Notre Dame Bay

Notre Dame Bay (NDB – “Bay of Our Lady”) extends along the northeast coast of the island of Newfoundland. The bay is broad and deeply indented. It is noteworthy for having the most irregular coastline and the most islands of all Newfoundland’s major bays. To the west NDB is bounded by Cape St. John, while its eastern terminus has never been exactly defined. Places like Long Point (Twillingate), Cape Freels, and Hamilton Sound, southwest of Fogo Island, have all been named as the eastern end of NDB. The greater bay is made up of several smaller bays, including Green Bay, Halls Bay, and one of the largest, Exploits Bay, which runs far inland to the mouth of Newfoundland’s longest river, the Exploits.

For hundreds of years NDB was home to Native cultures like the Dorset Palaeo-Eskimos and the Maritime Archaic Indians, the Bay of Exploits being especially favoured. In the early historical period the Exploits River was an essential hunting ground for the Beothuk, sometimes called the “Red Indians.” The Native peoples had Notre Dame Bay to themselves until the sixteenth century.

Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real (c. 1450- c. 1502) may have been the first European to sight the bay, followed in 1534 by Frenchman Jacques Cartier (c. 1491-1557). The French were the first use make extensive use of the bay’s rich fish resources, and from 1713 to 1783 the area was part of a fishery preserve known as the “French Shore.” French rights to the area were not strongly enforced, and Anglo-Irish towns like Fogo and Twillingate were well-established by the mid-1700s. With the removal of NDB from the French Shore after 1783, English settlement in the area expanded quickly, with areas like New World Island and Exploits being settled. Most of the new settlers had origins in the English West Country; their religion was mainly Protestant. Tilting, on Fogo Island, was one of the few areas of NDB with a heavy concentration of Irish-Catholic settlers.

By the 1820s the incursions of English fishers and trappers led to the Beothuk abandoning the region – many experts believe they became extinct in this period. From this point on the bay was left exclusively to the new arrivals. The fishery was always the mainstay of European settlement in NDB. English merchant houses, and later home-grown firms, sent sailing vessels as far as the coast of Labrador in search of codfish. Eventually the Labrador fishery declined and was replaced by an inshore harvest conducted mainly from small, open boats. The bay’s other important economic planks included a seal fishery, originally conducted in the Winter months and later in the Spring. In the late-nineteenth century the discovery of copper at places like Tilt Cove led to a mining boom in the bay, though this proved short-lived. The growth of sawmilling, and the beginning of a major timber industry centred on the Exploits River, were of far greater benefit to the region in the long-run – the towns of Grand Falls-Windsor, Bishop’s Falls and Botwood all trace their origins to the enterprise.

Though many bay residents relied on interior work for their livelihoods, transportation was mainly by sea. Before the 1960s overland travel across Newfoundland was generally poor, though a railway linking east and west had been built in the late-1800s. Newfoundland’s colonial government introduced the first steamer service (in Conception Bay) in the 1850s. By the early-1900s Notre Dame Bay was serviced by the 439-gross ton steamer, S.S. Clyde. Apart from passenger services, vessels like the Clyde also delivered retail goods and mails, the service shutting down for several months in the Winter and Spring when the bay was clogged with Arctic pack ice, and its harbours frozen.

The politics of Notre Dame Bay were fairly consistent though to the late-twentieth century, with a solid following for Liberals like William V. Whiteway and Robert Bond. Only since the late-1900s have Conservative candidates gained ground in the region, starting with the election of future Premier A. Brian Peckford (b. 1942) in 1972. In 1948, three-quarters of NDB residents voted in favour of Confederation with Canada, and the area was a major base of support for Liberal Premier Joseph R. Smallwood (1900-91), the foremost champion of Canadian union.

Recent decades have seen many changes in Notre Dame Bay, a process echoed in other parts of the Province. Some of the changes have been positive, with communities linked by roads, causeways and modern ferries. On the other hand, the economic realities of the era have not been kind to NDB. The mining booms are long gone, and the logging sector has declined markedly, culminating in the 2009 closure of the Grand Falls paper mill. Perhaps the greatest upheaval has been caused by the collapse of the northern cod stocks and a fisheries moratorium announced in 1992. Now the major centres in Notre Dame Bay are not the traditional resource-based towns like Twillingate and Fogo, but service centres such as Lewisporte. Census data collected from 1991, the year before the fishery moratorium, through to the latest census in 2006, indicate that many Notre Dame Bay towns have experienced a marked and consistent drop in population.

Today fewer young families remain in the area, with a proportionate increase in retirees and seasonal dwellers as homeowners. As in the past, Notre Dame Bay is undergoing a period of transition. Still, bay residents have always proven resilient, and will certainly do their best to weather this economic storm.

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