relocation emigration regeneration repair energy
project resource migrations newfoundland by marianna de cola
Newfoundland’s South
Losing too is still ours, and forgetting still takes shape in the kingdom of transformation when something’s let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the centre of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken and marvellous curve. — Rilke
In tracing the course of the Trans Canada Highway, the far eastern end terminates in the province of Newfoundland. The island is connected by ferry to the rest of the country. Newfoundland’s cultural, political and economical existence is a phenomenon that has been affecting the physiology of the province for its entire lifetime. This province’s birth in Confederation initiated the acceleration of the modernisation of this place. A government program to resettle edge- dwelling Newfoundlanders to larger urban centres shifted and pushed populations to focus on resources inland. People transferred their families, their cultures and floated their houses from places with ‘no great future’ to more centralised and accessible areas. Many towns had been forgotten; many names have been erased.
Ode to Newfoundland by Sir Cavendish Boyle: ‘Though they are anthem-like, there is something indefinably sad about the words, resigned, regretful, as if Boyle imagined himself looking back from a time when Newfoundland had ceased to be. It is the sort of song you might write about a place as you were leaving it by boat, watching is slowly fade from view, a place you believed you would never see again. He was governor of Newfoundland for only a few years, so he must have written it in the knowledge that he was soon to leave.’ — Wayne Johnston. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.
The history of settlement on the island and the tensions between the French and the British encompass themes of settling, destruction, and resettling again. This initiates the continual themes of impermanence and erasure throughout the island. From 1954 until 1975 over 20,000 inhabitants of the province of Newfoundland were resettled with Government grants. This proved to be socially detrimental, and some think economically harmful.
channels of emigration
On Site review 24
38
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator