Editor’s Note: Maine fishermen have watched their traditional fishing species decline over the last several years, and industry groups and the government are working to avert disaster. Newfoundland had declines too, but its government reacted by shutting down the fishery with no warning. This is the second of two reports that look at Newfoundland’s fishery today as a government support program is about to run out, and what the shutdown has done to fishing-dependent towns.

PORT UNION, Newfoundland — Paulette Canning stands behind the counter in the restaurant of a small hotel, trying to explain what the cod fishery closure means to people here, where a now-shuttered fish plant once kept three shifts working around the clock.

Tears well up in her eyes and she swallows a few times before she speaks.

“There are no friends left,” she says finally, her tears spilling. “They are all gone.”

Murphy, 28, graduated with 11 others in tiny Melrose. Only she and one young man are left of the dozen in their class. In nearby Port Union, where 700 people once lived, more than half have left — most reluctantly — to seek employment on Canada’s mainland.

Similar scenes repeat themselves all over the province of Newfoundland these days, since the major employer, the 500-year-old cod fishery, closed abruptly in July 1992.

Newfoundlanders thought it could never happen.

The cod, they believed, was inexhaustible. Now that the unthinkable has occurred, these rugged islanders are angry with the managers and scientists they blame for the collapse, and frustrated to watch a generation of young people depart, perhaps forever.

Like harvesters in many Maine fishing communities, especially Down East, Newfoundlanders deprived of fishing cannot drive down the road to a nearby factory and switch careers. More than half the estimated half-million Newfoundlanders live in tiny outports where handfuls of no-nonsense houses nestle among granite cliffs facing seaward into the never-ending wind. There are few alternatives to fish.

One Newfoundlander angry with the bureaucrats is himself a bureaucrat. John Efford of Port de Grave, provincial fisheries minister, agrees that Canada’s government is part of the problem.

“People on this island are being lost. Their futures are clouded over by bureaucratic thinking,” said Efford. “The tears in people’s eyes, that’s been going on since 1992 and no one is saying there will or won’t be a future for them here.”

Outports more accessible by sea than land were settled by cod fishermen centuries ago who bestowed names like Heart’s Desire, Cupids, Little Heart’s Ease and Joe Batt’s Arm. Commuting from outports to anywhere would be difficult, if there was anyplace to go. In a province dependent on natural resources, islanders say the federal government is selling those resources to foreigners and multinational companies to benefit only itself, not the province.

Tales of TAGS

Efford says the Ottawa government is guilty of “Newfoundland prejudice” for ending The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy income maintenance program prematurely and for dropping many people from TAGS early.

“A woman in my district worked at the fish plant all her life. When the fish were going down, she got only six weeks of work in the plant and was laid off, so she took a job with a government make-work program. Because she was on that program, she was terminated from TAGS this winter,” Efford said.

“A Petty Harbor woman worked in a plant for 24 years and never missed a day, except two years before TAGS when she fell in the plant and broke her leg,” said Efford. “She was on sick leave, so she was terminated by TAGS.”

Working “away”

Like many islanders, Efford once moved to Ontario, but returned determined to make a living in Newfoundland. He tells tales many know, of towns in Ontario populated mostly by Newfoundlanders, apartment buildings where only Newfoundlanders live, and special mainland clubs where displaced islanders go to hear familiar music and accents.

The Placentia region enjoyed high employment for many years. During World War II, the Canadian government leased the U.S. land in Argentia for a military base that employed hundreds of people. A phosphate plant opened in nearby Long Harbor in the 1970s. Offshore oil rig construction for the vaunted Hibernia project took place within commuting distance for several years. And there was the cod fishery.

“We got hit hard,” said Leo Bruce, a retiree from Placentia, who serves on the board of a local hall where many town functions are held. “We lost the base, the plant, the Hibernia project and the fishery within two years.”

Bruce looked around the Star of the Sea Hall one Saturday night where 50 patrons danced, laughed and enjoyed a drink. “Before everything went, we’d have 300 people in here every Saturday night. We’d have to close the doors at 10 p.m. to stop them coming in.”

Another town hall has closed already and Bruce says if the exodus continues, the Star’s future is in jeopardy. Already most of the Saturday night patrons are older folks. Several of the young people dancing that night said they will leave for the mainland soon.

In Port Union, dart players fill a lounge Sunday night, making the place look prosperous. But it’s the only night the lounge is open now, when once plant workers filled it nightly. Inn occupancy has dropped by 75 percent. Dart teams, like the halved population, are shrinking in number. More people will leave when TAGS ends.

