History
[edit]
Main article: History of New Brunswick
Further information: Monarchy in New Brunswick § History
Indigenous societies[edit]
Main article: Indigenous peoples in New Brunswick
Paleo-Indians are believed to have been the first humans on the land of New Brunswick, settling there roughly 10,000 years ago. Because their descendants did not leave a written record, there is a lack of knowledge of the history of the area before the arrival of European explorers. New Brunswick's land base has historically formed integral parts of the homelands of three First Nations:the Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, and Passamaquoddy of Wabanakia. Much of the eastern coast falls within the Mi'kmaw district of Siknikt (Signigtewa'gi) in their country of Mi'kma'ki; the western half of the province is covered by the Wolastoqiyik homeland: Wolastokuk, named for the Wolastoq or Saint John River; and Peskotomuhkatik, the Passamaquoddy country, surrounds the bay named for the nation. Many placenames in the province originate from their Eastern Algonquian languages, such as Aroostook, Bouctouche, Memramcook, Petitcodiac, Richibucto and Shediac.
Acadia and Nova Scotia (1604–1784)[edit]
Main articles: Acadia and New France
The first documented European exploration of New Brunswick was made by Jacques Cartier in 1534, when his party set foot in Miscou and explored the coasts of Chaleur Bay. They made contact with aboriginals, who from this point on began to trade with Europeans. This also exposed them to Old World diseases. Acadia, a colonial division of New France covering the Maritimes, was founded in 1604 by Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Dugua de Mons with a settlement on Saint Croix Island.[citation needed] It was quickly abandoned due to difficult living conditions and moved to Acadia's capital, Port-Royal. There, the Mi'kmaq helped the French survive. In 1626, Port-Royal was destroyed by the British. The British conquered Acadia shortly after and held it until 1629. James VI and I, King of Scotland, renamed it "Nova Scotia" in English.[citation needed]
The Mi'kmaq helped all French survivors, including Charles de Saint-Étienne de la Tour. Together, they established a fur trade network along the Saint John River. With the onset of the Anglo-French War (1627–1629), de la Tour was issued a charter to govern Acadia.[citation needed] In 1629, Acadia was officially returned to France. As such, a new wave of French settlers arrived in Port-Royal to revitalise the colony, including Isaac de Razilly, a new governor of Acadia, and Charles de Menou d'Aulnay, his cousin. de Razilly and de la Tour's charters conflicted with each others',[citation needed] but the two maintained an amicable relationship. In 1635, de Razilly died, triggering tensions between de la Tour, who governed from the Saint John valley, and d'Aulnay, who governed from Port-Royal. In the 1630s, this erupted into the Acadian Civil War. d'Aulnay managed to expel de la Tour in 1644. But, following d'Aulnay's death in 1650, de la Tour married his widow in 1653, essentially overturning his success.[citation needed]
Over time, French settlement extended up the river to the site of present-day Fredericton. Other settlements in the southeast extended from Beaubassin, near the present-day border with Nova Scotia, to Baie Verte, and up the Petitcodiac, Memramcook, and Shepody Rivers. The descendants of Acadia's French colonists became the Acadians. Acadians developed a unique society characterised by dyking technology, which allowed them to cultivate marshes left by the Bay of Fundy's tides, and by tightly knit independent communities, because they were often neglected by French authorities.
During the 1690s, in King William's War, attacks were launched from the Saint John valley by Acadian militias onto New England colonists. This would create a deep English hostility against the French presence in the region.
From the 1600s to mid-1700s, Acadia was routinely a war zone between the French and the English and would often change hands. However, Acadia would definitively fall into British hands following Queen Anne's War, a conquest of most of the Acadian peninsula, formalized by the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. After the war, Acadia was reduced to Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and Île-Royale (Cape Breton Island), with the ownership of continental Acadia (New Brunswick) being disputed between France and Britain, with an informal border on the Isthmus of Chignecto. In an effort to limit British expansion into continental Acadia, the French built Fort Beauséjour at the isthmus in 1751. Fort Beauséjour at the Isthmus of Chignecto. The French built the fort in 1751 in an effort to limit British expansion into continental Acadia.
