The government decided to try to help people move. But, before it would help, everybody had to decide to go. The government didn't want a few people staying behind. What would happen to them if they stayed? How could the government afford to help them? And they would surely need help.

A meeting was held in the community. The people were told to make up their minds. Leave or stay: they would all have to agree.

We can follow this story through another letter from Mr. Belbin.⁵ In August, 1955, he wrote to P.H. Jardine, the Director of Social Assistance. He wrote about the meeting on Bragg's Island. He was not very happy with the result.

He said that the people could not agree about what to do. Not everyone wanted to go. Six families wanted to stay on Bragg's Island. If they were the only ones who stayed, they would have no mail or telegraph services the next winter. They would be cut off from the world.

The government wanted them all to agree on a plan. It would not offer any help to people moving unless everyone agreed to go.

We can look back today and imagine the pressure people felt. People who wanted to go would have felt that the ones who wanted to stay were holding them back. The ones who wanted to stay would have felt that the choice was being taken from them. The issue had already hurt the community. Mr. Belbin reported that one man who was trying to move could get no one to help him.

Bragg's Island is not a strange case. Resettlement often divided communities. There were bad feelings. There was pressure. There was a sense that changes were coming that people could not control.

Today, many people believe that resettlement would have taken care of itself if the government had stayed out of it. Some people would have left their isolated communities; a few others would have stayed. But the government did not see this as a solution. The small groups of people left in tiny settlements would still need services. It would cost a lot to provide these services. The government felt it could not afford to do both things: help some people move and help others stay.

There was also another idea behind resettlement. Joseph Smallwood had his own vision of the future. He wanted Newfoundland to have more large towns and fewer small outports. He had big dreams of industry and new jobs. Like some leaders today, he thought there were too many people struggling to make a living in the fishery.