The Decibel - The tiny town that might vote itself out of existence

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

In the community of Gaultois, Newfoundland, an upcoming vote will determine whether to keep receiving government services, or take a payout to relocate to the mainland, leaving behind their homes and dramatic beauty of their small island town.Greg Mercer, the Globe’s Atlantic Canada reporter, tells us about the history of resettlement in Newfoundland, and how the people of Gaultois feel about deciding the town’s fate.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail].

The tiny island town of Galtis in Newfoundland is going to be voting on a big issue. Whether to stay where they are or abandon their home. If they vote to leave, the entire community of just over 70 people has to move, whether they want to or not. That's because there won't be any more public services to the island. So no more ferry service, no more phones, no more electricity, no more Galtis. But not everyone wants to take the money and move. Oh yes, you know, the way of life is changing altogether, all around. Well, you know what, that's the thing with me is I'm being forced.

I don't want to go. I haven't even considered it. I've never considered it. And to me, it's I'm being forced out. To me, I don't know what I would do if I had to start over.

For me to go and buy another house, you know, this is something else. I don't have somebody to tell me that, Derek, sorry, you gotta go. You know, then is something else. I don't have somebody to tell me that, Derek, sorry, you've got to go. No, then we've got to look up where we're going to go. We haven't really sat down,

because I know the topic is touchy. We've spoken briefly, but we haven't had that gut-wrenching conversation yet. Because if we do go, where are we going to go? Today, The Globe's Atlantic Canada reporter, Greg Mercer, tells us about the history of resettlement in Newfoundland towns and how the people of Galtus are deciding if they should stay or go. I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Greg, it's great to have you back on the podcast. Thanks for being here. Hey, happy to be here, Manika. Thanks for having me. I'd like to just start by really getting an idea of this place. Can you describe what it's like actually traveling to Galtis, Newfoundland? You know, I spent three days there in August, and it felt like I spent three days in a novel. You know, first you show up, you know, you drive about two hours through the woods to get to the south coast of Newfoundland. And if you've never been there, you feel like

you're in Norway. It's just soaring mountains, you know, and forest that crash down to the sea, just this wall of rocks, sheer rocks, and then you're at the ocean. And then from there, there's a little town that you take a ferry to the island that Galtus is on. And when I say a ferry, like it's really a barge, just an open boat that vehicles don't go on, you walk onto it. And it's about a 20 minute ride across this, this straight that separates Long Island from the mainland of Newfoundland. And you're going out across the water. It's just this beautiful setting. It's just, you know, there's not a house, there is not a building on this coastline. And then suddenly this little crack in the rock appears and the boat turns left and you come into this harbor and there you are, you're looking at

Galtus. And from the moment you set foot on the wharf, you feel like you're being transported back in time. Wow. That sounds beautiful. What is life like then? This sounds like it's kind of this middle of nowhere town. What is it actually like to live there? People who live there love it, most of them. I mean, yes, it is isolated, right?

If you want to get any kind of service from the mainland, it's a bit of a job. You know, you have to wait for this ferry to come that only leaves a few times a day. The ferry's often disrupted by weather. The day we showed up, the ferry wasn't running at all because the crew had COVID. So, we had to get one of the islanders who live in Galthas to come over in his speedboat and he ferried us over. So one of the first things you notice when you get off the wharf and walk into the community is that there are no vehicles, right? I mean, the roads are really just for four-wheelers and for pedestrians. And that's because in all of Galtas, there are only two cars.

One is a fire truck, right, that the volunteer fire department runs. The other one is what they call the town car. And its job is to do garbage collection. And when someone passes away, it's the vehicle they use to carry the body to the church. And that's a significant change in Galtus where the church used to be a real focal point in terms of weddings and baptisms and that kind of thing. Now, unfortunately, the church registry is just full of deaths because it is a town, as people say, that is dying. And, you know, and every time someone passes away, it's one less person in town, right? And it's such a small community that those deaths are noticed. Yeah. And how many people actually

live there today? Not many. There's only a little bit over 70 people who live there now. It is an older community. The average age would be somewhere in the 70s. There are a few children. There's four kids who go to the local school. You know, just a couple of decades ago, there were 400 children at this school. So it just shows you how much it's shrunk. When you're walking around, you don't see many young people. And typically once someone reaches the end of high school, the first thing they do is leave. So it sounds like the town was bigger at one point. What was it like in its

heyday, if I can say that? So the way people described it to me was this bustling seaside community. It was a fishing port. There was a fish plant where there would just be a steady stream of boats coming in and offloading cod and other ground fish. The plant worked around the clock. There were hundreds of people employed by it. They said that at lunchtime when the plant would pause, there would be this procession of several hundred fish plant walkers who would exit with their lunch pails or whatever and walk home. You could see them walk along the waterfront. Like the rhythm of the town was tied to this fish plant. And ever since the fish plant is closed and the cod fishery has collapsed, really that's been the beginning of the end for Galtus. And so now Galtus, the town, is voting on resettling.

