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The Dominion of Newfoundland
A self-governing dominion that gave up home rule and later voted to join Canada
Newfoundland holds an unusual distinction in the history of the British Commonwealth: it is the only dominion that gave up self-government. Recognized as a dominion in 1907, on paper alongside Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the island and its Labrador mainland carried heavy debts from building a railway and from fielding a regiment in World War I. When the Great Depression collapsed fish prices, its legislature agreed in 1933 to suspend responsible government, and from 1934 a commission appointed in London ran the country. In 1948, after two referendums, Newfoundlanders narrowly chose to join Canada, and arguments over whether that was the right choice still surface in the province today.
The dominion combined the island of Newfoundland, about 108,900 square kilometers of rocky barrens, boreal forest, and fjord-cut coast at the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with mainland Labrador, whose interior boundary the Privy Council in London fixed in Newfoundland's favor in 1927, a ruling Quebec has never formally accepted. Together they covered 405,212 square kilometers. Life centered on the sea, above all the cod of the Grand Banks, and on outport villages strung along the shore, with St. John's on the Avalon Peninsula as capital and port. The 1945 census counted 321,819 people, only 5,525 of them in Labrador. The whole territory is today the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
England claimed the island in 1583, and for centuries it was mainly a base for the migratory cod fishery. Representative government came in 1832 and responsible government in 1855, and voters rejected joining the new Canadian confederation in 1869. Dominion status was granted on September 26, 1907, though Newfoundland never ratified the 1931 Statute of Westminster. Debt, Depression, and a 1932 riot in St. John's led a British royal commission to recommend suspending self-rule, and the Commission of Government began on February 16, 1934. Wartime American and Canadian bases brought new prosperity. In the 1948 referendums, the first vote split three ways, and the runoff on July 22 favored confederation with about 52 percent. Newfoundland joined Canada on March 31, 1949.