Harbour Breton is a small fishing community on the Connaigre Peninsula in

Fortune Bay Fortune Bay () is a fairly large natural bay located in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada.island of Newfoundland Newfoundland (, ; french: link=no, Terre-Neuve, ; ) is a large island off the east coast of the North American mainland and the most populous part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It has 29 percent of the province's land ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. It is the largest center on the Connaigre Peninsula and was long considered the unofficial capital of Fortune Bay. During the 1960s many communities were resettled into Harbour Breton. Harbour Breton is the only administrative centre in Fortune Bay and is located approximately south of

Grand Falls-Windsor Grand Falls-Windsor is a town located in the central region of the island of Newfoundland in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, with a population of 13,853 at the 2021 census. The town is the largest in the central region, the si ...

History

Harbour Breton is known for its rich fishing history. But the first major company to take up post here was Newman & Co. Based in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and famous for its port wine, this company happened upon the value of the town's marine climate in its wine aging process. The Newman Company's ship ''Retriever'' arrived in Harbour Breton with a cargo of

port wine Port wine (also known as vinho do Porto, , or simply port) is a Portuguese wine, Portuguese fortified wine produced in the Douro, Douro Valley of Norte, Portugal, northern Portugal. It is typically a sweetness of wine, sweet red wine, often ...

around 1892. Through the 19th century, the company relied heavily on the importing of fishing servants from England and Ireland. By 1871, the Newman & Co. employed about 100 people in salting, drying, packing, and shipping fish to

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

and the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...

. By the late 1800s, a large part of the population had either settled in Harbour Breton permanently, moved to other areas on the south coast which were connected with the Newman & Co. or returned to their country of origin. By 1891, Harbour Breton's population had reached 484. Of them, 443 were Newfoundland born with the remainder from England, Ireland, Scotland and other British colonies. Newman & Co. fortunes declined in the early 1900s and the company closed its operation in 1907. A

cottage hospital A cottage hospital is a semi-obsolete type of small hospital, most commonly found in the United Kingdom. The original concept was a small rural building having several beds.The Cottage Hospitals 1859–1990, Dr. Meyrick Emrys-Roberts, Tern Publicati ...

was built in Harbour Breton in 1936. Harbour Breton was designated as a growth centre in 1965 and the government encouraged people living in isolated communities to relocate to the town. From 1965 to 1971, a total of 700 people had moved to Harbour Breton. Many residents resettled from Sagona Island, Jersey Harbour, Little Bay West, Miller's Passage, Red Cove, and Grole. In 1971, Harbour Breton was linked to

Trans Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway ( French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the Atlantic Ocean o ...

by road. In 1973, a landslide on south side of Harbour Breton, killed 4 children from the Hickey family. A monument was erected on the site of the Hickey house in 1997. Harbour Breton has a notable fishing history, including companies such as Fishery Products International (FPI), which removed itself from the town in April 2005. The Barry Group of Companies Inc. renovated the plant used by FPI and re-opened its doors in December 2006. Cooke Aquaculture started a salmon processing operation in Harbour Breton at the Barry Group of Companies plant in 2008. The plant employed about 150 people, but it closed on January 31, 2014 when the Barry Group didn't renew its lease with Cooke Aquaculture. Barry Group Inc. opened a fish meal plant in Harbour Breton in 2017.

Climate

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

conducted by Statistics Canada, Harbour Breton had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

References

{{Authority control Populated coastal places in Canada Towns in Newfoundland and Labrador Fishing communities in Canada

History

Climate

Demographics

See also

References