The 37th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) on Saturday inscribed Canada's Red Bay Basque Whaling Station on the World Heritage List, bringing the total number of World Heritage Sites in Canada to 17.

Francisco Javier Gutierrez, Vice-Chair of the 37th session, in the name of the 21-member committee, expressed congratulations to Canada on the inscription of the property on the UNESCO's prestigious list.

Located in Labrador province on the shore of the Strait of Belle Isle, Red Bay provides the earliest, most comprehensive and best preserved testimony of a pre-industrial whaling station in the Arctic zone, according to the document of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an advisory body to the WHC on cultural properties.

Established by Basque mariners in the 16th century, it enabled the organization of summer coastal whale hunting, the butchering of the whales, the rendering of whale fat by heating to produce oil, and the storage of the oil.

The property includes remains of rendering ovens, cooperages, wharves, temporary living quarters and a cemetery, together with underwater remains of vessels and whale bone deposits, the document said.

The two main sites of the property, and Saddle Island in particular, had in total around fifteen buildings for the rendering ovens used to melt the whale blubber and produce the oil, it added.

"The property bears testimony to the pioneering establishment of Basque transatlantic whale hunting in the 16th century, in the Arctic maritime provinces of north-eastern Canada," the ICOMOS said.

"It exhibits a full ensemble of archaeological remains, both on land and under water, which are in many cases well preserved: vessels, oil rendering ovens, cooperages, whale bone deposits, temporary living quarters, a cemetery and a significant set of archaeological artifacts."

The 37th WHC session, taking place in Phnom Penh, will close in Angkor on June 27. Endi

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