With resettlement voting done, Gaultois's fate has been decided all residents can do now is wait

As of Friday, everyone casting a ballot on the future of the tiny isolated community of Gaultois, on Newfoundland's southern coast, will have done so. But while the voting isover, the waiting has just begun.

Gaultois residents are deciding whether to take part in the provincial government's resettlement program.If more than 75 per cent of voters choose to resettle, the government will provide between $250,000 and $270,000 to a property owner, depending on the number of people in the household, to help with relocation costs.

People won't be required to leave, but the provincial government will stop funding services, including electricity and critical for a community accessible only by water ferries.

It hasn't been an easy experience, though, with some residents complainingabout the voting process, particularly over who gets to vote and who doesn't.

And it's a difficult and emotional decision for many. Not necessarily for Chesley Rose, 74, who has lived in Gaultois for nearly his entire life; he's planning to leave either way,and he voted in favour of resettlement.

"I'm getting old now, and I wants to get out of it, get somewhere close around a hospital," he explains.

But he knows it's a hard decision for a lot of his fellow residents: stay in their picturesque but aging community, even as the population declines year after year, or take advantage of an opportunity to build a new life elsewhere.

Despite the community meeting a 75 per cent "expression of interest" threshold to trigger a vote, Rose says he doesn't think the community as a whole will vote to leave.

"There's a lot of people here who still wants to stay here," he says. "I don't know. That's just a guess of mine."

He doesn't like Gaultois's prospects even if residents reject resettlement,as they have in two previous votes.

"It's gonna go downhill," he says. "There's no young ones here anymore. There's only mostly old people."

Mayor Gordon Hunt, 75, has lived in Gaultois his whole life. He remembers when 700 people lived in Gaultois, back when the fish plant was still open. Today, he estimates, that number is down to about 80 people. (The 2021 census counted 100 people.) The town's school has just five students.

Still, he says he was surprised to learn residents would be looking at another resettlement vote.

"I don't know what happened. All of a sudden, we wereinformed that some were looking into resettlement," he says. "Actually, the town got accused of doing it, but that's far from the truth. We didn't know nothing about it before."

As mayor potentially the last mayor of Gaultois ever he says he's done his best to stay neutral so as not to influence the vote. He hasn't told people how he voted.

"I don't want to rock the boat," he says. "Everybody got a right to do what they want. If you want to vote yes to leave, or no, that's your business. And I don't want no part of it."

All votes were required to have been postmarked by Friday to count, but residents will have to wait a while to learn the fate of their town.

The provincial government said it expects to have results in early May, allowing time for all mail-in ballots to arrive.

Some people find the choice hard to talk about. Others, like town clerk Marcella Drover, don't but she understands why others feel reticent.

"I was out walking the other night with my girlfriend. We go walking every night," she said.

"And I told her my decision. But she said, like, 'I'm not going to say nothing to nobody what I did.' And I respect that. I got a sister who told me what she's doing I knowed what she was going to do. I got another sister in Gaultois I don't have a clue what she's doing. We don't we don't talk about it."

And she doesn't want to wait until May to learn the results.

"For me, now, it is like, 'Come on already, like,''' she says. "I want someone to call me on April the 10th and say 'This is the way this went.' OK, all right, see you, goodbye. It's enough already. Whether we go, whether we stay," she sighs,"it's enough."

Hunt says the hardest conversationshe's had have been with some of the town's most senior residents ones who would be leaving more than the town behind.

"A lot of seniors don't want to leave," he says. "Their spouses is buried here, and they'd like to stay here and live and be buried by their spouse."

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