Newfoundland, from far away

DENISE RIDEOUT

IQALUIT — Look under any rock in the Baffin region and you’re bound to find someone from ‘the Rock,’ — Newfoundland, that is.

There’s Newfoundlander Ed Picco, Nunavut’s minister of health. There are Newfoundland nurses in Iqaluit, teachers in Kimmirut and business people running stores, construction companies and hotels throughout the Baffin.

Some came to experience a new adventure. But many more moved north because the territory has something Newfoundland doesn’t: jobs.

Newfoundland’s unemployment rate is hovering around 17 per cent, and since the 1960s, more people left the province than moved in.

According to Statistics Canada, between 1991 and 1996, Newfoundland lost 23,200 residents to other provinces.

Fred Nurse is just one of the thousands of people who’ve left the island in search of work.

Three years ago, Nurse moved to Kimmirut to become manager of the Kimik Co-op hotel and store.

Originally from Grand Bank, a small community on Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula, Nurse had owned and run a hotel for 10 years.

But he got fed up with Newfoundland.

“The weather there is so unsettled. Everyday it either rains or blows,” he said.

“The job situation down there is unsettled too, because you didn’t know if you were going to make it this year or not in business.”

Nurse sold his hotel and headed north to work at the co-op. Every now and then the hotel there becomes a gathering place for Newfoundlanders.

During the summer construction season in Kimmirut, there’s usually a handful of Newfoundlanders in town for work. They tend to lodge at the hotel.

Next week they’ll have five Newfoundlanders gathered around the kitchen table.

“So we can sit down and have a good old chat and everyone will know what we’re talking about,” Nurse jokes.

The lodgers will also be treated to some traditional Newfoundland meals, courtesy of Nurse’s partner, Genny Rideout.

“Jiggs dinner,” a meal of chicken, vegetables and salt beef all smothered in gravy, is a treat for the visiting Newfoundlanders.

“We do cod fish and jiggs dinner and pea soup,” says Rideout, who’s also from the Burin Peninsula. “Basically what I used to cook at home I cook here.”

Rideout says seeing the small boats in Kimmirut’s bay reminds her of “home.”

“I’m quite content,” she says.

Further north, in Nunavut’s capital, Neville Wheaton is also content.
Wheaton is Iqaluit’s fire chief and director of emergency services.

Wheaton’s Newfoundland accent still rings out, though he left Green Bay, on the island’s north coast, 23 years ago.

In 1978, after graduating from college with a degree in marine engineering, he found himself with few job opportunities in Newfoundland.

“You had to bite the bullet and move away,” he says. “And it was hard to move away.”

Wheaton’s job search took him to Halifax, where he worked for the Department of National Defence. There, he joined the volunteer fire department and got the itch to become a firefighter.

“I miss ‘The Rock’: the fog, the moose hunting, the lifestyle.”
— Robert Sheaves,
originally from Port aux Basques

Now, years later, Wheaton is the fire chief in Iqaluit, a job he’s been doing for five years.

He jokes that while growing up in rural Newfoundland, he always wanted to get out.

Now he finds himself once again living in an isolated community.

But he’s loving small-town life.

“I grew up with snowmobiles and qamutiks. The lifestyle wasn’t much different than it is here,” he says.

Higher up in the Arctic, you’ll find the most northerly Newfoundlanders.

Three Newfoundlanders live in Grise Fiord, North America’s most northerly community.

One of them is Robert Sheaves, who left Port aux Basques to join the army when he was just 17 .

Due to the job shortage, his options on the island were few. “There was nothing left there,” Sheaves says.

He spent the next 20 years stationed in Germany, Ottawa and Yellowknife.

“My time in the army was up, I met a girl, we started a family and I ended up here,” Sheaves explains.

The 44-year-old now works as Grise Fiord’s senior administrative officer.

“I miss ‘the Rock’: the fog, the moose-hunting, the lifestyle,” he says.

“But we’ve got life good.