Placentia / Placentia Bay
Town

Phone : (709) 227-2151
Your Host(s) : Municipality

Dunville, NL (Nearby: Placentia, Fox Harbour, Long Harbour-Mount Arlington Heights, Branch, St. Bride's)

  • Placentia Bay

P.O. Box 99
Dunville, A0B 2Y0


Newfoundland Tourism Region : Avalon


Plaisance: Located on a roughly triangular beach at the easter end of Placentia Roads, an inlet of Placentia Bay, Plaisance, now known as Placentia, has been a fishing settlement frequented by Basque fishermen since the mid 1600s when they used Plaisance as a seasonal centre of operations.

As to the derivation of its name, there are a number of possibilities; some think it might be named after an old Basque villa, "Placentia de las Armas", located in Basque town of Gipuzkoa.

Others think that it may come for the Latin word placentia that translates to mean "smooth", or possibly the French word, plaisance, meaning "pleasant place".

When the French made it their "capital" in 1655, they needed to protect the city so Fort Plaisance, overlooking Placentia Bay was built in 1662 (that was followed by Fort Royal in 1687 and Fort Saint Louis in 1690).

As pointed out several times, everything changed in 1713 and the French were forced to abandon their settlement (some moving 1800s, more and more Irish immigrants (primarily from Waterford, Wexford, Kilkenny and Cork) moved into the area mingling with the English, predominantly from the West Country.

Through the 1900s Placentia continued to grow in size as major port, but undoubtedly, the major revitalization of the town occurred in the 1940s when the American government built a large military base in nearby Argentia, the largest base outside the United States.

But unfortunately, as the saying goes "all good things come to an end" and the base was scaled back in the 1970s and eventually closed in 1994 and the population dropped from a high of over 8,000 a low of 3,496 in 2016. In 2011 the population was 3,643 (a difference of 4.0%)

Today, Placentia actually is composed of four towns, Placentia, Dunville, Jerseyside, and Freshwater. Dunville was earlier called Northeast or North East Placentia or Northeast or North East Gut.

According to ENL sources, the name was changed circa 1888 with the arrival of the railway. Locals have suggested that the name came from "Dunphy's Village" but who Dunphy was has not been reported.

Brooks' research (2013) suggested that there are two other possibilities for the derivation of the name: one is that it could be named after the River Dun in Northern Ireland; the second that it was named after one of the first settlers, whose last name was either Dun or Dunn.

This section of Placentia stretches approximately 8km (4.97 mi) along the northern shore of the North-East Arm of Placentia Bay, and it is probably that as early as 1514, smaller fishing craft were able to shelter in the Arm.

According to local legend, "Blackey Moor Island" in the North East Arm is the legendary burial site of a Negro who died on board a ship; local legend maintains that "the wood growing there will not burn"

Jerseyside is across the bay, connected to Placentia by the Placentia Lift Bridge. While it has always been considered a part of Placentia, the town, which was incorporated in 1950, this "section" of town was named after the Jersey fishermen who took after the area when, in 1713, after the Treaty of Utrecht the French were forced to leave.

Freshwater is a common name of a community in the province. There are several towns by the name of "Freshwater" and like the other, the name probably originated from the practice of fishing boats replenishing their water, perhaps as far back as the 1500s.

It was written in the ENL that "a river once flowed through the site, draining Larkins Pond to the sea. E.R. Scary (1971, p. 215) states that Captain James Cook, in his map The Road and Harbour of Placentia (1762), first named the site "Freshwater Bay."

Local tradition maintains that the name Freshwater is derived from the French phrase la Fontaine, meaning "the fountain" possibly referring to the stream that ran down the slopes to the cove".

While Placentia (Plaisance) was already described in the section on "The English Shore" and interesting bit of information on the role of the Irish in the growth of the town was found on a Heritage NL website: The English expanded into Placentia and other areas on the southern Avalon Peninsula, but largely depended on Irish labour to catch and process fish.

This was partly due to a shortage of English fish workers during the first three decades of the 18th century. While England was at war with France from 1702 to 1713, military service prevented many young men from working in the fishery. By the time peace was restored, the migratory fishery had entered a depression that did not end until 1728.

Knowledge of the downturn was commonplace in the English West Country and deterred potential workers from signing on as planters' servants. This, however, was not the case in Ireland, where shipmasters and merchants' agents could still recruit labourers with relative ease.

PLACENTIA BAY: A major bay, on the southern shore of the island of Newfoundland, Placentia Bay is clearly marked on the charts of Cook and Lane. From the Canadian Encyclopedia:

Placentia Bay, from the French plaisance (meaning a "pleasant place"), is a large, deep bay formed by Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula to the west, and the southwestern Avalon Peninsula to the east.

From Ferryland Head in the west and Cape St Mary's 90 km east [55.9 mi], the bay runs 125 km (77.7 mi] to its head, the Isthmus of Avalon. Ringed with coves and harbours, the bay has 2 extensive islands, Merasheen and Long, formerly populated, which divide the bay into channels to the north.

Once utilized by Dorset people and the Beothuk, the fine fishing grounds were probably first frequented by Basques and French in the 1500s; by the 1660s French fishermen occupied the bay, as modern place-names still attest.

After the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, when the French settlements were ceded to Britain, English use and settlement slowly followed in Placentia Bay.

Today the principal settlements are in the Burin-Marystown area and in the vicinity of Placentia and Argentia, once the location of a major US military facility and now the terminus of Marine Atlantic's ferry service to Nova Scotia.

Fishing, shipbuilding and services are now the main employers. There is also a large oil refinery at Come by Chance. The major towns in the area are described in the two sections on peninsulas that form the bay: Burin Peninsula to the west and Avalon Peninsula to the cast.

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/Placentia



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