Words to remember

This week in NL history
"My assessment of it, quite frankly, is this: if Danny Williams ever does a lower Churchill deal … he’ll do the deal I had on the table, or very close to it, because it is the only one that makes any economic sense.”
— former Liberal premier Roger Grimes, Feb. 16, 2007.

Three years after Grimes' quote was published in The Independent and the province has reached a legal agreement with the Innu Nation that brings the development of the lower Churchill hydroelectric project a step closer.
Also moving us a step closer to seeing if Roger was right …
•••
“On a night flight, you’d fly about an hour offshore and all of a sudden the horizon would light up with a city of lights. It wasn’t something you’d expect. The Russians would have over 200 ships there, just raking the sea bottom and the Grand Banks ... I was not aware of the extent of foreign fishing, it’s a big business.”
— Col. Peter Drover of flying maritime surveillance missions over the Grand Banks, Feb. 19, 2006.

In December 2009 the federal Conservatives approved a renegotiated convention for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), which oversees fishing outside the 200-mile limit — despite having been voted down in the House of Commons.
The changes were supposedly to strengthen NAFO, but that apparently hasn’t happened. It was only last week that Ottawa closed ports to fishing boats from the Faroe Islands and Greenland because of their refusal to accept international shrimp quotas.
The holes in NAFO are still wide enough to sail a fleet of factory-freezer trawlers through.
•••
“By the time this issue is on the street the Prime Minister and the other two U.K. representatives of the Commission of Government will be in Newfoundland. It is hardly necessary to assure them of the welcome that awaits them here, even if the circumstances that brought about their coming are matters that must affect our pride. Nevertheless, into their hands the country is almost unanimously agreed that it can trustingly confide the future administration of Newfoundland and its rehabilitation.”
— Daily News, St. John’s, Feb. 15, 1934.

So how do you think our rehabilitation went?

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