I think it comes down to how the city has grown - NF today is made up of four formerly independent municipalities, amalgamated over the years (50s-70s). The smaller parts - when independent - were "remote" switches (not in the DSL sense, rather the old-school mechanical) hanging off the co on victoria; some places north of huggins hung off the st. davids switch which was a remote of the notl co.
Over the last 13 years or so, my experience - bouncing between cable and DSL in this city at my four sites (as availability and pricing fluctuates) - has been that DSL is far more reliable than cable.
Granted - I haven't used cogeco in about 5 years - but I could never get vpn tunnels to stay up reliably on their network (I strongly suspected at the time it was due to their dpi, which they consistently denied using, but later turned out to be true), but on DSL, they have always been rock solid stable, and far less downtime (although slower in some parts of the city).
so to the OP, go DSL if you can, otherwise cable. Teksavvy either way