Borderlines explores the global map, one line at a time.

July 22, 1948 is a red-letter day in alternate history. On that date, a new nation could have been born in the North America. A referendum on the constitutional future of the Dominion of Newfoundland — until then a separate entity within the British Commonwealth, with the same level of independence as Australia or New Zealand [1] — produced a slight majority for confederation with Canada, by 78,323 votes to 71,334. A swing of just 3,500 votes would have created a new state in the extreme northeast of the North American continent.

Now nearing the 64th anniversary of its Independence Day, that Republic of Newfoundland — blessed with a small population [2] and ample natural resources [3] — might have become a beacon of state-sponsored prosperity à la Scandinavia. Or independence might have aggravated a dormant border dispute with Quebec, opening the door to instability, conflict and outside meddling.

What if, in those scary first years of the cold war, Stalin had managed to use Newfie [4] sovereignty, and more specifically the dispute over its newly internationalized border, as a chance to interfere directly in North American affairs? Newfoundland could have been an earlier, colder Cuba — but with a foothold on the American mainland.

That didn’t happen, of course, but it’s not idle speculation, either. Ottawa, London and Washington were all keen to avoid precisely that scenario, and gently but urgently prodded the locals towards confederation. Among other things, the Americans put aside semi-official plans for a Newfoundland-United States trade alliance [5].

So on midnight of March 31, 1949, Newfoundland became Canada’s 10th (and last) province [6]. In 2001, the province was re-baptized, better to reflect its true geographical scope: Newfoundland and Labrador. That re-naming prompted the government of Québec to reiterate its position vis à vis its land border with Labrador: “No Québec government has ever formally recognized the course of the border between Québec and Newfoundland in the Labrador Peninsula, as defined by the judgment made by the judiciary committee of the Privy Council of London in 1927. For Québec, this border has never been definitively defined.” [7]

Joe Burgess/The New York Times

That, fortunately, was as worked up as Quebec chose to get over the Labrador border [8]; no gendarmes were sent to re-take territory, no Newfie militias were raised to stop the invasion. No doubt the fact that both entities are provinces within the same federation takes the edge off the dispute, and prevents its pursuance. Which is good, as the well of grievances is deep, and plentiful.

Labrador [9] and Newfoundland [10] were rediscovered [11] and named by Portuguese and Italian sailors respectively, but first settled by the English — who claimed Newfoundland as England’s very first colony, in 1583 — and the French, who abandoned their settlements on the island to the English by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The French did maintain fishing rights on the so-called French Shore [12] until ceding those in 1904.

Labrador remained part of New France until its conquest by the British in 1760. In 1763, a royal proclamation transferred the coast of Labrador to Newfoundland “to the end that the open and free fishery may be extended and carried on upon the coast of Labrador and the adjacent islands.”

The 1774 Quebec Act re-transferred Labrador to what was formerly New France, which under its new name was greatly enlarged to encompass lands up to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers [13]. But in 1809, the British re-re-transferred Labrador, “from the River St. John to Hudson’s Streights” to Newfoundland.

As an accommodation toward Lower Canada (i.e., Quebec), the British, by the 1825 Labrador Act, withdrew Labrador’s southern border from the shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence to the 52nd Parallel North, to where it meets a line due north from the “Bay or Harbour of Ance Sablon” (nowadays Blanc-Sablon). These two straight lines are the oldest (if contested) parts of Labrador’s current land border.

Yet the border conflict didn’t erupt until 1902,, when Newfoundland issued a logging license for an area far inland, on the Churchill River [14]. From Quebec’s point of view, Labrador existed only as a manifestation of fishing rights, but not much else — not unlike the French Shore — and should therefore not intrude inland more than, say, a mile.

At Quebec’s behest, Ottawa submitted the dispute to the Judiciary Committee of the Privy Council in London, as both Canada and Newfoundland were separate and equal members of the British Empire. As a ruling was not forthcoming, both parties to the dispute instructed the Privy Council to pronounce solely on the “location and definition” of the border, basing itself only on the existing statues and proclamations. In doing so, they spared the five-judge panel from having to create new borders or propose land swaps ex nihilo.

