As rain lashed the grey hills, clapboard houses and birthed fishing vessels of this outport-turned-bedroom-community, Robbie Melvin looked at the sea and recalled the days he went out on it.
“Years ago, I used to fish with my father,” he recalled. But then the fishery shut down, and he headed to Ontario.
Now he’s back, working at an oil refinery. “We’re all out of the fishery and into some other kind of business,” he explained.
Oil and Danny Williams brought him home – one of thousands of Newfoundlanders who’ve returned thanks to the economic resurgence and a Premier whom everyone here credits with making good times better by taking on and besting Ottawa and the oil barons.
But Danny Williams leaves as Premier Friday, and Mr. Melvin, who’s 48, wonders who, if anyone, can replace that political force of nature.
“That’s the question around the table,” he mused. It’s the question around many a table here.
Mr. Williams’s dominating personality, and the tight rein he held on his cabinet and caucus, have left him with no obvious successor. It has also left Newfoundlanders divided over whether that successor should be a less confrontational, more managerial leader, or someone whose elbows will be as high and tongue as sharp.
In more than a dozen interviews in St. John’s and in the former fishing villages that have become commuter towns on the Avalon Peninsula, the message was identical: Newfoundlanders are proud of their new-found prosperity and confidence, the former the result of offshore oil, the latter the legacy of Mr. Williams, who inspired them to believe that the future was theirs to seize.
Paul Dandeno, who has spent 35 years in the Coast Guard, is amazed by the transformation in attitudes, even in the remotest outports that he visits. “People are not just sitting around on their ass,” he recounts, as he sips a pint at St. John’s legendary Duke of Duckworth pub. “They’re saying ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, because, because, because.’ There’s a whole new mindset here.”
The Conference Board of Canada expects the provincial gross domestic product to grow by 4.7 per cent this year compared with 3 per cent for the rest of Canada. Though unemployment remains above the national average, employment growth, at 3.1 per cent since 2008, is the highest in the country. About 5,000 people have moved back to the Rock over that past three years, although, at 512,000 souls, the province is still about 65,000 people shy of what it was 25 years ago.
Royal LePage reports that St. John’s has the hottest housing market in Canada, with prices rising at an annual rate of up to 14 per cent, depending on housing type. Condominiums are sprouting everywhere, and the once shabby-but-colourful homes in the city centre have been reclapboarded and refurbished. Outside the city, people complain of rush-hour traffic jams on the roads from the Avalon outports to St. John’s.
Long-term projections are more ambiguous. The Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Finance forecasts slowing economic and employment growth through 2013. The life expectancy of the Hibernia and Hebron oil fields is uncertain, although there are promising possibilities for oil and natural gas both offshore and onshore.
The recently announced hydro-electric project that will route electricity from the Lower Churchill River to Nova Scotia by undersea cables will go ahead only if $6.2-billion in financing can be found and electricity rates rise.
But there are concrete reasons for optimism, not least the $2.8-billion plant that is being built at Long Harbour, which will process nickel from Voisey’s Bay in Labrador. And perhaps most encouraging of all: Newfoundland now has one of the lowest high-school dropout rates in Canada.
Mr. Williams can take credit for negotiating the deals that led to Voisey’s Bay and to an increased provincial stake in offshore oil. And the people of Newfoundland give him credit for developing that most invaluable if intangible resource: confidence.
“He stood up for us and got things done,” maintains Danelle Tiller. The 26-year-old is studying to become a hair stylist, and says there are plenty of jobs waiting for her when she graduates. “He showed us that we didn’t have to be pushovers.”
“Newfoundland knows what it’s doing and knows where it’s going,” says Paul Sheppard, a second-year science student at Memorial University who was visiting the art gallery at The Rooms, St. John’s elegant new cultural centre.” It knows that it’s becoming something more than what it was.” The Ontario native hopes to stay in Newfoundland and perhaps become a doctor.
If there’s one worry, it’s that the Progressive Conservatives won’t find the right successor to Mr. Williams. Some people here are ready for a political leader who brings a less combative, more managerial, approach to the job.
“We need someone who’s smart enough and steady,” said Michael Gatherall, 41, who offers whale-and-puffin-watching tours out of Bay Bulls on the Southern Shore, and who lives in one of the fine new homes on the hills overlooking the town. “Someone who’s not going to just grandstand. We’ve had enough of that in the past.”
Others want the opposite.
“I kind of like the aggressive, standing-up, we’re not going to get pushed around any more” approach, said Geoff Inder, 43, who works at a printing shop in St. John’s. “I’d rather see that than just picking some guy who says, ‘Okay, we’re good, let’s go with the status quo.’ After all, it was Danny “who made people realize that just because we’re the newest province and one of the smallest, that doesn’t mean we don’t count for anything.” He wants the next premier to carry on that assertive approach to the rest of the country.
Rick Hillier, who comes from Newfoundland, is wistfully cited as a possible replacement, though no one knows whether the popular former general, who now lives in Ottawa, is interested in the job.
Health Minister Jerome Kennedy is also a leading contender – he has also served in finance and justice – though some people find him too abrasive even by Newfoundland standards.
Interim Premier Kathy Dunderdale is a possibility, though a surprising number warned that the historically socially conservative province may not be ready to vote for a woman premier.
They may not have a choice. The Liberals are led by Yvonne Jones and the NDP by Lorraine Michael. Ms. Jones is being treated for breast cancer and her future as leader is uncertain. The general consensus of those interviewed was that the Liberals have faint hopes for victory in next October’s fixed-date election, and need time to rebuild.
Whoever succeeds Mr. Williams faces some big challenges in the immediate future. Ottawa and the provinces must negotiate new health-care funding and equalization accords by 2014, and with the Conservative government determined to rein in deficits, those talks could get heated.
Closer to home, the province is embroiled in a bitter dispute with doctors over pay and workload. And the next premier will need to work on improving the dysfunctional relationship between Newfoundland and Quebec.
Nonetheless, people are convinced that things are just getting started in Newfoundland. It’s not just the oil, it’s mining and hydro and tourism and a thriving artistic community. But the island’s greatest asset is the strong belief of its people that Newfoundlanders can entrench prosperity, and that they will never have to hold out a reluctant hand for help again.
