Campbell, Lydia National Historic Person

Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador
Campbell, Lydia (© (FloraBaikiecollection, with permission, Them Days))
Campbell, Lydia
(© (FloraBaikiecollection, with permission, Them Days))
Address : 3 Courte Manche Street, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador

Recognition Statute: Historic Sites and Monuments Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. H-4)
Designation Date: 2009-04-20
Life Date: 1818 to 1905

Other Name(s):
  • Campbell, Lydia  (Designation Name)
  • Lydia Brooks, Aunt Lydia  (Other Name)
Research Report Number: 2008-033

Importance: One of Labrador's most well-known and loved historical figures

Plaque(s)


No plaque in place, recommended location:  Newfoundland and Labrador

With her memoir, Sketches of Labrador Life by a Labrador Woman (1894), Lydia Campbell provided a rare first-hand account of early colonial Labrador, and inspired a regional literary tradition that conveys history through autobiography. Campbell lived all her life in Groswater Bay, inheriting traditional skills from her Inuit mother and literacy and Christian faith from her British father. Like many women of the North with links to two cultures, Campbell served as a valued contact between her society and newcomers, and she remains one of Labrador’s most well-known and loved historical figures.