The Rock Is A Hard Place
Maclean's, August 23, 1993
By Rick Mercer
Wanted by the police? Being chased by a drug lord? Witness protection not up to scratch? Newfoundland and Labrador awaits you. Hundreds of communities, bays and coves to choose from, many complete with all modern conveniences, many more complete with nothing but wildlife, blueberries and guaranteed anonymity. Move in, pay taxes, and nobody will say boo.
Whether or not the provincial department of tourism adopts a promotions strategy similar to the above is yet to be seen. Anything is possible because the provincial government is under a lot of pressure to come up with some sort of salvation plan. Answers, jobs, a strategy, an idea even, anything at all. The natives are getting restless.
It has long been a quaint Newfoundland expression to say, “I’d claw the eyes out of that,” when referring to, say, a child molester or cabinet minister. Until recently, it was just that, an expression. Roger Grimes (former labor leader turned employment minister) had the dubious honor of witnessing firsthand as quaint colloquialism became reality. When faced with a mob of surly fish plant workers looking for permission to return to work for lower wages, things got ugly. They wanted to hear a “yes,” Grimes said, “No,” so they kicked him, pushed him and then went for the eyes. One she-worker from the town of Curling drew blood in the first swipe. He’s lucky the stress of being out of work meant that her nails were bit to the quick. An upturn in the economy and he surely would have lost his sight.
This is strange behavior for Newfoundlanders. We wrote the book on conflict avoidance. If we were an aggressive people, not many premiers would live to see a second term and rioting in the streets would be a provincial pastime. But like anybody, we can only be pushed so far. It’s all fun and games until Roger Grimes loses an eye.
We don’t want much. We don’t expect much. Nobody settled here because of the untold luxuries the place has to offer. It’s a hard place to live, always has been, always will be and that’s the way we like it. Actually it’s the way we love it. We know most people in the Western world couldn’t hack it here for five minutes. That’s what keeps us going.
The Vikings came to Newfoundland and they left because it was too tough for them. That’s our history.
Everyone else pictures the Vikings as strong, brave, weather-hardy explorers; we know them as a bunch of pussies who couldn’t handle the cold. It must have been the weather because when they left the cod stocks were in fine shape. They had no excuse whatsoever.
It’s all part and parcel of the Newfoundland psyche. We’ve given up looking for the silver lining, we’re content with the cloud. Start looking for the light at the end of the tunnel and you’ll end up babbling like an idiot about how there’s a great future in importing American garbage. A proposal to turn our province into a garbage dump for the Eastern seaboard has been in the works for a couple of years now.
Sure it means jobs, but you can’t blame most Newfoundlanders for poo-pooing the idea. The thought of being America’s toilet does little to excite or inspire. We’re like the Third World, I suppose, we just don’t know what’s good for us.
It seems like the eco-adventure-whales-a-breaching-la-la-la crowd are on the right track. When people from Newfoundland go on holiday, we go to a big city, it makes sense that it would work vice versa. Those surrounded by an urban sprawl are attracted to wilderness, wildlife, clean air, clear water and a lack of public transportation. Being blessed with a history void of big industry we’ve got all of those attributes in spades. We’ve all bumped into New York heat wave escapees on their way to go iceberg watching with big silly grins on their faces. And we all know that they’ve got money in their pockets.
The great thing about adventure tourism is that anybody can get in on the ground floor. Since the beginning of time, city slickers have always loved a trip out to the lobster traps with a fisherman. Word of their excitement, however, made its way to Ottawa and stern warnings were issued. Arrests would be made if any fisherman was caught being that kind to visitors. Under no circumstances can a tourist tag along and see firsthand what they came to see firsthand.
Luckily, the federal government hasn’t figured out a way to make seabird- or whale-watching illegal. If you are interested in doing any of those things, act now; plans to scuttle those operations are surely in the works on Parliament Hill.
But regardless of any success in alternative employment, there are still thousands of fishermen and their families wondering, “what about us?” A few of them will leave, some say a few hundred thousand of them have to leave. Where are they going? I’m not sure. West, I suppose, to a suburb. They can go to work all week and then drive 38 miles every night to get drunk in an awful “Newfie” bar on the edge of an industrial park.
Yes, the future of my province is in fact grey. There are far too many unanswered questions for my liking. Some people whisper about a massive depopulation conspiracy that is afoot, how we will all have to be gone by 2025. Anything is possible, I suppose, and this may very well be true. But short of an atom bomb, I can’t for the life of me imagine what it would take to get the majority of us to leave. In Newfoundland there are lots of great places to hide.
Rick Mercer, a writer and actor based in St. John’s, is currently working on a CBC-TV comedy series to be launched in October.