Labrador, one of Canada ’s most remote but fascinating regions, lies on the east coast of Canada where it forms the mainland portion of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Separated by the Straits of Belle Isle from the island of Newfoundland, Labrador is also the name of a federal electoral district whose population in 2001 was 27,864. On Tuesday May 25, 2005, Labrador made politi Scholars say there are 300,000 places and features of Canada already named, and two million still to be named, a daunting vista for the official government body that adjudicates our toponyms. Don’t let its own fuddy-duddy moniker fool you. The Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names is a colloquium of questing spirits who also try to solve disputes that arise about place-names. Problems do arise too, even in the placid sea of place names. Once proud Canadian place names may sink into the Infrequently, names become an embarrassment. Paska Township near Thunder Bay was simply the Cree word for shallow taken from Paska Lake, which is shallow. But as some Finnish Canadians pointed out to govern-ment in 1959, paska is also the Finnish word for shit. Oops! The place is now named after the Finnish family who protested, Suni Township.
No one knows the precise origin of the name Labrador. After days of perusing ancient sources in five languages, I’m going to write a new Blues song, “Nobody knows the etymology I’ve seen.” The late, canny British etymologist Eric Partridge in his book Origins favours the tale of the explorer Gaspar Corte-Real who touched shore in 1500 CE on a voyage of piscatorial quest and sailed back to Portugal carrying a
In modern Spanish, a labrador is a tenant-farmer. One of the names for Newfoundland on early Italian maps is Terra del Laboratore ‘land of the worker.’ Then into the lexical fray enter scholars who say another Portuguese sailor, one João Fernandes, a rich lavrador (but the 16 th Century spelling?) or landowner in the Azores came north through the Atlantic in his own ships looking for the fabled cod fishery. A cod-fearing man, he took his cod piece, and perhaps several whole fishes, and sailed off, leaving the name of his former trade as a toponym to bedevil future etymologists. Some historians give Fernandes credit for discovery of the coast of Greenland and some of the coast of North America. An interesting folk alteration of the very word Labrador occurs among early Acadians in Nova Scotia who heard Labrador as the Acadian French phrase la bras d’or, the arm of gold. And so they gave the name to Bras d’Or Lake. Labrador. Quite a fuss spins around the spelling. Is Labrador sturdy Spanish orthography? Yes. Could it be Portuguese or Italian, mangled by an early monoglot cartographer? Yes. My picayune contribution shall consist in the observation that no affectionate adjective for the continental part of Newfoundland has yet appeared. I therefore suggest: labradorable.
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cal news when candidate Todd Russell, a 38-year-old Labrador Métis, won a very important Labrador by-election giving Prime Minister Paul Martin’s shaky minority government a majority-making extra seat in parliament, thus improving chances that Martin’s Liberal Party can hang on to power in the coming months, and that, maybe, just maybe, this pathetic session of Parliament can enact actual legislation before they vanish into the sewer of history as the least productive government in Canadian history. 
muskeg of political uncorrect-ness. Mount Stalin in high British Columbia and Stalin Township near Sudbury seemed ugly remembrances of the Russian mass-murderer. In 1986 Stalin Township became Hansen Township , in honour of Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion wheelchair tour for worthy charities. Mount Stalin became Mt. Peck , after a local hero and popular British Columbian outdoorsman. 
shipload of Inuit slaves! Historical proof of this particular atrocity is scant. In 16th century Portuguese, the euphemism for “slaves” was spelled labradores. Modern Portuguese is lavradores, but the word now means farm-workers. 
