After the moratorium. (Notebook/Carnet).

Ommer, Rosemary E.

IN 1992, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT declared a moratorium on the northern codfishery in the waters offNewfounland. In the ensuing months, further moratoria followed. Indeed it was feared -- and still is -- that the groundfish fishery was facing commercial and biological extinction. The unspoken consensus seemed to be that the outports, along with the codfish, might well be doomed. In the wake of the fishery's collapse, an interdisciplinary team of social, natural, and health scientists from Memorial University of Newfoundland researched what went wrong and, perhaps more importantly, if rural Newfoundland might have the strengths, both in terms of human and natural resources, on which to build a future.

The human history of this region has been marked by nearly continuous occupation for thousands of years -- by First Nations and, since the 17th century, white settlers. White settlers, like aboriginal populations before them, used a combination of different resources, woven together into some form of seasonal round, as a way of surviving. Cod, though, was king. For centuries, fishers and their families have always been the people closest to this resource, fishing both for merchants in a barter economy, and for themselves in a subsistence mode. This arrangement made it possible for them to live in relatively isolated rural communities; it also permitted merchants to run profitable enterprises because they did not have to pay their workers -- families -- a year-long wage. This basic socio-economic structure remained in place, in various forms, up to World War II.

But with the end of the war and Confederation with Canada, it was considered backward, a drag on the new province's economic future. Simultaneously, the state, which had demonstrated its capacity to manage civil society during the war, was seen as a catalyst for modernization and progress. The implications of this paradigm shift were profound. With Confederation came the social safety net. To those who lived and worked in the outports it was a welcome introduction to Canada. Yet despite the obvious benefits for people who were, by our standards, desperately poor, the sudden flow of cash disrupted the old internally-reliant structure of the household economy which had been based on occupational pluralism. Over time, it became less and less viable, even desirable, as ready cash permitted people to buy things that they once produced themselves. Many subsistence activities declined or disappeared.

At the same time, large-scale industrial schemes and commercial farming were, increasingly, looked upon as the sine qua non of a modem economy. According to Joey Smallwood, mega-projects, such as the oil refinery at Come-by-Chance on the Isthmus of Avalon, would drag Newfoundland "kicking and screaming into the 20th century." Indeed, in the post-World War II period, the icons of progress, captured in government-sponsored promotional films, were belching smokestacks, whirling gears, and busy factories, not pitchforks, hand lines, and dories.

What of the fisheries? Prior to the 1940s, the annual fish catch for Newfoundland was around 150,000 tonnes; this number increased in the 1950s as foreign fleets, which possessed "historic rights" to fish in the area, expanded their efforts. By the end of the decade, both domestic and foreign fishing fleets had adopted factory freezer technology, sophisticated sounding equipment, and new gear. As a result, by the 1960s, offshore catches exceeded inshore catches for the first time since the early 1700s. The total annual catch now stood at 810,000 tonnes, nearly a fourfold increase in less than 40 years.

Against this backdrop of resource exploitation, inshore fishers moved further offshore, while the offshore fleet expanded its zone of activity. All along there were voices of protest, largely from fishers who worked the inshore fishery and used older methods: the fish were getting smaller, they said, and they were getting harder to find. And they were right. It was becoming more and more difficult for fish to find safe places to spawn, regenerate, and recover, and the overall effect was startling: between 1962 and 1977 the biomass of cod for harvest declined 82 percent to 526,000 tonnes, and the reproductive portion of the stock fell by 94 per cent. The establishment of the 200-mile limit in 1977 provided a temporary reprieve from this intense predation, but the direction of change -- toward a capital intensive, high-technology industry -- was undiminished. In the years after 1985, the spawning biomass finally succumbed, falling to one percent of its historic maximum in 1992. That is the historical evidence and it is compelling.

How are rural Newfoundlanders responding to the crisis? Memorial University's researchers constructed a rich data base of information on residence, migration, occupational histories, experience of unemployment, attitudes to social issues, views of the environment, household division of labour, formal employment, and use of the informal sector. The data base was built out of a survey of 786 people, aged 16 and over, who lived on the Bonavista Peninsula and the Isthmus of Avalon (see figure 1). It was statistically analyzed and enriched by detailed interviews designed to reach beyond the descriptive data into people's thoughts, ideas, and motivations. Field workers lived in the area for nine months to one year, administering the survey, recording daily observations in field journals, and conducting life histories with a range of people.

Our investigation revealed that there was a general sense of insecurity about the future, and remarkably strong attachment to the area despite the fact that nearly one-third of the people we spoke to expected to leave within five years. It was the younger and better educated who spoke of doing that, while stayers often hoped for a revival of the fishery and a chance to live as they did before. Those who were taking steps to find a new occupation or set up a small business through education or retraining opportunities were, sadly, in the minority. We also found a tendency for people to deal with problems either on their own or within the confines of the extended family. On matters of the formal economy, communities themselves were often divided on how to proceed, though informal collaboration was still in place.

