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'Stephenville' (2005 est. pop.: 8,000) is a Canadian town in Newfoundland and Labrador on the west coast of the island of Newfoundland, located near the head of St. George's Bay. Stephenville serves a direct population of 25,000 people from surrounding areas. Its Airport serves a catchment population of 90,000 people from Port Aux Basques to the south, to the north of St. Anthony.
The town functions as a local service centre for the southwestern part of the island, with a 40 bed modern hospital (built in 2003), schools, stores, and banks. The town also includes a harbour, named Port Harmon, which was used for exporting of newsprint, up until the closure of the Abitibi-Consolidation paper mill in October, 2005. The provincial community college system, College of the North Atlantic, is headquartered in Stephenville and maintains a campus there for students from the southwestern region of the island. A provincial minimum security jail is also located in the town. The town also has an 18-hole links style golf course that was expanded from a 9-hole course in 1999, which was orinigally built by the USAF.
Stephenville was formerly home to Ernest Harmon AFB, which was operated by the United States Air Force between 1941-1966.After the base was closed, the facility was turned over to the federal government which then provided it to the provincial government for divestiture to the local community. The facility included the air field, which has 2 runways (10,000 ft x 200 ft, 4,000 ft x 150 ft) and numerous buildings which are operated as the Stephenville Airport. An abandoned USAF Pinetree Line radar site is located on nearby Table Mountain, north of the town. The town uses many former USAF structures for housing, recreation and entertainment.

Ernest Harmon was quite isolated during its early years as a United States Army Air Forces base. Newfoundland itself was, and still is, considered isolated but during the 1940s, when roads were virtually non-existent and surface travel was limited to the slow narrow-gauge passenger trains of the Newfoundland Railway, which linked to small coastal steamships or ferries to the mainland at North Sydney, Nova Scotia, the sense of isolation could prove overwhelming. In addition, the airfield's location at the head of St. George's Bay was one of the more geographically isolated parts of the island, being surrounded by the Long Range Mountains and the coastline of St. George's Bay being dotted with tiny outports. In addition to USAAF aircraft, the only other option for travel was the railway and ferries/coasters, or exploring the limited local road network which stretched along the coast and into the uninhabited interior of the island.
The base also precipitated an economic boom of sorts on Newfoundland's southwest coast during the 1940s. Corner Brook to the north had been considered the major population center for the region, given its industrial base and nearby recreational opportunities in the Humber River. With the investment of the USAAF in Ernest Harmon, the Stephenville and St. George's Bay area began to flourish. The village of Stephenville grew from a hamlet of several hundred people with no paved streets, side walks, water or sewage system in 1941 into a modern town of over 5,000 by the mid 1950s. By the time Ernest Harmon AFB closed in 1966, the town had more than doubled in size, partly as a result of the provincial government's forced resettlement policy toward residents of outports.
Stephenville shares a municipal border with Kippens to the west and Stephenville Crossing to the east, connected by the Hanson Memorial Highway. Settlements on the nearby Port au Port Peninsula makes the Stephenville area Newfoundland's only bilingual region.

Contents

Education

Operation Yellow Ribbon

Events

See also

References

External links

Education

The first educational institution in the St. George's Bay area was the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop John T. Mullock established the first church of the Roman Catholic faith at Sandy Point in 1848 when the population of the area was about 2000. Father Belenger was the first priest in the St. Georges Bay area from 1850 to 1868. Father Sears, then priest in the area, established a church in the growing town of Stephenville. In 1884 there were four Catholic schools in the parish. One at Sandy Point, one at the Highlands, one at Port aux Basques and one at Campbell's Creek.

Operation Yellow Ribbon

On September 11, 2001, 8 civilian airliners made unscheduled landings at the Stephenville Airport following the closure of North American airspace in the wake of the terrorist attack on New York City and Washington, DC. An unwitting participant in Operation Yellow Ribbon, the town managed to host the stranded passengers for approximately one week.

Events

On July 27, 2005 Abitibi announced plans to cease newsprint production in Stephenville, resulting in a loss of 280 jobs to the town and surrounding region. ^[1]
On September 27, 2005, a torrential downpour caused 180 people to be evacuated, after two rivers that flow through the town lept their banks and flooded the town. About 140 millimetres of rain fell. ^[2]
On October 29, 2005, the CBC announced that Stephenville had been chosen as site for the annual ''Hockey Day in Canada'' feature of Hockey Night in Canada. The event took place on January 7, 2006. ^[3]
In 2005, Port Harmon was dredged to allow bigger ships to enter the port.
A group of citizens of Stephenville, have begun to organize a Come Home Year celebration for 2007. The Celebration is set to run from July 27, 2007 - August 5, 2007 and a number of events are being scheduled.
On February 8th, 9th, and 10th 2007, Stephenville hosted the Newfoundland and Labrador Junior Broomball Provincial Championships.
On June 24th, 2006 Rex Goudie played at the field. The next day, Hedley played at the same field for a charity.
July 27-August 5, 2007 - Stephenville Come Year Events to begin
May 2007 - Stephenville High School named Newfoundland and Labrador 4A School Of The Year for the 4th year in a row. (2006/07, 05/06, 04/05, 03/04)

See also

★ List of communities in Newfoundland and Labrador

★ Ernest Harmon Air Force Base

★ Hanson Memorial Highway

★ Long Gull Pond

References

1. Abitibi cutting paper production in Ontario and Newfoundland
2. State of emergency remains in effect in flooded Newfoundland town
3. Stephenville, N.L., awarded Hockey Day in Canada

External links

★ Town of Stephenville - official website