A Bit Of History...

History
The aboriginal nations of New Brunswick include the Mi'kmaq (Micmac), Maliseet and Passamaquoddy. The Mi'kmaq territories are mostly in the east of the province. The Maliseets are located in the northwest and the Passamaquoddy tribe is situated in the southwest, around Passamaquoddy Bay. Until the 16th century, New Brunswick was exclusively the domain of what are now termed the First Nation.

Early European settlement

The first known European exploration of present-day New Brunswick was by French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1534, who discovered and named the Baie des Chaleurs between northern New Brunswick and the Gaspe peninsula of Quebec. The next French contact was in 1604, when a party led by Pierre Dugua (Sieur de Monts) and Samuel de Champlain sailed into Passamaquoddy Bay and set up a camp for the winter on an island at the mouth of the St. Croix River. 36 out of the 87 members of the party died of scurvy by winter's end and the colony was relocated across the Bay of Fundy the following year to Port Royal in present day Nova Scotia. Gradually, other French settlements and seigneuries were founded along the Saint John River and the upper Bay of Fundy region as well as along the North Shore of New Brunswick through the remainder of the 17th century. These settlements included Fort La Tour (present-day Saint John), a number of villages in the Memramcook and Petitcodiac river valleys and St. Pierre, (founded by Nicolas Denys) at the site of present-day Bathurst. The whole region of New Brunswick (as well as Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and parts of Maine) were at that time proclaimed to be part of the royal French colony of Acadia. The French maintained good relations with the First Nations during their tenure.

The first British claim to New Brunswick was in 1621, when Sir William Alexander was granted, by King James I, all of present-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and part of Maine. The entire tract was to be called Nova Scotia, Latin for "New Scotland". Naturally, the French did not take kindly to the English claims. France however gradually lost control of Acadia in a series of wars during the 18th century.

The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 which formally ended the War of the Spanish Succession saw as one of its provisions the surrender of peninsular Nova Scotia to the English crown. All of what would later become New Brunswick, as well as "Ile St-Jean" (Prince Edward Island) and "Ile Royale" (Cape Breton Island) would remain under French control.

The bulk of the Acadian population now found themselves residing in the new British colony of Nova Scotia. The remainder of Acadia including the New Brunswick region was only lightly populated, with major Acadian settlements in New Brunswick only found in the Tantramar, Memramcook, and Petitcodiac regions as well as at Fort la Tour (Saint John) and Fort Anne (Fredericton).

During the Seven Years' War (1756-63), the British extended their control to include all of New Brunswick. Fort Beausejour (near Sackville) was captured at the very beginning of the war in 1755. Acadians from the nearby Beaubassin and Petitcodiac regions were subsequently expelled just as had the Acadians from peninsular Nova Scotia been deported earlier the same year. Other skirmishes followed and Fort Anne (across from present-day Fredericton) fell in 1759. Following this, all of present day New Brunswick came under British control. France ultimately lost control of its North American empire after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec in 1759.

A British colony

After the Seven Year's War, most what is now New Brunswick (and parts of Maine) were incorporated into Sunbury County in the colony of Nova Scotia. New Brunswick's relative location away from the Atlantic coastline hindered new settlement during the immediate post war period; although there were some notable exceptions such as the founding of "The Bend" (present day Moncton) in 1766 by Pennsylvania Dutch settlers sponsored by the Philadelphia Land Company. Other American settlements developed, principally in former Acadian lands in the southeast region, especially around Sackville. Some American settlement also occurred at Parrtown at the mouth of the Saint John River. English settlers from Yorkshire also settled in the Tantramar region near Sackville prior to the Revolutionary War.

Significant population growth would not occur until after the American Revolution, when Britain convinced refugee Loyalists from New England to settle in the area by giving them free land. (It should be noted that most of the pre-existing settlers in New Brunswick actually favoured the American rebels, and it is conceivable that, if a little better organized, New Brunswick could have been the "fourteenth colony"). In particular, Johnathan Eddy and his "rangers" harrassed the British garrison at Fort Cumberland (the renamed Fort Beausejour) during the early parts of the American Revolution.

With the arrival of the Loyalist refugees in Parrtown (Saint John) in 1783, the need to politically organize the territory became acute. The colonial capital (Halifax) was so distant, the British Crown decided that the colony of Nova Scotia should be split. The Province of New Brunswick was officially created by Sir Thomas Carleton on August 16, 1784.

New Brunswick was named in honour of the British monarch, King George III, who was descended from the House of Brunswick. Fredericton, the capital city, was likewise named for George III's second son, Prince Frederick Augustus, Duke of York.

