Thirty Thousand Canadians Moved: The Young Were Saved, the Old Lost Everything
From 1954, nearly thirty thousand people in Newfoundland, Canada, were moved from remote fishing villages to towns. The younger generation gained education and a way out; the old and the Inuit lost their homes, scattered until there was no way left to reach one another. Resettlement has no single verdict.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
A village that cannot support a school and a hospital should be emptied out
From 1954 the Canadian government launched a large-scale resettlement programme, aiming to move nearly thirty thousand people from several hundred coastal communities (outports) in Newfoundland and Labrador into designated growth centres. The official logic was modernization: these remote settlements could not sustain modern education and health care, and only concentrated settlement would bring roads, schools and electric light. The episode makes clear at the outset that the process would run for more than two decades and would completely transform a way of life that had lasted for centuries.
— Katherine HarveyNo power and no road meant, in the government's eyes, no modern life
Don White, who lived through it, grew up in Port Nelson on Newfoundland's east coast. The early life he describes sounds like another era: one grocery store for the whole village, no electricity, people living off moose, rabbit and seabirds and off salmon and lobster fishing; his grandfather had a schooner that crossed the bay each year to bring in vegetables for the winter. The nearest hospital was an hour away by boat, and the road system consisted of footpaths. These details are not nostalgia — they are the premise for understanding the motive behind resettlement: in the government's view, this kind of life could not supply the basic conditions a modern citizen needed.
— Don WhiteFour children rowing themselves to school forced the decision to move
Don White's schooling was the most direct catalyst for moving: the family lived on the south side of the harbour and the school was on the north, so four children had to row an open boat across the harbour themselves, with no adult along; in winter the harbour froze over and the only option was an hour's walk around it. The whole school was a single classroom, with at most 22 pupils across all grades, and it closed after grade six. He says plainly that the family decided to move precisely so the next generation could get a decent education and decent opportunities. That chain of reasoning turns «resettlement» from an administrative order back into a family choice.
— Don WhiteIndustrialize or perish — but the government decided where you could go
The chief architect of the plan was Joseph R. Smallwood, the premier at the time. In his own words: Newfoundland had to industrialize or it would perish; and on an island where even elementary education was hard to guarantee, people could not possibly acquire the skills industry required. In a private recording he also stressed that resettlement was not a way of shedding a burden — the government set a condition: it would help you move, but the destination had to be approved, because it absolutely did not want people jumping «out of the frying pan into the fire». That double framing shows resettlement was both an idealistic theory of development and a form of conditional control.
— Joseph R. SmallwoodSix hundred dollars could move a house, not a fresh start
Resettlement was not free of charge. The government gave each departing household a grant of 300 dollars, later raised in steps to 400, 500 and 600 dollars. To save money, islanders invented their own way of moving: they fitted their houses with runners and hauled them by rope and cable all the way to the water's edge, even rolling an entire house — stove, table, curtains and furniture included — onto a raft and floating it along the coast to the new home, with no machinery, all by human muscle. The other side of that ledger: many people found no way forward once they reached town, and instead crowded into cramped quarters and faced unemployment. The subsidy could cover the move, but it could not cover the risk of starting over.
Resettlement saved the young and ruined those who only knew fishing
Not everyone benefited. One interviewee in the documentary (Edward) called it the worst thing he had been through: he had no skill other than fishing, and was reduced to rowing back alone to the old fishing grounds every summer to do the only trade he understood. The Inuit were hurt worst of all by the plan — driven off their land in Labrador, many were permanently cut off from their own traditions and communities. Don White admits too that after resettlement people scattered, and that he lost touch with his best friend (the one he had gone to school with since childhood) after grades seven or eight, and never saw him again before he died. This section breaks the single-track narrative that modernization equals progress.
Going back, only weeds are left: raising a child takes a whole village
Years later Don White went back to the home he remembered and found nothing there: no buildings, only weeds. He sat down on the spot where the house used to be and broke down — by then both his parents had died. That loss reached the older generation too: his father never managed to adapt to the new life. He says he did not realize at the time that «it takes a village to raise a child», and that the kind of community where neighbours raised each other's children is gone for good. At the same time, these abandoned «ghost villages» have now become sites for tourism and for film and television shoots — cultural and memorial heritage. The ending brings personal memory and the changing of a place together.
— Don WhiteIn their own words · checked verbatim
I think it was the best thing that ever happened to me, no doubt it was a more traumatic experience for older people.
Don White0:00
All we had basically were footpaths.
Don White2:53
Because we certainly did not want them. To go from the frying pan. Into the fire.
Joseph R. Smallwood2:53
The only way to see that youngsters got.A fair chance in life to get a decent education was.For their families to move.
I think it's the worst thing I've ever got of.
People were spread around, you know, after they resettled, and a lot of us never ever met after.
Don White6:12
It fills me now, to talk about it, to be honest, because so much had happened in the meantime, Both my parents had passed
Don White8:58
Everybody looked out for everybody.You know, the quote that takes a village to raise a child was very true.
Don White8:58
Figures
| Communities involved | several hundred coastal communities | 0:00 |
| Year the programme began | 1954 | 0:00 |
| Premier Smallwood's tenure | about 22 years | 2:53 |
| Year Newfoundland joined the Canadian Confederation | 1949 | 2:53 |
| Maximum pupils at the village school | 22 (all grades combined) | 2:53 |
| Resettlement grant per household | starting at 300 dollars, later rising to 400, 500 and 600 dollars | 6:12 |
| Population of one abandoned fishing village | 500 | 8:58 |
Glossary
- outport
- A remote small fishing village on the Newfoundland coast, once the dominant form of settlement there.
- growth centre
- A town designated by the government for concentrated development, with people encouraged to move in and share schools, hospitals and other facilities.
- Confederation
- Here, Newfoundland's entry into the Canadian Confederation in 1949.
How to listen
Policy researchers and local officials working on urbanization, regional development compensation and Indigenous resettlement, plus anyone running community rebuilding projects.
The ad at the start and the subscription pitch at the end can be skipped; the whole body of the interview is worth hearing.