Content Warning: History Lesson
Bear with me a bit guys as I give you a bit of background, it might help put a bit of an itch in your ass to start planning your own trip somewhere.
Grade 5 history lessons tell us that European fishermen have been fishing off the coast of Newfoundland since before Columbus "discovered" America. To enable them to dry their catch for transport back to Europe, they set up small settlements near to their fishing grounds, on the rugged rocks that make up Newfoundland's coasts. Over the next five centuries hundreds of these "outport" settlements were established, each one tiny, isolated, and clinging precariously to the small space between mountain and sea. It is these that created the culture of Newfoundland, with its unique language, music, and romantic tales of hard-assed fishermen and heroic sea captains.
Grade 5 stuff here, guys, stay with me.
When Newfoundland became part of Canada, the then premier, Joey Smallwood, decided that Newfoundland had to be modernized, that Newfoundlanders should have the same services - roads, schools, hospitals - that other Canadians enjoyed. To provide these in tiny, isolated communities, though, would be too expensive. It was decided then that the outports had to go; the "bay men" would be offered money to move to larger centres. It was "Yo, yokel! We'll give you $200,000 to put that box you live in on logs and float it to where our Captains of Industry have just built a fish plant that happens to need workers. Everybody wins!" Most, after much agonizing deliberation, accepted the offer.
Today, the number of outports that remain is but a fraction of those that had existed in 1949. The number continues to drop as fishing as a way of life is no longer viable and the young people move away in search of work.
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