The general idea of that seems clear, but I guess what exactly does that mean, Greg? So essentially what it means is that from the provincial government's point of view, they see communities like Galtus as unsustainable, unviable places to live. They see them as expensive places to run services to, you know, expensive to run a school, expensive to run, you know, hydro and the ferry service, because you can't drive to Galtus. You can run, you know, hydro and the ferry service because you can't drive to Galtus. You can only reach it by water. So, the government says, you know, we're spending a lot of money to sustain a community that is shrinking, that simply we can't afford to do this any longer. So, they have this program that has been around for

really since the 1950s, this resettlement program that essentially compensates families to leave. They give you a lump sum of money. In this case, it would be $270,000 per household. And you have to leave. And the government shuts off the power. They stop running the ferry. They close the school. And basically, they shut down the community. Wow. Okay. So there's a lot to talk about in there. So let's, I guess let's break it down. You say this is, I guess this is an initiative by the province that would be economical for the province to not have to run services out there. Is the province actually the one initiating this process then of resettlement in a town like this? No. So the way it works now is that citizens have to opt in. They have to say, hey, we would like to do this. Typically, it's people who might live there part time or who are thinking of leaving and they know there's some money on the table. Of course, it's very contentious, right? I mean, not everybody wants to leave, but the town gets to have a vote. If more than 75% of residents vote in favor, that begins the process. The province also does a cost-benefit analysis,

and they say, is it worth our while to pay to relocate these people or no? So that's one of the factors. But yeah, essentially, it is supposed to be started by residents themselves. And do we know when this vote is actually going to happen? It's been delayed a little bit, but at this point, no date has been set. And this isn't the first time that this specific town, Galtus, is actually voting on this. What happened before? So they've been through this before. You're right. And in fact, Galtus, a lot of the people who live there come from other communities further down the coast that were resettled

in previous decades. It was kind of the town that you went to when your town was closed. So yes, in the past, the threshold was higher to approve resettlement. It was 90% of residents. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador recently lowered that threshold down to 75%, basically to make it easier for residents to vote in favor of resettlement. And that in itself is controversial, right? Changing the goalposts. And do we have a sense of when this vote does happen, which way it's going to go? It's really hard to say. So there is a preliminary vote that the community does to say there appears to be support in favor of relocation, and then they do a formal vote. Right now, there's still the phase where the province is trying to confirm who actually is

a resident and who's just someone who owns a property there, but who's already left. You have to live there full time to get a vote. So yeah, they're still working their way through that. And so Greg, you said this idea of resettlement programs in Newfoundland, this has been going on for a while. You even mentioned that people in Galtus, a lot of them have actually been resettled from other places to come to this town. Where did this practice of resettlement come from? That's a long history and frankly, a painful history in Newfoundland. I mean, Newfoundland was settled essentially as a giant barge floating out in the sea, but with a bunch of coastal communities that were there only because of fishing. Over time, those communities that could not be reached by roads could only be reached by boats or by coastal ferries became less and less viable. And the government sort of proactively

started trying to centralize its population, realizing that having a small population that's scattered over a huge area that's hard to get to, that you can't build roads to, is very expensive. And so they began this process of relocating and closing communities. There's been at least four in the last decade that have been relocated in Newfoundland and Labrador. You know, something like between the 1950s and late 70s, like 30,000 Newfoundlanders in dozens and dozens of communities were relocated. I mean, it is a big part of the province's history. And there's no other place in Canada that has done it at this level. And that's where you get some of these famous stories of Newfoundlanders, you know, floating homes across the bay, you know, when their community has been relocated.

