SaltWire E-Edition

‘There’s no children around’

Corner Brook's population could shrink by 17 per cent in next 20 years

PATRICK NEWHOOK SPECIAL TO SALTWIRE NETWORK

With communities struggling provincewide to increase or maintain their population, places such as Corner Brook may see some changes in their future.

On April 27, Statistics Canada released its population report for 2021. According to the report, Newfoundland and Labrador stood alone as the only province in Canada to see negative population growth, with a decline of 1.8 per cent.

For somewhere like Corner Brook, this isn’t new.

In 2011, Statistics Canada cited Corner Brook’s population at 19,886; just five years later, in 2016, it was 19,806.

By 2021, it dropped to 19,333.

Corner Brook Mayor Jim Parsons says he wasn’t surprised by the report.

“Relative to those areas around us, we’re actually not declining too quickly,” said Parsons.

“I believe the Harris Centre reported a couple of years ago, (and) estimated that the population in the Corner Brook area would decline by about 17 per cent in the next 20 years.”

Parsons says the aging population is a key factor. According to the website Statista, the average age in Newfoundland and Labrador as of 2021 was 47.8 years, making its population the oldest in Canada.

Parsons estimates that Corner Brook's median age is about 49 years.

“Which is quite old when compared to other parts of the country,” he says.

“We don’t have the birth rate that we used to, and because of our age, our death rate is going up, so our natural population growth is declining.”

WESTERN HUB

Corner Brook wasn’t the only place to see a decrease. Rural regions of the province saw more significant declines than the west coast city did.

Corner Brook, however, is a city and plays a major role in providing services to the west coast.

So what is city council's strategy in the wake of a declining population?

“Our focus has been shifting towards immigration and making sure that we have the services and the things that people with young families and newcomers want to see,” says Parsons.

“We have a big mill, paper mill here, and of course, the university campus here, Memorial University Grenfell. These things all sort of help us attract newcomers.”

As for the future, Parsons says the island as a whole is going to see population movement.

“I think in the shorter term, you’re going to see more people moving to the population centres like Corner Brook, Grand Falls, Gander and the northeast Avalon from within the province, too, because they want to be closer to health-care facilities, long-term care, those kinds of things,” says Parsons.

“Long-term, that remains to be seen.”

DECLINING FOR DECADES

Like Parsons, Dr. Robert Greenwood, the director of the Harris Centre in St. John’s, points to a combination of an aging population, along with years of outmigration, as the cause of the population drop.

“Fertility rates are the other major factor that have changed significantly worldwide, especially in the developed world,” says Greenwood.

“We have fewer families of childbearing age. The ones we do have are having fewer children and, of course, we’ve had those years of outmigration, and so we have an aging population.”

Since the cod moratorium, Newfoundland’s population has been in gradual decline. According to Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador population statistics, the province’s population was 580,190 in 1992. By 2021, it was 510,550, a drop of nearly 70,000 people.

“As the same in the rest of Canada and in the U.S., the baby boomers were a massive cohort of population after the war,” says Greenwood.

“Now we’re all starting to retire, and the older ones are starting to die. So, it’s kind of the perfect storm and Corner Brook is representative of most small cities reflecting that reality.”

Focusing on immigration and attracting people to live in Newfoundland and Labrador is key, but Greenwood also says re-evaluation is needed on how the province thinks about population.

“I think in Corner Brook, and in Newfoundland and Labrador as a whole, we need to be thinking of productivity gains, innovation, doing more with fewer people, because development is no longer going to be equated, in my opinion, in the short- to medium-term with a growing population,” he says.

Greenwood does agree with Parsons’ population movement prediction, but says that shift has already happened.

“Our numbers, and our projections, indicate that most of that movement in rural Newfoundland through the smaller to relatively larger urban centres has happened,” he adds.

STILL FUTURE POTENTIAL

While Greenwood does point to some areas — such as St. John’s and Nunatsiavut in Labrador — as having younger demographics, the majority of the province is aging.

He is still an optimist and says the far future has a lot of potential.

“We have this strange situation where Newfoundland and Labrador is a part of Canada seeing outmigration and long-distance commuting as part of our way of life,” he says.

“We also know a drop in fertility rates, boomers aging. Looking around rural Newfoundland now, almost all rural communities are dropping in population, aging, and over the next 10 to 15 to 20 years, people moving into seniors homes.”

But there’s a key point to remember, he says: in the life of a jurisdiction, 15 years is nothing.

“So, in 30 years, I think Newfoundland and Labrador is going to see a resurgence of population,” he says.

“We are able to absorb immigration and people love it here. We just need to have more of the pull and less of the push that impacts population change, but it’s going to be 10, 15, 20 years, I think, before you see that transition to growing population.”

PARALLELS TO THE PAST

Rex Brown has been a resident of Corner Brook for over 50 years.

Originally from the community of Tack’s Beach, Brown moved away at age 19, first coming to Corner Brook in 1968 and later settling there permanently on Sept. 2, 1972. He worked as a teacher in the local high school until 1999.

When he arrived 50 years ago, Corner Brook had a lot to offer someone like Brown. It gave him a connection to his hometown — Tack’s Beach was an island in Placentia Bay that was depopulated in 1966 and, Brown says, “there was a number of families from Tack’s Beach who moved to Corner Brook in the late ’40s and ’50s.”

Another key factor was family. When Brown moved to the west coast, his daughter was 15 months old. The city seemed like it could provide a lot to a young family.

“I liked the spot from the very beginning,” he says.

“I liked the idea that it was a small city at the time, and at the time, of course, they were so big into sports and all that, which was big in my world at that time, and my wife and I felt that it would be a lovely spot to raise our daughter.”

His family is what made Brown stay.

Now, though, it’s almost common that younger generations move away.

Brown has seen this with his own family. His daughter went to law school and returned to Corner Brook to begin her career, but his son had to move to St. John’s for work.

As time goes on, Brown says, it’s less and less likely his son will ever move back. His son now has his roots planted in another city, and as more time passes, it gets harder to pull them up.

“He has a job and his family are there,” says Brown. “It’s like when we moved to Corner Brook, my wife and daughter and I, we never looked upon the move as a permanent one, but it wasn’t too many years passed that we didn’t want to live anywhere else.”

‘NO CHILDREN AROUND ANYMORE’

When told about what the future of Corner Brook is predicted to look like, he isn’t surprised, just like Parsons.

“We’ve been experiencing it for quite some time. It’s really strange to report to you,” Brown says.

“Corner Brook is twice as big now as when I came here in 1968, but at the time, the population was at 30,000 and now the population is around 18 or 19 (thousand), but definitely less than 20.”

The change is easy to see, he says.

“The big change is that there are no children around anymore. Once upon a time, the streets would be full of kids playing ball and playing street hockey, and West Street, near downtown, would be full of teenagers hanging out, there’d be enormous numbers of them,” said Brown.

Like Parsons and Greenwood, Brown is an optimist. He believes the medical field, and facilities like the pulp and paper mill and the university, hold a lot of potential.

However, there is a parallel happening. Just as Brown moved away from Tack’s Beach at 19 to pursue higher education and landed in a bigger centre for work, people who are currently in that position are leaving Newfoundland and Labrador for the same reasons.

It’s trends like this that locals like Brown are far too familiar with.

“I don’t see Corner Brook being abandoned, because that’s what, of course, happened to Tack’s Beach,” said Brown.

“But at the same time, there’s nothing on the horizon that would indicate a substantial growth spurt for the place.”

FRONT PAGE

en-ca

2022-10-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://saltwire.pressreader.com/article/281479280302633

SaltWire Network