History
The first premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Joey Smallwood, coined the term "Atlantic Canada" when Newfoundland and Labrador joined the Canadian Confederation (the Commonwealth of Canada) in 1949. He believed that it would have been presumptuous for Newfoundland and Labrador to assume that it could include itself within the existing term "Maritime Provinces", used to describe the cultural similarities shared by New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The three Maritime provinces joined Confederation during the 19th century: New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were founding members of the Canadian Confederation in 1867, and Prince Edward Island joined in 1873.
Smallwood and others have excluded Quebec from Atlantic Canada because of Quebec's dramatically different culture. This is despite the fact that Quebec has physical Atlantic coasts on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Ungava Bay, and the Hudson Strait.
Read more about this topic: Atlantic Canada
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)