Canada Parson, 53, always dreamed of living in the Little Bay Islands when he retired, but he and his wife are now the last two residents on the island.

Parsons remembers that the Little Bay Islands was once a wealthy town with hundreds of residents in the heart of Canada's Newfoundland province, where the fishing industry boomed with bustling, bustling shops, docks, and harbors. But when Parson and his wife returned here in 2017, they were the last residents of the island.

A 1992 prohibition on commercial cod fishing caused many people to leave the Little Bay Islands to look elsewhere. The factory closed in 2010. The school was vacant. For years, the only item on sale in this town was postage stamps. The last 54 residents, most in their late twenties, left the island on December 31 after a referendum earlier this year.

Development model of Little Bay Islands, migration, exhausted resources, aging population, quite popular with many small towns around the world. Many local leaders have tried to revive "dying" villages by selling them for US $ 1 or promising to pay residents to move in.

But Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada's easternmost province, have a different solution: paying residents to leave. Faced with mounting debt, difficult to recover from the collapse of the fishing industry and falling oil prices, the government promised to pay each household $ 190,000 to $ 20,000 to leave. Then, they will cut off all public services of the region to save costs.

However, this solution comes with a number of conditions: must be residents of the town, where at least 90% of residents vote to leave, and the benefits of greater displacement from residents at the expense of.

Residents of the Little Bay Islands voted to leave the island earlier this year, becoming the eighth community to make the same decision in the past two decades. Derrick Bragg, director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Provincial Department of Urban and Environmental Affairs, said the resettlement project for the islanders costs $ 6.61 million, but will save the province about 15 million. USD for two decades.

The government cuts off all public services in the town, including electricity, snow and ferry services. Residents may keep the house but must be self-sufficient. Volunteers rescued many feral cats on the island after the provincial government said it could kill them.

Parsons said many residents were sad to pack up and leave. He said a lot of "last things" have happened in recent weeks: the last church service, the last mail delivery service, the last evening at the Poachers Lounge, where everyone plays games. pepper and singing.

"It's heartbreaking to see people trying to clean up everything and leave. Most of them have spent their lives in Little Bay Islands," Parsons said.

Little Bay Islands residents have been considering relocation for almost a decade. In 2015, 95 people voted in a referendum on a resettlement. They needed 86 votes to pass, but only 85 votes were approved. Those who voted in opposition then face pressure from the community.

"The referendum worsened community relations. People stopped talking. People who voted against resettlement were shunned by the community and now they have to give up because of the pressure," Parsons said. .

A rift between permanent and temporary residents also appears. In this program, only permanent residents, who live year-round here, are allowed to vote, while seasonally temporary residents with overwhelming numbers cannot vote.

Carolyn Strong, 81, spent the first 16 years of her life in Little Bay Islands. As a child, she often had dinner with European captains who came to the islands to look for salted fish. As she got older, the sand, where she used to play as a child, was now full of boats coming from as far afield as Europe or Africa.

Strong left the Little Bay Islands to pursue a career as a nurse. She has two houses on the island and often returns every summer. However, she was among those who could not vote. "Money dominated the vote. Those who lived on the island in the summer like me were not looked upon by the government," Strong said.

Parsons was also denied a vote because he did not live on the island for a year when the government proposed a resettlement proposal in 2017. But he and his wife Georgina, 44, decided to stay in the town. They paid $ 38,000 to buy solar panels, generators and other essentials to live here when public services were cut. They also stock up on goods and complete first aid training. They expect a few neighbors to come back here in the summer.

Little Bay Islands will be in darkness when electricity is cut on December 31. MV Hazel McIsaac ferry made the last trip to leave the island. Parson's mother was worried, but many other residents said they were relieved when someone stayed on the island.

"It gives a sense of security that the Little Bay Islands will not die, because someone will keep life for this small town," Parson said.