities, but in rural Newfoundland, there are hundreds of towns that have completely died. And more are on the chopping block.

"It made more economic sense to centralize people than to give them the roads and the power lines and the infrastructure that they needed, but they never gave any consideration to the damage it did to the person," Miller says. "In my opinion, it (not having to move) would have given my grandfather the opportunity to die where he wanted to instead of being forced out of the community."

Resettlement 101

Miller is just one of the nearly 30,000 people who were forced to move between 1954 and 1975, leading to about 300 abandoned towns in Newfoundland’s most remote reaches.

The idea of a resettlement plan is rooted in the work of 17th-century English economist William Petty. According to the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage site, "The theory assumes that development in a specific area will generate further spin-off industries, and people will move there."

What led to Newfoundland’s resettlement program was a combination of factors that all happened within a few decades.

When Newfoundland entered Confederation in 1949, people quickly learned about social programs available to them, including six cents a day in employment insurance. They also began taking their catches to larger communities where they saw electricity and a better way of life.

Tim Greene, an interpreter for The Rooms, a museum and art gallery devoted to showing Newfoundland's history and heritage, also points out the growing accessibility of media.

"For a long time, these people were just growing and dying in these communities, just seeing the way of life as they lived it, as their parents lived it and not seeing how things could be different," he says. "Once Canada entered Confederation and for years before that, people began getting radio sets, people began getting literature and magazines ... they began to realize they could be getting a bit more (from the government)."

Newfoundlanders wanted help to get these modern conveniences, but the government didn't have the funds to provide power lines and roads into the hundreds of remote communities only accessible by boat. So they set up a program forcing people to centralize.

At the same time, the fishing industry was changing. Bigger boats fishing farther offshore and trawling the bottom of the ocean could catch a lot more fish than a few men in a punt. The advent of refrigeration meant fish no longer had to be salted for it to last. Not having to salt fish took a lot of the labour out of the process, and those who did want to keep fishing cod were often forced to head farther out to sea on bigger boats.

Newfoundland’s Department of Welfare first introduced the resettlement program in 1954, providing families with $150 if they agreed to move – an amount that was bumped up to $600 over the first 10 years of the program. At the time, the average fisherman earned under $500 a year.

A lot of people were in favour of the improvements to their community, but they weren't a fan of giving up their way of life.

— Newfoundland historian Tim Greeene

The problem for some towns in the early days was that the government required every single resident to agree to move. If one resident refused to move, no one received the money. When the program was transferred to the Department of Fisheries in 1965, assistance was increased to $1,000 per family plus $200 per dependant in addition to moving costs. It was common for resettlers to use their grant money to float their existing homes to new communities.

"There was a lot of literature sent out ... using the children as an example,” Greene says. “Hey, you want your children to have a happy healthy life? You want them to have opportunity? You want them to move to a populated centre where there are more chances for education, more chances for employment, more chances for a not-so-hard way of life ... where you aren't so dependent on the whims of nature?

“A lot of people were in favour of the improvements to their community, but they weren't a fan of giving up their way of life."

Mixed reactions

Once everyone in a town had moved, no one could return and governments could demolish the remaining buildings if they feared people would go back.

People are divided on whether the program between 1954 and 1975 was a success or a failure. Resettlers gained a better social sense, education opportunities and access to health care, but the program didn't always fulfill the promise of employment. A study completed in the 1960s indicated it would take families an average of 20 years to replace what they had lost financially. And that was assuming they were working full-time.

Between 1965 and 1970 the federal government spent $5 million and the province spent more than $2 million on the resettlement program. In today's dollars, that's a total cost of more than $41 million.

Minister of Municipal Affairs Kevin O'Brien also has a tough time answering the question whether the program was successful.

"From my point of view, I understand the reason why, but it could have been done in a different way," he says.

Greene calls the program a failure.

"I think it did work out for a few people, but I think the government's approach to it these days is a lot better," says Greene, who believes most of those people would have moved eventually anyways. "I think it was something that needed to happen. I think the approach was flawed."

A new era

Today, a program to relocate remote Newfoundland residents still exists. It now falls under O'Brien's ministry and last March they increased the per-household allotment from $100,000 to $270,000. The government requires 90 per cent of a town to agree to the move.

O’Brien says the government learned a lot from the 1960s program. It is now called 'relocation' rather than 'resettlement' and must be initiated by the community before the government will step in.

"Resettlement seems to be a forced government process where this is actually purely community driven," O'Brien says. "We're not out there promoting; we've had no fanfare other than a few interviews. It's up to the community because I heard loud and clear over the last three years from individuals that they'd like to, but couldn't afford to live where they were going. So we have to give them a start."

As some people start to have the discussions about relocating today, there isn't much left in those old fishing harbours that were abandoned decades ago. Some have a few buildings remaining, and some descendants, like Miller, have returned to build small vacation cabins. But mostly, all that is left are the rocky shorelines of protected harbours. Seeing those harbours today, you may never know they were once bustling ports. We can only look at old photographs and use our imaginations to picture the vibrant community and remember the past.