North River is a
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an ori ...
on the
Avalon Peninsula of
Newfoundland in the
Canadian province
Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North ...
of
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...
. It was incorporated as a municipality in 1964.
Geography
The Town of North River is located northwest of
Clarke's Beach
Clarke's Beach is a town on Conception Bay in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In the 2021 census the town had a population of 1,400. It is the home of a number of well-known Newfoundland artists, and is a favourite place f ...
,
Conception Bay, Newfoundland. The settlement extends along the northwest bank of the river of the same name, and includes Halls Town, located south of what was formerly Fillier's Bridge, further inland along the river valley.
History
In the early 1600s, colonist
John Guy of the
Cupids
Cupids is a town of 699 people (per the 2021 Census) on Conception Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. It has also been known as Coopers, Copers Cove, Cupers Cove, and Cuperts. It is the oldest continuously settled official British colony ...
plantation referred to people living in the
Clarke's Beach
Clarke's Beach is a town on Conception Bay in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In the 2021 census the town had a population of 1,400. It is the home of a number of well-known Newfoundland artists, and is a favourite place f ...
area, which could have included North River or South River. Permanent settlement, however, most likely started in the mid 1800s. Historically, what is now called North River was known as Northern Gut, while the name North Valley also appears on some maps.
North River has traditionally been a fishing and agricultural community. It is probable that Northern Gut and the valley of the North River as far inland as The Pond That Feeds the Brook were early sites of winter houses or summer gardens for fishing communities on the
Port de Grave
Port de Grave is a peninsula on Conception Bay (CB) in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The peninsula contains the communities of Bareneed, Black Duck Pond, Otterbury, Ship Cove, Blow Me Down, Hibb's Cove, Pick Eyes, and Hussey's Cove with a ...
peninsula. Many of the year-round settlers in the North River valley were fishermen of Irish descent who had been employed by English merchants and planters on the Peninsula. Local oral tradition holds that the early Roman Catholic settlers had been driven out of the Peninsula, but it is more likely that by the mid 1800s, the families of the original Irish fishing servants had saved enough money to facilitate a move to the riverside farmlands, where they already cultivated gardens.
The census records published in the Journal of the Legislative Council of the Island of Newfoundland for 1833 noted that there were 36 dwelling houses in Northern Gut at that point, with 101 men, 103 women, 27 servants, and 4 fishing boats.
Grave markers in the North River cemetery date back to 1870, but many of the original Irish settlers were buried in the older cemeteries of
Bareneed and Port de Grave.
Access to North River was originally always by water, but in 1836 a road was built from Northern Gut to Collier's Bay (today's
Colliers). This road joined up with the road from Collier's Bay to Holyrood, providing the first land transportation link into Conception Bay North. The local Road Commissioners at the time were Thomas Ridley, Thomas Chancey, John Elson, and John Stark. In the same year, tenders were called for the building of a road northward, stretching from Northern Gut to Riverhead, Harbour Grace. The bridge over North River was completed around the same time, at a cost of £100.
In 1839,
Joseph Jukes
Joseph Beete Jukes (10 October 1811 – 29 July 1869), born to John and Sophia Jukes at Summer Hill, Birmingham, England, was a renowned geologist, author of several geological manuals and served as a naturalist on the expeditions of (under th ...
, an English geologist and surveyor for Newfoundland, made a visit to Northern Gut while exploring local slate deposits. For June 21, 1839, Jukes wrote the following in his diary:
Here a brook empties itself into the sea having run for about three miles through a narrow pond or “cosh” as my men called it. We hauled the boat up the shallow bed of the brook for a few yards into deeper water and then rowed up the lake. I then struck off with two men and the theodolite and barometer to the top of a hill on the north side called “Sunday's hill” whose height I found to be about 500 feet.
Improved roads and an influx of settlers meant that by 1840 there was enough settlement in the Valley to justify the establishment of a Roman Catholic school.
By 1857, the combined population of Hall's Town and North River was 335, with Roman Catholic families clustered at North River. Protestants (most notably the Hall family) settled further inland. While early settlers chose the area for agricultural purposes, a group of later settlers moved into the area as waterfront property at Clarke's Beach became limited. By the 1860s, residents were combining farming with the Labrador fishery out of Port de Grave and Bay Roberts. Some of the nineteenth century pioneer families moved away to Philadelphia and Boston, but quite a number stayed on.
In 1870–1871, the following family names were in North River: Atkins; Brine; Butler; Cooney; Cullen; Cummins; English; Farrell; Hanlin; Hurley; Kavanagh; Lawless; Long; Moore; Morgan; Morrisy; Neville; O’Brien; Power; Ring; Shea; Sinclair; Skean; Swords; and Walsh. They were all listed as fishermen, planters, and farmers.
The
Labrador
, nickname = "The Big Land"
, etymology =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Canada
, subdivision_type1 = Province
, subdivision_name1 ...
fishery, farming, and woods work provided most work for late nineteenth-century residents.
The
Bell Island mines offered a new type of employment starting in the early 1900s, and in the 1940s many also worked on the construction of the United States base at
Argentia
Argentia ( ) is a Canadian commercial seaport and industrial park located in the Town of Placentia, Newfoundland and Labrador. It is situated on the southwest coast of the Avalon Peninsula and defined by a triangular shaped headland which r ...
.
At this time, Bern English opened the first shop in North River.
Family farming for household needs remained an important tradition in the area well into the twentieth century. In 1986, Clarke's Beach merchant Garfield Ralph remembered locals growing “thousands of barrels of potatoes a year. When I was a boy everybody in Clarke's Beach, North River and South River grew from 10 to 150 barrels of potatoes."
Early family names of North River still common in 1992 included Bradbury, Fillier, Hall, Hanlon, Morgan, Morrissey, Newell, Power, and Snow.
Demographics
In the
2021 Census of Population conducted by
Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...
, North River 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.
See also
*
List of cities and towns in Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the ninth-most populous province in Canada, with 510,550 residents recorded in the 2021 Canadian Census, and is the seventh-largest in land area, with . Newfoundland and Labrador has 278 municipalities, including 3 ...
References
{{Subdivisions of Newfoundland and Labrador, towns=yes, ICG=yes
Towns in Newfoundland and Labrador