Postville is an

Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

town in the north of

Labrador Labrador () is a geographic and cultural region within the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the primarily continental portion of the province and constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its populatio ...

, Canada. It had a population of 188 as of 2021. It is located about inside Kaipokok Bay, NNE of

Happy Valley-Goose Bay Happy Valley-Goose Bay (Inuit: ''Vâli'') is a town in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Located in central Labrador on the coast of Lake Melville and the Churchill River, Happy Valley-Goose Bay is the largest population centre ...

. Postville Airport is nearby. Postville is inaccessible by road and may be reached only by air (via Postville Airport) or via ferry service that operates between Nain and

during the ice-free period from June to November.

Uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

deposits A deposit account is a bank account maintained by a financial institution in which a customer can deposit and withdraw money. Deposit accounts can be savings accounts, current accounts or any of several other types of accounts explained below. ...

are located near Postville.

History

In the 18th century, the Franco-Canadian merchant Louis Fornel landed near the present site of

Rigolet Rigolet (Inuttitut: ''Tikigâksuagusik'') (population 327) is a remote, coastal Labrador community established in 1735 by French-Canadian trader Louis Fornel. The town is the southernmost officially recognized Inuit community in the world. Loca ...

and claimed the land for France in 1743. The Franco-Canadians established trading posts in Kaipokok Bay at that time. The British took control of

New France New France (, ) was the territory colonized by Kingdom of France, France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Kingdom of Great Br ...

in 1763 after the

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a Great Power conflict fought primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and South Asia. The protagonists were Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Prus ...

, bringing a flood of European fishermen and whalers to settle on the Labrador coast. Around 1784, Pierre Marcoux and Louis Marchand reopened the old Kaipokok trading post. In 1795, the Moravian Brothers of Hopedale observed that Pierre Marcoux and the former partner of George Cartwright Collingham were the first Europeans to settle in Kaipokok Bay. In order to compete with the Moravians, the

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...

established a coastal trading post on Kaipokok Bay in 1837 shortly after Rigolet. It operated until 1880. The village was first known as The Post because of the Hudson's Bay Company trading post located in the area. Inuit families traded in the fall, winter and spring before returning to the coastal camps in the summer. The village was renamed Postville in the 1940s by Pentecostal pastor William Gillet who helped establish the community by building a school and a church. Through the 1940s it was mostly a winter residence for settlers who were scattered around the bay and coast in the summer. In 1949, Gillet opened a store in Postville and built a sawmill in Shanty Brook across the bay (which burnt down in 1957). From then, the population gradually began to concentrate in Postville. In 1961, its population was 84. Permanent settlement was further boosted by the opening of a shipyard in 1974. Although the shipyard closed a few years later, a new sawmill opened in 1990. An uncommon magnitude 4.3 earthquake was measured in Labrador on February 5, 2020, with its epicentre about east of Postville. It was the strongest quake on the Labrador coast in 40 years.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), 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 culture. It is headquartered in ...

, Postville 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

External links

{{Authority control Inuit community governments in Newfoundland and Labrador Road-inaccessible communities of Newfoundland and Labrador Populated places in Labrador Fishing communities in Canada Populated places established in 1837