The Renaming of Newfoundland

Newfoundland is actually Newfoundland and Labrador. Sort of. ▬ 

Sources: 

→ Canada Gazette, Part II, December 6, 2001, https://canadagazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2001/2001-12-06-x1/pdf/g2-135x6.pdf.||

→ “List of Administrative Divisions by Country,” Wikipedia, August 25, 2024,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisions_by_country. ||

→ Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada, https://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com/. ||

→ Newfoundland & Labrador Tourism, TV Ads, High Quality, Newfoundland and Labrador, January 15, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE1BB7A8A2F97332B. ||

→ “What Countries Have States in 2024?,” World Population Review, 2024, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/what-countries-have-states. || ▬ 

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Newfoundland Boy, a podcast about me and the Canadian province of Newfoundland. This is episode 23: “The Renaming of Newfoundland.”

Every week I briefly introduce the title of this podcast as Newfoundland Boy. And every week there may be a listener or two, most likely someone who lives in the province, who grimaces because I am leaving something out.

What about Labrador?

As you may know, this is referring to the fact that the tenth province, which was called Newfoundland when it joined Canada 75 years ago, is now actually formally and officially called Newfoundland and Labrador. This change actually required an amendment to the Canadian Constitution, specifically called the “Constitution Amendment, 2001 (Newfoundland and Labrador),” which was enacted on December 6, 2001.

For those who don’t know Canadian geography, Newfoundland is not just the oddly shaped island that you may have visited or seen on maps. Labrador is located just off the northwestern tip of the island, on the mainland of Canada. In land area, it’s actually almost three times the size of the island portion of Newfoundland, but not so in population. There are only about 25,000 people there whereas there are about 500,000 on the island.

I like the formality of the wording of the legislation that brought the name of Labrador into the name of the province. It’s a proclamation from the prime minister at the time, Jean Chrétien. There is a list of phrases beginning with Whereas, and then ends with:

And whereas the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada has advised me to issue this proclamation; Now Know You that I do issue this proclamation amending the Constitution of Canada in accordance with the schedule hereto. In Testimony Whereof I have caused these Letters to be made patent and the Great Seal of Canada to be hereunto affixed. At Government House, in the City of Ottawa, this sixth day of December in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and One.

Well, in passing, I’m not sure what “Our Lord” is doing there in an official text from a secular country, but, anyway … The so-called “schedule” is a short six paragraphs, the main one being:

The Terms of Union of Newfoundland with Canada set out in the Schedule to the Newfoundland Act are amended by striking out the words “Province of Newfoundland” wherever they occur and substituting the words “Province of Newfoundland and Labrador”.

So, what does any of this have to do with my podcast? There are three main reasons why I don’t include Labrador in the title, or frankly refer to it when I talk about the province I live in. None of them has anything to do with disrespecting Labrador or considering it a second-class part of the province or anything else. 

1.     The now official name of the province makes for a mouthful to say. There’s not just Newfoundland and Labrador, but there’s also those situations where politicians and others have to refer to the residents of the entire province: Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. Compare that to Ontario and Ontarians. Or for that matter to Canada and Canadians.

2.     The long name may be intended to encourage unity, but it does so in name alone. In my experience, the way people generally refer to the province—that is, the actual usage, which is an important factor in language generally—is as Newfoundland. And someone from the Labrador part of the province will either say they are from Labrador, or that they are from Newfoundland, but not the island. I have not surveyed this, but I’m confident that a person born on the island of Newfoundland never refers to themself as a Newfoundlander and Labradorian.

3.     And speaking of the island, the Canadian and Newfoundland governments missed a great opportunity when they assigned the new official name. They should have left it as Newfoundland, and if they were going to do anything, they should have legislated that the two portions of land would continue to be called that, but that the mainland portion would be called Labrador and the island portion would be called … and here’s the additional opportunity. How about The Island? Or The Rock, a common vernacular nickname that many Newfoundlanders use to describe it?

Those are my reasons. I also had a look online for a complete list of all the countries in the world that also included a complete list of their constituent parts, you know, states or provinces or regions or counties or anything like that. Granted, I did not review the entire list, but the naming of a constituent part of a country by using the word and to join together two other names is actually very rare. There are a few in the countries that make up the United Kingdom. And there and elsewhere there are some cases where two names are hyphenated but there is no and. I personally like the practise in Micronesia, where there are only four states and they all have very short names (which I am likely mispronouncing): Pohnpei, Kosrae, Chuuk, and, my favourite, Yap.

So, back to Canada though, and Newfoundland and Labrador. You can tell from some of the touristic advertising that the and is a bit of an inconvenience. The official site for the government department uses a tightly squeezed-in and barely distinguishable ampersand instead of and (though the URL has nothing: it’s just newfoundlandlabrador.com). But the kicker, the true tell, is that in the beautiful video ads that they produce, the logo in the bottom right doesn’t even have the ampersand. It’s just Newfoundland Labrador. There’s a link in the show notes if you want to check it out.

And that’s all for this episode from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Thanks for listening. And please join me again next Tuesday.