In general, those who wished to stay in the outports put forth two different, though not mutually exclusive, approaches -- strategies that looked "backward" and/or strategies that looked "forward." "Looking back" took the form of employment in a resurrected fishery in combination with Employment Insurance; "looking forward" took various forms, usually based on moving into new occupations such as tourism, skilled trades, and small farming. Combinations included a preference for returning to the fishery, but linking that to other things as well, such as starting a small business, fruit and market gardening, to name but two possibilities. While rural problems often seem intensely local, they are, as this evidence suggests, in fact structural, and strategies that build the necessary infrastructure to support small scale, self-reliant, and locally-rooted business in such areas will pay dividends in the form of sustainable communities and a sustainable tax base.

Significantly, the informal economy continued to play an important role in people's lives: rural Newfoundlanders build their own homes and provide much of their own sustenance through berrying, gardening, hunting, fishing, and wood cutting. But our informants warned that these skills can be lost, and it must also be noted that cash inputs of some kind remain essential to this lifestyle. Modern ways of living, including mortgage arrangements and other urban-industrial structures, undermine informal structures, which actually provide a cheap and efficient safety net for communities in hard times. Without some way of recognizing the value of this set of strategies, and giving them formal development support, they are unlikely to be enough to sustain local communities.

How do people feel? Our health scientists' survey of the effects of unemployment on people's health found the same high degree of anxiety about the future, lack of confidence in the federal and provincial government's ability to solve the economic crisis, and a moderate amount of stress related to the moratorium in most cases. Women experienced more distress than men, which is consistent with other studies of this nature, but most people said they had adequate methods for coping. Parents cited kin and friendship networks as important in this regard, as well as being involved in the community, and most people participated in some kind of local volunteer activity -behaviour that underscores the linkages between family, community, and population health.

The children who participated in the study were, overall, socially and personally secure, exhibiting no maladaptive behaviour. They were also, like their parents, happy with life in Bonavista and with their family and friends. Unlike them, however, they were practical about future expectations, knowing they would have to leave, and knowing they would need advanced education to make this possible. Pessimism about local employment opportunities was high and the vast majority -- about 90 per cent -- plan a post-secondary education and a career NOT in the fishery. In sum, neither parents or children in this study exhibited the mental distress, lowered self-esteem, higher social anxiety, or weakened social support so typical of unemployed people in the research literature. It is clear that the kinship network is such that communities have a remarkable capacity to absorb shock.

What, then, of the future? Key people in the community who might be expected to spearhead future development still look to the government or outside capital for the way forward, but see local control as vital. Everyone recognizes that there will be a severely reduced fishing sector under any future scenario, and the historical evidence for the danger of continuing what has been a very long-term strategy of increasing capital intensive technology in the development of the fisheries can not be ignored. It is critical that the fisheries be managed as an ecosystem, made up of human and fish communities, both of which need to be sustained. Foreseeing and forestalling any biological risk to commercial and non-commercial species will require a variety of political, economic, and technological innovations, not the least of which is the incorporation of fishers' local knowledge with that of government scientists to make fruitful partnerships between managers and local harvesters. Fish catchers possess a complex way of seeing and interpreting the oceanography of their different fishing grounds, and their knowledge is nuanced, enormously detailed, and vital to stock assessment and policy implementation.

What is immediately clear, of course, is that under this kind of scenario out-ports would have to diversify (probably building on existing informal economic structures) and government would have to take diversification seriously, adopting a sustained approach to local human, as well as fisheries, development. This implies the development of other small-scale activities: ecotourism, in its many manifestations, is an obvious possibility and a real one, given that, with the crucial and tragic exception of the decline in fish stocks, both the marine and terrestrial parts of the ecosystem are relatively healthy. Fortunately, in this age of communications technology, many of the old locational difficulties for rural small business development are being removed. The existence of a still flourishing informal economy, and a very strong personal attachment to the area, are precisely the kind of building blocks that are needed for such a policy to be feasible. They also provide a potent counterargument to the proposed " they should move away" solution, which does not come to grips with the serious adjustment costs of outmigration, or what would happen to the displaced and unemployed, let alone the valuable social and cultural features that would be destroyed in the process.

Rural Newfoundland could become sustainable again. Outport people with real responsibility for their livelihood and environment would regain their historic self-reliance, and be in a position to match their rich local knowledge with that of formal science, to develop a range of small business activities which would ensure the survival of a cultural heritage and environment for themselves, their descendants, and the many visitors that would come to the dramatic and beautiful places they call home.