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 |  |  | Newfoundland's abandoned communities [from the National Post]
< on 1/24/2011 1:06 PM >
|  | | | Joe O'Connor, National Post · Monday, Jan. 24, 2011
She can't stay away from the place. And yet it hurts to go back, like she does every summer. She goes looking for things that are no longer there. The paths she walked as a child are overgrown. Her parents are dead, but the memory of them is everywhere: In her aunt's kitchen, a cousin's laugh, a game of cards, a song, a story told for the 400th time and in her uncle's sturdy, stubborn pride.
These are Donna Morrissey's people. And The Beaches, N.L., population 39 and dwindling, is her place, a wellspring even for those who have left.
"What people don't really understand about small towns is the idea of identity, that this is our place and our time, our mythology," Ms. Morrissey says. "And when you take something like that apart you break bones. Resettlement is a tragedy. It is like having your past eradicated."
There it is: the r-word. Resettlement. In Newfoundland, it is a loaded and divisive term, shaded by memories of bygone days and haunted by ghosts of places that no longer exist. McDougall's Gulch, Rattling Brook, Muddy Hole, Pushthrough, Tickles, Ireland's Eye and hundreds of other communities that were abandoned for money, for politics, for "progress" from the 1950s to '70s because people felt like they did not have a choice. That if they did not leave, they would get left behind.
Premier Joey Smallwood, the self-styled "last Father of Confederation," former radio host, pig farmer and visionary -- or fool, depending on whom you ask -- issued a press release in 1957 that uncorked the tide. The premier saw "no great future" for about 200 outports and isolated fishing outposts, some substantial and others no more than a few families. To Joey -- and Newfoundlanders all knew him as Joey -- they were anchors around the province's neck. A financial drag that drove up government service costs and kept people living in the Dark Ages.
By offering financial incentives and encouraging families to move to larger towns as part of a totalitarian-sounding "Centralization Programme," later known as the "Fisheries Household Resettlement Program," costs for essentials, such as education and health care and roads, would be reduced and a mass labour pool created.
Industrialization could then take root in Canada's poorest province, went the theory. It was Joey Smallwood's dream. And it did and didn't come true.
"The word resettlement evokes a kind of inept, heavy-handed government policy of another era," says Jeff Webb, a historian at Memorial University in St. John's. "People in the outports thought there was some kind of community hit list. Mention the word resettlement now, and for many older people it evokes substantial emotional baggage."
Mention it to Donna Morrissey, and she winces. Not because of an old wound, but due to an ongoing crisis in The Beaches that has revived the r-word. Ms. Morrissey lives in Halifax. She is a famous novelist. Try telling her that and she will laugh, but it's true. There is even a monument to her in The Beaches, a marker honouring a local daughter who left home at 16 to be a hippie and has, with Kit's Law, Downhill Chance and Sylvanus Now, made a career out of writing
about the place and people she left behind.
"Everything comes out of The Beaches," she says.
The next chapter could get tricky. The Beaches was evacuated earlier this month. For the third time in the past decade, a violent winter storm forced residents from their homes. The harbour used to freeze every December, providing a buffer from the bad weather. It does not freeze anymore. Sea levels have risen, and when the January winds begin to howl, calamity ensues.
The community of 17 homes, plus a recreation centre -- where it's cards on Wednesday night and darts every Friday -- is perched on the ocean, backed by a steep hill and separated from the pounding surf by a strip of road. When things get really wild, like they did a few weeks back, the road washes out, leaving The Beaches cut off from Hampden, the nearest town (population 489) with a health-care centre, a post office and emergency services.
For an outport where 75% of the residents are seniors, with several in their 80s, being cut off could be a death sentence if somebody suffered a heart attack, a bad fall, a fire broke out or a rogue wave came crashing through a front door.
People began talking about resettlement after the most recent evacuation. It is not a new conversation. Only this time, the politicians were paying attention. Darryl Kelly, a member of the provincial legislature, suggested perhaps it was time for a serious discussion about resettlement. The government can't bully a community into moving. It's not the bad old days. Residents have to want to go.
"Resettlement wouldn't be on the radar unless they initiate the contact," says Kevin O'Brien, Newfoundland's Minister of Municipal Affairs. "Certainly we would respond to a request, but it has to come from them, and for us to even entertain a request there has to be 90% support within the community."
Marshalling near-unanimous support could be a problem in The Beaches. Lots of people want to move. They just don't want to leave. Ever.
Jeanette Rodgers is Donna Morrissey's cousin. She has lived in The Beaches her entire life.
"I wasn't frightened of the sea," the 55-year-old said of the latest evacuation. "But I am afraid of the road washing out and then if something happens, if somebody gets sick, we're cut off."
Ms. Rodgers wouldmove-- if she had to. So would Boyd and Edna Gavin. They are not concerned for themselves. They are worried about their parents. Ms. Rodgers lives in a three-bedroom home with beige siding. Her 83-year-old father, Leslie Osmond, and his 82-year-old wife, Margaret, live next door. Aunt Beat, age 80, is her other neighbour. Uncle Elikum, 86, lives down the way.
"Dad, he's perfect, he is smart as a bee," Ms. Rodgers says. "But Mom has trouble with her legs."
Leslie Osmond built his house with his own hands, 58 years ago. He had this to say to his adult children when they told him to evacuate.
"What's wrong with youse all? What are you afraid of a bit of water for? You were born and raised in a boat. I am not feckin' going nowhere."
Arthur Osmond, age 85, a second or third cousin to Leslie -- it is hard to keep track -- said this about resettlement.
"I am not going to leave and that's it. I was born here and I'll drown here."
And so exists a generational divide, a gap that does not close, and only gets more complicated as parents age. There is no easy negotiation in any part of the country when it comes to asking a person who has lived in the same house for 50 years to leave it. But in The Beaches, a living nostalgia permeates the air. It is inescapable. People move forward, press on, but the past is always present.
So is resettlement. There are no young people, unless you count the grandchildren that come to visit every summer from someplace else -- St. John's, Ontario, Alberta, B.C. -- from someplace Newfoundlanders have resettled. Almost 10,000 leave the province every year. The majority of them are between the ages of 20 and 30. It's the cruel irony, the bitter plot twist. Resettlement happens all the time.
And yet The Beaches persists. Kept alive in the collective memory and in the imagination of a famous writer who went away, but never left home.
"All my memories are there," Ms. Morrissey says. "It's who I am, and I am sure it is the same for everybody else who is from there.
"No matter where you go, The Beaches is home. And they can't leave it. I am never going to get a monument anywhere else."
Read more: http://www.nationa...html#ixzz1BxQqn498
[last edit 1/24/2011 1:07 PM by rob.i.am - edited 1 times]
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|
Thunderstorm
location:
Mississauga
Gender: Male
| | Re: Newfoundland's abandoned communities [from the National Post]
<Reply # 1 on 1/25/2011 5:22 AM >
| | | | Good Read. Thanks for sharing dude.
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|
Carl Ham
location:
Rural Manitoba
Gender: Male
| | Re: Newfoundland's abandoned communities [from the National Post]
<Reply # 2 on 1/25/2011 5:49 PM >
| | | | yeah man, great article
Long Live Gary Numan |
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