I've never been to NewFoundland and only know people from there through coworkers that know people from there, or friends of friends ie, someone I use to play volleyball with husband is from there...
Cod fishery collapse, Hibernia oil and Paul McCartney protesting baby seal harvesting is about the most I can think of on my own without wiki.
Other than that all my knowledge is through the random hodgepodge of trivia from SignHillHiker (if it wasn't for him I wouldn't even know what a signal hill is or that you could hike it).
My guess is that unless one has traveled there or have some reason for thinking about it then you won't really have much knowledge about Newfoundland or any other small place in Canada. Newfoundland is an outlier because most Canadians have never been there, the least traveled to Province in Canada.
I'd bet most people from the Maritimes have about as much knowledge of cities like Kelowna and Lethbridge as people from The Prairies know about similar sized cities in the East like the two St.Johns's. (or even that there are two St.Johns for that matter)