After the fish were gone

Jean Marbella over at the Baltimore Sun has written a great article on how the collapse of fish stock turned a community into a ghost town.

Jean Marbella
May 2, 2008

Towns usually die slowly in a cascading series of losses – the factory, the high school, the movie theater – making it hard to point to when or even why a once thriving community expires. But with Great Harbour Deep, a one-time outpost in a remote coastal stretch of Newfoundland in Canada, it was clear when the death spiral began and what triggered it.

When the cod went away, so did the town.

“It was overfishing,” said Sharon Elgar, a former town clerk of the former town. “Fish, fish, fish, till nothing was left.”

Today, Great Harbour Deep, once home to several hundred people, is a ghost town, one of a number of towns that died along with the collapse of the cod industry. In 2002, the Canadian government paid each of the remaining 52 households as much as $100,000 to abandon their homes and their community – it was cheaper than continuing to provide power, transportation and other services to the dwindling population. Given her official town duties, Elgar was among the last to leave, shortly before the date, Oct. 31, when the power would be cut and the lights, literally, would go out in Great Harbour Deep. (Link) to read more