While staying at a B&B in New Brunswick, we met a friendly couple who had lived all their lives in central Maine. They were in New Brunswick to search for a retirement home. We expressed surprise that someone from the frigid interior of Maine would move even farther north to retire. Why not seek the warmth of the south? Oh, the Maine couple explained, they wanted to move north for warmth — the warmth of New Brunswick's people. It didn't take us long to discover what they meant. Cycling around New Brunswick, we found it hard to keep a tight schedule. Stopping for a cup of coffee, buying groceries, or just filling a water bottle would often result in a half-hour of conversation with a friendly New Brunswicker. Even teenagers seem to be consistently friendly and polite. Imagine that!

Perhaps people are unusually friendly in New Brunswick because there aren't too many of them. New Brunswick could hold within its borders all of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, with enough room left over for most of Vermont. It is nearly 30% larger than Nova Scotia and over 12 times the size of Prince Edward Island, yet the population is less than 800,000. Most of New Brunswick is covered with forest, and the interior is barely inhabited. About a quarter of the population is concentrated in three small cities — St. John, Moncton, and Fredericton, the provincial capital. The rest is spread out in villages and towns along the coast and in the St. John River Valley.

New Brunswick is the only province in Canada that is officially bilingual. Quebec has only one official language - French - and in the other Canadian provinces, English is the official language. Only in friendly New Brunswick are Canada's two principal languages given equal treatment. French is spoken in about one third of New Brunswick homes. So many people are bilingual that language is never a problem for the visitor.

New Brunswick, bordering Maine and Quebec, is the first Maritime Province in which visitors arrive from the U.S.or from Upper Canada. However, New Brunswick is less well known than Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia, and tourism, while thriving, is still not as important as in the other Maritime Provinces. This is puzzling. New Brunswick is remarkable diverse and just as beautiful as its neighbors. There are the headlands, harbours and islands of the Bay of Fundy, the warm sandy beaches of Northumberland Strait, and the rolling hills, forests and farms of the interior. The St. John River Valley is, we believe, one of the finest areas for an extended bicycle tour in eastern North America, and there is any number of wonderful rides along the coasts. Except in a few resorts in peak season, there are seldom crowds or heavy traffic in New Brunswick. Perhaps we bicycle tourists should simply be grateful that New Brunswick is not as well known as it deserves to be.

•  Go to the Evandale Loop  >
   
•  Suggestions for New Brunswick Lodging  >
   
•  Useful Links  >
   
•  Return to Home Page  >