Burin

Burin, NL, incorporated as a town in 1950, population 2424 (2011c), 2483 (2006c). The Town of Burin is located along a protected inlet of Placentia Bay on the southeast coast of the Burin Peninsula. Present-day Burin is an amalgamation of communities along Burin Inlet and adjacent islands, most of which date from the 1700s or 1800s. The name, which appears on early French charts, may have come from the French burin, a graver or chisel. Basque and French fishermen were using the area by the second half of the 1600s, and after the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, it began to be settled by English fishermen.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Burin developed as a major port for the Grand Banks and inshore fisheries and as a shipbuilding and dry dock centre. As the principal harbour on the peninsula it had a school and courthouse before 1800 and a variety of local industries after that date. Until the cod moratorium of the early 1990s, it was an important fishing, fish-processing and service centre. From 1987-97 Burin was the home of Eastern Community College, which had 3 campuses. The college was then merged to form College of the North Atlantic of which the town has a campus.