The choice of Fredericton as the colonial capitol shocked the residents of the larger Parrtown (Saint John). The reason given was because Fredericton's inland location meant it was less prone to enemy (i.e. American) attack. Saint John did, however, become Canada's first incorporated city. Saint John also found itself home to the American traitor Benedict Arnold, whose shady local business dealings meant that local Loyalists also came to revile him.

Some of the deported Acadians from Nova Scotia found their way back to "Acadie" during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They settled mostly in coastal regions along the eastern and northern shores of the new colony of New Brunswick. There they lived in relative (and in many ways self imposed) isolation as they tried to maintain their language and traditions.

The War of 1812 had little effect on New Brunswick. Forts such as the Carleton Martello Tower in Saint John and the St. Andrews Blockhouse were constructed, but no action was seen. Locally, New Brunswickers were on good terms with their neighbours in Maine and the rest of New England. There was even one incident during the war where the town of St. Stephen lent its supplies of gunpowder to Calais, Maine, across the river, for the Fourth of July Independence Day celebrations.

Further north along the Maine-New Brunswick border, the boundary was disputed. Officials in London and Washington, D.C. stated their claims, but many local residents did not care one way or the other, even after they were pushed to state their preference by British magistrates. When one resident of Edmundston was asked which side he supported, he replied "the Republic of Madawaska". The name is still used today and describes the northwestern corner of the province. The boundary dispute, known as the Aroostook War, was settled in 1842.

Immigration in the early part of the 19th century was mostly from the west country of England and from Scotland. A large influx of settlers came to New Brunswick in 1845 from Ireland as a result of the Potato Famine. Many of these people settled in Saint John or Chatham, which to this day calls itself the "Irish Capital of Canada". The Catholic population often clashed with the existing Protestant residents, coming to a head with a gun battle in Saint John in 1849.

Throughout the 19th century, shipbuilding, both on the Bay of Fundy shore and the Miramichi, was the dominant industry in New Brunswick, although resource-based industries such as logging and farming were also important. In the latter part of the century, several railways were built across the province, making it easier for these inland resources to make it to markets elsewhere.

New Brunswick in Canada

New Brunswick was one of the four original provinces of Canada formed with Confederation in 1867. The Charlottetown conference of 1864 was initially intended only to discuss a Maritime Union of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, but interest in expanding the geographic scope developed in the Province of Canada (formerly Upper and Lower Canada, later Ontario and Quebec) and the meeting's agenda was altered. Many residents of the Maritimes wanted no part of this larger Confederation, for fear that the region's needs would be overshadowed by those of the rest of the country. Many politicians involved - such as Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley; New Brunswick's best-known Father of Confederation found themselves without a seat after the next election.

Following Confederation, New Brunswick suffered the effects of an economic downturn. New national policies and trade barriers as a result of Confederation disrupted the historic trading relationship between the Maritime Provinces and New England. The situation in New Brunswick was worsened by the Great Fire of 1877 in Saint John and by the decline of the wooden sailing shipbuilding industry. Finally, the global recession sparked by the Panic of 1893 significantly affected the local export economy. Many skilled workers moved west to other parts of Canada or south to the United States, but as the 20th century dawned, the province's economy began to expand again. Manufacturing gained strength with the construction of several cotton mills across the province and, in the crucial forestry sector, the sawmills that had dotted inland sections of the province gave way to larger pulp and paper mills. Nevertheless, unemployment remained relatively high and the Great Depression provided another setback. Two influential families, the Irvings and the McCains, emerged from the depression to begin to modernize and vertically integrate the provincial economy.

The Acadians, who had mostly fended for themselves on the northern and eastern shores, were traditionally isolated from the English speakers that dominated the rest of the province. Government services were often not available in French, and the infrastructure in predominantly French areas was noticeably less evolved than in the rest of the province. This changed with the election of premier Louis Robichaud in 1960. He embarked on the ambitious Equal opportunity plan in which education, rural road maintenance, and health care fell under the sole jurisdiction of a provincial government that insisted on equal coverage of all areas of the province. County councils were abolished with rural areas outside cities, towns and villages coming under direct provincial jurisdiction. The 1969 Official Languages Act made French an official language, on par with English. Linguistic tensions rose on both sides, with the militant Parti Acadien enjoying brief popularity in the 1970s and anglophone groups pushing to repeal language reforms in the 1980s, but tensions had all but disappeared by the 1990s

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_brunswick#History