I am proud that we built half the city here and that I was chief electrical supervisor for construction of the new MUN campus. I prepared the electrical design of the CMIC plant in Germany in 1951 and in May 1952 came over to supervise mechanical and electrical installation. I was part of those three or four MIAG workers who were scheduled to return to Germany but wanted to stay. In 1953 we started CMIC Construction. This nucleus then attracted other Germans here. In 1953 I decided to stay in Newfoundland and in December 1953 my family arrived.
— Joachim Heintze, November 23, 1983
Develop or Perish is an illustrated companion to Escape Hatch by Gerhard P. Bassler. Most of the pictures in this book were offered for publication by the more than 100 immigrants and Newfoundlanders interviewed about Newfoundland's New Industries of the 1950s and 1960s. The immigrant interviewees included German, Austrian, and Latvian workers and managers, as well as some of their wives and adult children. Premier J.R. Smallwood had recruited them from Germany, along with 15 of the 17 industries that employed them, to industrialize Newfoundland after it had joined Canada in 1949. Along with additional images from archives and newspapers, these photos provide a unique pictorial record of the New Industries story.

Gerhard P. Bassler is professor emeritus at Memorial University of Newfoundland and a specialist in modern German history and Canadian migration history.His previous books include Vikings to U-Boats: The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador (2006), Alfred Valdmanis and the Politics of Survival (2000), Sanctuary Denied: Refugees from the Third Reich and Newfoundland Immigration Policy, 1906–1949 (1992), and The German Canadian Mosaic Today and Yesterday (1991).

Gerhard P. Bassler's profile page