New Found Names: West vs. East End

Where do the two ends of St. John’s begin? And do they make sense?

For those not in the know, the capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John’s, is divided into two main sections, the East End and the West End.

Now, this form of inter-neighbourhood division, be it North Side and South Side or Downtown and Uptown, is common in cities the world over. The East End and West End of St. John’s fit all the common tropes of a city divided; in the early days of the city the West End was much more desirable, far “from the smell of fish and smoke of coal”, as compared to the East End, which was where the working class lived.

Since then, the perception has shifted. As of 2014, four of the top five richest neighbourhoods in NL were in the East End of St. John’s, and the other was in Mount Pearl. It’s no wonder, given the history, that’s there’s some animosity between the two zones.

But where exactly do people believe the east and west end start? And should they even be called the East and West End at all? It’s high time we found out. So I made a survey.

My survey, created through Google Forms, that ultimately received 210 responses in just over a month.

Sharing the survey online through connections and social platforms such as Reddit and Facebook helped the survey explode like wildfire, resulting in over 200 responses in just over a month (I’m sure the promise of a gift card, which will be delivered, helped as well).

Of the 210 respondents, 69.5% currently live in St. John’s. 50.8% identified as being from the East End (potential bias alert), while 28.4% identified as being from the West End, and the remaining respondents being from the downtown area, centre city, or outside St. John’s entirely. This makes the fact that 69.7% of respondents said the East End is better than the West a much less valuable statistic.

But back to what really matters, the reason this survey was created and the reason you may be reading this, where do people think the different sides of the City start? This is where things get interesting.

Where does the East End start?

A beautiful pinwheel.

Scraping the data proved to be difficult, given the length of some streets (cough, Elizabeth Avenue, cough) and overlap of some landmarks. After some further scraping and combinations (for example, combining the results for East Side Mario’s with Portugal Cove Road), we emerge with a much more digestible pie chart.

A second beautiful pinwheel.

Here we can see that Portugal Cove Road, Memorial University, the Confederation Building, Elizabeth Avenue, and Torbay Road are the most common results. The most jarring aspect of these results is just how many results fit into the “Other” category, including answers as far into the West End as the Nalcor Building on Columbus Drive and as far into the East End as Stavanger. There is certainly a lack of specificity regarding where the East End begins. And things are much the same in the West.

Where does the West End start?

The beautiful pinwheels don’t stop.

The results from the West End became even more tangly, with 50 unique identifiable results as opposed to the East End’s 46. After some similar scraping as conducted with the East End data, we end up with this:

A fourth!

Here we end up with a similar situation to the East End results, with similarly located but different results, such as Columbus Drive and Blackmarsh Road, filling out the top 5. We also end up with a similarly large Other category with results such as Mount Pearl (?) and Georgestown (???). If we look at the top eight responses for each question though, we can start to see a trend emerge.

Let’s get Visual

My attempt to visualize the top eight responses on both sides. The larger the dot, the more votes that section received. Map courtesy of Google Maps.

It becomes clear looking at this that while there was no clear consensus regarding exactly where each end begins, but there certainly is an approximate area that most people are able to agree upon. It’s also worth noting that the results of this survey are relatively close to Google Maps’ assumption of the borders.

The West and East Ends of St. John’s, respectively, according to Google Maps. Interesting how odd they look side-by-side.

Note that Google Maps perceives the border of the East End to be mainly along New Cove Road (which no one identified in the survey) into Portugal Cove Road, and the West End doesn’t come close to Kenmount Road and the Avalon Mall, as many people suggested. The top line of the West End also does not appear to follow any road, which is interesting.

This answers the question of are “where exactly do people believe the east and west end start?” It’s clear that the inhabitants of St. John’s have a strong general sense of where each end should start, and although there is little specific agreement, there is a lot of similarity. It is also clear that the majority of St. John’s folk recognize a form of City Centre, calling it either City Centre, Downtown, MUN or other, between the two Ends. Further detail on this is below.

Thoughts on “What’s in between?”

All in all, this is, at its heart, a great topic for discussion when you’re at a house party with people from both sides of town. So what of the question “should they even be called the East and West End at all?”

In my research, I heard countless people suggest that there wasn’t even a need to conduct a survey, as, “The East End if just east of downtown,” and “Obviously the West End is everything west of Cashin.” This is truly what needs to be discussed. Let’s consider the map from above with a compass added to it.

The map from above with compass and dividing lines added. Map courtesy of Google Maps.

If we look at this visualization, it becomes clear, at least to this author, that the names East End and West End are flawed. While the two Ends are slightly east and west of one another, the truth is clear. They are undoubtedly geographically north and south. So why on God’s green earth do we call them east and west? Is it simply their relation to the harbour and downtown? Did Giovanni Caboto’s compass get confused in the constant rain, drizzle, and fog? Has anyone ever tried using the North Side and South Side as names? Or could these names come from the fact that we have the Southside Hills, now geographically east of the City as a whole, which have been giving townies an incorrect directional reference point since at least the early 1900s.

To be fair, this confusion PROBABLY doesn’t stem all the back to 1497 and John Cabot, but this townie certainly still has questions. If anyone out there has the answers, I would love to hear them. But for now, I’ll continue to call myself an east-ender, even though I’m actually in City Centre, and I’ll keep calling them the East and West Ends, even though I may know better.

First and foremost, I would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who completed the survey. I was not anticipating the amount of traction it received, and for that I am truly grateful.

Special thank yous to Emily, Nicole, and Evan as well for providing their best townie opinions on the piece and data, and the crew at Fytics for staying so engaged. And of course, as always, thanks for reading.

You can read more stupid nonsense about Newfoundland and Labrador names with my other articles in New Found Names. And you can also reach out to liamchrisflanagan@gmail.com with questions, comments, concerns, and general berating. Cheers!