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Grade 8 · Social Studies · Unit 1 of 6

Making a Living, 1800s to 1949

Salt fish, the credit system, railways, mines and mills.

What your child practises

Grade 8 looks at how people in Newfoundland and Labrador earned a living before 1949: the salt fish trade and the credit system, the seal hunt, the railway, mines, paper mills and the fishers’ union. Ask your child why depending on one industry was risky.

Newfoundland and Labrador Curriculum curriculum outcome: Individuals, societies and economic decisions (by Grade 9) · how the fishery, the credit system, the railway, mines and mills shaped the economy and daily life of Newfoundland and Labrador before 1949

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    What is newsprint?

    • a fishing boat
    • a kind of fish
    • a metal
    • cheap paper used to print newspapers

  2. Question 2

    In 1907, Newfoundland became a…

    • state of the United States
    • colony of France
    • dominion within the British Empire
    • province of Canada

  3. Question 3

    Which town grew around a paper mill that opened in 1909?

    • Trinity
    • Brigus
    • Grand Falls
    • Nain

  4. Question 4

    What was a fish flake?

    • a kind of fishing net
    • a coin
    • a small boat
    • a wooden platform for drying salted cod

  5. Question 5

    Why did the government want a railway across the island?

    • to stop the fishery
    • to open the interior to mining, forestry and farming
    • to carry tourists only
    • to join the island to Labrador

  6. Question 6

    Which mine, opened in 1928 in central Newfoundland, produced lead, zinc and copper?

    • Bell Island
    • Buchans
    • Wabush
    • Voisey’s Bay

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