Newfoundland and Nova Scotia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Historical and geographical information

 

 

 

  

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The Farndale Directory

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Farndale History

Particular branches of the family tree

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General Sir Martin Farndale KCB

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Introduction

 

Dates are in red.

Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.

Headlines of the history of the Newfoundland are in brown.

References and citations are in turquoise.

Contextual history is in purple.

 

This webpage about the Newfoundland has the following section headings:

 

 

The Farndales of Newfoundland

 

The Newfoundland Line are the descendants of John Martin Farndale (FAR00613), 1886-1966 who emigrated to Newfoundland. See also the Newfoundland Farndales.

 

Raymond WS Farndale (FAR00804), served in 59th (Newfoundland) Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery.

 

They lived at Corner Brook, St John’s, Toronto and Halifax.

 

Many of the Canadian immigrants docked in Halifax on their journey west.

 

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Nova Scotia and Newfoundland                                                                                                      Newfoundland                                                                                       Nova Scotia

 

Corner Brook

 

Corner Brook is a city located on the west coast of the island of Newfoundland in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

 

Located on the Bay of Islands at the mouth of the Humber River, the city is the second-largest population centre in the province behind St. John's, and smallest of three cities behind St. John's and Mount Pearl. As such, Corner Brook functions as a service centre for western and northern Newfoundland. It is located on the same latitude as Gaspé, Quebec, a city of similar size and landscape on the other side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Corner Brook is the most northern city in Atlantic Canada.

 

It is the administrative headquarters of the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nations band government. The Mi'kmaq name for the nearby Humber River is "Maqtukwek"

 

1767

 

The area was surveyed by Captain James Cook in 1767. The Captain James Cook Historic Site stands on Crow Hill overlooking the city. 

 

Nineteenth century

 

By the middle of the nineteenth century the population of Corner Brook was less than 100, and the inhabitants were engaged in fishing and lumber work.

 

Corner Brook is home to the Corner Brook Pulp & Paper Mill (owned by Kruger Inc.), which is a major employer for the region.

 

The area was originally four distinct communities, each with unique commercial activities: 

 

·         Curling, with its fishery;

·         Corner Brook West (also known as Humber West or Westside) with its retail businesses;

·         Corner Brook East (also known as Humbermouth and the Heights) with its railway and industrial operations; and

·         Townsite (known as Corner Brook), home to the employees of the pulp and paper mill.

 

1948

 

Between 1948 and 1958, about 70 people from Latvia and Germany settled in Corner Brook. They came as part of then Premier Joseph Smallwood's New Industries program. They built and worked at North Star Cement and the Atlantic Gypsum Plant.

 

1956

 

In 1956, the four communities were amalgamated to form the present-day City of Corner Brook.

 

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Pulp and paper industry, Corner Brook

 

 

 

 

St John’s

 

The St. John's metropolitan area is the most populous census metropolitan area in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

 

1500

 

St. John's was used by fishermen setting up seasonal camps in the early 1500s. Sebastian Cabot declared in a handwritten Latin text in his original 1545 map that St. John's earned its name when he and his father, the Venetian explorer John Cabot, in the service of England, became the first Europeans to sail into the harbour, on the morning of 24 June 1494 (per British and French historians, in 1497), the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. However, the locations of Cabot's landfalls are disputed.

 

1519

 

The earliest record of the location appears as São João on a Portuguese map by Pedro Reinel in 1519.

 

1527

 

When the English mariner John Rut visited St. John's in 1527, he found Norman, Breton and Portuguese ships in the harbour. On 3 August 1527, Rut wrote a letter to King Henry on the findings of his voyage to North America; this was the first known letter sent from North America.

 

1540

 

A series of expeditions to St. John's by Portuguese from the Azores took place in the early 16th century, and by 1540, French, Spanish and Portuguese ships crossed the Atlantic annually to fish the waters off the Avalon Peninsula. In the Basque Country, it is a common belief the name of St. John's was given by Basque fishermen because the bay of St. John's is very similar to the Bay of Pasaia in the Basque Country, where one of the fishing towns is called St. John (in Spanish, San Juan, and in Basque, Donibane).

 

1541

 

St. Jehan is shown on Nicolas Desliens's world map of 1541, and San Joham is found in João Freire's Atlas of 1546.

 

1583

 

On 5 August 1583, an English Sea Dog, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, claimed the area as England's first overseas colony under Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I. There was no permanent population, however, and Gilbert was lost at sea during his return voyage, thereby ending any immediate plans for settlement.

 

1620

 

By 1620, the fishermen of England's West Country controlled most of Newfoundland's east coast.

 

1627

 

In 1627, William Payne, called St. John's "the principal prime and chief lot in all the whole country".

 

1630

 

Sometime after 1630, the town of St. John's was established as a permanent community. Before this, English fishermen were expressly forbidden by the English government, at the urging of the West Country fishing industry, from establishing permanent settlements along the English-controlled coast.

 

1665

 

The town's first significant defences were likely erected due to commercial interests, following the temporary seizure of St. John's by the Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter in June 1665.

 

1673

 

The inhabitants fended off a second Dutch attack in 1673, when it was defended by Christopher Martin, an English merchant captain. Martin landed six cannons from his vessel, the Elias Andrews, and constructed an earthen breastwork and battery near Chain Rock commanding the Narrows leading into the harbour. With only 23 men, the valiant Martin beat off an attack by three Dutch warships.

