-Nfld. is one of the four Atlantic provinces.
-It is the fourth smallest province, made up of the island of Nfld.
and Labrador on the mainland.
-The mainland is larger than the island and is bordered by Quebec.
-Thousands of smaller islands are also included.
-Nfld. is surrounded by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Atlantic Ocean
and the Arctic Ocean.
-The capital city and largest city (174,500) is St. John's.
-flower - Pitcher Plant, tree - Black Spruce, bird - Atlantic Puffin.
-Motto - "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God."
PEOPLE
-Nfld. is the home of about550 , 000people.
-People live in small fishing villages near the coast.
-People came from Britain, Western Europe, East and
Southeast Asia.
-Many are of British and Irish origin.
-Aboriginal ancestry : Micmac, Inuit, Innu and Metis
HISTORY
-The first people were the Beothuk (now extinct) who hunted
caribou and fished.
-For thousands of years ancestors of the Inuit hunted seal and polar bears
along the Labrador coast.
-Vikings were the first to visit Nfld . They were blown off course on the way to
Greenland.
-Five hundred years later the explorer John Cabot arrived (1497 ).
-He claimed the land for the King of England.
-Fishermen from France, England, Spain and Portugal fished in the waters of
the Grand Banks.
-English and Irish settlers built small villages along the coast.
-In 1949 Newfoundland became a Canada's tenth province.
LAND AND WATER
-There are many bays and deep fiords along the coastlines of Nfld. and Labrador.
-Icebergs can be seen off the coastline.
-Gros Morne National Park: mountains, forests, lakes, sand dunes
-Terra Nova National Park: rocky cliffs, rolling hills, forests, lakes, ponds, old sawmills
-The Continental Shelf is a flat sea-bottom covered by shallow water.
-The Grand Banks are a shallow part of the Continental Shelf.
RESOURCES
-Nfld. is part of the Canadian Shield. Nickel, copper, cobalt, zinc,
lead and silver are mined.
-Nfld. is the main producer of iron ore in Canada. Steel is made from iron ore.
-Oil and gas are found under the Grand Banks.
-Hibernia, an oil platform in the water, began producing oil in1997 .
-Churchill Falls in Labrador is one of the largest hydro-electric power plants in the world.
-Overfishing caused a severe decline in the amount of fish in the Grand Banks.
-Fishermen catch cod, herring, Atlantic salmon,
flounder, turbot, halibut, tuna and haddock.
-Lobster, scallops, shrimp, and crab are also caught.
-Forests ( mostly coniferous trees ) cover one third of Nfld. There are many sawmills.
PEOPLE AND PLACES
-Signal Hill - a high cliff where Italian inventor Marconi received the
first radio message from across the Atlantic Ocean.
-Titanic, a large passenger ship, sank in 1912 after hitting
an iceberg south of Nfld.
-Heart's Content - where the transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in1866 .
The cable was laid on the bottom of the ocean all the way to Britain.
-Kevin Major - author of books for young people lives in St.John's.
-W.Grenfell - a doctor and missionary in the early1900 s visited fishing
villages along the coasts of Labrador and Nfld. to care for the sick.