Labrador Plateau
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a vast paninsula of eastern Canada. Its limits are somewhat indefinite, but it extends from the gulf of St. Lawrence to Hudson Bay . The area is upward of 40,000 square miles-larger than France and Germany combined. That part of the plateau of Labrador lying along the coast of the St. Lawrence is part of the province of Quebec. A small portion of the adjacent mainland at the extreme east belongs to Newfoundland. The interior forms a part of the district of Ungava. Labrador lies in the same latitude as the British Isles, but, owing to the influence of Arctic currents, the climate is more like that of Iceland. The entire peninsula is a table land of ancient rocks, having an average altitude of about 2,000 feet. The Atlantic coast is precipitous, rising to a height of from 1,000 to 4,000 feet. It is intersected by numerous inlets. The cliffs are inhabited by myriads of nesting waterfowl. The Labrador duck, a beautiful sea species, is now extinct. The interior of Labrador is not well known. There are numerous rivers, teeming with salmon and other fish. Travelers have made their way upward in canoes for hundreds of miles. The interior is a land of elevated morasses, bare rocks, and forests of birch and fir. Accounts have reached the outside world of a waterfall said to be 2,000 feet in height. The forests are inhabited by the lynx, fox, wolf, marten, otter, weasel, bear, beaver, muskrat, and other fur-bearing animals. The barrens, as they are called, are occupied be herbs of caribou that feed on the reindeer moss. The inhabitants, about 6,000 in number, ware chiefly Algonkin Indians, who are at perpetual enmity with the few Eskimos who dwell along the northern border. In the spring, they come down the streams with bales of fur. The winter is long and of Arctic severity. The summer is short and warm. Those who do not mind swarms of mosquitos, flies and "no-seems" find the wilds of Labrador a summer paradise. The Atlantic coast is visited by many thousand fishermen from Newfoundland, Canada, and the United States . The catch of cod, herring, salmon, and trout is valued at several million dollars a year. See Cod ; Canada ; Saguenay
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's called the interior "not well known" in 1910 and passed on "accounts... of a waterfall said to be 2,000 feet in height" — that was Grand Falls on the Hamilton River, nearer 250 feet but at the head of a huge drop; it was harnessed in 1971 by the Churchill Falls hydroelectric station, one of the largest in the world, which diverted the river and left the falls largely dry. The political map has also been redrawn: what Aiton's called "a small portion of the adjacent mainland" held by Newfoundland became, by a Privy Council ruling in 1927, the whole of Labrador as far inland as the height of land, and Newfoundland itself joined Canada in 1949 (the province was renamed Newfoundland and Labrador in 2001). Iron ore, unmentioned here, became the region's great industry from the 1950s, with railways pushed north to Schefferville and Labrador City. The Algonkian people described as "at perpetual enmity" with the Eskimos are now known as the Innu and the Inuit, the latter governing the self-governing region of Nunatsiavut since 2005; the Labrador duck remains extinct, as the entry says.
Written for this edition, 2026.