Newfoundland and Labrador has a long history of commercial whaling, beginning in the first half of the sixteenth century when Basque whalers established seasonal stations on the Labrador coast from which to hunt bowheads and North Atlantic right whales. Anthony Dickinson and Chesley Sanger examine the region's modern shore-station industry from its beginnings in 1896 to its peak catch season in 1904 through subsequent cycles of decline and revival until its enforced closure in 1972 by the federal government.

Modern shore-station whaling on Canada's eastern shores developed with the spread of Norwegian-dominated whaling from local areas where stocks that had been depleted by new hunting technologies to more productive locations in the North Atlantic and elsewhere. Twentieth-Century Shore-Station Whaling in Newfoundland and Labrador adds to a growing number of regionally specific case studies that collectively illustrate the complex nature of the history of global whaling. Dickinson and Sanger further demonstrate how participants in the industry were instrumental in developing other whaling initiatives, including those in British Columbia.