New Brunswick

New Brunswick (French, le Nouveau-Brunswick) is one of Canada's provinces. Its capital is Fredericton. Its population is slowly growing, and now exceeds 700,000 (New Brunswickers).

New Brunswick is located in the Canadian Maritimes, on the country's east coast. It is bounded on the north by Quebec's Gasp� Peninsula and by the Baie des Chaleurs and on the east by the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and Northumberland Strait. To the south, a narrow peninsula connects it to Nova Scotia, most of which is split off by the Bay of Fundy; on its west, the province borders the American state of Maine.

The total land and water area of the province is approximately 70,000 square kilometres. About 80% of the province is forested, with the other 20% consisting of agricultural land and urban areas. New Brunswick is at the northern limit of the Appalachian Mountains, a chain of ancient, eroded mountains. The land consists of river valleys and low, gently rolling hills.

The aboriginal nations of New Brunswick include the Mi'kmaq (Micmac), Maliseet and Passamaquoddy. The population is majority English-speaking but with a substantial (35%) French-speaking minority who call themselves Acadians from Acadia, the former name of the region in the French colonial period when large numbers migrated from the Vienne area of France. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in the country.

The Province of New Brunswick was created in 1784, when recently-arrived Loyalists to the British Crown who resented being governed from distant Halifax, Nova Scotia, petitioned the British Government to allow them to form a separate province consisting of the mainland portion of Nova Scotia. The new province was named in honour of the Duke of Brunswick, son of King George III of the United Kingdom. Fredericton (note: there is no "k") was likewise named for the Prince of Wales, who died before becoming king.

New Brunswick has eight officially incorporated cities, listed here in descending order by population:

Saint John is a port city, with heavy industry in the form of pulp and paper, oil refineries, and drydocks, all owned by the family of the late K.C. Irving, as is much of the province's economy and 3 out of 4 of its daily English language newspapers. Saint John is conventionally written out in full, to distinguish it from St. John's (Harbour), the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, with which it is commonly confused by those outside of the Atlantic Provinces.

Fredericton, in addition to being the capital of the province, is a genteel university town, and home to the Lord Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Theatre New Brunswick, and other amenities, including Christ Church Cathedral, whose foundation is the oldest in Canada or the United States. Fredericton is nicknamed the "City of Stately Elms". It has boasted of the largest stand of elms outside of Central Park since Dutch Elm Disease devastated this species in the early twentieth century.

The economy of New Brunswick is a modern service economy dominated by financial services, insurance and other services, but is best known for forestry, mining, mixed farming and fishing. The most valuable crop is potatoes, while the most valuable fish catches are lobster and scallops. The largest employers are the Irving family companies, the Government of New Brunswick, and the McCain (french fries) family companies.

The University of New Brunswick was founded as King's College in 1785, one of the oldest educational institutions in North America.

Mount Allison University is a small private undergraduate university which has consistently topped the Maclean's magazine survey of Canadian Universities in the undergraduate university category since that poll began. It produces a Rhodes Scholar about once every two years on the average, and was the first university in the British Empire to grant a Bachelor's degree to a woman.

The Universit� de Moncton is a french-language university with its principal campus in Moncton.

Atlantic Baptist University is an undergraduate university offering three Bachelor's degrees; Science, Arts and Education. It was founded mid-twentieth century as a bible training school, and grew to an accredited and academically rigorous Liberal Arts university in under fifty years. ABU is also located in Moncton.

The Acadians are survivors of the Expulsion (1755) which drove several thousand French residents into exile in North America, the U.K. and France for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to Britain during the time of high tension pending war between France and Britain. Their American cousins, who wound up in Louisiana and other parts of the American South, are often referred to as Cajuns.

See: Famous people from New Brunswick

The provincial flower is the purple violet. The provincial bird is the black-capped chickadee, in common with some states in the United States of America.

New Brunswick

Map

See also