Branch on National CBC Radio

Sorry for the short notice, but I had no idea of this until a few seconds ago. And it's on in a few minutes!

Sometime between 10:30 and 11:30 this Sunday (the 9th), The Sunday Edition (a nationally broadcast CBC radio program) will feature a documentary about Branch and its mayor, Priscilla Corcoran Mooney. 21 reasons to move to Branch, heard from Victoria to Iqaluit to St. John's!

If you miss this, don't despair. You can listen again on CBC's website. I'll post a link once they upload today's show (usually it happens a few hours after it airs).

EDIT: It hasn't appeared on cbc.ca yet, and, looking at The Sunday Edition's main page, it seems not all segments of past shows are available to listen to again. We'll have to wait and see if "21 Reasons" (the documentary on Branch) is put up for internet listening.

In the meantime, here's how it's described on the site:

Branch, Newfoundland is the kind of small fishing outport that is considered an endangered species. Twenty years ago, Branch - and hundreds of villages like it - were prosperous fishing communities. But since the collapse of the cod stocks fifteen years ago, the citizenry of Branch has shrunk from about six hundred to just half that. People have been fleeing outport Newfoundland and Labrador as quickly as water running down a drain. On top of that, the entire province is in a population crisis. It's people are aging more quickly, and its birthrate is falling faster, than any province or state in North America.

But Branch has a secret weapon: it's mayor - Priscilla Corcoran Mooney. She's a 31 year old social worker, business owner and probably the youngest municipal leader in Newfoundland and Labrador. And Priscilla has a radical plan.

She's determined - government demographers be damned - to increase the population of Branch to five hundred people. Heather Barrett went to Branch to find out how. Her documentary is called "21 Reasons".