The Resettlement of Pushthrough, Newfoundland, in 1969
The Resettlement of Pushthrough, Newfoundland, in 1969 RaymOND B. BlakE INTRODUCTION One of the largest internal state-sponsored migrations of people within Can- ada occurred in Newfoundland and Labrador between 1954 and 1975.1 Some 300 rural communities were vacated and 30,000 people relocated to larger communities, greatly reshaping settlement distributions and patterns in out- port regions, particularly along the south coast, in Placentia, Bonavista, and Notre Dame bays, and on the southeast coast of Labrador. Many who moved under the program welcomed their relocation from small, isolated outports as improving immensely their social and economic prospects even if their com- munities were dismembered in the process. There was little public opposition until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the program had largely run its course. Resettlement then became a cause célèbre of what journalist and writer Sandra Gwyn called the Newfoundland cultural renaissance, led primarily by a St. John’s artistic and intellectual class that considered resettlement a mis- guided policy imposed by callous state elites, insensitive social and economic planners, and ill-informed politicians that recklessly interfered in the lives of ordinary, hard-working people.2 It indicted Joseph R. Smallwood, the prov- ince’s Premier from 1949 to 1972, for his failure to appreciate the uniqueness of outport life in his relentless search for modernity and North American con- sumer culture.3 His attempt to change the spatial patterns of settlement through the depopulation of isolated settlements did not simply threatened the physical, social, and cultural landscapes of the past, they argued, but was newfoundland and labrador studies, 30, 2 (2015) 1719-1726 The Resettlement of Pushthrough 221 paramount to destroying a people by obliterating its culture, history, and trad- itions.
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