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Introduction
HISTORICALLY, the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland has been a relatively isolated, sparsely populated, and climactically difficult region within which to live.1 A mixed form of livelihood has included a heavy reliance upon both the subsistence and commercial harvesting of natural resources, such as fish stocks and timber. In the last several decades a passable road has eased the isolation, and some of the population has resettled into larger communities such as St. Anthony or Port au Choix rather than staying in the tiny hamlets that have dominated most of the history of the area. These residents have relocated largely to take advantage of state-provided educational and medical services and so that they might participate whenever possible in the wage labor opportunities that have emerged in a developing service and tourist economy, as well as within the industries of newer forms of resource extraction, such as a revitalized lobster and shrimp fishery.
As in much of rural Newfoundland, many people living in the northern peninsula region were economically devastated by the virtual closure of the Cod Fishery (e.g., Palmer 1992).
By the late 1980s the situation in northwest Newfoundland had been transformed by the growing realization that the cod stocks upon which most fishers depended were in serious danger of extinction. This growing ecological concern culminated in the closure of the cod fishery at the end of 1993, following the 1992 moratorium on Atlantic cod off northeast Newfoundland. (Palmer and Sinclair 1997:7).
In addition, the region has always been strongly affected by the common rural Newfoundland problem of providing relatively expensive government services to a scattered population. Increasingly, both the government and local entrepreneurs seem to be looking toward tourism to help tackle the issues of local unemployment, underemployment, and seasonal employment in the area.2 Over the last few decades, the northern peninsula has been cultivated by the Provincial Government as a regional tourism area. Four large sites-L'Anse aux Meadows, Gros Morne National Park, Port au Choix, and St. Anthony-have been areas of heavy monetary investment, as has the Labrador site of Red Bay, just across the strait from St. Barbe in Newfoundland (Burzynski 1999; Horwood 1985; McLeod 1988; Renouf 1999; Tuck and Grenier 1989). Many secondary sites (e.g., provincial parks, local museums) are...