Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Atlantic Canada has always been home to hardy folk whose lives have re-
volved around the sea. Early Aboriginal people lived on seals and fish, and
the first European arrivals could hardly believe their luck when they dis-
covered the plentiful cod stocks. Through the millennia Canadian Aboriginal
tribes, the British and the French have all vied for control of the region with
the British eventually getting the upper hand, and Canadian Aboriginal
people and French-speaking Acadians sticking to the fringes. American
Loyalists, including many freed slaves, were taken in after the American
Civil War and over time thousands of other immigrants from Europe and
around the world have joined the cultural mix. Today, with mine closures
and the moratorium on now depleted cod stocks, the region has faced out-
ward migration and economic hard times - yet the natural beauty and qual-
ity of life still encourages many to stay put and attracts others.
The First Fishers
Atlantic Canada's first inhabitants, the Paleoindians, walked into Labrador 9000 years
ago. The harsh, frozen land didn't make life easy or lengthy for these folks. Next came the
Maritime Archaic Indians, hunters and gatherers who survived on the sea's bountiful fish-
and-seal dinners. They ranged throughout Atlantic Canada, Maine and into parts of Lab-
rador between 7500 and 3500 years ago and are known for their ceremonial burials and
other religious and magical practices, evidenced at sites such as Newfoundland's Port au
Choix. They mysteriously disappeared around 1000 BC.
The next to tend the land were the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet peoples in the Maritimes and
the Beothuk people in Newfoundland - all members of the Algonquin-speaking eastern
woodlands tribes. The Mi'kmaq and Maliseet practiced agriculture and lived in fairly per-
manent settlements. The Beothuk were seminomadic and paddled the area in their birch-
bark canoes. It was the Beothuk and their ceremonially ochre-coated faces who were
dubbed 'red men' by the arriving Europeans, a name soon applied to all of North Amer-
ica's indigenous groups.
None of these people fared well once Europeans arrived and introduced diseases, land
conflict and war to the mix. While the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet still occupy parts of Atlantic
Canada, the last person of Beothuk ethnicity died in 1829, and a unique language and cul-
ture was lost forever.
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