St. Juliens: Today, the names Grandois and St. Julien's tend to be used interchangeable. While St. Juliens, as a town, no longer exists, however just before one arrives in Grandois there is a boardwalk trail that leads out to the old fishing site. Along the trail one can see a few discrete traces of the once-bustling fishery.

St. Julien du Mans was the first bishop of Le Mans, France, a city in northwest France. Whether or not there is a connection unknown. St. Julien is a popular name of municipalities in France. There are nearly 100 (c.g., Saint-Julien-Beychevelle, Saint-Julien-de-la-Net, Saint-Julien-en-Saint-Alban) so it is possible that an early fisherman came from a town with a similar name. Nearby is an abandoned copper mine (which started operation in the 1850s) which was reopened in 2008.

St. Julien's: Located off the eastern side of the Great Northern Peninsula, the following, from the ENL is a brief history of this community and the island by the same name.

Note the reference to the "post office name": St. Julien's Island shelters the harbours of Grandois, Little St. Julien's and Great St. Julien's. These harbours and the off-lying islands were fishing stations of the French from the 1500s to the mid-1800s, being just to the north of the major French station at Croque.

Since that time they have continued to be summer fishing stations for Newfoundlanders out of Conception and Notre Dame bays, as well as home to a small year-round population. Since the 1950s the names Grandois and St. Julien's have been used more or less interchangeably.

St. Julien's "proper" (Great St. Julien's) was resettled to Grandois in the 1960s, but the name St. Julien's is perpetuated as a "post office name" for Grandois.

Some modern maps also show Pointe I'Aurore at Little St. Julien's. The earliest known settler was George McGrath, at Grandois, a gardien for the French premises who was living there by 1822. Although the McGraths were of Irish descent (as were most of the year-round settlers who came later) the "mainland" part of the Grandois station often appears thereafter as English Harbour.

The first settlers of St. Julien's were probably the Keough family, who were living at St. Julien's by 1857, when it appears in the Census with a population of 13.

St. Julian, aka Julian of Antioch (who died in 305) was a venerated as a Christian martyr of the fourth century. There are many towns in France that are named after him, so it is possible that early French speaking fishermen chose the name as far back as the 16th century.

Used with permission from "Uncovering the Origin of 1001 Unique Place Names in Newfoundland and Labrador" 2021 Jennifer Leigh Hill

Address of this page: http://nl.ruralroutes.com/StJuliens