Land & Sea: An isolated outport that resisted resettlement and defied the odds
Discover Placentia Bay's Petite Forte in this 1983 archival episode
Getting to Petite Forte for this episode of Land & Sea wasn't easy.
It required the help of skipper Billy Senior, who took the crew out from Baine Harbour along the west coast of Placentia Bay in June 1983. The trip out to Petite Forte — pronounced "Petty Fort" — took about two hours from the nearest highway.
The isolated community is located in a long, deep sheltered harbour, with no roads and just a handful of cars at the time. The coastal boat no longer came by even then, having been replaced by a smaller passenger ferry.
It was exactly the kind of community one might expect to find abandoned or resettled. Indeed, Petite Forte had resisted the provincial government's efforts at centralization in the 1960s, though just a few years ago it looked like the town might die a natural death despite that fight.
Despite expectations, in '83 Petite Forte was undergoing a revitalization as new people settled there, and former residents returned home. The coast is emptier than it used to be, and the boats on the water are fewer, but fishermen there were still making a living on the water.
'It was almost gone'
Fisherman Eugene Jones had left to work elsewhere, but he was back home permanently in 1983. He had a house, a boat and a family, and was able to make a living fishing lobster, cod and other groundfish with his four brothers.
"It was almost gone, you know, we got down to 17 households in '68," Jones said.
Things in Petite Forte were bleaker then. The town began to look shabby, he said. People weren't fixing up their homes in those days, figuring they might not be living in them in a year's time.
But by the mid-80s the town had grown considerably for a small town — there were even eight babies expected to be born that year, Jones said.
"Right now it's on the up again and we're doing really good," he said.
"It's back to 30 households or 31 all year, and in summer months there's a few summer families."
Another community that didn't survive
Not every community in the area had survived over the years.
Petite Forte resident Michael Walsh was the town's patriarch, at 87 years old.
He was a fixture in the community, where he was beloved, but his first home had been elsewhere — Placentia Bay's Little Bona, which had first been settled by his great-great grandfather Patrick Dray after he arrived in Newfoundland from Ireland.
The resettled town was largely grown over by 1983, and Walsh was not able to get back often.
He went when he could, visiting the old cemetery to straighten up the graves of the family he had there: his mother, father and grandparents.
"It's still the place I love best of all," he said.
For more archival Land & Sea episodes, visit the CBC Newfoundland and Labrador YouTube page.