New Brunswick Culture & Language

New Brunswick's culture runs along its language line. The English-speaking two-thirds, rooted in the Loyalist migration of the 1780s and later Scottish, Irish and English settlement, holds the Saint John valley and the south. The French-speaking third are Acadians, descendants of the settlers who survived and returned after the deportations; their heartland is the Acadian Peninsula around Caraquet, the north shore and the southeast, with the distinct Brayon community at Edmundston. Acadian French, and the English-blended Chiac of the Moncton area, are living dialects, and National Acadian Day on 15 August, with its tintamarre of noise-making through the streets, is the year's great expression of identity.

The institutions reflect both halves. Fredericton, the capital, holds the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, opened in 1959 with paintings by Turner and Dalí and now the province's designated provincial gallery, alongside two universities. Saint John holds the New Brunswick Museum, Canada's oldest continuing museum, tracing to 1842, and Moosehead, founded there in 1867 and Canada's oldest independent brewery. The Acadian story is told at the Village Historique Acadien near Caraquet and Le Pays de la Sagouine at Bouctouche, drawn from the writing of the Acadian novelist Antoine Maillet. Three First Nations, the Mi'kmaq, Wolastoqiyik and Passamaquoddy, keep their own cultures across the province.

New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada, and both English and French are official. About two-thirds of the population speaks English and a third French; provincial government services are available in either language by right. English is understood almost everywhere and is the working language of the south and the Saint John valley.

French dominates the Acadian north and east, the Acadian Peninsula around Caraquet, the north shore and the southeast around Moncton, and the Brayon northwest around Edmundston. The local French is Acadian French, with the English-blended Chiac heard around Moncton; standard French is understood throughout. A few French words, bonjour, merci, s'il vous plaît, are welcome in Acadian country, though visitors get by in English everywhere. The Mi'kmaq, Wolastoqiyik and Passamaquoddy languages survive in their communities.