[25] Newfoundland, in broad terms, has a cool summer subtype, with a humid continental climate attributable to its proximity to water — no part of the island is more than 100 km (62 mi) from the Atlantic Ocean.

[27] Newfoundland and Labrador contain a range of climates and weather patterns, including frequent combinations of high winds, snow, rain, and fog, conditions that regularly made travel by road, air, or ferry challenging or impossible.

[35] Many of these sites, such as Port au Choix, recently excavated by Memorial archaeologist, Priscilla Renouf, are quite large and show evidence of a long-term commitment to place.

[60] João Álvares Fagundes and Pero de Barcelos established seasonal fishing outposts in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia around 1521, and older Portuguese settlements may have existed.

[62] The establishment of English fishing operations on the outer coastline of the island, and their later expansion into bays and inlets, cut off access for the Beothuk to their traditional sources of food.

[63][64] Twenty years later, in 1583, Newfoundland became England's first possession in North America and one of the earliest permanent English colonies in the New World[65] when Sir Humphrey Gilbert, provided with letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I, landed in St.

The entire population of the English colony was either killed, captured for ransom, or sentenced to expulsion to England, with the exception of those who withstood the attack at Carbonear Island and those in the then remote Bonavista.

[80] Following news of rebellion in Ireland, in June 1798, Governor Vice-Admiral Waldegrave cautioned London that the English constituted but a "small proportion" of the locally raised Regiment of Foot.

In an echo of an earlier Irish conspiracy during the French occupation of St. John's in 1762, in April 1800, the authorities had reports that upwards of 400 men had taken an oath as United Irishmen, and that eighty soldiers were committed to killing their officers and seizing their Anglican governors at Sunday service.

[81] The abortive mutiny, for which eight men (denounced by Catholic Bishop James Louis O'Donel as "favourers of the infidel French")[82] were hanged, may have been less a United Irish plot, than an act of desperation in the face of brutal living conditions and officer tyranny.

But the attorney general and supreme court justices determined that as Newfoundland was a colony, and not a province of the United Kingdom, the Roman Catholic Relief Act did not apply.

Along with other half-hearted measures to relieve the distress, Governor John Gaspard Le Marchant declared a "Day of Public Fasting and Humiliation" in hopes the Almighty might pardon their sins and "withdraw his afflicting hand.

[103] The regiment, which the Dominion government had chosen to raise, equip, and train at its own expense, was resupplied and went on to serve with distinction in several subsequent battles, earning the prefix "Royal".

[102] The FPU members joined Edward Patrick Morris' wartime National Government of 1917, but their reputation suffered when they failed to abide by their promise not to support military conscription without a referendum.

[117] In June 1940, following the defeat of France and the German occupation of most of Western Europe, the Commission of Government, with British approval, authorized Canadian forces to help defend Newfoundland's air bases for the duration of the war.

Several motions were made by Joey Smallwood (a convention member who later served as the first provincial premier of Newfoundland[120]) to examine joining Canada by sending a delegation to Ottawa.

[114]: 68  Yet, most historians who have examined the relevant documents have concluded that, while Britain engineered the inclusion of a Confederation option in the referendum, Newfoundlanders made the final decision themselves, if by a narrow margin.

[114]: 224  Some have argued that independent oversight of the vote tallying was lacking, though the process was supervised by respected Corner Brook Magistrate Nehemiah Short, who had also overseen elections to the National Convention.

His government introduced emergency legislation that immediately decertified the IWA, prohibited secondary picketing, and made unions liable for illegal acts committed on their behalf.

As a result, the province is experiencing increased permafrost melt, flooding, and infrastructure damage, reduced sea ice, and greater risk from new invasive species and infectious diseases.

Under those conditions the winter season could shorten by as much as four to five weeks in some locations and that extreme storm events could result in an increase of precipitation by over 20% or more, enhancing the likelihood and magnitude of flooding.

[136] In April 2023, following years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, a major hydro-generation project at Muskrat Falls,[138] was declared complete with the final testing of the 1,100 km transmission link from the site in Labrador to a converter station outside St John's.

[156] As of the 2021 Canadian Census, the ten most spoken languages in the province included English (501,135 or 99.81%), French (26,130 or 5.2%), Arabic (2,195 or 0.44%), Spanish (2,085 or 0.42%), Innu (Montagnais) (1,925 or 0.38%), Tagalog (1,810 or 0.36%), Hindi (1,565 or 0.31%), Mandarin (1,170 or 0.23%), German (1,075 or 0.21%), and Punjabi (1,040 or 0.21%).

[164] A distinct local dialect of Scots Gaelic was also once spoken in the Codroy Valley of Newfoundland, following the settlement there, from the middle of the 19th century, of Canadian Gaelic-speakers from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

[190] The sovereign is King Charles III, who also serves as head of state of 14 other Commonwealth countries, each of Canada's nine other provinces and the Canadian federal realm; he resides in the United Kingdom.

Though similar in its Celtic influence to neighbouring Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador are more Irish than Scottish, and have more elements imported from English and French music than those provinces.

[221] During the 21st century, however, linguists discovered that several of Donnchadh Ruadh's poems in the Irish language contain multiple Gaelicized words and terms known to be unique to Newfoundland English.

[228] In 1967 the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre was opened along with the first all-Canadian Dominion Drama Festival: Rossleys, a "vaudeville-style performance troupe", put on blackface minstrelsy shows which were a popular source of entertainment in Newfoundland between 1911 and 1917.

[236] What has commonly but mistakenly been called the Newfoundland tricolour "Pink, White and Green"(sic) is the flag of the Catholic Church affiliated Star of the Sea Association (SOSA).

[246] A regular passenger and car ferry service, lasting about 90 minutes, crosses the Strait of Belle Isle, connecting the province's island of Newfoundland with the region of Labrador on the mainland.