Newfoundland and Labrador

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The 12-volume Discover Canada series was first released in 1994. In
1996, the publisher began releasing revised and bilingual editions of
volumes. This is the last volume of the revised series. The book is
divided into 10 chapters, which explain the history, geography, economy,
climate, religion, culture, and politics of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The fact that this region was the last province added to Canada lends a
unique tone to the text of this volume. Among other things, readers can
find out about the Newfie Bullet (described by long-suffering passengers
as “the slowest passenger train in civilization”), which served the
colony for nearly a century before being annexed by Canadian National
Railways and turned into a bus route. Another chapter describes the
events that led up to Newfoundland joining Canada on March 31, 1949.

Although many of the initial series’ photos, maps, and illustrations
have been kept, the text has been updated. (The subchapter on the 1992
Cod Moratorium, for example, discusses developments in 1996 and 1997.)
As with the original series, the revised volumes are first-rate
reference works. Highly recommended.