

INTEODUCTION 29 



result was that in 1825 that part of Labrador which is 

 now known as the Quebec Labrador, stretching from the 

 River St. John to Blanc Sablon, was reannexed to Lower 

 Canada. This is the arrangement which governs the 

 present condition. Unfortunately, however, the boun- 

 daries of Labrador have never been clearly defined. The 

 jurisdiction of the governor of Newfoundland, as defined 

 in the letters patent regularly issued up to 1876, includes 

 "all the coast of Labrador, from the entrance of Hudson's 

 Straits to a line to be drawn due north and south from 

 Anse Sablon [sic] on the said coast to the fifty-second 

 degree of north latitude." The only conclusion which 

 may be drawn from this document is that the advisers 

 of the British crown, when they drew it up, were, as usual, 

 not looking at the map. Anse Sablon is a place which 

 does not exist, though Blanc Sablon does; and just where 

 the entrance to Hudson's Strait is, might well, as Sir John 

 Haselrig said, be the subject for a month's debate. It 

 might be anywhere from Cape Chudleigh to Fort Chimo. 



The result of the ambiguity in the terms by which the 

 boundary of Labrador is defined, has been a dispute be- 

 tween Quebec and Newfoundland which is still pending. 

 Canada has issued a map coloured red right to the Atlantic 

 seaboard; and Newfoundland has retorted by colouring 

 nearly the whole of the Labrador peninsula green. The 

 question will probably be decided by the Judicial Com- 

 mittee of the Privy Council. 



In 1811 an act of Parliament was passed authorizing 

 the holding of surrogate courts in Labrador. Nothing 

 was done to give effect to this act until 1827, when Sir 

 Thomas Cochrane, the governor, issued a proclamation 



