Placentia is a town located in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It consists of the amalgamated communities of Placentia ("Townside"), Southeast Placentia, Freshwater, Dunville and Jerseyside and also includes the Argentia Industrial Park.
History
There is considerable evidence that Placentia Bay was intermittently occupied by Little Passage people. Their descendants, the Beothuk, continued to settle there until the 17th century. Remnants of Beothuk occupation from the surrounding area has been carbon dated back to as far as 1500 CE. This effectively cut the natives off from salmon, seal, and other valuable coastal resources.
Contemporary scholars think that the land called Vinland extending from Nova Scotia to L'Anse aux Meadows consisted of at least a few settlements; probably on the Avalon Peninsula too. "Placentia" may be derived from the similarly named village of Placencia de las Armas (Basque: Soraluze), which is located in the Gipuzkoa province of the Basque Country.
Placentia may also be derived from the Latin placentia ("smooth"), a name also probably given by the Basques. Placentia's large, rocky beach meant that fish could be salted and dried on the beach rocks rather than on a constructed wooden fishing stage, saving both time and effort.
In 1655, the French, who controlled more than half of the island of Newfoundland, and most of Atlantic Canada, made Placentia (French: Plaisance) their capital. They built Fort Plaisance in 1662, which was followed by Fort Royal in 1687, and Fort Saint Louis in 1691. The establishment of a fort with a garrison allowed fishermen to pursue their activities with greater safety in neighbouring harbours. The French garrisons at Plaisance were small, but despite that fact, the soldiers and French privateers managed to hold their own in the face of numerous English attacks during the two major conflicts of the Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession, which marked the colony's history. Recollect (Franciscan) friars from New France built a friary here in 1689, which lasted until the expulsion of the French in 1714. In 1692, Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce de Lahontan, Baron de Lahontan defended the French port.
In 1711, the British Rear-Admiral Hovenden Walker considered attacking the French at Placentia with a Royal Navy fleet containing fifteen ships, armed with a total of nine hundred cannons, and transporting 4,000 soldiers. However, he decided that doing so was not a viable option.
In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht forced the French to abandon their Placentia Bay settlements and migrate to Louisbourg, and Placentia became a British possession. Many of the French fishermen who had to abandon the fisheries in Placentia ended up at the fisheries in Isle Royale, otherwise known as Cape Breton Island. In the spring of 1714, the governor of Plaisance began organizing the emigration. Three royal ships accompanied by merchant vessels took the French residents of Placentia to the future site of Louisbourg. William Taverner suggested that the Miꞌkmaq left because they had been deprived of their French trading partners. The town was described by the then-Prince as "a more decent settlement than any we have yet seen in Newfoundland" and was reported as having a population between 1,500 and 2,000 people. to well over 8,000 in the 1960s (note: these figures account for the current boundaries of Placentia, which at the time consisted of four separate towns: Placentia, Dunville, Jerseyside, and Freshwater).
The post office was established in 1851. The first postmistress in 1863 was Mary Morris.
Ecclesiastical history
On September 16, 1870, it became the seat of the Catholic pre-diocesan Apostolic Prefecture of Placentia. However, instead of becoming a diocese, the prefecture was suppressed in 1891; its territory merged into the Diocese of St. John's, Newfoundland.
Demographics
thumb|centre|800px|View of Placentia from [[Castle Hill National Historic Site, a former fort]]
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Placentia had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
In the 2016 census, Placentia's population was reported as 3,496, down significantly from the 2001 figure of 4,426. This population decline has been ongoing since the early 1990s; in the 1996 census, Placentia was, proportionately, the 2nd fastest shrinking town in Canada, dropping from 5,515 to 5,013 between 1991 and 1996.
Historical demographics
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|+ Permanent Population of colonial Plaisance
|-
! Year
! Number of inhabitants
! Year
! Number of inhabitants
|-
| align="center"| 1671 || align="center"| 74 || align="center"| 1673 || align="center"| 71
|-
| align="center"| 1685 || align="center"| 153 || align="center"| 1687 || align="center"| 119
|-
| align="center"| 1691 || align="center"| 107 || align="center"| 1693 || align="center"| 108
|-
| align="center"| 1698 || align="center"| 208 || align="center"| 1704 || align="center"| 158
|-
| align="center"| 1705 || align="center"| 192 || align="center"| 1706 || align="center"| 205
|-
| align="center"| 1710 || align="center"| 248 || align="center"| 1711 || align="center"| 189
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|+ Permanent Population of modern Placentia
|-
! Year
! Number of inhabitants
! Year
! Number of inhabitants
|-
| align="center"| 1900 || align="center"| 16,099 || align="center"| 1921 || align="center"| 8.504
|-
| align="center"| 1921 || align="center"| 8,504 || align="center"| 1935 || align="center"| 8,454
|-
| align="center"| 1991 || align="center"| 5,515 || align="center"| 1996 || align="center"| 5,013
|-
| align="center"| 2001 || align="center"| 4,426 || align="center"| 2006 || align="center"| 3,898
|-
| align="center"| 2011 || align="center"| 3,646 || align="center"| 2016 || align="center"| 3,498
|-
| align="center"| 2021 || align="center"| 3,289
|-
|}
Economy
From the outset, it was fish that brought the Europeans to Newfoundland, as well as their patterns of settlement. While Placentia was considered a military base, it was also a colony with an economy based on the cod fishery and cod trade. Fishing was a consistently shared activity between French ships and resident boatkeepers. The fisheries of Placentia played a large role in ultimately securing Newfoundland as the world's largest exporter of salt codfish. Following the Treaty of Utrecht, Placentia's residential fisheries met their ultimate demise.
