From the story Deborah tells, it may seem that we are hearing about a place and people long ago. We may think that Deborah is an older woman. We may think she is talking about a past before the modern times we live in. But Deborah is a young woman. She was born in 1962. Her story is about living in Grole. This was a small settlement in Hermitage Bay on the south coast of Newfoundland. Grole does not exist now. You will not find it on the map of Newfoundland.

The map Deborah draws is a special one. It is a memory map. We can use memory maps to help us recall places and events from our past. Drawing the map helps a person remember places, people and the details of everyday life. And, as we remember more things, we can fill in more of the map.

What happened to Grole? It was one of the many Newfoundland communities that people left in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. During this time, whole communities moved to other places. Sometimes, people moved on their own. Other times, the government tried to get them to move to larger centres. This is called resettlement. Deborah and her family were resettled in 1970. They moved from Grole to Harbour Breton. Everyone else left Grole too. It became another empty place that you can find off dirt roads or on boat trips, but not on the map. But the story of resettlement in Newfoundland began long before the Jackmans packed the last of their things into a truck one August day in 1970.

To Leave or to Stay

A Hard Choice to Make

Will we go or will we stay? People in Newfoundland and Labrador have had to make this choice many times. People have always moved from one place to another. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes people move to find work. They might move to a better harbour. They might go to a place with a better water supply. They may move to a place where new jobs have been created, or somewhere with better schools or medical services.

Resettlement was different. The Newfoundland government got involved in moving people. It wanted to change the face of Newfoundland. And it did. Newfoundland became a province of Canada in 1949. The new premier, Joseph R. Smallwood, had quite a job on his hands. People all over the new province were asking for better services. They lived in hundreds of small communities strung out along the coast. Many of these places had no electricity or decent roads. Smallwood had promised people a better life if they voted to join Canada. Now they were asking for that better life.