Obviously, Canada hoped that this meant that its interpretation of “coast” would prevail. It didn’t. In 1927, the Privy Council fixed Labrador’s inland border on the watershed (or the highest point of land) between the Atlantic Ocean and the Hudson Bay. It coupled this to the 1825 straight-line border, refining the definition to grant the town of Blanc-Sablon to Quebec.

To Quebec, this felt like a consolation prize. The watershed line deprived Quebec of a large chunk of territory that it felt was rightfully hers. It was whispered, in Quebec’s corridors of provincial powerlessness, that some of the judges had logging interests in Labrador.

Nevertheless, this is the official border as it has appeared on most maps ever since. When Newfoundland acceded to Canada in 1949, it made sure to cement its Labrador border in the Terms of Union [15]. Quebec took exception to the Privy Council’s ruling, but in 1971, an official commission of the Quebec government decided that the dispute was not worth pursuing. And yet, as the reanimated animosity of the 2001 press release shows, the dispute lives on.

The dispute now centers on Labrador’s southern, straight-line border. Some maps published by the Quebec government show the straight line as “non-definitive” [16] and place the actual border further north. Giving Labrador a taste of its own medicine, this line marks the southern border of the Atlantic basin, the very watershed that forms Labrador’s western boundary. This not only deprives Labrador of its only sizeable straight-line border, but also of just under 5,000 square miles of its territory.

Related More From Borderlines Read previous contributions to this series.

Neither Quebec nor Newfoundland seems to want to press the issue — for the moment. But who knows what will happen in the future? Quebec, as the heir to New France, has occasionally leaned toward declaring independence [17]; should that ever come to pass, the Quebec-Labrador border would yet become an international one — perhaps reviving Quebec’s claims to the southern watershed border, or even the 1-mile coastal border [18].

Meanwhile, we should not forget that Newfoundland already has an international border. Some 12 miles off the island’s southern coast are the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon — the only splinter of New France still under French control [19]. This peculiarity comes with not one but two border disputes.

In 1972, Canada and France delimited the maritime boundary between Newfoundland and St. Pierre and Miquelon, leaving open a dispute about the extent of the two countries’ economic exclusion zones. It was only solved in 1992, by arbitration. The zone granted to France was peculiar, to say the least: it consisted of a 24-mile extrusion west of Miquelon, and a corridor southward from the islands, only 10 nautical miles wide, but 188 nautical miles long. The intention of the zone’s baguette-like shape ostensibly was to allow access to St. Pierre and Miquelon from the high seas; otherwise, they would have been surrounded by the Canadian exclusion zone. Sadly, it wasn’t well drawn: according to a conventional reading of the pertinent treaty, Canada’s zone extends well beyond France’s, cutting off the intended access route.

And it would appear that the 1972 decision also contained a blunder. The maritime border, halfway between St. Pierre and Newfoundland, may pass through Canada’s Green Island and the Little Green Islands just to its south. Or it may not. Some maps place all of these islets on either side of the border, some place the border straight through them — providing France with a third dry-land border in the Americas [20].

Clearly, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador is a minefield of dormant border disputes — and we haven’t even mentioned its own third land border, on its northern extremity: for apparently no good reason, Killiniq Island, just above the extreme northern point of Labrador’s mainland, is divided in two — between Newfoundland and Labrador and Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut.

Frank Jacobs is a London-based author and blogger. He writes about cartography, but only the interesting bits.

[1] Newfoundland was a colony until 1907, then had dominion status until 1949. Unlike other dominions, and quite unique in history, Newfoundland in 1934 voted to abandon self-government in favor of direct rule from London, becoming the rare entity to reject independence in favor of being governed by someone else.

[2] The population at the time of the referendum was just over 350,000. It now stands at around 515,000. Newfoundland accounts for 95 percent of the total population, with just over 50 percent concentrated on the Avalon Peninsula on the island’s southeast (also the location of the capital, St. John’s).

[3] Fish and oil, with a decline of the former now compensated by a boom of the latter; but also mining (and prospecting) for minerals such as iron, nickel, copper, zinc, silver and gold.