 

1675

 

The population grew slowly in the 17th century. St. John's was Newfoundland's largest settlement when English naval officers began to take censuses around 1675. The population grew in the summers with the arrival of migratory fishermen.

 

1680

 

In 1680, fishing ships mostly from South Devon set up fishing rooms at St. John's, bringing hundreds of Irish men into the port to operate inshore fishing boats.

 

1689

 

The English government planned to expand the fortifications of Fort William in around 1689, but construction did not begin until after the French admiral Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville captured and destroyed the town in the Avalon Peninsula Campaign in 1696. When 1500 English reinforcements arrived in late 1697, they found rubble where the town and fortifications had stood

 

1705

 

The French attacked St. John's again in 1705, the Siege of St. John's, and captured it in 1708, the Battle of St. John's, devastating civilian structures with fire on each instance.

 

The harbour remained fortified through most of the 18th and 19th centuries.

 

1762

 

The final battle of the Seven Years' War in North America (known as the French and Indian War in the US) was fought in 1762, in St. John's.

 

Following a surprise capture of the town by the French early in the year, the British responded and, at the Battle of Signal Hill, the French surrendered St. John's to British forces under the command of Colonel William Amherst.

 

1800

 

On 24 April 1800, the "United Irish Uprising" occurred when 19 Irish soldiers who were part of the British garrison stationed in Newfoundland mutinied. The mutineers, who were suspected to be members of the Society of United Irishmen, fled to the countryside after the mutiny failed, and were apprehended in a matter of weeks and court-martialled. Of the 17 mutineers captured, 8 were executed, 4 were let go while 5 were sentenced to penal transportation.

 

The 18th century saw major changes in Newfoundland: population growth, beginnings of government, establishment of churches, reinforcement of commercial ties with North America and development of the seal, salmon and Grand Banks fisheries. St. John's population grew slowly. Although it was primarily a fishing station, it was also a garrison, a centre of government and a commercial hub.

 

St. John's served as a naval base during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

 

1892

 

The Great Fire of 1892 destroyed a significant portion of the city.

 

1901

 

Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal in St. John's on 12 December 1901 from his wireless station in Poldhu, Cornwall.

 

1919

 

St. John's was the starting point for the first non-stop transatlantic aircraft flight, by Alcock and Brown in a modified Vickers Vimy IV bomber, in June 1919, departing from Lester's Field in St. John's and ending in a bog near Clifden, Connemara, Ireland.

 

1939

 

During the Second World War, the harbour supported Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy ships that were engaged in anti-submarine warfare. It was the site of an American Army Air Force base, Fort Pepperrell, that was established as part of the "Lend-Lease" Destroyers for Bases Agreement between the United Kingdom and United States. The base included several US-manned coast defence guns, and a Canadian-manned battery of two Lend-Lease 10-inch M1888 guns was at Fort Cape Spear.

 

1942

 

The Knights of Columbus Hostel fire in December 1942 saw 99 military and civilian lives lost.

 

1960

 

The military base was transferred to Canadian control in 1960 and is now known as CFS St. John's.

 

1990s

 

St. John's, and the province as a whole, was gravely affected in the 1990s by the collapse of the northern cod fishery, which had been the driving force of the provincial economy for hundreds of years.

 

After a decade of high unemployment rates and depopulation, the city's proximity to the Hibernia, Terra Nova and White Rose oil fields led to an economic boom that spurred population growth and commercial development. As a result, the St. John's area now accounts for about half of the province's economic output.

 

Halifax, Nova Scotia

 

Halifax, officially known as the Halifax Regional Municipality (“HRM”), is the capital of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

 

Coastal areas of Nova Scotia in the region of Halifax were inhabited seasonally by Mi’kmaq before the influx of Europeans.

 

1749

 

The first permanent European settlement in the region was on the Halifax Peninsula. The establishment of the Town of Halifax, named after the 2nd Earl of Halifax, in 1749 led to the colonial capital being transferred from Annapolis Royal.

 

The establishment of Halifax marked the beginning of Father Le Loutre's War. The war began when Edward Cornwallis arrived to establish Halifax with 13 transports and a sloop of war on June 21, 1749. By unilaterally establishing Halifax, the British were violating earlier treaties with the Mi'kmaq (1726), which were signed after Father Rale's War. Cornwallis brought along 1,176 settlers and their families. To guard against Mi'kmaq, Acadian and French attacks on the new Protestant settlements, British fortifications were erected in Halifax (Citadel Hill) (1749), Bedford (Fort Sackville) (1749), Dartmouth (1750), and Lawrencetown (1754), all areas within the modern-day Regional Municipality. St. Margaret's Bay was first settled by French-speaking Foreign Protestants at French Village, Nova Scotia who migrated from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia during the American Revolution.

 

1917

 

6 December 1917 saw one of the greatest disasters in Canadian history, when the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship carrying munitions, collided with the Belgian Relief vessel SS Imo in "The Narrows" between upper Halifax Harbour and Bedford Basin. The resulting explosion, the Halifax Explosion, devastated the Richmond District in the North End of Halifax, killing approximately 2,000 people and injuring nearly 9,000 others. The blast was the largest artificial explosion before the development of nuclear weapons. Significant aid came from Boston, strengthening the bond between the two coastal cities.

 

 

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