St. John's, Canada

St. John’s is the provincial capital and the largest city on Newfoundland, located at the easternmost edge of Canada. Fishing was long the main industry, but has now been overtaken by oil and gas, along with trade and tourism.

The first people came to North America from Siberia when dry land covered the Bering Strait around 14,000 years ago, and humans have lived on Newfoundland for a very long time. The oldest traces of the Inuit, who hunted and fished on the ice and along the coasts here, date back 9,000 years.

Vikings

The first Europeans to reach Newfoundland, and in fact the North American continent, were Norwegian Vikings. They sailed from Greenland in the 11th century and settled in what they called Vinland - “Meadowland” in English.

The Vikings stayed only for a short time, and nearly 500 years passed before Europeans returned.

In 1497, Giovanni Caboto from Venice set out on an expedition for Henry VII of England, like Columbus also in search of a sea route to India. St. John’s is said to have been named because Caboto sailed into the bay where the city now lies on June 24 - the feast day of Saint John the Baptist.

Fishermen

From the 1500s onwards, fishermen from Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland, and England came to Newfoundland. They stayed along the coast for extended periods, but it wasn’t until around 1630 that people settled permanently in St. John’s.

By the 1700s, St. John’s had grown into a town, and today it has close to 240,000 inhabitants.

Not until 1949

In 1583, Newfoundland became England’s first overseas colony. France also established colonies in what is now Canada, but after several conflicts, Great Britain took over all French colonies in this region in 1759.

When the United States became independent in 1776, the remaining British colonies in North America were united as British North America, and later as Canada in 1867, except for Newfoundland and Bermuda.

Newfoundland did not join Canada until 1949, after two close call referendums had been held.

Cooler climate

Although St. John’s lies further south than Paris, it sits on a peninsula far out in the Atlantic Ocean, giving it a cooler climate than its latitude would suggest.

July is the warmest month, with average temperatures between 11.2°C and 20.9°C. January is the coldest, averaging between -0.7°C and -7.8°C. The city gets a lot of precipitation, 1,539 mm per year, mostly in the winter months.

Much of it falls as snow, and it’s not unusual for the ground to be covered by a full meter of snow in winter.

Normal maximum temperature in August: 20.8°C
Normal rainfall in August: 100 mm