Newfoundland

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Port-aux-Basques with St John's was closed in the 1960s. The line from Schefferville to Sept-Îles carries iron ore.

Newfoundland, Canada's youngest province, consists of the island of that name together with countless other small islands and an area of some 300,000 sq. km (115,800 sq. mi.). Newfoundland Island, the tenth largest island in the world (roughly 110,000 sq. km (42,460 sq. mi.)) is in the Atlantic off Canada's north-east coast, separated from Nova Scotia by the Cabot Strait and from Labrador by the narrow Strait of Belle Isle, and measures 525 km (326 mi.) from north to south and 515 km (320 mi.) from east to west. Labrador, the peninsula called by Jacques Cartier "the land that God gave Cain", is bordered on the west and south by the Province of Québec and is 1046 km (650 mi.) north to south and 724 km (450 mi.) east to west.

Newfoundland Island is part of the Appalachian system and sits on the Continental Shelf. The famous "Grand Banks" offshore to the east and south of the island, which are only 200 m (656 ft) deep, are the world's richest fishing grounds. Newfoundland's varied landscape was shaped by the ice ages, leaving big fiords, moorland, lakes and gentle valleys. The highest point is Lewis Hill (814 m (2,672 ft)) in the Long Range Mountains on the west coast. These are wooded, as are the river valleys, with the rest a rocky wasteland.

From the Long Range Mountains the land falls away to the east and north-east. The Central Newfoundland plateau is one of North America's oldest geological formations, going back 400 million years to when it was part of the old Afro-European continent. The landscape in east Newfoundland, with the Bonavista, Burin and Avalon peninsulas, is pleasantly hilly.

Labrador is part of the east wing of the Canadian Shield surrounding the vastness of Hudson Bay. The undulating plateau of Pre-Cambrian granite and gneiss is 200-500 m (656-1,641 ft) above sea level, rising up to 1800 m (5908 ft) in the north-east. The coast is a typical fiord landscape.

Newfoundland's island climate is characterised by the fogs which occur all year round, caused in summer by the cold air from the Labrador current meeting the warmer air from the landmass, with the process reversed in winter. There are no great swings in temperature, the weather tends mainly to be rainy and cool. Average winter temperatures are between 22°C (28°F) and 29°C (16°F), often accompanied by violent storms, and in the middle of the island the thermometer can fall to 220°C (4°F) and below. Summer is fairly hot and wet on the coast and warmer further inland: the average July temperature is 15.3°C (59.5°F). The island has plenty of rain or snow all year round, especially in the east and on the coast (St John's 1346 mm (53 in.) a year).

Labrador has a much more severe climate, with greater extremes of temperature, but less rain. Its northern climate is arctic, with winter temperatures of below 240°C (240°F) for six months of the year. In the three months of summer the average temperatures are around 10°C (50°F). The southern coastal areas are distinctly warmer. Goose Bay averages 214°C (7°F) in January and 21°C (70°F) in July, with an annual rainfall of 737 mm (29 in.).

The northern part of Newfoundland Island is largely covered with fir and spruce, while the south is moor and marsh, with a few stunted trees growing on the barren podzol.

Labrador's vegetation is predominantly conifers in the south giving way to sparser subarctic birch and small conifers and then the tundra of the far north.

Excavations at Port-au-Choix show that Indians were living in Newfoundland, the "cradle of the New World", at least 6,000 years ago. The Beothuk, the original North American Red Indians, were first known to Europeans as "redskins" because of the red ochre they used to decorate their bodies, and hence the name for them brought back to Europe by John Cabot.

The sensational diggings at L'Anse aux Meadows between 1961 and 1967 revealed traces of a Viking settlement from around 1000 ad, possibly making the legendary Leif Erikson, one of their number, the first discoverer of Newfoundland and hence North America. The island was rediscovered in 1497 by John Cabot, an Italian whose real name was Giovanni Caboto, but who was in the service of England, although Basque fishermen were already fishing the rich waters of the Grand Banks as early as the 14th c., but keeping the existence of those waters to themselves. Soon the seas off the "new found land" were keeping the whole of Europe supplied with fish. This contact with Europe had fatal consequences for the native peoples, and the last Beothuk died in St John's in 1829. Labrador's Montaignais and Inuit only managed to avoid the same fate because their lands were of no interest to the colonialists.

Newfoundland effectively became Britain's first colony when Elizabeth I was declared its Queen in St John's in 1583. For a century the island was in practice ruled by the "Fishing Admirals", the British West Country merchants who made rules to prevent any permanent settlement that would provide them with competition. Some small English fishing communities managed to establish themselves nevertheless, although they never actually succeeded in getting colonial status. The French, however, did set up a colony, with a Governor, in Plaisance (Placentia) in 1662, and conflict between the French and the British over the island only ended in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht when the British got Newfoundland and the French ended up with just St-Pierre and Miquelon.

In the years that followed Newfoundland was settled by the Irish, Basques and English West Countrymen. Newfoundland became a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth in 1855. During the Second World War an economic boom was created by the Allied military bases. Although Newfoundland took part in the Québec Conference in 1867 it did not become the tenth province of the Canadian Confederation until March 31st 1949, following a 52 per cent vote in favour at a referendum.

Labrador has known human habitation for about 8,000 years (L'Anse Amour), and the Inuit in the north and the Naskapi Indians in the south long resisted French and English attempts to settle the coastline. John McLean began exploring the interior on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1839. The railway line between Sept-Îles (Québec) and Schefferville in central Labrador, completed in 1954, enabled exploitation of iron ore deposits discovered at the end of the 19th c. Goose Bay, an important Allied base during the Second World War, is now used by NATO.

During the night of the 14th to 15th April 1912 the SS Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, struck an iceberg over the Newfoundland Bank and sank within three hours in the waters of the Atlantic. Only 703 of the 1308 passengers and 898 crew of the supposedly unsinkable ship survived. The wreck now lies on the sea floor at a depth of 3797 m (12, 462 ft).

Newfoundland is unusual for Canada in having a very homogenous population: 99 per cent of the "Newfies" are English-speaking and more than 95 per cent were born on the island. About 2700 speak French, and they live mainly in the north-east and south-west of Newfoundland (St George's, Port-au-Port) and in Labrador. The only native peoples to have survived are the Micmac Indians.

About 95 per cent of the population of the province live on Newfoundland, although at 5.1 persons per sq. km (2 per sq. mi.) it is still very thinly populated. About a fifth of the population live in the St John's commuter area, while the rest are in the fishing villages along the coast. Originally people lived along the whole length of the coast but in the 1970s they were grouped into small communities of one to two hundred as part of a resettlement campaign.

With a population of only 0.1 per sq. km (0.03 per sq. mi.), Labrador is virtually uninhabited, apart from the coast and the iron ore workings. Two Indian tribes live in the north-east and south-west of Labrador, the Naskapi and Montagnais. The Inuit community numbers about 2600, and they get their living from the sea.