Interactive timeline · 2,000 BCE to 2026
From Beothuk lands and a fishing harbour to a provincial capital: 43 moments.
43 moments6 eras60 sourcesAbout ↓
4,000 BCE – 1496
Maritime Archaic, Paleo-Inuit and later Indigenous peoples lived on the island of Newfoundland; the Beothuk were its people at contact.
Archaeology at Port au Choix on the Great Northern Peninsula records about 6,000 years of human history on the island of Newfoundland. Maritime Archaic, Dorset and Groswater peoples, and later Indigenous peoples, all used the site, and a Maritime Archaic burial ground there is about 4,000 years old.
The Beothuk, who may descend from the earlier people archaeologists call the Little Passage people, fished, hunted seals and gathered shellfish on the coast in spring and summer and hunted caribou inland in winter. No Beothuk archaeological sites are known in the St. John's area itself, but finds at Ferryland and on the Avalon isthmus suggest they lived or hunted on the Avalon Peninsula.
Norse expeditions from Greenland built a small encampment of timber-and-sod buildings at the northern tip of the island more than 1,000 years ago, the earliest known European presence in North America. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978.
1497 – 1762
European fishing crews used the harbour each summer while England and France fought for control of it.
Popular tradition holds that the harbour was named for the feast of St. John the Baptist, the day Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) reached Newfoundland in 1497. The real origin of the name is unknown; it first appears as "Rio de San Johem" on a Portuguese map by Pedro Reinel made between about 1516 and 1520.
💡 Fun fact
Did you know? Since 1978 the city has marked St. John's Day (June 24) as a civic holiday; the rest of the province calls it Discovery Day.
Italian diplomat Alberto Cantino wrote in 1501 of about 50 Indigenous men and women captives, possibly Beothuk, whom he saw in Lisbon. It is perhaps the earliest mention of the Beothuk in European records and an early example of the kidnapping that marked contact.
English sailor John Rut wrote in 1527 of the "Haven of St. John" and reported Norman, Breton and Portuguese ships at anchor there. By then European crews came every summer to fish and dry cod, leaving in the autumn.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert arrived off St. John's on August 3, 1583, with four ships and entered the harbour on August 5, where he formally took possession of Newfoundland under letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I. He left on August 20 and was lost at sea on the voyage home in September.
Under a custom dating from the late 1500s, the captain of the first fishing ship to reach a harbour each spring became its "fishing admiral", with first choice of shore space and the duty to enforce English rules. A British charter confirmed their authority in 1633. By the mid-1600s St. John's was the main supply and administrative centre of the Newfoundland fishery.
During King William's War, French troops under Governor Brouillan of Placentia and Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville marched north from Ferryland, and St. John's surrendered on November 30, 1696, after a brief siege. The town was burned. According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the campaign destroyed 36 English settlements, killed about 200 people and took about 700 prisoners.
St. John's fell to the French several times between 1696 and 1709. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 recognized British sovereignty over Newfoundland and brought a pause to the fighting. From 1729 the colony was run by appointed naval governors, who lived in St. John's only during the summer fishing season.
French forces under Charles-Henri-Louis d'Arsac de Ternay landed at Bay Bulls on June 24, 1762, and the British garrison at St. John's surrendered without firing a shot. On September 15, British troops under Lieutenant-Colonel William Amherst climbed Signal Hill in dawn fog and took it, and the French gave up the town. It was the last battle of the Seven Years' War in North America.
1763 – 1854
Irish immigration, year-round government and repeated fires turned a fishing station into a colonial town, while the Beothuk were driven to extinction.
Demand for salt fish during the Napoleonic Wars drew large numbers of mostly Irish Roman Catholic immigrants. The population rose from 3,742 in 1796 to 10,018 in 1815. The Benevolent Irish Society was founded in 1806.
Fires destroyed large parts of the wooden town in 1816, 1817 and 1819. In 1817 St. John's received its first year-round governor, replacing the system of winter magistrates that residents had run since the 1720s.
The first recorded rowing race on Quidi Vidi Lake took place on August 12, 1816, and the first organized regatta was held on September 22, 1818. The Royal St. John's Regatta is described as the oldest continuous sporting event in North America.
💡 Fun fact
Did you know? A crew from Outer Cove set a course record of 9:13 in 1901 that stood until 1981.
In March 1819 a party of settlers seized the Beothuk woman Demasduit at Red Indian Lake; her husband, Chief Nonosabasut, was killed trying to free her, and their newborn child died soon after. She was taken to St. John's, where a vocabulary of the Beothuk language was recorded from her. She died, likely of tuberculosis, in January 1820 before she could be returned to her people.
