By Patrick Newhook/February 17, 2022
With a mostly negative change in the population of the Irish Loop, some community leaders are wondering what else can be done to try reversing the trend.
On February 9, Statistics Canada released the 2021 census, showing how each province’s population changed over the last four years.
Newfoundland and Labrador has been struggling for years to maintain its population, and that was represented in the census with this province being the only one in the country to see negative growth, going from 519,716 people to 510,550, a decrease of 1.7 per cent according to the census.
The Avalon’s Southern Shore was among the regions experiencing the decrease. Ferryland, for example, saw its population decline from 414 in 2016 to 371 in 2021.
Mayor Aidan Costello said it’s a hard thing to curb because of how difficult it is to attract younger people to rural Newfoundland. “While we’re close to St. John’s – we’re only an hour’s drive from St. John’s – we’re still not close enough to be able to attract the young families that would normally live in the city,” Costello said. “They’re residing just outside the city in places like Bay Bulls and Witless Bay because they’re closer to St. John’s, closer to the job market, closer to all the facilities and things for kids and young families that we don’t have.”
Ferryland wasn’t the only town to see its population decline; most towns in the area saw a decrease. According to the census, Trepassey decreased from 481 people to 405, Tor’s Cove went from 459 people to 377 and Calvert went from 219 to 196.
If these types of declines continue, Mayor Costello said, it will impact the towns’ abilities to provide services to their citizens without costing more, and with fewer people, a town won’t be able to do as much, creating a negative loop.
“The cost of services is increasing by the day, and to have less people to pay those bills is going to have an effect on the population,” said Costello.
While he is confident Ferryland will be able to maintain or closely maintain its population by attracting people as a retirement community, Costello admits that if changes don’t come then nothing will get better for many rural communities.
“Unless things change drastically in the next 10 years, I don’t see it (improving),” he said. “I’ve been involved with community economic development for a long while prior to becoming mayor and we tried a lot of different things for a long time.”
Not every town on the Shore saw a decline; some towns were able to make gains. Mobile saw its population increase to 294 people from 260.
Bay Bulls saw some of the largest growth of any town in the province with an increase of 66 people. That’s a gain of 4.4 per cent according to the census.
Dr. Rob Greenwood, the director of Memorial University’s Harris Center in St. John’s, said the trend towards a population decline started a long time ago and the province is still dealing with it.
“You combine that outmigration after the (cod) moratorium, with the baby boomers aging and then the other factor which has happened in the last 15-20 years, since the moratorium, is the fertility rate dropping,” Greenwood explained. “So you kind of have this triple whammy of the cohort of people who are young and are having kids diminishing in rural areas after the moratorium because they moved out – many of them, not all – and then you have the aging demographic. And that’s where we are now.”
Greenwood points to a negative loop that many rural towns find themselves in with population loss.
“A big factor, and it becomes a vicious circle, is once you lose that critical mass, once you have that big outmigration after the fisheries moratorium, it’s hard to maintain certain specialized services in a rural area with a smaller population,” he said. “So, for younger families you want your kids to have dance class and hockey lessons and music lessons etcetera, and the smaller the population gets, the fewer those services people can afford to provide if you’re the person providing them. And it becomes a vicious circle, you have fewer people creating demand, less ability to maintain it, so some of the services diminish or disappear.”
To curb the trend, Greenwood said, immigration is key.
More specifically to the Irish Loop, Greenwood agrees with Costello as to the reason why areas on the North end of the Southern Shore, such as Bay Bulls and Witless Bay, have seen growth is due their location, specifically their proximity to St. John’s. Once you reach a certain point, he noted, people aren’t willing to commute.
“Once you get around Ferryland, it becomes very, very difficult to commute to work or access services easily,” Greenwood said. “And it’s across Canada, the greatest growth of population has been in the suburbs and in the exurbs.”
