Basically, I left home right after high school to join the Coast Guard, so that's why I came out east. Basically I stayed because I stayed with the marine industry.
I was here in the early 1990s when the fisheries collapsed and I think what I saw was the lowest point in any part of Canada I've ever been to as far as the mood of the people is concerned. A lot of people had to retrain. They had to move into different industries. A lot of them had to get on airplanes and leave. The price of houses, all that stuff, went right down through the floor. There were potholes in the streets, everything you could think of. The mood in Newfoundland was very dark.
I think if you fast-forward to early 2000s when Hibernia came on stream.... It came on stream before that, but just as Husky SeaRose came on stream, what you saw was a real sense of optimism come into Newfoundland. I think we saw people start to migrate back to the province, especially people with oil and gas expertise. I think with the investments coming through the Atlantic accord in high tech—when we had nothing we had to develop an entrepreneurial spirit—basically the R and D investments added fuel to that burnt little ember and I think what you're seeing now is that Newfoundlanders are very export-focused, very entrepreneurial in spirit, and very much of the sense that this is an opportunity that we can't let pass by and we have to move ahead with.