New Brunswick

http://meta.wikipedia.com/upload/ca-nb.gif

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.

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 population is largely English-speaking 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. Fredericton (note: there is no "k") was likewise named for the Prince of Wales, who died before becoming king.

The principal cities of New Brunswick are Saint John (pop. c. 108,000); Fredericton (capital); Moncton (known as "the hub"); Edmundston, Bathurst, and Campbellton.

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 all of its daily English language newspapers. Saint John is always written out in full, to distinguish it from St. John's (Harbour), the capital of Newfoundland, 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 the 1780's and is thus 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 Université 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 rigourous Liberal Arts university in under fifty years. ABU is also located in Moncton.

English New Brunswick is socially a conservative region, albeit with an outward-looking economy and population.

New Brunswickers of British extraction are nicknamed "Herring Chokers", because, it is traditionally said, they look like they are choking on a herring.

The Acadians are survivors of the Expulsion (1755) which drove several thousand French peasants into exile in North America, the U.K. and France. Their American cousins who wound up in Louisiana and other parts of the American South are called Cajuns (sometimes derogative).

The aboriginal peoples include the Micmac (Mikma), Malecite and Passamaquoddy .

New Brunswick gave the world Albert Gesner, a geologist who invented kerosene and was instrumental in the creation of the early oil industry in Pennsylvania; the inventor of the fog horn; Donald Sutherland and Walter Pidgeon, actors; Louis B. Mayer, one of the founders of MGM Studios, Hollywood, Fleet Street publishing baron, William Maxwell Aitken and Canadian Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett. Poets Bliss Carmen and Charles G.D. Roberts, as well as Archibald Lampman, were New Brunswickers.

The provincial flower is the purple violet. The provincial bird is the black-capped chickadee, in common with some American states.