Makkovik (Inuit: Maggovik) is a town in Labrador in eastern Canada. It had 365 residents in 2021. The main industry is snow crabbing and there is a fishing cooperative.
Makkovik is only accessible by air or sea.
History
The Makkovik area has been inhabited by the Inuit since 1400 or earlier.
Some early European settlers included Antoine Perrault and Jean-Baptiste Jacques, French Canadian fur traders who set up trading posts at nearby Kaipokok Bay. Another earlier settler to the area was Charles McNeil, a Scottish fisherman who married a woman from Clarke's Beach and established a fishing post at Island Harbour. A Scottish fur trader named George Lyall settled near Island Harbour in the 1850s while a Welsh settler named Thomas Evans settled at Ben's Cove. Several Inuit families also continued to live in the region. Near the 1880s, some families of mixed European and Inuit origin from Cartwright and other areas of southern Labrador also established fishing posts near Makkovik. The later establishment of the Moravian mission in Makkovik eventually pushed many families to move from outlying posts (such as Island Harbour, Ben's Cove, Adlavik, Ailik and Tishialuk) to Makkovik itself or to Postville.
Torsten Kverna Andersen and his wife Mary Ann Thomas set up a trading post at Makkovik in 1860. Andersen was originally from Norway and had previously worked in Rigolet while his wife was from Labrador.
Colonization was assured in 1896 when the Moravian Church established a mission station and residential school there. Both the mission and school were destroyed by a fire in 1948 but the economy was instilled in the 1950s by two notable events. First was the forceful resettlement to Makkovik of 150 Inuit residents of the northern communities of Nutak and Hebron. Second was the establishment nearby of a radar warning station by the United States government.
In January 2012, Makkovik received notable media attention after 14-year old Burton Winters froze to death after his snowmobile broke down on the ice just outside of the community.
The population is mainly composed of residents of mixed European and Inuit heritage. Ninety five people in Makkovik claimed to have Norwegian ancestry in the 2016 census.
United States Air Force base
For three years in the late 1950s, the United States Air Force operated a remote radar base approximately north of the settlement. Called Cape Makkovik, it was constructed between 1955 and 1957 and operated until 1961, and dismantled later in the decade. It was a "gap-filler" in the Pinetree Line set up to monitor the skies for aircraft approaching from the north.
Geography
The community lies at the end of a peninsula in northern Labrador about northeast of Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Travel is by air year round (served by Makkovik Airport) and by boat in summer. Winter travel is by snowmobile. The community is situated on a sheltered bay in a saddle between two hills. In the lee of the northernmost hill is a large copse of tall spruce trees, which is remarkable given the paucity of tree cover for miles around. Now known as the Moravian Wood, there is a small cemetery in the centre.
Demographics
In the 2021 Canadian census conducted by Statistics Canada, Makkovik had a population of 365 living in 142 of its 154 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 377. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
Geology
The community is located in the Makkovik Province, a Paleoproterozoic accretionary belt which is the smallest defined tectonic component of the Canadian Shield. The Makkovik Province is separated from the Nain Province to the north by the Kanairiktok Shear Zone and from the Grenville Province to the south by the Grenville Front, which marks the northern limit of the widespread Grenvillian deformation. Prior to the opening of the Labrador Sea the Makkovik Province lay adjacent to the Ketilidian mobile belt which currently forms part of Southwest Greenland.