Did John Cabot Land At Bonavista?

Gordon Bradley

Gordon Bradley of Bonavista is a founding member of the Bonavista Historical Society. He is a local expert on the area's heritage. I asked him if John Cabot set foot on land at Bonavista.

DID JOHN CABOT LAND AT BONAVISTA?

That's almost as bad as the question that one of the BBC fellows asked me last summer when they were here. They asked me what I thought Cape Bonavista looked like when John Cabot came around.

I answered, "It's like all the rest of the bloody coast. Rocks and trees!"

The new sign coming into Bonavista, put up for the John Cabot celebration last year, says: "Site of Cabot's Landing." That is a mistake.

Cabot's Landing was never the phrase that was used. It was the "Landfall of Cabot." A landfall is really where you sighted land. So you would come up to the land you sighted from your ship and search for a place to land, if you planned to go ashore.

We don't know if John Cabot ever went ashore at Bonavista.

[Landfall means "the first sight of or approach to land over open water." - The Canadian Oxford Dictionary]