From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Basques/Mario Mimeault
With agricultural lands traditionally in short supply, most young people in the Basque country sought their fortune at sea. Near at hand and omnipresent, the sea was the outlet that made it possible for the Basques to maintain a population balance. Basque sailors staffed trading ships in the early fourteenth century and were part of the first cod fishing and whaling crews in the Bay of Biscay.
In the early sixteenth century, declining stocks in nearby offshore waters led shipowners to look for new fishing grounds. When Jacques Cartier undertook his first official voyage in 1534 he saw installations visited by Basques on the coast of Labrador. Because many of these Basques were under the authority of the Spanish crown, he said nothing about them, but documents found in recent years identify Puerto de los Hornos, Butus, Ballenne, Puerto Breton, and numerous other ports that the French of the time knew well despite the official silence.
After Cartier’s voyages, other ships came to fish off the coast of Newfoundland, providing work for more than 2,000 cod fishers and whalers each year between 1540 and 1580. This seasonal migration was based in the major seaports of the province of Labourd, including Bayonne, Ciboure, and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The Spanish ports of San Sebastian, Bilbao, and Santander also provided contingents of fishers. In 1571 Guipuzcoa alone sent twelve whaling ships to America and eleven more ships to take cod from the banks of Newfoundland.
According to recent studies, 600 fishers came each year to Red Bay on the Strait of Belle Isle. As many went to Baie des Châteaux and Port Neuf, while other Basque fishing ships sailed to the interior of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Thus, in 1587 Charle Leigh found 150 fishers from Ciboure working in the Magdalen Islands. In 1625 there were 1,475 fishers on the coast of Newfoundland from the port of San Sebastian alone. This population movement had several characteristics: it was seasonal, it was made up only of men, the people involved returned to their port of origin, and it did not create favourable conditions for the development of permanent colonies. Eventually, however, permanent immigration began, and once it did, it would continue without interruption up to our own time.