From 1749 to 1755, Father Le Loutre's War took place, where British soldiers fought against Acadians and Mi'kmaq to consolidate their power over Acadia/Nova Scotia. In 1755, the British captured Fort Beauséjour, severing the Acadian supply lines to Nova Scotia, and Île-Royale. Continental Acadia thus came to be incorporated into the British colony of Nova Scotia with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Following this, the British, unsatisfied with the Acadians' surrender because they refused to pledge allegiance, turned to capturing and exporting Acadians en masse, an ethnic cleansing event known as the Deportation of the Acadians which was ordered by Robert Monckton. From 1755 to 1763, 12,000 Acadians out of 18,000 were forcefully deported to various locations around the world, though 8000 died before arrival. The remaining 6000 Acadians escaped the British by fleeing North to the present Acadia, or to Canada. From 1755 to 1757, most Acadians were deported to the Thirteen Colonies. From 1758 to 1762, most were sent to France. Between 1763 and 1785, many deported Acadians relocated to join their compatriots in Louisiana. Their descendants became Cajuns. In the 1780s and 1790s, some Acadians returned to Acadia, and discovered several thousand English immigrants, mostly from New England, on their former lands.
In the late 18th century, the British began to make efforts to colonise the region, mostly by importing colonists from New England. Before the American Revolution, these colonists were called planters. After the revolution, new colonists were called loyalists, because only those loyal to the British crown settled in Nova Scotia. In 1766, planters from Pennsylvania founded The Bend of the Petitcodiac, or simply The Bend, which later became Moncton in 1855, and English settlers from Yorkshire arrived in the Sackville area. In the 1770s, 10,000 loyalists settled along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy. In 1783, both Saint Andrews and Saint John were founded.
British colony of New Brunswick (1784–1867)[edit]
A romanticized depiction of the arrival of the Loyalists in New Brunswick Loyalists who received land allocations around the St. John River valley, the Bay of Fundy or the Northumberland Strait became dissatisfied with being governed from Halifax because it was so far away. Therefore, on 18 June 1784, the British government created a new province for them: New Brunswick. New Brunswick was formed from the partition of Sunbury County from the remainder of Nova Scotia. In that same year, New Brunswick formed its first elected assembly. The first governor was Thomas Carleton, and, in 1785, he chose the hamlet of Sainte-Anne as the provincial capital. Sainte-Anne was later renamed Frederick's Town (and then later Fredericton) after the second son of George III.
In total, it is believed that around 14,000 loyalist refugees came to New Brunswick. However, 10% eventually returned to the United States. In 1785, Saint John became New Brunswick's first incorporated city.
Economically, New Brunswick was a poor environment for agriculture and mining. Its fishery was also far inferior to that of Nova Scotia's. New Brunswick's forests were rich in wood, but as wood is a bulky and low-value commodity, accessible markets were limited. Essentially, in the late 1700s, New Brunswick was a peripheral corner of the British Empire and North American world. Geopolitical events in Europe would change this situation. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte's continental blockade forced the United Kingdom, which usually relied on the Baltic Sea for supplies, to import timber from its North American colonies. This stimulated the lumber trade in New Brunswick, as well as in Lower Canada.
Between 1805 and 1812, New Brunswick annually exported 100,000 tons of squared timber. In 1819, the number exceeded 240,000 tons, and in 1825 exports reached their highest level at 417,000 tons. This also resulted in the emergence of a shipbuilding market. These industries were then bolstered by the Canadian–American Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, and demand from the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865. St. Martins became the third most productive shipbuilding town in the Maritimes and produced over 500 vessels.
From 1800 to 1851, New Brunswick's population grew from 25,000 to 200,000, and it saw large-scale immigration from Ireland and Scotland. In 1848, responsible home government was granted. The 1850s saw the emergence of political parties largely organized along religious and ethnic lines.
From the late 1700s to mid 1800s, Acadians became a minority, and they lived largely on the fringes of society, fearful of the English. They were mostly illiterate due to laws preventing them from opening schools. They were also not part of the economic boom, and had troubles asserting their land rights.
During the 1860s, the notion of unifying the maritime colonies of British North America was being increasingly discussed. This was due to multiple factors. For example, some felt that the American Civil War was the result of a weak central government and wished to avoid the same fate. Some also wanted to increase trade between the colonies, and be less economically tied to the US. In 1864, the Charlottetown Conference was held to discuss a possible Maritime Union between Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. However, the Province of Canada, caught wind of the conference and decided to send representatives to attend. They asked that the agenda be expanded to discuss a union that would also include them.
