L'Anse au Loup
Modern view of L'Anse au Loup harbour
Located along the northern shore of the Strait of Belle Isle, the harbour of L’Anse au Loup was well positioned for ships stopping on their passage in and out of the Strait. The harbour’s name is from the French, meaning Wolf Cove.
Jacques Cartier mentioned L’Anse au Loup in his journal of 1534. By the time of his arrival, French, Basque and other European fishing fleets were using the harbour and nearby Schooner Cove. In the early 1700s, as New France grew, it extended its proprietorship of the Quebec-Labrador coast by giving seigneruial concessions to individual entrepreneurs. L’Anse au Loup was within the concession of Augustin Le Gardeur de Courtemanche. From his headquarters farther west in Bradore, he oversaw a number of fishing and fur trading stations. The influence of the concessionaires was destined to come to an end when in 1763 France lost the Seven Years War and all claims to Labrador. Not long after, fishing and trading merchants from Britain and the Channel Islands took control of the area. The English firm Noble & Pinson built a large station in L’ Anse au Loup that lasted into the 20th century.
In the early 1800s fishermen, artisans and shore workers from England and the Channel island of Jersey arrived in L’Anse au Loup to work for the British fishing firms. As part of their contracts, a number of the workers overwintered in Labrador and a few eventually became settlers. They were joined by Newfoundlanders who migrated to the area looking for better fishing grounds and access to the seal fishery. The height of immigration to L'Anse au Loup came in the second half of the 19th century.
Today, L’Anse au Loup is the largest town in the Labrador Straits with a working fish plant and a population of over 500 people.
L'Anse au Loup Photos : ( Click each for full size )
Women and men worked together to process cod in rough stages, usually attached to small wharves.
L'Anse au Loup : Schooner Cove
The Strait of Belle Isle region was home to indigenous people long before the arrival of Europeans. The movement of sea mammals through the Labrador Straits, as well as the excellent fishing grounds nearby, have attracted human habitation for millennia. At Schooner Cove, part of L’Anse au Loup, archeologists have discovered several Maritime Archaic and Paleo-Eskimo sites, possibly 8000 years old.
Basque whalers, whose story has been expertly interpreted at the Parks Canada museum in Red Bay, lived and worked in Schooner Cove in the 17th century until over-harvesting the bowhead and right whales destroyed the industry. After the Basque whalers left, Basques fishermen continued to fish seasonally out of Schooner Cove for more than a century. they were joined by French migratory cod fishermen and fishermen hired by the Quebec concessions. When France lost its rights to the region in 1763, the English firm of Noble & Pinson took over, followed by Stabb, Row & Holmwood. In those days, the cove was crowed with fishermen and shoreworkers, the harbour choked with vessels. The last fish merchants in , Job Brothers from St. John’s, came to the area in the mid-1800s and had a fishing, sealing and whaling business at Schooner Cove. They, too, employed a lot of people, some of whom came seasonally from southern Newfoundland. In 1920 Job Brothers closed it operation and Schooner Cove’s commercial activity came to an end. Today there is little physical evidence of its long history as a whaling and fishing centre.
Photos : ( Click each for full size )
Before the invention of cod traps, fishing crews used unfixed nets called seines.
At certain times of year, cod can best be caught using a weighted hook called a jigger.