Newfoundland

[smishingtrip]

I've probably never talked about it before, but I'm very proud of where I'm from. I'm definitely biased, but I think I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world with such a unique and fascinating history. Sometimes I get in these moods where I just am overwhelmed with how much I love where I'm from (and not in a patriotic-wearing-the-

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[smishingtrip]

Are we talking just the island portion of Newfoundland, or Labrador as well? And are we talking just England, or all of the United Kingdom? Because Labrador is pretty big, but also a lot of uninhabited areas (that were largely unexplored until the late 1800s, I believe. You should check out Lure of the Labrador Wild were a guy tried to hike across Labrador in the winter with not enough food and not listening to any local guides and, you know, died).

If we're talking Newfoundland and Labrador vs the United Kingdom, we're bigger landwise (405,212km squared vs 243,610km squared) but your population dwarfs ours (514,536 for us, 62,262,000 for you!!). Isn't that crazy? But it makes sense, sort of, because our population was historically connected to fishing, and so we settled along the coast, and only started venturing inland late during our history (the biggest move inland was during the Resettlement program after we joined Canada, when they paid people to move to government designated growth areas so they didn't have to build roads and hospitals and infrastructure in thousands of outport communities that had populations of 50 people or less, which is ANOTHER bone of contention in our history).

Okay, that was more than I had intended to say. :p

[magic_treehouse]

Ah yes, that's the problem of living on a island I guess, there's nowhere to go! But we're very European like that, we're quite densely populated over here.

Canadian history isn't something you really hear a lot about over here. It's an interesting (and vast!) country.

[smishingtrip]

It's funny, but I know more about British history and Newfoundland history than I do about mainland Canadian history. =/

I think Newfoundland would have been more densely populated if it weren't for a number of reasons.

1) We originally weren't allowed to settle here. We were supposed to come from the UK to fish every summer, but then go home again (in the 1500s). Some people didn't, they thought it'd be easier just to stay.

2) Our economy was controlled by the merchants, who didn't start paying fishermen in cash until extremely recently (within the past 100 years). Before that it was on a credit system, and the merchant determined what your fish was worth. Almost entirely, the merchants decided the fish was bad and didn't give you as much credit as you needed to get your staples/gear for next fishing season and people were always behind. What incentive was there for people to move here if they weren't getting paid, the work was hard, and relied entirely on conditions out of your control (weather, fish availability, etc)?

3) The cod moratorium in the 1990s really set us back. We were a have not province already, and now our main economy was shut down. A lot of the younger population moved away for jobs (to Ontario, Alberta). But even before then, people were moving away. When the Americans were stationed here during WWII so many of them married Newfoundland women that they were told they would be court-martialed if they did it! That took a lot of people away. And the cod moratorium just made it worse. So we've been an aging population for a long time. It's only recently, with the influx of the Hibernia oil money, that we have people moving back to the province to raise their children, or people from other provinces/countries visiting and deciding to stay. We're a have province, now! And St. John's gets a lot of traffic from cruise ships that visit the harbour and international conferences being held here. I'd say tourism is our biggest economy right now.

[smishingtrip]

oh, and..

4) Foreign fishing vessels (mostly Spanish and Portuguese) had been stealing our fish for years. We didn't have a very well protected limit around our waters, and the Canadians pretty much refused to enforce it for whatever stupid reason. Then, factory freezer ships took over after WWII and the salt cod market almost completely dried up.