Bird Cove

Bird Cove has been a site of human habitation for over 4500 thousand years. Its location along the Gulf of St. Lawrence made it an excellent place to hunting migrating sea mammals and marine birds, catch salmon and cod, and harvest shellfish in the shallow coves. Bird Cove’s oldest archeological sites belong to the Maritime Archaic people, who lived in the region from 4500 to 3500 years ago, having come across the Strait of Belle Isle from Labrador. After the Maritime Archaic people disappeared from the historical record some 3000 years ago, Bird Cove was seasonally inhabited by Paleo-Eskimo people who traveled the coast in pursuit of the migrating game. These people also seemed to disappear from the area  after 800 years of habitation. They were eventually replaced by an aboriginal group archeologists call Recent Indians. Their sites at Bird Cove date from around 1800 BP. Recent Indians are thought to be the ancestors of today’s Innu whose communities today are primarily located on the Quebec and Labrador mainland.

The coves and islands around Bird Cove became fishing grounds for the European fishermen who began venturing to these waters after cod and salmon in the early 16^thcentury. They too left traces of their habitation, such as cobblestone beaches for drying cod, as evidence of their activities. Like much of the northwest coast of Newfoundland, Bird Cove had its first permanent settlement in the 1800s when fishermen from southern Newfoundland outports moved into the area.  Today’s residents can trace their ancestry back to fishing people from the British Isles and France.