St Anthony, Nfld, Town, pop 2730 (2001c), 2996 (1996c), 3164 (1991c), area 37.02 km2, inc 1945, is located near the top of the Great Northern Pen. Originally called St-Antoine, it was a French fishing station settled by Newfoundlanders in the mid-1800s. With a superb natural harbour, St Anthony is at the crossroads of shipping and fishing routes serving the Str of Belle Isle and the Labrador coast. Dr Wilfred GRENFELL, on behalf of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, in 1900 chose St Anthony as the site for a small hospital that would later become the headquarters of the International Grenfell Assn, founded by Grenfell in 1912.
St Anthony's history since 1900 has been dominated by the work of the mission, the centre of a far-reaching medical and social-services network serving a large area of northern Newfoundland, Québec and Labrador. Other sources of employment have included a radar base (built 1951), a series of fish plants (beginning in 1944) and an airport built in 1957 and replaced in 1983.