In 1866, the United States cancelled the Reciprocity Treaty, leading to a loss of trade and a stronger desire to build up trade within British North America. A Fenian raid in 1866 also increased public support for a potential union.
Canadian province (1867–present)[edit]
On 1 July 1867, New Brunswick joined with Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) to create the Dominion of Canada.
An Intercolonial Railway bridge, 1875. The railway was established as a result of Confederation.
Though Confederation brought into existence the Intercolonial Railway in 1872, new barriers undermined traditional trade relations. In 1879, John A. Macdonald's Conservatives enacted the National Policy, which called for high tariffs and opposed free trade, disrupting the trading relationship between the Maritimes and New England. The economic situation was worsened by the Great Fire of Saint John of 1877, the decline of the shipbuilding industry, and the US Panic of 1893. Many experienced workers lost their jobs and had to move west or to the United States.
In 1871, the government introduced free education, banning catechism, the cassock and French in public schools in the process. Though contested by the Acadians and the Irish, the law was deemed constitutional. Following a riot in Caraquet in 1875, and political pressure, the bans were lifted in 1877.
The Irving Group of Companies, founded by the Irving family, officially began in 1881 in Bouctouche when James Irving bought a sawmill. Afterwards, the family continued to acquire businesses and substantial wealth, eventually becoming the richest family in the province. Today, Irving is considered by many to exert a monopoly over New Brunswick.
Towards the early 20th century, the economy began to improve somewhat. The railways and tariffs fostered the growth of new industries in the province such as textile manufacturing, iron mills, pulp and paper mills, and sugar refineries. However, many of these eventually failed to compete with their competition in Central Canada. Unemployement was high for a long time and increased during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
By the end of the Great Depression, the New Brunswick standard of living was much lower than the Canadian average. In 1937, New Brunswick had the highest infant mortality and illiteracy rates in Canada. In 1940, the Rowell–Sirois Commission reported grave flaws in the Canadian constitution. While the federal government had most of the revenue gathering powers, the provinces had many expenditure responsibilities such as healthcare, education, and welfare, which were becoming increasingly expensive. The Commission recommended the creation of equalization payments, which were eventually implemented in 1957.
After Canada joined World War II, 14 NB army units were organized, in addition to The Royal New Brunswick Regiment, and first deployed in the Italian campaign in 1943. After the Normandy landings they redeployed to northwestern Europe, along with The North Shore Regiment. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, a training program for ally pilots, established bases in Moncton, Chatham, and Pennfield Ridge, as well as a military typing school in Saint John. While relatively unindustrialized before the war, New Brunswick became home to 34 plants on military contracts from which the province received over $78 million. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had promised no conscription, asked the provinces if they would release the government of said promise. New Brunswick voted 69.1% yes. The policy was not implemented until 1944, too late for many of the conscripts to be deployed. There were 1808 NB fatalities among the armed forces.
A provincial welcome sign in English and French, the two official languages of the province
The Acadians in northern New Brunswick had long been geographically and linguistically isolated from the more numerous English speakers to the south. The population of French origin grew dramatically after Confederation, from about 16 per cent in 1871 to 34 per cent in 1931. Government services were often not available in French, and the infrastructure in Francophone areas was less developed than elsewhere. In 1960 Premier Louis Robichaud embarked on the New Brunswick Equal Opportunity program, in which education, rural road maintenance, and healthcare fell under the sole jurisdiction of a provincial government that insisted on equal coverage throughout the province, rather than the former county-based system. In 1969 the Robichaud government adopted the Official Languages Act making the province officially bilingual and establishing the right of New Brunswickers to obtain provincial government services in the official language of their choice. In 1982 at the request of the government of Richard Hatfield, this right became part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and therefore part of the Constitution of Canada.
The flag of New Brunswick, based on the coat of arms, was adopted in 1965. The conventional heraldic representations of a lion and a ship represent colonial ties with Europe, and the importance of shipping at the time the coat of arms was assigned.
In 2005, the Court of Queen's Bench approved a ruling allowing for the legalization of same-sex marriage. At the beginning of 2023, the provincial government implemented a local governance reform, reducing the number of entities from 340 to 89. The following year, the province elected Susan Holt, its first woman to serve as premier, following the 2024 provincial election.
