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Cupids Cove Plantation Provincial Historic Site
Cupids, Newfoundland and Labrador, approx 1
hour from St. John's.
How to get here.
What will I see around Cupids?
Located on Conception Bay along the Baccalieu Trail, Cupids is a
small community with a long and famous history. In the 1500s,
Portugeuse, French, English and Spanish ships came to this area
every spring and summer to fish, but there was no evidence of
Europeans trying to establish permanent, year-round settlements.
Cupids stepped into the history books in 1610 when John Guy brought
a group of thirty-nine English colonists to this protected harbour
to settle and stake a permanent year-round claim on the lucrative
fishery.
Over the next few years, the colonists built several buildings,
including a brewhouse, gristmill and sawmill. They explored the
area and traded peacefully with the Beothuk, the Aboriginal people
of this part of the island. Most importantly for long term
settlement, women were brought to the colony in 1612. In March
1613, a son was born to settler Nicholas Guy and his wife. It was
the first recorded birth of an English child in what would become
Canada. The families of many of these first colonists went on to
settle the rest of the peninsula and their names are still found
among the population of the area.
Cupids went through various transformations over the centuries. The large merchant firm Newman and Company had a premises here in the 1750s, and the town also had an active shipbuilding trade. In the 1800s, the Labrador fishery was the economic driver for the community.
Today, the archeological dig is all that you'll see of John Guy's colony, but you'll find Cupids is a little place bustling with activity and building as people move here for the scenery and history, while taking advantage of the town's proximity to the larger centres of Bay Roberts and St. John's.
Want to learn more?
Cupids, Baccalieu Trail Tourism
English Settlers, Baccalieu: Crossroads for Culture
