Black Tickle
It's a sad story, but a familiar one in a country built on natural resources and now leaving them behind.
In the 1980s, when the fishery was in its heyday, Black Tickle was a Labrador boom town. There were 3,000 people and the shore of the Island of Ponds was littered with trailers and cheap shacks. A global fleet jammed the harbour and there were jobs for all who wanted one. One woman remembers earning more than $500 a week in the fish plant - when she was 16.
And then the bust came. The trailers emptied, the shacks were torn down and the fishing fleet vanished.
A community based on cod was left reeling by the federal moratorium on the fishery. Its population has plunged by 95 per cent and residents now fear that the place is dying before their eyes. Those who remain look old beyond their years, eking out an existence foreign to most Canadians.
"We are really, really poor," says Dominique Keefe, who is 15 and in Grade 10.
Having lost its economic reason for being, Black Tickle needs a new one. And it's not alone. From mining to logging and pulp and paper, resource-based communities across the country have been struggling for years to survive and, with the increasing pace and potentially radical impact of climate change, many smaller centres soon may follow.
In fact, given the persistent notion that global warming is partly to blame for the cod's collapse, Black Tickle may be in the climate vanguard.
OIL MONEY
Trevor Taylor, the minister in St. John's responsible for rural development, says his department can't save every ailing community, but small-town depopulation is high on the agenda of a government that is flush with oil money and equipped with a strong new mandate from the voters.
This week, he says, the government brought together more than 100 community, business and social leaders to meet politicians and bureaucrats - and to work on a rural strategy to carry the province until 2020. "We've had our time trying to attract hockey-stick factories and rubber-boot factories or whatever a few decades ago," Mr. Taylor explains. "For much of Newfoundland and Labrador, the success of rural communities depends on building small and medium-sized businesses."
He says his department has almost $30-million for rural development and spends much of it on economic diversification, usually putting up one dollar for every three invested by the private sector.
That ratio is a problem for Black Tickle, where money is so scarce that many people use "honey buckets" instead of installing septic systems and empty their waste at the town dump or in the harbour.
The island has no water distribution system and the treatment plant is several kilometres from town. There are also no trees, so residents must travel 50 to 80 kilometres to fetch firewood. There is no fixed link to the mainland and the coastal ferry can't run year-round.
It's too expensive to "eat from the shops," so people fish and hunt for food, although nerves become frayed when the stores run out of cigarettes.
Fishermen now rely on marine species, such as whelk, that they never used to bother with. Government make-work projects help people log the 400-odd hours they need for employment benefits, but many must augment their income by picking bakeapples, as cloud berries are known in this part of the world.
"But the bakeapples won't last forever," said Clement Keefe, 54. "People are going out too early and picking too many of them."
Most of the 200 or so people who remain are either Keefes or Dysons, sprawling extended families with deep roots in the community. Some have stayed because they love Black Tickle and others because they felt that they had no choice.
"Most of the people have no education, degrees or anything," said David Dyson, who spends part of his time here, but has his permanent home in Goose Bay, more than an hour away by air. "They can't go outside and pay thousands of dollars for a house."
But the young people are voting with their feet, and the population has dropped by 100 in the past six years.
NATIONAL DILEMMA
Newfoundland and Labrador may be the hardest hit by rural depopulation, but nearly every province in the country is struggling with the problem.
Manitoba is working to improve its rural infrastructure and has recruited business-development specialists who can help rural residents identify new economic opportunities. "Government can't step in [and take over]" says Rosann Wowchuk, the province's Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development. "But government can provide the tools and the leadership."
In New Brunswick, Greg Byrne, the minister responsible for the rural secretariat, calls the issue "one of the most serious" facing his province. So the government has doubled its financial resources, is planning a major new population strategy and is trying to attract immigrants as well as to lure back former residents.
Mr. Taylor says Newfoundland and Labrador also is trying to create conditions that, over the long term, will persuade some former residents to come home.
But none of this is of any help to Black Tickle, where people are grappling with the here and now. "Just because we're on an island with only about 200 people," says Ms. Keefe, the student, "we still deserve to have clean water."
Older people and those without a vehicle find it hard to get water from the plant, so many homes draw some of their supply from the ponds that give the island its name. "You know it's not good for you, but what do you do?" asks Shawn Dyson, 33. "I think there's people here sick 360 days a year, but they don't think to blame it on the water."
John Hickey, the minister responsible for Labrador affairs, acknowledges that the community is one of the few in the province where homes do not have running water. But he notes that the government has taken the first step by building a treatment plant and providing funds to operate it.
Because of Black Tickle's rugged terrain and remote location, it would cost $15-million to provide water service to every home, Mr. Hickey says. The burden would have to be shared, but he has yet to see a plan from the community showing how it would do that.
Limited access to clean water makes it more difficult for people to wash their hands or food thoroughly. In one family, a pail of water is used to wash an infant son and then his mother. Finally, the water is used to flush the toilet.
Many residents say they find the situation degrading, but it also affects efforts to save the community. Tourism is often mentioned as a possible source of income, but that calls for sewers and water - and a road to the mainland.
Mr. Hickey says there simply isn't the money to connect the town to the Trans-Labrador Highway, and local people fear that when other coastal communities receive road access, Black Tickle's air and ferry service will be cut.
Philip Earle, general manager of Air Labrador, says there are no plans to change the schedule, but the concern persists, feeding residents' feeling that they are being ignored.
"Back in the olden days, people would take their dogs and put them on an island and throw them a bone every now and then to get them to shut up and stop howling," says Livenda Keefe, 34.
"We're like that, on an island, and government throws us a little bone every now and then to get us to shut up."
TOO OLD TO LEAVE
Roland Morris says he probably wouldn't still be here if he were 20 years younger, but now that he is 68, he and his wife cannot afford to relocate.
Then again, "I'd go in a minute if you'd move me," he adds. "I think the government is trying to move people - but do it at their own expense."
Others aren't waiting. This fall, a few more families packed up, including what remained of last year's graduating class - all four have now left the community.
"I'm just waiting until graduation and then I'm gone," Dominique Keefe says. "I want to get my university degree and get a decent job."
Oliver Moore is The Globe and Mail's Atlantic Canada bureau chief.
Oliver Moore