Canning recalls a man she saw interviewed on television recently. “He said, `Take my house and my car and my boat. You took everything else six years ago. You took my dignity.’

“In Ottawa they complain we’re costing them money, but no one complains about the money they’ve given Canadian farmers for years. No one cares that in the past few years, we’ve lost the equivalent of the population of Mount Pearl [the province’s second-largest city at 27,000].

“And the worst thing is, they say we’re lazy,” said Canning, tears slipping down her cheek. “We’re not lazy, but what are we going to work at?”

Trouble ahead

Others, not fisheries workers, complain that some TAGS recipients perform work under the table for lower wages than the tradespeople who rely on those jobs.

“I don’t blame them, I’d probably do it myself,” said one carpenter who’s losing work. “But there’s going to be trouble.”

Others also predict trouble when TAGS ends. The federal government has reinforced office doors to keep their employment counselors from harm when the expected violence breaks out.

“Our clients aren’t going to hurt anyone,” said Fred Russell, a jobs counselor in Bonavista. “But there will be protests here. We had three days of sit-ins last year when people couldn’t get answers from the federal fisheries minister about TAGS. Prospects here are few. Everyone who comes here now realizes they’ll have to go away.”

Russell’s colleague, Charmaine Ford, spent her first Christmas without her 21-year-old son who moved to the mainland to find work.

Wilfred Sutton, jobs counselor in Trepassey, says not all stories are bad. Some clients report they’re happy on the mainland. At least happier than they were recently on The Rock, wondering if they would ever work again and watching their self-esteem erode.

“The older people resist the hardest,” said Sutton. “All the people here owned what they had. Outport people don’t like to owe anything, they like to pay as they go.” When TAGS ends and their clients are gone, Wilf, Fred and Charmaine could be among the next wave of unemployed people.

Selling and resettling Newfoundland

During the 1960s and 1970s, the provincial and federal governments undertook resettlement programs to move people from the islands and remote outports to communities closer to services.

Many in Newfoundland see a back-door form of the hated resettlement occurring again through the moratorium, TAGS and the end of TAGS. They say the sale of Newfoundland’s natural resources could easily subside income maintenance until the cod return. No money from selling their resources goes to Newfoundland coffers, although Ottawa revenues enjoyed a billion-dollar surplus last year.

As a glaring example of Ottawa’s lack of concern for Newfoundland communities, Efford and others point to Black Tickle, Labrador. There, hundreds of unemployed residents have no income, no work and no license to fish shrimp, the current most abundant resource, because permits for shrimp quota are held by a millionaire dentist in Miami.

“I fought for years to get a shrimp quota for Newfoundland while millionaires in Montreal and Florida owned them,” said Efford. “How did they get them? I’d like an answer to that.”

Patrick Hewitt of St. Shott’s is one of the island’s success stories — an outport resident not dependent on the fishery, with a shore-based business to support him. His Emerald Sod Producers Inc. grows Kentucky bluegrass to provide lawns for golf courses, businesses and residences, mostly around St. John’s.

As mayor of the tiny outport, he’s concerned about the exodus.

“There are alternatives and opportunities, but in terms of replacing the number of people employed by the cod fishery, it would be terribly difficult,” said Hewitt. “The big fear is numbers will get so low that communities won’t be able to sustain themselves.”

Hewitt says he’s “not overly optimistic” about the survival of St. Shott’s. “We need to return to a small-boat, inshore fishery to enable rural Newfoundland to survive. What will destroy it completely will be, when the cod comes back, if it’s a big-boat fishery.

“My generation could be the last one here,” Hewitt said. “I’ve been saying all along, it’s just another form of resettlement.”

Too few tourists

Tourism is sometimes touted as an alternative to the fishery. Aidan Costello, who operates a bed and breakfast in a former Ferryland convent, says so far, tourism can’t support anyone. But B&Bs and whale-watching tour boats are on the rise along the southern Avalon Peninsula’s recently designated “Irish Loop Drive” from Bay Bulls to Trepassey.

“Tourism has stiff competition worldwide,” said Costello. “And this year, we had bad weather and a short season.”

“We are one of the oldest fishing villages here, going strong from the early 1500s until 1992,” said Costello, president of the Southern Shore Development Association. Ferryland lost 30 of its 750 people, so far. Nearby Calvert lost 100 of its 500 people. Costello, his wife and two children hope to stay.

“Anyone with family and roots here resists leaving. They have a lot invested, so they’re hanging on, hoping it will come back,” said Costello. “I think a lot of them will go back fishing, whether or not they’re allowed.”