The American base at Argentia was scaled back in the 1970s, and closed totally in 1994. This, along with the collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery and the moratorium introduced by the Canadian government a few years earlier, left the town of Placentia without an economic base for some time, although recent developments by Vale Inco are beginning to stabilize the town's rocky economic situation.
Education
Placentia is home to one primary education school: St. Anne's Academy, a K-6 school in Dunville. There currently exists one high school, Laval High School, which educates students from grades 7 to 12. The original Laval High School was demolished in 2010, with a new state of the art facility replacing it in September 2010. All schools are home to many extracurriculars, including student council, sports, drama and music, and volunteer organizations.
Placentia is also home to a post-secondary institution; a campus of the College of the North Atlantic, offering programs in heavy duty equipment mechanics, heavy equipment operation, welding, machinist, and industrial machinery.
Tourism and culture
thumb|right|Lift bridge overseeing town.
Placentia has many features that make it a popular tourist attraction in Newfoundland and Labrador. It has a unique lift-bridge named the Sir Ambrose Shea Lift Bridge that spans the tumultuous tides of 'the gut' (the narrow opening to the harbour). Around Placentia, countless buildings and sites reflect the deep history of the area. In 1893, Harry Verran who was a mining engineer from Cornwall, England, worked for Cyrus Field. He built a historic house that now operates as a bed and breakfast called Rosedale Manor.
There are many archaeological sites (some partially re-constructed), several excellent examples of late-19th century Newfoundland architecture, two museums (O'Reilly House and Castle Hill), and one of the two Marine Atlantic ferry links from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia (via Argentia). The local historical society owns both the O'Reilly House and St. Luke's Cultural Heritage Centre (formerly St. Luke's Anglican Church) which is used to host workshops, presentations, performances, and even an escape room. It is from the capital city, St. John's, and is within easy distance of the scenic Cape Shore (including the Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve), and St. Mary's Bay, Conception Bay, and the inner reaches of Placentia Bay.
In 2009, Placentia celebrated the opening of the Placentia Bay Cultural Arts Centre with a month of artistic events, including drama productions, art exhibitions (three shows recognizing art from elementary students, high school students, and adults), and musical performances.
The town has an established summer stock theatre troupe, Placentia Area Theatre D'Heritage (PATH), which performs historical plays of significance in the Placentia area. The primary production is Faces of Fort Royale, performed at Castle Hill National Historic Site, depicting the lives of the early inhabitants of Placentia under the leadership of Governor De Brouillan. They also perform a dinner theatre cabaret set in the 1950s during the Argentia Base heyday, and a ghost walk. The troupe generally consists of post-secondary students under the direction of the province's finest theatre producers.
Placentia in literature
- Hannah: The Lighthouse Girl of Newfoundland by Don Ladolcetta
- The Garden Gate: Argentia's Sacrifice for WWII by Darrell Duke
- Thursday's Storm: The August Gale of 1927 by Darrell Duke
- Swept Away by Darrell Duke
Notable people
- Rex Murphy, commentator and journalist (born in Carbonear but raised in the area)
- Patricia Murphy, restaurateur who operated nine Patricia Murphy Candlelight restaurants in New York and Florida
- Greg Power, lyric poet and influential promoter of confederation with Canada
- Leonard J. Miller, businessperson and politician
- Harry Verran, politician and member of the House of Commons of Canada for South West Nova
- Alastair Ralphs, known as A-1, professional wrestler
- Sylvana Tomaselli, married to George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews
- Shannon Tweed, actress
- Agnes Walsh, poet and playwright
- Ray Guy, humorist and journalist
- Pat and Joe Byrne, Newfoundland traditional folk music group
- Tony Wakeham, 16th premier of Newfoundland and Labrador
See also
- List of municipalities in Newfoundland and Labrador
- Newfoundland Railway
- Governors of Placentia
References
External links
- Town of Placentia's official site
- Around the Cape Shore Loop
- GCatholic - ecclesiastical history
- Placentia Area Event Calendar on placentiabay.ca
- The Charter, Placentia's local newspaper
- Placentia Area Historical Society
- Placentia - Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, vol. 4, p. 317-318.