Perched along Canada’s windswept North Atlantic coast, the town of Little Bay Islands – population 51 – is a picturesque collection of brightly-painted fishing houses and narrow streets.
But on Dec. 31, the island town will shut down permanently under a government mandate following an overwhelming vote by residents, the provincial minister responsible for relocations said.
Today, residents in the tight-knit community are packing their belongings into U-Haul trucks and making the final preparations to shutter their homes, one long-time resident said.
Ferry services to the rest of Newfoundland and Labrador province, phone connections and electricity will stop at the end of the year.
Similar scenes albeit with less immediacy are playing out globally as billions of people move from rural areas into cities, according to U.N. data.
A decline in the fishing catch, the town’s economic lifeblood, coupled with an aging population and the high cost of maintaining infrastructure in the remote settlement prompted residents to vote in favour of moving, said Jeff Webb, a history professor at Memorial University in the provincial capital, St. John’s.
Ecological changes, “perhaps climate change induced” and declining catches linked to overfishing underpin the community’s need to move, he added.
“This not a Newfoundland particular thing; this is something happening throughout the world,” Webb told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Many small communities no longer have an economic imperative to exist.”
2019 Thomson Reuters Foundation