The industrialization of Newfoundland and Labrador's fisheries during the late 20th century changed the way people in the province worked and lived.

With the construction of the railway, workers began to leave their coastal homes to find employment at new mines and mills in the island's interior.

Much of our knowledge of daily life in outport Newfoundland in the late 18th and early 19th century comes from the pens of visitors. They were typically missionaries, explorers, naturalists, and geologists whose work brought them to outlying communities not often visited by outsiders or even the local government.

Considerable uncertainty surrounds our understanding of daily life in Newfoundland during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.