Newfoundland and Labrador has a long history of commercial whaling, beginning in the first half of the sixteenth century when the Basques established seasonal stations on the Labrador coast form which to hunt bowheads and North Atlantic right whales. Anthony Dickinson and Chesley Sanger examine the modern era of the region's shore-station industry from its beginnings in 1896 through subsequent cycles of decline and revival until its enforced closure in 1972 following the enactment of a whaling moratorium by the government of Canada.