Newfoundland Is Full of Weirdos

Newfoundland is an island off the coast of Canada. Part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Newfoundland (the island) is home to 94% of the province’s 509,200 residents.

The island was visited first by the Icelandic Viking Leif Eriksson in the 11^th Century. It was all downhill from there. The island was next visited by an Italian, Giovanni Caboto (also known by his porn name John Cabot), who was working under contract for the English. Newfoundland was later claimed officially for England by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583. This is widely cited as the beginning of the British Empire. Newfoundland, it seems, was the spark that ignited a nearly four hundred year run of British dickheads planting their flags on various landmasses around the world.

Today, of course, Newfoundland is a dynamic part of Canada, a great big country known for snow, ice hockey, and Justin Beiber—an impressive legacy indeed. Still, because Newfoundland was not made a part of the Canadian confederacy until 1948, Newfoundlanders maintain a rich sense of identity, with 72% identifying themselves as being Newfoundlanders first, and Canadians second. This statistic suggests that Newfoundlanders are smarter then the average bear, knowing just enough to keep their distance from the embarrassing shenanigans of the general Canadian populace.

Still, Newfoundland, is just as weird as the rest of Canada. Their time zone, for example, is weird. The Newfoundland Standard Time Zone (NT) is anything but standard—establishing Newfoundland time as UTC-3:30, a very weird arrangement indeed. While most normal time zones are calculated by modifying Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) in whole hour increments (Eastern Standard Time, for example, subtracts 5 hours), NT subtracts 3½ hours. Nobody really knows why.

As if this wasn’t complicated enough, most of the rest of the province uses another time zone, Atlantic Standard Time (AST). They aren’t supposed to (the entire province is supposed to follow NT) but they do anyway. Again, nobody knows why.

In any case, being an hour and a half ahead of Central Canada creates some interesting (and weird) time quirks. Television and radio broadcasts, for example, get all confuddled by Newfoundland. National broadcasts are aired in Newfoundland according to AST, the neighboring time zone. Local Newfoundland programming, meanwhile, is broadcast on NT. Since only Newfoundland and parts of Southeastern Labrador use NT, Newfoundland broadcasters have to say something ridiculous to help time-challenged Newfoundlanders out—“coming up at six-thirty, six o’clock in most of Labrador.”

Newfoundland also got all the Harry Potter books before the rest of Canada, something that shouldn’t really matter—but does, somehow.