Theory of greener grass (Part 2)

Last house standing in the resettled community of Ticklets in St. Mary's Bay, Newfound- land

My last blog entry was about the depopulation of rural Newfoundland through a resettlement program started by the government. People were given incentives to give up their communities as government wanted to centralize the population in order to provide modern services. This is one of 24 houses that existed in Tickles at one time. The census of 1921 listed 122 individuals in 24 households. Family names were Upshall, Marshall, Hollett, Gilbert, Crann, Best, Masters, Gregory and Dicks. Scattered now to where? Who knows?

In 1992 the cod fishery collapsed in Newfoundland and the federal government of Canada provided income to fisherpeople for a period of 2 years. Then, realizing the fishery would not recover soon, they provided money to train former fisherpeople to do other things. That was really moronic because the unemployment rate was an already national high of about 17%. Where did they think the new plumbers, computer programmers and other skilled workers were going to be able to find work? Thus began the depopulation of Newfoundland proper.

The resettlement program for the most part only moved people around within the province. Now, people began leaving Newfoundland in droves, bound for the provinces of Alberta, Ontario or wherever they could find work. The highest population figure I can remember was 568,000. The current population stands at about 500,000 give or take a thousand. That's a drop of 12%.

The people that left didn't because they saw the grass greener on the other side of the fence. They were forced to leave due to the missmanagement of the northern cod fishery by the government of Canada. A fishery that had sustained Newfoundland and fed Europe for 500 years. Now, we're reduced to a few days each year when we can fit out our kayaks to catch cod in a "recreational" fishery.

When Newfoundland joined Canada it was forced to give up control of its fishery. We were pretty "green", too green to burn they say.

Tony :-)