St. Anthony

By tradition, St. Anthony harbour was named by French explorer Jacque Cartier in 1534, though the long, deep, sheltered harbour was probably already known to Breton fishermen and became one of the primary French stations on the Petit Nord until the mid-1800s, with French fishing rights in Newfoundland waters ending in 1904. English settlement was difficult to date because it was technically illegal under treaties with the French, but Newfoundlanders persisted in fishing off the French Shore, and some served as gardiens overseeing French fishing premises, becoming the first settlers. When Bishop Edward Field visited in 1849, he noted only one English settler, J. Macey, at St. Anthony Bight, while local tradition identifies the founding families at St. Anthony harbour as the Pateys on the west side and the Simms on the east; by the 1857 census there were 11 families and 71 people. The town’s turning point came in 1899 when Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell chose St. Anthony as the site of a new hospital serving Labrador and northern Newfoundland and as the winter base for the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen; by 1912 he had founded the International Grenfell Association, whose work expanded beyond hospitals and nursing stations to agriculture, livestock, lumber, co-operative stores, orphanages, and handicrafts. As the Grenfell Mission headquarters, St. Anthony grew into a regional centre, gaining a slipway and marine railway in 1928, a salt fish plant in 1935, and a cold storage plant in 1944 that reflected wartime demand for fresh-frozen fish; later, Fishery Products Limited took over the plant in 1957, and Chianti Food Processors operated secondary processing in the late 1990s. By the 1950s the fishery was no longer the town’s largest industry, and a second era of growth followed when St. Anthony was chosen in 1950 as the site of the joint Canada-U.S. Aircraft Control and Warning System, bringing construction and service work until the late 1960s, while resettlement brought in families from surrounding communities. The Charles S. Curtis Memorial Hospital was completed in 1967, harbour facilities were upgraded, the Northern Peninsula Highway reached St. Anthony in 1968, and in 1981 the Grenfell Mission became Grenfell Regional Health Services within the provincial healthcare system, while Dr. Grenfell’s home became a museum as part of a developing regional tourism strategy.

Newfoundland and Labrador · Canada