Calvin Lippert, age 14, of Jackson, miss., for his question:
WAS LABRADOR DISCOVERED BEFORE AMERICA?
Labrador, that large peninsula in northeastern Canada which lies between the Atlantic Ocean and Hudson Bay, was probably visited by Viking explorers between A.D. 950 and A.D. 1050. This was about 500 years before Columbus discovered America.
John Cabot, an Italian explorer in the service of England, probably sailed to Labrador just about the same time that Columbus was coming to the New World.
The origin of the word Labrador may be linked to Cabot's voyages. According to tradition, a farmer from the Portuguese islands called Azores sailed with Cabot. The Portuguese word for farmer is llavrador. This may account for the name Labrador, but no one is sure.
Many other European explorers visited Labrador after Cabot.
Until the 1700s, only Eskimos and the Naskapi and Montagnais Indians of Algonquian origin lived in Labrador. The earliest white settlers were French fur traders and seal hunters. They established trading posts along the coast before Britain seized Labrador from France in 1759, during the French and Indian War.
English speaking fishermen also built permanent homes there, mostly in the 1800s. Explorers of the Hudson Bay Company ventured into the interior in the 1840s.
The white settlers, Eskimos and Indians were leading lives of extreme hardship when Wilfred Grenfell, an English medical missionary, first visited them in 1892. Grenfell made their suffering known and obtained money for hospitals, schools and church missions.
Newfoundland and Quebec disputed the ownership and boundaries of the Labrador interior as interest grew in the area's resources. Finally in 1927, the British Privy Council settled this question by defining the present boundaries in favor of Newfoundland.
The council interpreted the term "coast" as "watershed." Thus, the Newfoundland part of Labrador includes the areas drained by rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean along the east coast.
During World War II, the U.S. Army arranged with Great Britain to station American troops in Labrador to keep Nazi submarine raiders from using the coastal waters as a base. Newfoundland became a province of Canada in 1949. Industrial companies then began to develop the rich natural resources of Labrador.
In 1967, construction on the largest hydroelectric development in the Western Hemisphere started at Churchill Falls. The plant's first generators started operating in 1971. The facility has a generating capacity of 5.25 million kilowatts.
Labrador extends farther east than any other part of the North American mainland.
You'll find lots of wild animals in Labrador. Included are caribou, bears, beavers, ermines, foxes, lynxes, martens, minks, otters, squirrels and wolves.
Atlantic salmon, cod, herring, seals and trout are caught in the coastal waters.
Ducks and geese and other migratory water birds visit Labrador each year.