The Labrador boundary

What is a coast?

In 1763 Britain put “all that Coast, from the River St. John’s to Hudson’s Streights” under the governor of Newfoundland, so that the fishery there could be run from one place. Where that coast ended inland was never defined.^[4] Labrador was moved to Quebec in 1774, returned to Newfoundland in 1809, and in 1825 its southern edge was set at Blanc-Sablon and the 52nd parallel.^[4]

Canada took over the Hudson’s Bay Company’s lands in 1870. In 1898 Ottawa extended Quebec north on the assumption that Newfoundland held only a strip along the shore, and a 1912 act gave Quebec the rest of the peninsula on the same assumption.^[4]

A timber licence starts a court case

The quarrel began in 1902, when Newfoundland licensed timber cutting on both sides of the Hamilton River, now the Churchill, and Quebec protested that part of it was Quebec land.^[4] Because Canada and Newfoundland were separate members of the British Empire, neither’s courts could settle it, and in 1907 they agreed to send it to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.^[1][2] Quebec was not a party to the case.^[1]

The case turned on the word “coast”.^[1] Canada argued it meant only a strip of shore, about a mile wide, enough to run a fishery. Newfoundland argued it reached inland to the height of land, and pointed out that it had governed Labrador since the late 18th century.^[4][1]

The 1927 line

The judges heard the case in October and November 1926, and the decision was announced in Newfoundland’s favour on 1 March 1927.^[2] The line runs north from Blanc-Sablon to the 52nd parallel, west along it to the Romaine River, and then along the crest of the watershed of the rivers that flow into the Atlantic, all the way to Cape Chidley.^[4]

“…along the crest of the watershed of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean until it reaches Cape Chidley.”^[4]

Settled in law, not in Quebec

Canada’s official yearbook reported that the decision moved 112,400 square miles, which its geographers had counted as part of Quebec, to Newfoundland.^[3] The ruling has always been unpopular in Quebec.^[4]

When Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, the Terms of Union confirmed the boundary, and they are now part of Canada’s constitution.^[1] A Quebec commission decided in 1971 that challenging the line wasn’t worth it, but the province still didn’t consider the matter settled in 1987.^[1] In 2007 a caribou-tracking map on a Quebec government website showed much of southern Labrador inside Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador’s government complained. CBC reported that Quebec has never recognised the 1927 decision.^[5]