Shawnadithit, her mother and sister were captured by English furriers in 1823 while starving and were taken to St. John's. In 1828 she was brought to the Boeothick Institution in the city, where she drew maps and recorded words and history of her people. She died of tuberculosis on June 6, 1829, and was buried in St. John's. Loss of coastal resources to settlers, violence and disease had destroyed the Beothuk population.
Britain granted Newfoundland a colonial legislature in 1832. The cornerstone of the Colonial Building was laid in 1847 and the legislature began meeting there in 1850. It remained the seat of government until 1960.
The fire of 1846 burned much of St. John's and ended the era of Georgian-style frame buildings. Because the government could not afford to buy land afterwards, the old irregular street pattern was rebuilt rather than a grid, a pattern repeated after 1892.
1855 – 1933
St. John's was the capital of a self-governing colony through riots, fire, war and economic crisis.
Newfoundland gained responsible government in 1855, and Liberal Philip F. Little became its first premier. After Governor Alexander Bannerman dismissed John Kent's Liberal government and a bitter, sectarian election followed, about 2,000 protesters gathered outside the Colonial Building on May 13, 1861, and the protest turned into a riot.
A fire that started on July 8, 1892, burned for about 12 hours, destroying about 2,000 houses and dozens of businesses and leaving about 11,000 people homeless. Its cause was never confirmed. Rebuilding brought Gothic Revival, Queen Anne and Second Empire buildings, and many of the row houses rebuilt after the fire survive.
After the trans-island railway was completed by Robert G. Reid, St. John's became its headquarters in 1898. The Reid contract also brought electric streetcars, and the first one ran on May 1, 1900. A dry dock had opened in the harbour in 1882.
In a former diphtheria hospital on Signal Hill, Guglielmo Marconi received the Morse letter "S" sent from Cornwall, England, about 3,500 km away. Cabot Tower, built from 1897 to 1900 to mark the 400th anniversary of Cabot's voyage, stands nearby.
💡 Fun fact
Did you know? On July 23, 1920, the Canadian Marconi Company transmitted a human voice across the Atlantic from Cabot Tower.
The first transatlantic telegraph cable to Signal Hill was landed at Cuckold's Cove in 1909, giving a direct link from Ireland to St. John's and on to New York; by 1931 eight cables reached the hill. On July 23, 1920, the Canadian Marconi Company transmitted a human voice across the Atlantic from Cabot Tower, and a wireless station operated there from 1933 to 1949.
In 1914, men from the sealing ship SS Newfoundland were left on the ice in a violent storm, and 77 died, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia. Union leader William Coaker blamed Captain Abraham Kean, who had sent them back onto the ice; a court of inquiry exonerated Kean.
On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, more than 80 per cent of the Newfoundland Regiment soldiers who advanced at Beaumont-Hamel were killed or wounded. The first Memorial Day was held in St. John's on July 1, 1917. Of 6,241 men who served in the regiment during the war, 1,304 were killed.
John Alcock and Arthur Brown took off from St. John's in 1919 and flew non-stop to Ireland, the first non-stop airplane flight across the Atlantic.
The town gained limited self-rule in 1888 and a fully elected council in 1916. A 1921 Act of the legislature incorporated St. John's as a city and remains the basis of its government. Memorial University College opened in 1925 as a memorial to Newfoundlanders who died in the First World War.
Corruption charges against Prime Minister Sir Richard Squires sparked a riot in St. John's in April 1932, and his party was defeated that June. With the Depression bankrupting the dominion, Newfoundland gave up self-government, and a Commission of Government of a governor and six British-appointed commissioners took office in February 1934.
1934 – 1948
Britain suspended self-government, the Second World War transformed the city, and voters narrowly chose Confederation.
Fearing German air raids, the Canadian government approved an airbase near St. John's in 1939, and construction began at Torbay in 1940. The field came under civilian operation in 1946 while keeping strong military ties.
US armed forces arrived in January 1941 to build Fort Pepperrell and other bases, and on February 4, 1941, American troops garrisoned Signal Hill. The harbour served Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy ships fighting U-boats, and prosperity returned to the city after the Depression.
In 1942 a fire at the Knights of Columbus hostel, which housed service members, killed 99 military personnel and civilians.
In the first referendum on June 3, 1948, responsible government led with 44.6 per cent but no option had a majority. In the run-off, Confederation won 78,323 votes (52.34 per cent) to 71,344 for responsible government. Newfoundland became Canada's tenth province on March 31, 1949, with St. John's as its capital.
1949 – today
A growing public sector, the cod moratorium and offshore oil reshaped the capital of Canada's newest province.
