Leaving Home: Growing Number of NL Outports Make Wrenching Choice to Resettle

Leaving Home: Growing Number of NL Outports Make Wrenching Choice to Resettle
Boats at rest in Snook's Arm, N.L., in an undated photo. The outport’s community of 10 was approved for relocation in November 2017. The Canadian Press/HO, Edwin Neeleman
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ST. JOHN'S, N.L.—Raymond Blake can still see his mother, a strong woman raising six kids alone after his father died, dissolve into tears as the schooner pulled away from their home in remote southern Newfoundland.

It was a Monday in July 1969. They were leaving all they'd ever known in Pushthrough, a tiny fishing settlement of 150 people, for a new start across the water in comparatively modern Hermitage.