New Brunswick
New Brunswick (French: Nouveau-Brunswick) is the only constitutionally bilingual province (French and English) in Canada. The provincial capital is Fredericton. The provincial population is approximately 751,250; the majority is English-speaking but there is also a large Francophone minority (35%), chiefly of Acadian origin. The total land and water area of the province is 72,908 km², over 80% of which is forested.
The province’s name comes from the archaic English translation for Braunschweig; a city in northern Germany, and the ancestral home of the Hanoverian King George III of the United Kingdom. New Brunswick was one of the four original provinces of Canada and entered into the Canadian Confederation on July 1st, 1867.
Climate: No part of New Brunswick lies more than 200 km from the ocean, yet the province has a typically continental flavour to its climate. During the winter, cold air, largely unaltered, frequently flows across New Brunswick from the centre of North America. In summer, the predominant air mass is warm continental, with occasional incursions of hot, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. On the other hand, influxes of moist Atlantic air produce mild spells in winter and periods of cool weather in summer. January is the coldest month in New Brunswick and July is the warmest. Average daytime highs vary between 20 and 25C in the summer and – 7C to – 12C in winter.
Language: New Brunswick (French: Nouveau-Brunswick) is the only constitutionally bilingual province (French and English) in Canada.
Education: New Brunswick has a comprehensive parallel system of Anglophone and francophone public high schools providing education from kindergarten to grade 12. There are also several private schools in the province, such as the university preparatory Rothesay Netherwood School (pls see under our Private High School Section). The New Brunswick Community College system has campuses in all regions of the province. There are also a number of private colleges for specialized training in the province, such as the Moncton Flight College; one of the top pilot-training academies in Canada.
The two comprehensive provincial universities are the University of New Brunswick and Université de Moncton. These institutions both have extensive post graduate programs and Schools of Law. Mount Allison University in Sackville consistently ranks as one of the best liberal arts universities in Canada and has produced 47 Rhodes Scholars, more than any other liberal arts university in North America.
