Province is committed to recruiting and retaining, says health minister CBC News · Posted: Jun 16, 2023 4:30 AM EDT | Last Updated: June 16 |With files from Mark Quinn NDP Leader Jim Dinn says the province is spending money on travel nurses it should be spending to help nurses already in the system. (Mark Quinn/CBC)   The provincial New Democrats say millions spent on travel nurses in Newfoundland and Labrador's health-care system should be used to keep nurses already in the system in the province — but Health Minister Tom Osborne says the money spent is a "necessary evil."   In a news release issued by the party on Thursday, Health Department documents acquired through an access-to-information request estimates using travel nurses to cover gaps in the health-care system would cost $18.4 million over 12 months, compare...

Jane Adey · CBC News · Posted: Feb 25, 2023 5:30 AM EST Spring is on the horizon in Newfoundland and Labrador, and you can be sure many tourists and tourism operators have their fingers crossed for icebergs this year.   "When I see people's reactions and everybody so happy … I've got to say, I love it.," said Chris Scott, who operates Twillingate Adventure Tours.   He says there's no feeling like showing an iceberg to someone who's never seen one before.   However, there have been very few icebergs off the coast in recent years.   Temperatures are rising, and that means northern ice is melting faster.   Frederic Cyr, a Fisheries and Oceans Canada oceanographer in Newfoundland and Labrador, monitors icebergs as part of his work.   Cyr says researchers have been counting icebergs since the time of the T...

CBC News · Posted: May 22, 2023 Alexandr Pugachev's first steps in St. John's in 1993 led him to the Association for New Canadians on Military Road. Now, 30 years later, that's where he wanted to return. (Henrike Wilhelm/CBC) When Alexandr Pugachev entered the St. John's harbour on a Russian fishing trawler in 1993, he knew it was his best chance to escape and start a new life. Pugachev had been working on the ship as a doctor. On the May long weekend, the crew arrived in Newfoundland to get food and water, and then continue their journey — but Pugachev had no intentions of going back home. "I really hoped that we would be stopping somewhere so I can get out of the boat and escape from Russia. And that happened," said Pugachev. "That was my golden opportunity. I didn't have a choice. I came here ...

CBC News · Posted: May 22, 2023   The oldest homes across the province are widely associated with men, but Heritage N.L. wants to change that. (Heritage N.L.) Newfoundland and Labrador's heritage organization is revamping who's considered important enough to get mentioned on a historical plaque — and it's not always the traditional head of the household. "A lot of our buildings, they were associated with the history of the men who owned the buildings," said Andrea O'Brien, registrar of Heritage N.L. "We're trying to bring to light the stories of the women who lived in those buildings." The heritage society is responsible for the plaques that reveal historical information about some of the province's oldest and most significant sites. There are over 300 of those plaques across Newfoundland and Labrador. Until now, women haven't been featu...

Around 985, an Icelandic merchant ship was blown off course en route to Greenland, and the sailor on board was the first to report the new land to the west. 15 years later, Leif Eiriksson wintered at a settlement called Straumfiord, also known as Leif's Camp, located near what is now L'Anse aux Meadows, a grass terrace. In the years that followed, his family and a group of colonists visited the camp and may have ventured southwest to New Brunswick. But conflicts with the aborigines apparently forced them to withdraw from the area and return to Greenland within a decade.   In 1960, the Norwegian team Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad located the remains of Straumfiord, based on Viking legends recorded in medieval Icelandic manuscripts. Ingstad and later Parks Canada's excavations uncovered the remains of eight buildings and hundreds of Viking artifact...

Archaeological excavations on land and underwater have revealed that during the peak of whaling in the 1580s, there were over a thousand people working at the whaling station in Red Bay, Labrador alone. This harbor, known as Butus or Grand Bay to the Basque people, was likely the largest port in the world at that time. This extensively used site encompassed all the key elements associated with Basque overseas whaling activities; its traditions and techniques (an industry that flourished for three centuries globally by the Basques). Unearthed remains include a network of over a dozen shore-based stations, typically consisting of tryworks where whale blubber was rendered into oil in copper pots over fire pits, as well as cooperatives, workshops, temporary dwellings, and wharves. There is also a burial ground and lookout point. The collection of artifacts and numerous bones o...