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    If the first decades of the nineteenth century can be considered as a period of foundation, and those of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century as one of consolidation for the French villages in the area, 1940 inaugurates a time of rupture and assimilation. It is true that the 1930s was a baleful period in the economic life of the French, but the Great Depression was the same for everybody. The only notorious and traumatic event before 1940 was the resettlement of the village of Clam Bank Cove by English and Irish fishermen transplanted from Fortune Bay, in southeastern Newfoundland.

    This establishment of an anglophone village in the heart of a French community took place in 1935-36, under the charge of an Irish priest, Fr. O'Reilly. It is ironic that the only village on the peninsula with a categorically French name (at least on official maps) owes its name to an anglophone priest. This later implantation had the effect of sowing discord between French and English settlers; the latter brought with them different values from those held by the former. The new village of Lourdes (as Fr. O'Reilly had rebaptized Clam Bank Cove) subsequently prospered, to become by the 1960s, the largest population centre on the peninsula.