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Newfoundland Resettlement From the 1950s to the 1970s, the sight of houses moving was often a sad one. In an effort to economize on the services it had to deliver to its far-flung population, the Newfoundland government of the day instituted a policy of consolidating outport communities. It offered outport dwellers cash to resettle in "growth centres," promising that children would have better education, old people access to more medical facilities, and everyone a better chance at jobs.
Thirty thousand people
took the government up on its offer and relocated. Many found themselves
feeling adrift among strangers in places whose rocks and coves they did not
know, whose fishing grounds they had no ancestral claim to, and whose ways
they could not teach their children. Few forgot their old outports, and today
many of their children are summer visitors there. Some, in fact, have built
cottages in the places where their parents once lived. Many of these
Newfoundland families, not only took all of their belongings with them, some
even took their house. On these occasions, the whole community would turn out,
and with long heavy ropes, inch the house ashore and then use logs to move it
to its new location. The men of
the community pulled or pushed together as a man sang the HAUL in the verse of
the working lyric 'Jolly Poker'. And all hands would join in. And it’s so me, Jolly Poker And it’s so me, Jolly Poker And it’s so me, Jolly Poker, HAUL
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by Page Created 06 June 2001
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Ressettlement 
