Fredericton

In 1783, with the end of the American Revolution, about thirty-four thousand colonists who had been loyal to the British government fled their homes in the former American colonies to reestablish themselves in what is now Canada. About two thousand of them tried their luck in a small French Acadian settlement called Ste. Anne's Point.

Many of them died in the harsh Canadian winter that followed, but those who remained were carrying on a long tradition of refugees and adventurers who sought new lives on the banks of the St. John River in the city now known as Fredericton. Today, the city is the provincial capital of New Brunswick.

Landscape

The fertile valley where Fredericton lies is geologically unique. In the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia regions, glaciers once scraped bare the ancient Precambrian layers of earth, leaving a landscape characterized by rugged coastline and shallow soil.

As the sea levels rose and receded during ice ages over the past hundred thousand years, the land was further spotted with bogs, wetlands, and tidal saltwater marshes. Those wetlands are still fed by the power of dramatic tidal changes in the nearby Bay of Fundy, which cause the St. John River to regularly reverse the direction of its flow, creating powerful eddies.

Combined with the province's cold winters, the area was a challenge to human habitation. The St. John River Valley, however, represents a unique exception to the New Brunswick landscape. Favored with a deeper deposit of soil and nourished by warmer winds from inland and fresh water from the rivers, the site drew First Nations people and European settlers alike.

The greater metropolitan area, which includes Fredericton and more than a dozen other smaller communities, measures approximately 4,521 square kilometers (1,745 square miles).

People

Fredericton had a population of approximately 58,220 in 2016. The population of the greater metropolitan area is almost double that number.

Fredericton's population swells between the months of September and May, when school is in session. The city's median age (39.9 years old, according to data from the 2016 census) tends to be slightly younger than the national average thanks to the universities and a variety of other small colleges and trade schools in the greater Fredericton area.

Like many small cities, Fredericton has undergone enormous changes through the last century. The first groups that sought refuge on the banks of the St. John have been joined by many others: the descendants of First Nations, French, Acadians, British loyalists, Scottish, and Irish settlers mix with later emigrants and refugees from Germany, Scandinavia, and countries throughout Asia.

Immigration into Fredericton from overseas, along with an international corporate presence, continues bring a variety of languages and cultures into Fredericton's historic mix. Census information from 2016 shows that 91.5 percent of the city's population speaks English as a first language and 6.8 percent speak French as a first language.

A growing portion of the population speaks languages other than the province's official languages (French and English), which bodes well for the increasing corporate demand in the area for Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, and German speakers.

Economy

The nineteenth century brought with it the end of the fur trade and the rise of industrialism in Canada. Railways rather than waterways were becoming the primary means of travel between North American cities, and Fredericton was no exception. New factories rose all over the city to manufacture boots, shoes, and carriages. Brickyards, iron foundries, tanneries, and lumber mills processed raw materials to meet the growing demand throughout North America and Europe. New Brunswick, with its mighty rivers and coastal ports, became an important region for shipbuilding.

Though the shipbuilding industry eventually declined and new industries took the place of the original manufacturers, Fredericton retains much of its nineteenth-century character. Historic quarters with tree-lined streets and Victorian storefronts grace the small twenty-first-century city.

Fredericton continues to serve as the capital of New Brunswick's government, which along with a few large manufacturers, provide many of the city's jobs. The University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University now play a more significant role in the city's makeup.

The educational centers in Fredericton also mean that the city ranks ahead of most of the province in economic trends. Large corporations mine the area for a skilled workforce to work in the areas of information technology and research and development.

History

Fredericton's history began long before the colonial wars. Perched strategically at the point where the Nashwaak River empties into the St. John, the city was originally a regular stopping point for the Maliseet and Mi'kmaq Indians, who took advantage of the area around the rivers for hunting and fishing. However, these early inhabitants along the St. John also found the area unusually useful for farming.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, European exploration and settlements were bringing dramatic changes to regions throughout North America. While explorers ventured north of the Bay of Fundy in search of a passage through to the Pacific Ocean, others settled along the rivers in search of goods for trade. In the middle of the century, the French won control of Nova Scotia and the St. John River Valley, forcing out British colonists and tradesmen.

The last quarter of the seventeenth century witnessed a large-scale reorganization of the territory as the king of France issued land grants, rewarding settlers and favorites with land parcels in the new world. Among those to be rewarded was Joseph Robineau de Villebon, who received a title to the land that is now Fredericton in 1692.

Villebon established a fort at the point where the St. John and the Nashwaak meet, where he could exert control over the trade coming down the rivers. For a time, the fort grew wealthy from the fur trade, but the year Villebon died, floods destroyed the village and the settlement failed.

The French and British colonial wars, however, continued. The British regained control of Nova Scotia and the river valley under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This sent many of the French settlers and traders fleeing, including a small group of Acadians, descendants of the original French-speaking settlers.

Historians believe that the British forced the emigration of approximately 73 percent of the Acadians, allowing French inhabitants to remain, but as British subjects. Among those Acadians to relocate was a small group who settled the Fredericton area yet again in 1723. With only eighty-three settlers, the village reemerged as Ste. Anne's Point.

With the British quickly gaining ground in North America, the Acadians of Ste. Anne's Point were driven out again in 1758. Native Americans took control of the area in their absence. Not until 1768 were three trading families from England able to reestablish a European settlement at the site. Two thousand British loyalists from the American colonies joined them in 1783, after the British lost the American Revolutionary War.

Two years later, the residents of Ste. Anne's Point petitioned the governor of Nova Scotia for a new province to be created from the area north of the Bay of Fundy, to be called New Brunswick. The request was granted, and Ste. Anne's Point was renamed Frederick's Town after King George III of Britain's second son. The governor quickly chose the city for the provincial capital. The new government established government buildings, the first public high school, and one of North America's first universities in that first year.

During the following century, Frederick's Town (changed to Fredericton) continued to thrive as a small trading city, a government center, and a military outpost. In the mid-nineteenth century, under Queen Victoria, it also became a cathedral city, the seat of an Anglican Church Diocese, despite the fact that it had little more than ten thousand residents.

During the same period, the British Crown granted the Maliseet tribe a permanent settlement on the other side of the river. In 1867, legislators from Fredericton played a key role in the creation of a new nation from the confederation of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Upper Canada, and Lower Canada.

While Fredericton's unusually well-educated and multilingual population strengthens its economic outlook, it also faces the changes wrought by an aging national population, international competition for businesses, and the inevitable stresses of a city absorbing a large variety of cultures, languages, and histories.

Bibliography

Brookes, Alana, and William W. Thorpe. "Fredericton." The Canadian Encyclopedia, 6 Mar. 2019, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/fredericton/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2021.

Forbes, Ernest R. "New Brunswick." The Canadian Encyclopedia, 27 Jan. 2021, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/new-brunswick/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2021.

Soucoup, Dan. A Short History of Fredericton. Nimbus, 2015.

Warkentin, John. So Vast and Various: Interpreting Canada's Regions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. McGill-Queen's UP, 2010.

Watson, Julie V. Frommer's Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Wiley, 2012.