Sunday, August 18, 2019

The prettiest place in all of Newfoundland + Labrador – well, one of the prettiest places...


Trinity NL from Gun Hill
Watercolour and marker
©2019 Charlene Brown

This lovely town, which featured prominently in early European contact with North America, was named by Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real when he arrived here on Trinity Sunday in 1501.

Fishermen from England began using Trinity as a base in the 1570s and gradually began to settle the area and export fish to Britain.  Due to its importance in British-Newfoundland trade it was captured twice by the French during the Anglo-French Wars of 1696-1713 and once more during the Seven Years War of 1756-1763.

Trinity was also the site of the first court of justice in North America, the Court of the Admiralty, held in 1615.  In 1798, vaccination for small pox was introduced to the New World in Trinity by John Clinch, a medical colleague of Edward Jenner.