Economy
In 1851 Bishop Edward Field describes Battle Harbour as probably the oldest, as well as the largest settlement on the Labrador coast. The men who came and stayed there were generally from the Island of Newfoundland that used to bring with them servants from Dorset. Some of the first permanent residents were fishermen, carpenters and coopers from Poole, Dorset, Fogo Island and New World Island. As the community grew, there became an increasing need for supplies and merchants took full advantage of that where in some cases local residents paid as much as 100% beyond the regular cash price for goods. The exclusive monopoly was not challenged until 1918, when Battle Harbour's first co-operative was set up, through the initiative of Dr. Wilfred Grenfell.
In 1905 the first Newfoundland government lighthouse in Labrador, called Double Island Light, was set up at Battle Harbour, and in 1921 there was telegraph service installed.
After the devastating fire of 1930 and the drastic decline of the fishery in 1950 and the prospect of employment elsewhere led to the resettlement of Battle Harbour in Mary's Harbour, Happy Valley and Epworth under the Fisheries Household Resettlement Programme of 1966.
Since 1966 Battle Harbour has been a summer fishing station and in 1980 it was the site of a year-round government weather station.
Read more about this topic: Battle Harbour
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)