They opted out of the BNA - 1867. They resisted confederation and did not welcome the British North America act until 1949. Three provinces joined the new Confederation The Province of Canada (which later became Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

I asked this question hoping that someone else would look it up for me - that will teach me to be lazy! I looked it up in the Canadian Encyclopedia and here is what I found. Both Québec and Newfoundland claimed the 'Coasts of Labrador' , as it was known in earlier times, when it was primarily a fishing colony of Great Britain. This dispute was fairly low key until Newfoundland issued timbering licenses for Labrador (the Hamilton River area) in 1902. Québec asked Ottawa (the nickname for the Canadian federal government, as 'Washington' is for the American federal government) to submit the dispute to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), a body of the British government. This was appropriate, because neither Canada nor Newfoundland had its own Supreme Court at the time, as well as not being the same country; both being members of the British Empire, their highest legal venue for recourse and dispute resolution was the JCPC. The dispute lingered on and in 1922, the two parties asked the JCPC to resolve only one issue - the exact location and definition of the border in accordance with statutes, orders-in-council and proclamations. The main issue was the definition of 'coast', as the territory known as the coast and surrounding territories of Labrador has been annexed back and forth between Newfoundland and Québec several times over the centuries. To make a long story short, the 5 judges of the JCPC decided in Newfoundland's favour and set the boundary at the watershed line (the one leading to the Atlantic Ocean), with a few exceptions, such as a line that follows the 52nd parallel. Québec has never been happy with this resolution; I suspect that Hydro Québec's contract with Newfoundland for the purchase of electricity from Labrador generators on the Churchill River at below market values is a subtle way of evening the score. Ironically, Newfoundland had offered to sell Labrador to Québec in 1925, but the offer was turned down. The Constitution Act (1982) re-confirmed these boundaries, but, as always, there are those who do not consider the issue to be over. from various sources on the 'net, but principally from The Canadian Encyclopedia, Hurtig Publishers, Edmonton, copyright 1985.