Dragging Newfoundland “kicking and screaming into the 20th century”, resettlement was a carrot-and-stick approach to depopulating the province’s fishing outports.
The derisive name given to the town of their impeding relocation, Whereverville is a story of a single, decisive night in the life of a Newfoundland community facing government resettlement. Set entirely in an outport schoolroom during a single night in 1969, a young teacher named ABBY SHEA washes down her blackboards, eavesdropping on the four “pillars” of her community as they make a final decision-- will their community of Loam Bay accept an offer to resettle?
“ I pick up a rock in my backyard, then throw it through somebody’s window... that’s vandalism.
“If I take that same rock, tie it to a bag of kittens, throw it in the water... that’s an killick.
“But if I take that rock, travel half-way ‘round the world with it, then take it and hold it in my hand..? That’s Home”.
Whereverville marries a human story about the East Coast with the mechanics of a courtroom drama as a means of discussing one of the most controversial social-engineering experiments in Canadian history.
It explores various notions of “home”-- is home - a bedrock-rooted creation of geography and genealogy... or can home exist as a state of mind?