AHC: Maximum population of Anticosti Island

The POD can be either before or after 1900, but--I mean, here's an island larger than PEI and it only has 240 people? C'mon, Canada--where are your wilderness-despoilers?
 
The possible population size would depend on different factors. Some factors may be
  • Area
  • Population Density
  • Food Production
  • Food Import
. Area is the space which the human settlement could be situated on. Population density is the amount of humans living in an area. Food Production matters if food cannot be imported from outside. If the settlement is going to import food then it will have to export something in return, or plunder other areas.

The population of Anticosti could be above a million, allthough that may not be likely.
 
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BlondieBC

Banned
The POD can be either before or after 1900, but--I mean, here's an island larger than PEI and it only has 240 people? C'mon, Canada--where are your wilderness-despoilers?

Looks fairly flat. Empty. Easy to get to by Sea. Joint USA/Canada military based complete with naval live fire range.
 
I think it is just a bit too cold to support farming. Being an island, this meant importing food and nobody may have wanted to take the initiative to try to settle a place that cold and far from other settlements for a long time. A charismatic French chocolate tycoon named Henri Menier bought the entire island in the late 19th century and worked hard to develop a community there. The town he started was starting to establish itself but it apparently wasn't able to stand on its own, because his heirs didn't share his interest in the project and when they sold off Anticosti, the whole thing kind of devolved into a small logging camp with a summer sport hunting business. Even if Menier had lived long enough to continue his development scheme or produced an heir who did as well, WWI and the great depression would have made it hard to gain traction. The key to success then, would be for a man, perhaps cut from the same cloth as Menier, to have attempted to develop his own personal island, but to have done so a few decades earlier than Menier did.
 
I'd be curious to find out the maximum population it had before European contact. But it doesn't look like the natives ever farmed there, perhaps due to poor soils and climate compared to places further south. The problem is that Anticosti is pretty remote from anywhere important in the Maritimes or Quebec. The seas freeze over in winter, compounding the remoteness.

However, to the south lay the Magdalen Islands, which have a population of about 13,000, so given the size of Anticosti, it's possible that it might have 10-20,000 people, employed in forestry, fishing, sealing, and tourism.

I think it is just a bit too cold to support farming.

That might be the case, since the climate looks a bit colder than Newfoundland or nearby places, and the soil might be poor too. But I'm not sure if that means it's totally impossible for the island to grow a decent subsistence of food, combined with hunting/fishing/ranching.
 
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