New Brunswick

F

Political Parties

The Conservative Party and the Liberal Party have dominated the politics of New Brunswick since the late 19th century. This two-party system has proven fairly balanced, and each party has won a more or less equal number of elections. The Conservative Party is now known at the provincial level as the Progressive Conservative Party (at the federal level it is called the Conservative Party). Third parties, such as the New Democratic Party, have rarely been successful in the province.

G

Services

Health and medical services are provided free of charge to residents, and the elderly are eligible for financial assistance to cover the cost of prescription drugs. Health services are provided by seven regional districts, which include major urban hospitals as well as smaller clinics.

VIII

History

A

Indigenous Peoples

The original inhabitants of New Brunswick were Algonquian-speaking aboriginal peoples—the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy. The Mi’kmaq lived in northeastern New Brunswick, the Maliseet in the Saint John River Valley, and the Passamaquoddy in the southwestern coastal area. These aboriginal groups had distinct customs but shared much in common. They were primarily hunters and fishers who depended for their food on the wildlife of the forests and the fish and shellfish of the rivers and coastal areas. They made their tools from stone and bone, their clothing from animal skins and fur, and their wigwams using birch poles and bark. They also built light and maneuverable birchbark canoes for travel by water and wooden toboggans for travel in winter over snow.

The arrival of the French in the early 16th century was greeted by the Mi’kmaq as an opportunity to trade for European goods, such as iron tools, woolen clothing, and copper kettles, that supplemented their way of life without transforming it. Until the early 18th century, the aboriginal population continued to dominate the area, and European trade and settlement depended on collaboration with native peoples. However, aboriginal society was undermined by increased dependence on European goods and exposure to unfamiliar diseases. This led to a catastrophic decline in the native population and, with increasing European settlement in the 18th century, the loss of control over their territory.

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B

Exploration and Early Settlement

It is likely that explorers John Cabot in 1497 and Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 sailed along New Brunswick’s coast. In 1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed into Chaleur Bay. Seventy years later, Pierre du Gua, sieur de Monts and Samuel de Champlain explored and named the Saint John River before sailing to Dochet Island (now Saint Croix Island, Maine), at the mouth of the Saint Croix River, where they spent the winter of 1604 and 1605. This is generally regarded as the beginning of European settlement in New Brunswick. The following spring the expedition was relocated to Port Royal, which is now Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia.

Over the next century a distinctive new society emerged in the maritime region known as Acadia to the French, an area that included the present-day provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. The Acadians, as they became known, were people of French ancestry who developed a successful mixed economy based on farming, fishing, and trade. They enjoyed rapid population growth and good relations with aboriginal peoples. However, imperialist rivalries between France and Britain, complicated by the expansionist ambitions of New Englanders, caused repeated conflicts over control of Acadia after 1680.

Control over the Bay of Fundy alternated between France and Britain as several European treaties negated British military victories over French-held territories in North America. Most of Nova Scotia fell permanently to the British in 1710, and its status was confirmed by the Peace of Utrecht three years later. Possession of New Brunswick, however, was not decided. In the meantime, disputes over the loyalty of Acadian settlers to the British crown were resolved by the acceptance of an oath that promised Acadian neutrality in military conflicts.

In 1750, in an effort to strengthen its control of the Canadian mainland, France built two forts on the Isthmus of Chignecto: Beauséjour, near Aulac, and Gaspereau, near Port Elgin. As the French-British imperial rivalry again heated up, British authorities in Nova Scotia demanded new loyalty oaths from the Acadians. At that time the Acadians numbered more than 15,000 people in the region, and they were viewed as a potential source of assistance to French territorial ambitions. In 1755, when the Acadian residents refused to swear new oaths of loyalty, Nova Scotia governor Charles Lawrence ordered the removal of the entire Acadian population from the colony and the confiscation of their lands and property. In the same year British forces captured the two French forts, thus ensuring British control of New Brunswick. The deportation of thousands of Acadians to British ports along the Atlantic seaboard from New England to Georgia was a major military exercise and has remained one of the most controversial episodes in the history of the region.

C

British Colony

Under the terms of the Royal Proclamation in 1763, issued by Britain after France’s defeat in the French and Indian War, New Brunswick was to be administered from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Beginning in 1764 British authorities permitted exiled Acadians to return. Over the next half-century many Acadians reestablished themselves in the region, although most moved to rural areas on New Brunswick’s frontiers because their former lands had largely been resettled. At the same time, a new wave of immigration from New England served to strengthen the English-speaking presence in New Brunswick, including the arrival of about 1,000 people who established Maugerville as their chief settlement. Even before the war ended, three enterprising New Englanders, James Simonds, William Hazen, and James White, founded a trading post at the mouth of the Saint John River in anticipation of increased population and trade. By 1775 an influx of settlers from Yorkshire, England, had brought the population to about 4,500. The settlers lived by farming, trading furs, fishing, and lumbering.

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