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Originally Posted by casper
Gander is explained by being one the last jumping off point for aircraft going to Europe from North American when they could barely make it over there. Today not the case for most commercial airliners but still the case for some aircraft.
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Almost all trans-Atlantic flights once had to stop in Gander. There were tremendous benefits for us - if you go back through old newspapers in St. John's, there are advertisements for every conceivable airline, telling readers to speak to their local booking agent in St. John's and fly out of Gander. All of the celebrities of that era passed through. Canada was actually getting a bad reputation because all most people ever saw of it was Gander, and its old bush terminal. It was the federal government that built the award-winning terminal there for that reason:
https://flic.kr/p/cERQEJ
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Regarding our airports - it's mostly due to regionalism. Many are served only by one of our local airlines (PAL, Air Labrador, etc.). These, in turn, are obscenely expensive and mostly serve politicians and the public service. It's all covered by taxpayers, however indirectly, and meant to make it easy for MHAs to get from their rural ridings to the Confederation Building.
Beyond that, Deer Lake (especially, but the others as well) served the up-to-30,000 rural NLers who live here but work in other provinces. That traffic is starting to die down, of course.
The only oddity is Stephenville and Deer Lake being so close together. Stephenville was the big boy, very successful for its size (I believe it's still an international airport, even). Some politician didn't want to have to drive that far from his cottage up near Deer Lake so the latter airport (until then, just one of the airstrips every other town here has) was given political support and Stephenville was politically hobbled and held back. Governments change, incentives change, the people wanting to kill Stephenville lost power before the deed could be done, and so now we're left with both.
The rest all make sense in terms of isolation or legacy. That graphic above isn't even all of them. There are lots of smaller ones, especially in northern Labrador (no roads, no winter ferry service possible due to ice).
St-Pierre et Miquelon has a proper airport as well.
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EDIT: Found some info on the different ones, including all the officially maintained airstrips on the island and Labrador:
http://www.tw.gov.nl.ca/airportservices/index.html
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