HICKMAN’S HARBOUR, N.L. — Brian Avery was three years old when he and his parents packed their belongings into a boat and pulled away from Deer Harbour, N.L., leaving behind their home, their way of life and centuries of family history.
The Averys and their neighbours were abandoning their community on Random Island in Trinity Bay as part of Newfoundland and Labrador’s resettlement program. Their boats were pointed toward Clarenville, N.L., and larger towns beyond, where roads, running water and the promise of jobs outside fishing and forestry awaited.
Fifty-seven years later, Avery is part of a new generation of Newfoundlanders navigating the painful history of resettlement and bringing people back to these abandoned communities through tourism.
“It was a lot of years before they went back, a lot of years before anybody went back. You don’t want to go back to something that hurts,” Avery said of his parents and other residents.
“But I always knew in the back of my mind … there would be a day that people would know about Deer Harbour and the beauty there.”
For centuries, people in Newfoundland relied heavily on fishing and settled in towns near the coast, close to fishing grounds. But after Newfoundland entered Confederation in 1949, the provincial and federal governments began offering people money to leave far-flung communities and move closer to government services.
More than 16,000 people were resettled between 1965 and 1970, leaving behind nearly 120 communities, according to Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador. Some houses holding generations of stories were left standing, empty and intact. Others were lifted up and set afloat to be pulled by boat to the owners’ new communities.
Resettlement broke people’s hearts and divided communities. It still haunts the province today.
“Many people left extremely reluctantly, especially some of the older folks,” said Duane Collins, whose mother was seven when she and her family left their home on the low-sloping rocks of Silver Fox Island, off Newfoundland’s northeast coast in Bonavista Bay. The town was empty by 1961.
“The adults frequently decided to go knowing it was going to be tough for them, but they did it for — hopefully — a better future for their kids.”
Collins’ family kept up their house on the island and used it as a summer home when he was growing up. In 2018, when he was 41, he helped found Hare Bay Adventures, offering day trips to Silver Fox Island and other nearby resettled towns among a roster of other excursions.