That’s been a thing forever in the Atlantic provinces. Fish, forestry, military or move.
I ended up moving from NB in 2009, with the company saying I could move back when work improved. Fifteen years later, I’m still in the West and the people who made the promise are long gone.
I’m hoping to retire and move home in a few years. I’ve had enough.
“Oh, I miss the green and the woods and streams
And I don’t like cowboy clothes
But I like being free and that makes me
An idiot, I suppose”There’s something extra sad to me about newfoundlanders having to leave for work… And nobody expresses homesickness so beautifully
No change in the weather
no change in me
I dont want to leave but
You cant live for free
You cant eat the air
And you cant drink the sea
No change in the weather
And no change in meA lot of people, especially early into adulthood, move away from home in search of career development and better job prospects. Having multiple places run out of money to pay you doesn’t sound fun either.
To me Nova Scotia doesn’t seem too far from Newfoundland but this writer would probably beg to differ.
The author view as portrayed in the title is rather bizzare. She also doesn’t justify it aside from her essentially day dreaming things would be that way.
As someone who grew up in rural Canada. It’s pretty clear that a significant amount of people would leave to seek better employment opportunities by the last few years of high school.
Eh. The author saw potential for a thriving life and community in their home, and didn’t see what other locations had that their home didn’t. They saw the potential - the human and natural resources they grew up around - and couldn’t understand why no one wanted to actualize it.
What they missed was that society lies to us about what drives prosperity in our current economy. The thing that other places have that Atlantic Canada lacks is not ingenuity, or work effort, or desire, or natural resources.
It’s money.
There’s no reason it couldn’t happen here, except all of the money is over there, and the people who control it are never going to (willingly) loosen their grip.
If you don’t see that, for some reason, it feels arbitrary.
Had a guy leave work in BC a few weeks back. He was going back to N.S. after 19 years working at our work and many years in other places since leaving home.
He finally went home now that one of his parents died and left him property. He can afford to retire there now.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
I had sneered as my high school classmates disappeared, heading west for jobs in the oilsands, and turned up my nose when my siblings left Newfoundland for employment in Nova Scotia.
We would live a life right out of a tourism commercial: clothes flapping on the line, grass rustling in the cool breeze and whales breaching out of the blue-wave backdrop.
The folks who left lacked vision, I thought, and if we rolled up our sleeves and applied some Newfie ingenuity, we could create the opportunities we needed out of the frigid Atlantic air.
When I got laid off from that program (which was later shut down to save money), I found a part-time contract touting the many petroleum-related careers young people could pursue in N.L.
Every night on my lumpy mattress, I swiped through Bumble and searched real estate listings, seeking some semblance of home, romance and friendship to soothe my sense of failure.
If I went for a quick weekend visit, I would tout Nova Scotia’s superiority — the better weather, amenities, events and activities that I had access to that weren’t available on the island.
The original article contains 1,289 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I suppose being oil sands the The Idiot is more apropos.
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