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...

Mistaken Point - An ecological reserve in Newfoundland and Labrador, known for its evidence of some of the oldest life forms on Earth, has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Mistaken Point geologist Richard Thomas said the UNESCO designation is the most prestigious recognition a fossil site can get and it will have an important effect on the reserve. "There's going to be a big influx of visitors," said Thomas. "We're expecting visitation to increase greatly." There will also be much more worldwide scrutiny of Mistaken Point, he added. "The provincial government now has a duty to protect and monitor and present the site to the world," he said. Mistaken Point, on the southeastern point of the Avalon Peninsula, is home to the oldest-known evidence of Earth's first, large, complex, multicellular life forms — a 565-mi...

Gros Morne National Park is considered a textbook example of plate tectonics, the theory that suggests the Earth's crust is composed of large plates that repeatedly collide and separate over geological time, opening and closing oceans between them. The park provides us with rare specimens of continental drift, where deep-sea crust and continental mantle rocks are exposed. Recent glacial activity has created many stunning landscapes, including coastal lowlands, mountain plateaus, fjords, glacier-carved valleys, sheer cliffs, waterfalls, and pristine lakes. Six hundred million years ago, Europe and North America were connected but began to drift apart. Magma from the lower crust erupted and filled the gap - solidified magma can now be seen in the cliffs of Western Brook Pond in Gros Morne. From 570 to 420 million years ago, there was an ocean between the two continents ca...

Rock formations and fossil finds on Newfoundland and Labrador's Bonavista Peninsula were given international honours Friday morning, as the Discovery Global Geopark received official UNESCO status. The Discovery Geopark, approved by UNESCO at meetings in Paris, is now one of more than 150 sites recognized for their international geological importance. "We're really excited. It's been a long road to get here," said Edith Samson, a longtime volunteer with the Geopark committee. "Lots of ups and downs, but … here we are." The geopark was recognized, in part, for the Ediacaran fossils that can be found in the area. These fossils — some of which can be accessed from the boardwalk in Port Union — are an estimated 560 million years old, and show some of the earliest multicell organisms. "With over 20 taxa present, these enig...

2023.4.29 CBC NEWS         Work is underway to establish a salmon processing facility at the massive Quinlan Brothers seafood processing plant in Bay de Verde. The plant will process farmed Atlantic salmon for Grieg Seafood Newfoundland. (Danny Arsenault/CBC)   A rapidly growing player in the Newfoundland and Labrador aquaculture industry plans to harvest its first market-sized fish from Placentia Bay this fall, launching what company officials hope will be a profitable and environmentally sound business that will create hundreds of long-term jobs." We have proven that Placentia Bay is not only viable, it's actually a very preferable place to do fish farming," Perry Power, a spokesman for Grieg Seafood Newfoundland, told CBC News this week. "The fish have performed extremely well. We're very pleased with their rate of...

2023.4.29 CBC NEWS     It was evening when I almost hit the moose.  We call it "duckish" — the time between sunset and full dark.  There were light showers, but I was paying attention and driving to conditions.  I had just grabbed a coffee for the short, 45-kilometre drive to Butterpot Park and then back home to Mount Pearl.  Just long enough to clear my head.  I was doing about nine kilometres under the speed limit when I spotted the young bull from about 100 metres away as it was climbing the small bank onto the highway near Paddy's Pond, so I didn't have to nail the breaks to stop — about as hard as you would approaching an amber light when you notice cops stopped at the intersection. My Corolla stopped with about 20 metres to spare between me and the moose. The animal stopped, turne...

  2023.5.3| CBC News Loaded   This stone doorway was found several feet beneath Water Street in Carbonear. The town's heritage society wants to know what it is before it gets destroyed.(Carbonear Heritage Society) The discovery of an underground entranceway deep beneath the road in one of Newfoundland's oldest towns ignited imaginations and led to a range of hypotheses on what the structure could be.  Was it an 18th century war shelter or hidden tunnels connecting old buildings? In the end, it turned out to be a fairly old drain. And while that may seem disappointing, provincial archaeologist Jamie Brake said it's still quite a find. "It's amazing. This sort of infrastructure is really impressive and worth documenting," he told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show on Wednesday. Brake worked with fe...

2023.5.3| CBC News Loaded The Newfoundland and Labrador government could soon build a new 850-kilometre trail network on the Great Northern Peninsula, according to a draft plan obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada. The Great Coastal Trail would be almost three times as long as the East Coast Trail.  The first phase of the project — 500 kilometres of new trails linking Parson's Pond, just north of Gros Morne National Park, to the L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site — would cost about $21 million, according to a preliminary estimate.  CBC/Radio-Canada obtained a copy of a draft proposal prepared in February by Tracy Consulting on behalf of the provincial government and the Central Development Agency.  The Great Coastal Trail would be a catalyst for tourism and economic development for the region, according to ...

   CBC NEWS 9/2022 Mike Moore Newfoundland and Labrador's tourism industry is one of the province's economic work horses, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy every year. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit N.L. in March 2020, tourism operators faced a bleak future, as lockdowns, restrictions and a halt to international and interprovincial travel cut off their most important source of revenue essentially overnight. Now, with almost all restrictions lifted, operators who spoke to CBC two years ago about their fears amid a pandemic-decimated season are finding themselves in much different circumstances. Colin Shears, owner and operator of Out East Adventures in Rocky Harbour, told CBC News in July 2020 that Newfoundlanders generally make up about just five per cent of his business, ...