Newfoundland and Labrador

The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the ten provinces of Canada. A British colony from the time of Elizabeth the First, Newfoundland joined confederation in 1948. Since 2001 the official name of the province has incorporated the names of the island of Newfoundland and its mainland territory of Labrador. Most Canadians still refer to the province in everyday conversation as Newfoundland. According to the 2006 Canadian Census, The province has a population of 505,469. Newfoundland and Labrador cover 405,720 square kilometres in total.

Economy

Whale hunting was an important industry in the first half of the 10th century. At first slow whales were caught by men armed with handheld harpoons in small open boats. Mechanization copied from Norway included cannon-fired harpoons, strong cables, and steam winches mounted on maneuverable, steam-powered catcher boats. They made possible the targetting of large and fast-swimming whale species that were taken to shore-based stations for processing. The industry was highly cyclical, with well-defined catch peaks in 1903–05, 1925–30, 1945–51, and 1966–72, after which worldf-wide bans shut it down.

When Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, it relinquished jurisdiction over its fisheries to Ottawa; the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that the federal government also has jurisdiction over offshore oil drilling.

In 1992, the northern cod fishery off Newfoundland and Labrador (the world's largest ground fishery) was shut down. The northern cod had been reduced to 1% of their historic spawning biomass and cod fishing as a way of life had come to an end after a 500 year history as a main industry.

The fishing industry crisis of the 1990s saw the already precarious economic base of the many towns further eroded. The situation was made worse by both federal and provincial pursuit of programs of economic liberalization that sought to limit the role of the state in economic and social affairs. As the effects of the crisis were felt, and established state supports were weakened, tourism was embraced by a growing body of local development and heritage organizations as a way of restoring the shattered economic base of many communities. Limited, short-term funding for some tourism-related projects was provided mostly from government programs, largely as a means of politically managing the structural adjustment that was being pursued.

History

20th century

During the great Battle of the Somme in 1916, the British assault against the German trenches near Beaumont Hamel, in France. The eight-hundred-man Royal Newfoundland Regiment attacked as part of the British 88th Brigade. Most of the Newfoundlanders were killed or wounded without anyone in the regiment having fired a shot. The state, church, and press romanticized the sacrifice Newfoundland had made in the war effort through ceremonies, war literature, and memorials, the most important of which was the Beaumont Hamel Memorial Park, which opened in France in 1925. The myth of the heroic sacrifice of the regiment in 1916 served as a cultural inspiration throughout the turbulent years from 1916 to 1925 in which six successive Newfoundland governments failed, widespread corruption was uncovered, and the postwar economy plummeted.

Bibliography

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