Labrador

See also: Labrador (homonymy)

The Labrador is the continental area of the province of Ground-New-and-Labrador belonging to the Provinces of the Atlantic. Labrador is separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Détroit of Beautiful-Isle. The area belongs to the Péninsule of Labrador (of which the coastal region is sometimes also named Markland, “ground of wood” as old man norrois). Labrador is bordered by the Quebec in the west and the south, by the Atlantic Ocean in the east.

Labrador has a population of 27.860 inhabitants (2001) of which 30% are of indigenous origin (Inuit, Innu and Métis), widespread on a surface of 294.330 km ² as large as the Italy, or the New Zealand. One finds a small community French-speaking of origin Québécois and acadian, come in the Sixties to work in mining.

Its name, among the oldest toponyms of Canada, goes back to the Portuguese João Fernandes Lavrador who discovered it towards 1495, in company of Pêro de Barcelos.

A royal Commission in 2002 revealed a strong dissatisfaction reigning at Labradoriens as for their place in Ground-New-and-Labrador and thus an incipient pressure certain so that Labrador separates from Ground-New-and-Labrador and becomes a separate territory. The Ines would prefer that this territory becomes their fatherland as the Nunavut is for Inuit; a resolution of the Assemblée of the First Nations in 1999 claimed Labrador like fatherland of Innu and required its formal recognition before any later constitutional discussion concerning the area.

Since 2005, the Inuit which live in the north of Labrador are entitled to a mode of self government in an area called the Nunatsiavut (" our beautiful pays"), which includes/understands all the north of Labrador like some areas in the central latitudes.

Disputed territory

The coast of Labrador was allotted to the colony of Newfoundland in 1809. However, the border with the Low-Canada (today Quebec) was not delimited precisely at this time. Terreneuviens claimed that it extended to the watershed, far in the grounds, whereas for Canada, the territory included/understood only one narrow coastal strip. A lawsuit in front of the the Private Council in London, begun in 1922, leads in 1927 to a decision which strongly favoured Newfoundland, which did not form part of Canada yet. Quebec always disputed this decision since this time. At the time of its entry in the Canadian Confederation, in 1949, Newfoundland required that the border of 1927 form integral part of the Constitution.

The dispute of Quebec is however also important only it was it formerly. The only dispute maintained by the government of these days is a definition different from the southern border between Labrador and Quebec which appears on the geographical maps in Quebec.

Chronology

11th century: Probable discovery by Leif Ericsson. See Markland.
1498 : Outline by João Fernandes Lavrador
1498: Exploration by Jean Pooch
1500: Exploration by Gaspar Corte-Real
1534: Exploration by Jacques Cartier
1763: Labrador is transferred from the French possessions to the Canada, with the British territory of Newfoundland at the time of the Traité of Paris.
1774 : Labrador is transferred (with the island of Anticosti and the islands of the Madeleine) to the Quebec.
1791 : Labrador enters the Low-Canada, when Quebec is divided into two colonies.
1809 : Labrador (of the Cape Chidley with the mouth of the River Midsummer's Day) is returned to Newfoundland.
1825 : The northern coast of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence in the west of White-Fine sand and the south of the 52° parallel North, is separated from Labrador and is transferred to the Low-Canada.
1927 : The argument on the borders of Labrador is regulated.
1941 : Construction of an air base with Goose Bay.
1949 : Labrador becomes an area of the Canada when Newfoundland joint the Confédération as a province.
2001 : The province changes name for Newfoundland and Labrador (Newfoundland and Labrador).

Geography

Demography

Zh-min-nan: Labrador

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