A vast Canadian wilderness named after a Portuguese farmer who never farmed the land.

Countries & Cities · Published 30 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Spanning 1.4 million square kilometres, the Labrador Peninsula is a rugged expanse of the Canadian Shield. While it is defined by its dramatic mountain ranges and thousands of lakes, its name carries a curious history, originating from a Portuguese explorer who was granted land rights by King Manuel I.

The Labrador Peninsula is a massive, plateau-dominated region in eastern Canada, bordered by the Hudson Bay, the Hudson Strait, the Labrador Sea, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Its landscape is defined by the ancient, glacially scarred Canadian Shield, which has resulted in an extraordinary abundance of freshwater. In Quebec alone, there are over half a million lakes. While natural bodies like Lake Mistassini are significant, much of the region's water is now contained within massive hydroelectric reservoirs, such as the Smallwood Reservoir and the Manicouagan Reservoir. The peninsula is also home to the Torngat Mountains, where Mount Caubvick reaches 1,652 metres, marking the highest point in mainland Canada east of Alberta.

The peninsula’s human history long predates European arrival, with the Cree, Innu, Naskapi, and Inuit peoples maintaining deep connections to the land. The Innu refer to their territory as Nitassinan, while the Naskapi call theirs St'aschinuw, both translating to 'our land.' Inuit homelands are divided into regions including Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and NunatuKavut. Norse explorers from Greenland once referred to the area as Markland, encountering inhabitants they called Skræling.

The modern name stems from the Portuguese explorer João Fernandes Lavrador. In 1498, alongside Pero de Barcelos, he charted parts of northeastern North America and Greenland. King Manuel I granted him a patent in 1499, and because of his status as a landowner, he held the title 'lavrador,' meaning farmer or landholder. Though he originally applied the name Terra do Lavrador to Greenland, the title eventually migrated to the peninsula. It remains a linguistic curiosity, as the term signifies a landholder in Portuguese, yet translates to agricultural worker in Spanish and Galician.

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