The wearing of the green

According to the 2006 census of population, the single biggest ethnic origin in Newfoundland and Labrador, as self-identified by respondents in the 20% census sample, was... English.

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, this map shows the predominant ethnic origin — again as self-identified by those respondents who got the long census questionnaire — mapped for the entire province at the Census Division level. Census Divisions include cities, towns, incorporated communities, Labrador Inuit communities, and Indian Reserves, as well as geographically larger "unorganized" census divisions.

(Unfortunately, Statistics Canada's base map for the province does the Labrador-as-inset annoyance, but bear with.) Click on the map to massively embiggen.

Green is Irish; red is English; blue is an aggregate of all "French" origins, including French, Acadian, etc.; brown is an aggregate of all Aboriginal origins, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis; and yellow is where two or more ethnic origins were tied for predominance within that Census Division. Grey indicates either an unpopulated Census Division, or one where data was suppressed in the census report to ensure the personal privacy of respondents where the population is very small.

Saturated colours indicate that the ethnic origin is shared by a majority of respondents, while pale colours indicate that it is the single largest origin, but not a majority.

Each Census Division is coloured according to the statistics for that division, even though large portions, especially of unorganized divisions, may be unpopulated. (Exceptionally, certain unpopulated islands are not coloured, mostly due to laziness.) A division may also have individual populated places which would have ethnic profiles different from the overall division, if data were available at that level of detail. (It isn't.)

Since respondents to the ethnicity question can select multiple responses to describe themselves, it is entirely possible that a Census Division where the majority of people consider themselves to have English or Irish ethnic origin, may also have a majority of people considering themselves to have French or Aboriginal ethnic origin. In fact, we will see that this not only possible, but inevitible.

You still have a month to do your St. George's Day shopping and plan your St. George's Day drink-up.

You're welcome.

[Data source]