Dover: Located in a small cove at the head of Freshwater Bay, in Bonavista Bay, northeast of Gambo, Dover was settled in the early 1890s.

Its first name was Shoal Bay, referring most likely to the numerous shoals in the area, however, given that there were a number of communities similarly named, it was changed to Wellington (one presumes after the Duke of Wellington) in the mid 1900s.

Unfortunately, there are a number of communities that also went by the name of "Wellington" in Canada, so the Post office was not satisfied with the change.

According to the material cited in the ENL, from 1950 to 1970 Shoal Bay was referred by the cumbersome name of "Wellington (Dover Post Office)" even though the locals continued to refer to the community as Dover.

Who decided to add Dover to the town's name or why Dover over any other name was chosen is not known, however, eventually there was a general meeting, and a variety of names were submitted for consideration.

The one that was considered to be the frontrunner was Port Charles (again why that name was so popular is unknown) however, the "authorities" (one assumes the Post Office staff) decided it should be called Dover.

At this point the NL Nomenclature Board became involved and the community was canvassed, and the necessary seventy-five percent of the population requested and endorsed the name change and consequently, finally, in 1973, the Lieutenant Governor declared the town to be "henceforth" called Dover.

Today the community has over 600 residents. The 2016 census reported 662 residents, a slight decrease of 1.65% from the 673 enumerated in 2011. The following excerpt highlights the most tragic event that happened in the history of the town of Dover:

The Dover Connection. At approximately 7:30 pm on the evening of November 18, 1929 the largest tidal wave to hit the eastern seaboard of North America crashed into the southeast coast of Newfoundland destroying dozens of communities and sweeping houses out to sea, taking 28 lives on the island and another in Cape Breton.

At 5:02, about two and a half hours earlier, a shift along the same fault line that runs through the Town of Dover caused an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale, centred at a depth of 18 km beneath the earth's crust at an ocean depth of 2,000 metres.

The quake caused a massive landslide in which a huge section of the continental slope of about 200 cubic kilometres plunged into the Solm Abyssal Plains at a speed of up to 70 km per hour.

This massive slump, in turn, created a long wavelength disturbance generating three tsunami pulses which stuck the Burin Peninsula over the span of 20 minutes.

The late Precilla Willis, a resident of Dover, was living in Butcher's Cove at the time with her mother and father-in-law. She said she was downstairs at the time sitting in her rocking chair. They heard a loud noise, like thunder she recalls, only louder and different.

The oven doors on the old wood stove were shaking and the stove started to smoke. She remembers thinking the house was going to be on fire.

Her mother-in-law told her the tide was rising higher and no one seemed to know what was happening. She said that they were terrified and didn't really know what happened until days later because there were no radios or televisions at that time. The water level had risen very high, you could not walk along the beach area.

The late Mrs. Evelyn Collins worked in the Post Office at Hare Bay. She got the news saying there was a tidal wave at Burin on the south coast of Newfoundland.

The Late Ronald Hunt was 9 years old when the earthquake occurred. Mr. Hunt was at Butcher's Cove playing when everything started trembling and then he saw the trees shaking.

A pile of wood seven feet high fell down and he was told that people were holding onto the pots on their stoves to keep them from falling off.

There was a roar in the air that seemed to last for a half an hour and some people thought that Buchan's mine had blown up.

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/DoverNL