The Victoria Community Development Corporation
The Community of Victoria

The Town of Victoria, pop. 1900, Incorporated in 1971 probably began as a "winterhouse" for people from Freshwater and Carbonear. It was noted that the area was being used for wood cutting in 1817. Gradually people built more permanent dwellings along the road between Carbonear and Heart's Content and around Beaver Pond.

Documents indicate that Nicholas Powell was granted land along the Heart's Content Road in 1859. There were enough settlers by 1864 to justify a school, where classes were taught by Sarah Powell. The settlement was named in honour of Queen Victoria and was known in the nineteenth century as Victoria Village. Though Victoria lies inland, it is within walking distance from Carbonear, Freshwater and Salmon Cove. The majority of early settlers were fishing families, with most of the involved in the Labrador fishery. Small-scale farming and livestock raising were auxiliary activities to the fishery, with surplus produce being sold in Carbonear.

In the late 1800's scores of people from Victoria signed on with merchants in Carbonear, Harbour Grace and Northern Bay for the Labrador fishery. Lumbering, the railway and mining (at Bell Island and Cape Breton) employed others in the early 1900's. An electrical power station was running in the community in 1904. Sawmills were operated locally by James and David Stephenson, Robert Clarke, Isiah and John Clarke and William Burke but in 1921 a forest fire destroyed much of the timber in the immediate area. In that year, merchants in Victoria were Nicholas Powell and Reuben, William and Nicholas Clarke.

Of 448 people in Victoria in 1884, 378 were Methodist and there were two Methodist churches. In 1924 Victoria native Eugene Vaters established an independent congregation which later joined the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland and by 1935 had more than 300 member.

Also in 1924, with the Labrador fishery in its death throes, 28 families from Victoria took part in a land settlement scheme and move to Markland to help found the first Commission of Government.

During World War II an internment camp was built at Victoria to house prisoners of war. The structure was never used as the Americans felt it was a security risk for their bases in Newfoundland and it was dismantled in 1943.

The population of Victoria grew steadily in the following decades, as many of the people of the nearby communities of Flatrock and Otterbury relocated there, as well as much of the population of Perry's Cove. By the 1900's very few residents of Victoria remained involved in the fishery. They worked in Carbonear in local services and away from the area. Services in the town today include a town hall, a fire department, library and the Victoria Electrical Museum which opened in 1985.

The town is served by one school, Persalvic Elementary, which takes in pupils from Perry's Cove, Salmon Cove and Victoria.