First contacts during the Age of Discovery Portugal played a pioneering role in the explorations of the
New World in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 15th century,
Prince Henry of Portugal, better known as Henry the Navigator, established a school of navigation in
Sagres, in the
Algarve region of Portugal. From this school emerged explorers who found their way to the Indies, South America, North America and Africa, including the Portuguese
João Fernandes Lavrador, who was the first explorer of
Labrador, and
Gaspar Corte-Real, who was also one of the earliest European explorers of Canada. Corte-Real explored the northeast coast of "
Terra Nova", naming
Conception Bay,
Portugal Cove, and Labrador, named after Fernandes Lavrador. Recent historiography suggests Corte Real May have reached Canadian coasts in 1473, before Columbus officially "discovered" America. It is nonetheless worth noting that historical evidence from the early Age of Discovery is lacking. Around 1521,
João Álvares Fagundes was granted
donatary rights to the inner islands of the
Gulf of St. Lawrence and also created a settlement on
Cape Breton Island to serve as a base for cod fishing. In 1524 the cartographer
Estêvão Gomes traveled along the coasts of northeastern North America. During his journey, he possibly reached the
Cabot Strait and
Cape Breton, in the present-day Nova Scotia. Pressure from natives and competing European fisheries prevented a permanent establishment and was abandoned five years later. Several attempts to establish settlements in Newfoundland over the next half-century also failed.
16th–19th centuries In the early 1600s
Mathieu Da Costa was probably the first black person setting foot in modern-day Canadian territory. In 1705, the Portuguese
Pedro da Silva became the first post courier in the French territory of North America,
New France. He settled in the Canadian part of the territory. In addition,
Esther Brandeau, of
Sephardic descent is notable in the history of the
Jews in Canada as the first Jew to set foot in the country, travelling from
France to New France. Portuguese and Spanish Sephardic Jews also contributed founding the oldest Jewish congregation in Canada, establishing Montréal synagogue in 1778.
20th century: large-scale emigration During the 1950s, a large number of immigrants from the
Azores and
Madeira, fleeing political conflict with the regime of
António de Oliveira Salazar, moved into the downtown core of Canada's major cities such as the area of
Portugal Village in
Toronto, Ontario and further west along
Dundas Street to
Brockton Village. The stretch of Dundas Street passing through Brockton Village is also known as "Rua Açores". Many other Portuguese have immigrated to
Montreal since the 1960s. As well, Portuguese
emigrants settled in areas of
British Columbia from the mid 1950s onwards, including
Vancouver and
Kitimat where they worked in the lumber and smelting industries, and the
Okanagan Valley in the interior of the province, where many became orchard farmers. From the 1970s, increasing numbers of
Brazilians moved into the Portugal Village, Toronto. Recently, a number of Canadians of
Goan heritage have opted to pursue Portuguese citizenship they are entitled to through their heritage as a result of Goa being an overseas province of Portugal until 1961, thus adding to the Portuguese Canadian population in Canada. ==Demographics==