A History Lesson

"Thank God we're surrounded by water." This line from the chorus of a well-known Newfoundland and Labrador song reflects a central theme in the province's rich artistic tradition. Indeed, there is scarcely an art form that has not been influenced in one way or another by the sea and the seafaring life.

The island of Newfoundland was perhaps the first part of the New World to be explored by Europeans. Firm archaeological evidence has shown that Vikings reached Newfoundland and Labrador around 1000 B.C. There are also strong indications that Newfoundland was the site of John Cabot's landfall during his first voyage to North America in 1497. Migratory fishers from Portugal, France, and Spain began to harvest cod off the coast of Newfoundland in the early sixteenth century.

The population of Newfoundland and Labrador came mostly from the southwest of England and the south and southeast of Ireland. Migration to the island was intimately linked to the fishery and occurred mainly between the mid eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. The province is also home to three native groups-- Innu, Inuit, and Mi'kmaq--and to a French-speaking population, found mostly in the western portion of the island.

The Europeans who came to Newfoundland after Cabot's 1497 voyage were attracted, not by furs, nor gold, nor land as in other parts of the Americas, but by fish. They built the new founde lande and its surrounding waters into their existing economic structures. Their efforts were not intended to create or sustain a Newfoundland society; the fishery was a seasonal, transatlantic operation. At the end of the 18th century the migratory fishery declined rapidly and the Newfoundland-based fishery grew in importance. The first three or four decades of the 19th century saw a dramatic increase in the resident population

The immigrants brought with them their knowledge, ideas, beliefs, social relationships, loyalties, prejudices and animosities, but the society they built in the New World was unlike the ones they had left, and different from the ones other immigrants would build on the American mainland. As a fish-exporting society, Newfoundland was in contact with a great many other places around the Atlantic rim. On the other hand, its geographic location and political distinctiveness isolated it somewhat from its closest neighbors in Canada and the United States. Internally, most of its population was spread widely around a rugged coastline in small outport settlements, many of them a long distance from larger centers of population and isolated for long periods by winter ice or bad weather. These conditions had an effect on the culture the immigrants had brought with them and generated new ways of thinking and acting, giving Newfoundland and Labrador a wide variety of distinctive customs, beliefs, stories, songs, and dialects of spoken English At the same time, homogeneity of background and the economic structures of the cod fishery made for similarities of social structure and practice.

The First World War had a powerful and lasting effect on the society. From a population of about a quarter of a million, 5,482 men went overseas. Nearly 1,500 were killed and 2,300 wounded. On July 1, 1916, at Beaumont-Hamel, 753 men of the Newfoundland regiment went into action; the next morning , only 68 answered the roll-call. Even now, when the rest of Canada celebrates the founding of the country on July 1, many Newfoundlanders take part in solemn ceremonies of remembrance. In other respects, however, the first two decades of the 20th century were a high point. The fishery prospered, standards of living rose, and the Government of Newfoundland was treated by London on an equal footing with the larger Dominions of the British Empire, such as Canada.

In 1940, as the United States prepared to enter the Second World War, the British government signed an agreement that gave the Americans control over three areas in the island for use as military bases. Starting in 1941, the presence of thousands of American servicemen had profound effects on the economy, society and culture. In many areas, a measure of prosperity returned. Many Newfoundland women married Americans.

With the war over, in 1949 the population voted by a narrow margin to join Canada, a country whose history, economy, culture and political institutions were significantly different. The Republic of Newfoundland was gone, but not forgotten. Newfoundland embarked on a new set of changes and adjustments, some of which are still going on.

With the passage of time and the restructuring of social and economic life in Newfoundland and Labrador, many aspects of the old culture have necessarily disappeared, others have been transformed and, more recently, some have been revived. The new economy, more diverse and less tied to the fishing village and to the power of fish merchants, has brought social diversification. There has been a great increase in the numbers of white collar workers in business, industry, government and education, and of people in managerial and professional positions. At the same time, there is a new awareness of the older and suppressed ethnic and cultural realities of the French and aboriginal peoples.