[4] A common, originally derogatory nickname for Newfoundlanders, now often self-applied with pride.

[5] The Economic Union Party advocated for such an outcome; as this option was purposely left off the ballot, the party supported “responsible government” (i.e., independence), which gained a plurality of the votes (44.5 percent, vs. 41.1 percent for confederation with Canada) on June 3, 1948, in the first round of the referendum.

[6] Canada consists of 10 provinces and 3 territories; Newfoundland’s admission was the last but one major territorial change for Canada. In 1999, the new territory of Nunavut was split off from the Northwest Territories.

[7] A statement by Québec’s minister of natural resources and minister responsible for Canadian intergovernmental affairs, expressing the Québec government’s position on the constitutional changes in the nomenclature of Newfoundland.

[8] Not only the only disputed interprovincial boundary in Canada, at over 2,100 miles it is also the longest one. This is due to the borderline’s erratic course as it follows the watershed between the Atlantic and the Hudson Bay.

[9] Named by and after João Fernandes Lavrador, who sighted the peninsula in 1498. The name initially also applied to the coast of southwest Greenland.

[10] Named Terra Nova in 1497 by John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), an Italian sailing for the English king. The Irish later called it Talamh an Eisc (“Fishland”) and the Basque Ternua. The toponyms in common use today are in English (Newfoundland) and French (Terre-Neuve). The island’s name in some languages like German (Neufundland), Polish (Nowa Fundlandia) and Hungarian (Uj-Fundland) suggests the island, analogous to many other places in the New World, is named for a place in the Old World — “Fundland.” The Mi’kmaq Indians first named the island Ktaqamkuk (translatable as the “Big Shore”, the “Mainland” or the “Little Continent”).

[11] In 1960, the discovery of the remains of a Viking village at L’Anse-aux-Meadows, on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, provided the first undisputable archaeological evidence of the Norse discovery of America as described in Icelandic sagas. Many scholars have since identified Newfoundland with (part of) Vinland, and Labrador with Markland.

[12] The Treaty of Utrecht defined the French Shore as between Cape Bonavista (in the island’s east) and Point Riche (in the northwest), but as the French continued to fish to the south of this area, the Treaty of Versailles moved the French Shore to between Cape St John and Cape Ray. In this area, what Breton fishermen had called Le Petit Nord since the 16th century, French fishermen were allowed to come ashore in order to prepare their catch, but not to establish permanent settlements.

[13] Quebec’s southernmost point thus became the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, at present-day Cairo, now merely the southernmost town in Illinois.

[14] Named the Hamilton River until Feb. 1, 1966, when Newfoundland premier Joey Smallwood renamed it after the former British prime minister, who had died one week previously. The river now flows from… Smallwood Reservoir.

[15] Term #2: “The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador shall comprise the same territory as at the date of Union, that is to say, the island of Newfoundland and the islands adjacent thereto, the Coast of Labrador as delimited in the report delivered by the Judicial Committee of His Majesty’s Privy Council on the first day of March, 1927, and approved by His Majesty in His Privy Council on the twenty-second day of March, 1927, and the islands adjacent to the said Coast of Labrador.”

[16] Tracé de 1927 du Conseil privé (non définitif) on this map, published as part of Quebec’s Plan Nord to develop the province’s hydroelectric potential.

[17] In two referendums, in 1980 and 1995, the No camp won, but only by 50.6 percent in that second one.

[18] Even though, according to Henri Dorion, who presided over the Commission to Study the Territorial Integrity of Quebec (1966-1972) in a 1995 speech outlining the “Ten Great Myths about the Labrador Boundary,” “if it is ridiculous to have the boundary on the watershed, it is even more ridiculous to have it 5,000 feet inland.”

[19] In fact, it was returned to France at the Treaty of Paris in 1763, just when the rest of New France was transferred to Britain.

[20] For a discussion of another French land border in the Americas, see this previous Borderlines post.

France’s third land border in the Americas is with the Netherlands, with which it shares the Caribbean island of St. Martin/Sint-Maarten.