And there are a lot of Newfoundlanders who trace their roots to these old outports that are now ghost towns. And they're scattered up and down the Newfoundland coast. Wow. So when you say ghost town, what do you mean by ghost town? Picture a small village that nobody lives in, right? A little fishing village that's just simply been abandoned. And the power has been shut off and there's no one there keeping it up. In some places, you will find a few residents who refuse to leave. And so you might have one or two people who are just living there and they live off the grid. Right. Once the government pulls the plug, there's no more power.

There's no more services. So you kind of have to be a pretty resilient, self-reliant kind of person. But there have been examples of Newfoundlanders who just say, I'm not going. I'm not taking the money. This is home. And that happens. We'll be back in a minute. The province is offering households up to $270,000 to leave town. But that could be,

you know, millions of dollars we're talking about here. Can we, I guess, weigh that against what it would actually cost to stay? Like, how much does the province spend on providing services to a remote community like Galtus? That's exactly the calculation that they're trying to do. So they do a cost benefit analysis. They say if in the next 20 years, we are going to spend $10 million to keep Galtus running, well, it might be cheaper to relocate. This is the kind of math they're doing, trying to project as the community continues to decline, we still have to run power. We still have to maintain a school. We still have to run some of those basic services that a provincial government runs. So it is millions of dollars

to maintain these communities over time. Yeah. And you spoke to people when you were there, I know, Greg. What did you hear from those who don't want to leave? I mean, they feel like this is their home and there's no other place they want to live. And they say this is God's country, you know, in their view. It's the kind of place where you don't, there are no police because they say there's no crime, right? There's the kind of place where everyone knows their neighbors. They look out for each other. You don't have to lock your door. Many people say they don't even know where the keys to their door is.

You know, they don't want to move to Corner Brook or Gander or St. John's. Those places to them feel very foreign. This is their community. And frankly, they don't want to leave. And for a lot of them who are in their 70s, they know that they're not going to go and buy a house on the mainland. You know, as they age and, you know, health problems surface, they know the next move is likely into a nursing home. So for them, it's not an appealing option to leave. But then there are other people who realize as I'm getting older and I need more medical help, I need to be able to get to see a doctor more easily than taking a ferry across the bay

and this two-hour drive to the nearest emergency room. So there are people in that camp who say it's not realistic as we get older to live like this. Is there anyone specifically that you talked to, Greg, that I guess stood out in your mind that who took this position? Yeah. I mean, you know, the mayor, Gord Hunt, is a really interesting guy. I mean, he spent most of his life there. And his view is like, this is the end for me. If I leave Galtas, you know, it's all over. There's no other life for me to build somewhere else. I want to spend the rest of my days here. But he's also torn, right? He has grandchildren who he knows their future is not in Galatas. It's on the mainland in Newfoundland or somewhere else in Canada. So he knows for them, the compensation could open a door to something better.

What about the people who are in favor of leaving? What did they tell you about why they would make that choice? A lot of them point to economic reasons. Apart from the salmon farming industry, there's not a lot of employment there, right? I mean, there's a few jobs with the school or the post office, that kind of thing. And a lot of them point to the issue with medical access, right? There's a nurse who comes and visits once a month to go to the medical clinic. But if you have like a chronic issue that you need to see a doctor regularly, you're looking at like sometimes a two and a half hour trip to go see that doctor. And, you know, in January, getting on an open ferry across the bay and then getting in a car and driving, I mean, that's, it's not an appealing option for some people. And so they say that's a real issue for them.

Yeah. We talked a little bit about the history of resettlement in Newfoundland. But I wonder, does this happen in any other province or territory in Canada? This is really this is a uniquely Newfoundland phenomenon. I mean, there are there have been pressures around amalgamation and, you know, you know, phasing out government services in different parts of this country. But there's no other part of Canada that I'm aware of that actively has a program encouraging people to sell their, you know, to leave their home in exchange for money as part of an established government program that continues this effort of centralizing its

citizens. I mean, I imagine this must be a pretty emotionally charged issue in the province then. It's no question, right? I mean, you talk to Newfoundlanders, many of them say, look, the heart of Newfoundland is not St. John's, right? They see St. John's as a big city. It's the outports. And they say the outports built Newfoundland. There would be no Newfoundland as we know it without these communities, right? I mean, the fishery was the lifeblood of the province and it was the outports that staffed that fishery and processed the fish and essentially built that industry. This is a big part of Newfoundland's history and heritage that we are phasing out.

And they're saying something significant is being lost when we do this time and time again to these communities. Greg, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me about this. My pleasure, Manika. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. I'm Manika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.