ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the roots of the crisis in the disruption of an economic system that combined mutually-sustaining formal and informal sectors. It explains the response of local people to their contemporary circumstances as they attempt to construct an adequate way of life: some are planning to leave, others to stay. For an indefinite time, the economic mainstay of much of rural Newfoundland has disappeared, and people have had to reconstruct their lives on some other basis. Cod, redfish and various flatfish species comprise the groundfish on which fishing off Newfoundland concentrated in the current century until overtaken by shrimp and crab. The amount and value of production in the various communities reveal the complexity of the Newfoundland traditional household economy, its regional differentiations and the adjustments made to it over time. The household was the local unit of production in both formal and informal sectors.