Memorial became a university in 1949 and moved to a new campus in 1961, and the legislature moved to the new Confederation Building in 1960. Federal and provincial jobs drew people from the outports, and the population doubled between 1946 and 1971, though cheaper Canadian goods hurt local manufacturing.
Ottawa completed a 915 m wharf along the north side of the harbour in 1964, and the Marine Institute was founded the same year. The paved highway across the island, completed in 1965, let mainland distributors bypass St. John's through Corner Brook and Port aux Basques, reducing the port's role.
In December 1975 a Royal Newfoundland Constabulary detective investigated abuse of boys by Christian Brothers at the Mount Cashel orphanage in St. John's, but the investigation was halted before charges were laid. After former residents spoke publicly in 1989, the province appointed Justice Samuel Hughes to lead a televised royal commission on how the justice system had handled the complaints.
⚖️ Established fact
Established factThe Hughes Royal Commission report (1991) found that the investigating officer had been ordered to alter his December 17, 1975 report and a March 3, 1976 report to remove references to sexual abuse, and to end the investigation, and that this was contrary to accepted police policy. Several Christian Brothers were later convicted and jailed.
St. John's was the host city of the 1977 Canada Summer Games. In 1978 the city began marking St. John's Day (June 24) as a civic holiday.
Terry Fox dipped his artificial leg in the Atlantic near St. John's on April 12, 1980, and set out to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. He covered 5,373 km in 143 days before cancer forced him to stop near Thunder Bay.
The Ocean Ranger, then the world's largest semisubmersible drilling rig, capsized and sank in a storm on the Grand Banks, about 315 km east of St. John's in the Hibernia field. All 84 crew members died, 56 of them Newfoundlanders.
With the spawning stock of northern cod at about 1 per cent of its estimated peak, federal Fisheries Minister John Crosbie announced a two-year moratorium on July 2, 1992; protesters tried to force their way into the news conference. The ban was later extended with no end date, and the fishery has never returned to its 1980s level. A commercial northern cod fishery reopened in 2024.
The Hibernia platform, towed to the field and set on the sea floor in June 1997, began producing oil on November 17, 1997. Offshore oil became a major part of the St. John's economy, and ExxonMobil Canada moved its headquarters to the city in 2010.
The Rooms, a combined provincial archives, museum and art gallery, opened in 2005 near the Basilica. The city had amalgamated with neighbouring areas in 1992 and opened a 6,000-seat arena and convention centre in 2001.
A blizzard set an all-time daily snowfall record of 76.2 cm at St. John's. The city declared a state of emergency that closed businesses and ordered vehicles off the roads for eight days.
In 1827 William Cormack took the skulls of Demasduit and Nonosabasut from their burial place, and the remains ended up in National Museums Scotland. After a repatriation campaign begun in 2015 by Saqamaw Mi'sel Joe of Miawpukek First Nation, the remains were returned and placed in the care of The Rooms in St. John's until Indigenous leaders decide on a final resting place.
About this timeline
St. John's grew around a sheltered harbour on the Avalon Peninsula, on an island where Indigenous peoples had lived for thousands of years and where the Beothuk were living when Europeans arrived. For three centuries it was the supply and administrative hub of the migratory cod fishery, fought over by England and France, and repeatedly rebuilt after fire. It became the capital of a self-governing dominion, joined Canada in 1949, and has since been shaped by the public service, the collapse of the cod fishery and offshore oil.
1 moments on this page carry a government record note.
FAQ
There is no single founding date. European fishing crews used the harbour seasonally from the early 1500s, John Rut described it in 1527, and Humphrey Gilbert claimed Newfoundland for England there in 1583. The permanent population stayed small until about 1800. St. John's was incorporated as a city in 1921.
The origin is unknown. Popular tradition links it to John Cabot's arrival on the feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 1497, but the earliest record is "Rio de San Johem" on a Portuguese map from about 1516–1520.
The Beothuk were the Indigenous people of the island of Newfoundland at contact, and archaeological finds at Ferryland suggest they used the Avalon Peninsula. Earlier Maritime Archaic and Paleo-Inuit peoples lived elsewhere on the island thousands of years ago.
Newfoundland joined Canada on March 31, 1949, after voters chose Confederation with 52.34 per cent in a second, run-off referendum in 1948.
A fire on July 8, 1892, burned for about 12 hours, destroyed about 2,000 houses and left about 11,000 people homeless.
Written from the sources linked on each moment: the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Parks Canada, Library and Archives Canada, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, provincial and city archives, and others. Where governments acted wrongly, we say so and note whether it has been officially acknowledged, is established by the record, or is disputed. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will fix it.
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