Readers will note that some of the programs that make up the social safety net have been taken away or changed. There is no longer a family allowance. There have been many changes to UI. And some people think that we can't afford medical care. This reminds us that improvements in people's lives can be taken from them. If we did not have a social safety net, could something like the Great Depression happen again?

People thought about this when the northern cod moratorium brought a stop to the fishery. If programs had not been in place to help people, what might have happened? The word "dole" is still a part of our language. It came up in an interview with a fisherwoman in 1989, 50 years after the Depression.

We're having a good enough season this year, but there's only one bad summer's fishery between most of us here and the dole.²¹

This woman could not have remembered the Depression. She wasn't even born then. But her parents lived through the 1930s. Through their stories, she learned how hard things can get. She uses the word "dole" to mean what you have to live on when you can't make a living from your work.

Depression Memories

The Great Depression left its mark on Newfoundland in many ways. It left many people sick or weak. Many people lost much of what they had worked for. The "dirty thirties" comes up again and again in songs, books, and in the stories people still tell. And many older adults in Newfoundland today still will not eat brown bread or drink black tea. These things remind them not of "the good old days," but of the hardest times of their lives.